The Lost Ark of the Covenant - Sources and Location

The Lost Ark of the Covenant - Sources

The Mishnayot is the historical document which recounts the hiding of the Ark of the Covenant (the Ark of the Law). Read the Mishnayot. Any theory about the Ark of the Covenant must mesh with this document since it has since been confirmed by other sources as follows - see "Vendyl Jones and the Ark of the Covenant" by Gerard Robins, which was published as a series of articles in the Jewish Herald Voice Newspaper, Houston, Texas, May 2000.

Verifying Sources - Dead Sea Scrolls (Qumran Scrolls)

The first of the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in modern times, i.e. in 1947.

Qumran Scrolls - The Copper Scroll

One of the Dead Sea Scrolls found at Qumran is the famed Copper Scroll - made of pure copper - which was found at Qumran in 1952. The Copper Scroll is the inventory - written in Hebrew - of the holy treasures of Solomon's First Temple, treasures which were hidden by the Hebrews before the destruction of that temple by the Babylonians (Assyrians). These treasures have (allegedly) not been seen since.

The Copper Scroll tells us that a silver [mistranslation for alabaster] chest, the vestments of the Cohen Gadol (Hebrew High Priest), gold and silver in great quantities, the Tabernacle of the Lord (the Mishkan) and many treasures were hidden in a desolate valley under a hill - on its east side, forty stones deep. The Mishkan was a "portable" Temple for the Ark of the Covenant.

Qumran Scrolls - The Copper Scroll

The writings in the Copper Scroll were confirmed 40 years later in the 1990s through an ancient text found in the introduction to Emeq HaMelekh ("Valley of the King(s)"), a book published in 1648 in Amsterdam, Holland, by Rabbi Naftali Hertz Ben Ya’acov Elchanon. The book's introduction included ancient records which Rabbi Hertz called the "Mishnayot". Hertz used the term Mishnayot, since the text of the Mishnayot is missing from the Mishnah (Mishna), which is the first section of the Talmud, a collection of ancient Rabbinic writings including also the Gemara, "the summary", and containing the Jewish religious law.

Qumran Scrolls - The Massakhet Keilim

The "missing" Mishnaic text in the Mishnayot is called the 'Massakhet Keilim', written in twelve chapters. Each chapter of the Mishnayot describes vessels which were hidden under the direction of Jeremiah the Prophet by five holy men (Shimor HaLevi, Chizkiah, Tzidkiyahu, Haggai the Prophet and Zechariah the Prophet), seven years prior to the destruction of Solomon's First Temple, because the dangers of Babylonian conquest were imminent. The Mishnayot - which describes this hiding - was then allegedly written in Babylon during the Babylonian Captivity.

The Marble Tablets of Beirut

In 1952 two large marble tablets were found in the basement of a museum in Beirut, stating they were the words of Shimor HaLevi, the servant of HaShem, and the writing on the tablets is the entire missing text of "Massakhet Keilim" (Mishnayot) including reference to the Copper Scroll.

The Mishnayot and the Hiding of the Lost Ark

The first chapter of the Mishnayot describes the vessels that were hidden - including the Ark of the Covenant and the Tabernacle of the Lord, i.e. the Mishkan, the Tablets of Moses, the altar (with cherubs) for the daily and seasonal sacrifices (the ushebtis), the Menorah (candelabra), the Qalal (copper urn) containing the Ashes of the Red Heifer (ashes from a red cow sacrificed under Moses, necessary for ritual purification of the priests), and numerous vessels of the Kohanim (priests).

The second chapter of the Mishnayot states that a list of these treasures was inscribed upon a copper tablet. This is the Copper Scroll found at Qumran.

The Tosefta

Work in the 1990s showed that in 1896, almost one hundred years previous, Solomon Schechter at Cambridge University in England had acquired 100,000 pages of ancient Hebrew texts from the Genizah (repository for aged sacred Jewish texts) of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo, Egypt. A copy of the "Tosefta" (supplement to the Mishnah) was found in these texts, included among the text on Keilim (vessels). This "Tosefta" is the same text as cited by Rabbi Hertz as his source for the Mishnayot.

We thus have the hiding of the Ark of the Covenant and the Tabernacle of the Lord verified by four separate sources:

1) the Marble Tablets of Beirut,
2) the Copper Scroll,
3) the Tosefta, i.e. ancient sacred texts of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo now at Cambridge University, England, and
4) the Mishnayot of Rabbi Hertz.

Where was the Ark of the Covenant Hidden?

Based on the Mishnayot, Andis Kaulins has developed the theory that the artefacts that were found in the alleged "tomb" of Tutankamun (actually probably the tomb originally intended for Smenkhare, a lesser untimely deceased royal) are in fact many of the objects listed in the Mishnayot, including the Ark of the Covenant and the portable Tabernacle.

See online:

Introduction
followed by these additional pages
Anubis in the Tomb of Tutankhamun
The Mercy Seat of the Tabernacle
The Consecrated Parts of Aaron (this is ADONAI at the Tabernacle, in our view ADONAI = ATON)
The Lampstand of the Tabernacle
Shrine I the Outer Shrine of the Tabernacle
Shrine II the First Inner Shrine of the Tabernacle
Shrine III the Second Inner Shrine of the Tabernacle
Shrine IV the Innermost Shrine of the Tabernacle (the above 4 large Shrines fit inside one another)
The Golden Shrine of the Psalms for the Golden Ushebtis
The Pectoral Jewels of the Hebrew High Priest Cohen Gadol
The Artists who Made the Ark and the Tabernacle - Bez Alel and Oho Liab
Moses and Exodus - Who was Moses?

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