We already understand
from the Dead Sea scrolls just how such records and treasures were secreted
during an invasion. It is actually as secure a method as one could likely
create. It is only a problem if there
are simply no survivors. They would also
not be too far away either. Recall that
a burdened porter can travel six miles in any direction inside of six
hours. That is ample to make recovery by
close ground search a total impossibility.
Thus it appears likely
that these objects were placed outside the city in preselected caves and neatly
buried with perhaps only several individuals actually knowing. During Roman times and Babylonian times,
everyone of import was exiled forthwith.
All would have died in captivity and what we have left is random
discovery.
What I am curious
about is just why no additional copies of the Ark were make and placed at a
distance.
Fate of Ark of the
Covenant Revealed in Hebrew Text
By Owen Jarus,
LiveScience Contributor | January 07, 2014 09:07pm ET
A newly translated Hebrew text claims to
reveal where treasures from King Solomon's temple were hidden and discusses the
fate of the Ark of the Covenant itself.
But unlike the Indiana
Jones movie "Raiders of the Lost Ark,"
the text leaves the exact location of the Ark unclear and states that it, and
the other treasures, "shall not be revealed until the day of the coming of
the Messiah son of David …" putting it out of reach of any would-be
treasure seeker.
King Solomon's Temple,
also called the First Temple, was plundered and torched by the Babylonian King
Nebuchadnezzar II in the sixth century B.C., according to the Hebrew Bible. The
Ark of the Covenant is a chest that, when originally built, was said to have
held tablets containing the 10 commandments. It was housed in Solomon's Temple,
a place that contained many different treasures.
The newly translated
text, called "Treatise of the Vessels" (Massekhet Kelim in Hebrew), says the "treasures were
concealed by a number of Levites and prophets," writes James Davila, a
professor at the University of St. Andrews, in an article in the book "Old
Testament Pseudepigrapha More Noncanonical Scriptures Volume 1" (William
B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2013).
"Some of these
(treasures) were hidden in various locations in the Land of Israel and in Babylonia,
while others were delivered into the hands of the angels Shamshiel, Michael,
Gabriel and perhaps Sariel …" writes Davila in his article.
The treatise is
similar in some ways to the metallic "Copper Scroll," one of
the Dead Sea Scrolls found
near the site of Qumran in the West Bank. The Copper Scroll also discusses the
location of hidden treasure, although not from Solomon's Temple.
The Treatise of the
Vessels (Massekhet Kelim) is recorded in the 1648 Hebrew book Emek Halachah,
published in Amsterdam. In the book the Treatise is published as Chapter 11
(one of its two pages shown here). The two pages also contain material from
other book chapters.
The treatise describes
the treasures in an imaginative way. One part refers to "seventy-seven
tables of gold, and their gold was from the walls of the Garden of Eden that
was revealed to Solomon, and they radiated like the radiance of the sun and moon,
which radiate at the height of the world."
The oldest confirmed
example of the treatise, which survives to present day, is from a book
published in Amsterdam in 1648 called "Emek Halachah." In 1876, a
scholar named Adolph Jellinek published another copy of the text, which was
virtually identical to the 1648 version. Davila is the first to translate the
text fully into English.
A story of legends
The writer of the text
likely was not trying to convey factual locations of the hidden treasures of
Solomon's Temple, but rather was writing a work of fiction, based on different
legends, Davila told LiveScience. [In Photos: Amazing Ruins of the
Ancient World]
"The writer draws
on traditional methods of scriptural exegesis [interpretation] to deduce where
the treasures might have been hidden, but I think the writer was approaching
the story as a piece of entertaining fiction, not any kind of real guide for
finding the lost Temple treasures,"
he wrote in the email.
The structure of the
story is confusing. In the prologue it states that Shimmur the Levite (he
doesn't appear to be a biblical figure) and his companions hid the treasures,
"but later on the text mentions the treasures being in the keeping of or
hidden by Shamshiel and other angels," Davila said. "I suspect the
author collected various legends without too much concern about making them
consistent."
Similarities to the
Copper Scroll
The Copper Scroll,
which dates back around 1,900 years, and is made of copper, shows several
"striking parallels" with the newly translated treatise, Davila said.
The treatise says that
the treasures from Solomon's Temple were
recorded "on a tablet of bronze," a metal like the Copper Scroll.
Additionally, among other similarities, the Treatise of the Vessels and Copper
Scroll both refer to "vessels" or "implements," including
examples made of gold and silver.
These similarities
could be a coincidence or part of a tradition of recording important
information on metal.
"My guess is that
whoever wrote the Treatise of Vessels came up with the same idea [of writing a
treasure list on metal] coincidentally on their own, although it is not
unthinkable that the writer knew of some ancient tradition or custom about
inscribing important information on metal," wrote Davila in the email,
noting that metal is a more durable material than parchment or papyrus.
An ongoing story
The study of the
treatise is ongoing, and discoveries continue to be made. For instance, in the
mid-20th century a copy of it (with some variations) was discovered and
recorded in Beirut, Lebanon, at the end of a series of inscribed plates that
record the Book of Ezekiel.
Those plates are now
at the Yad Ben Zvi Institute in Israel, although the plates containing the
treatise itself are now missing. Recent research has revealed, however,
these plates were created in Syria at the turn of the 20th century, about 100
years ago, suggesting the treatise was being told in an elaborate way up until
relatively modern times.
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