Where is the Ark of the Covenant

QUESTION: Where is the Ark of the Covenant?

ANSWER:

Where is the Ark of the Covenant? We don't know. But there is a lot of speculation...

Graham Hancock, a former East African correspondent for the Economist, believes that the Ark may be housed in the Saint Mary of Zion's Church in Axum, Ethiopia. Hancock published The Sign and the Seal: The Quest for the Lost Ark of the Covenant in 1992 in which he presented his theory. Robert Cornuke, an investigator with B.A.S.E. Institute, has pursued this theory with multiple expeditions over the last few years.

Rabbis Shlomo Goren and Yehuda Getz believe that the Ark of the Covenant is hidden beneath the Temple Mount and is accessible through a series of underground passages. The Temple Mount is currently home to the Islamic Dome of the Rock Mosque and when the local Muslims discovered that excavations were being conducted beneath the Temple Mount, they threatened to riot. For the sake of peace, the Jewish authorities sealed up the entrance to the underground passageways.

Vendyl Jones believes that the mysterious Copper Scroll, discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls in Qumran Cave 3, is a treasure map which leads to the exact location of the Ark of the Covenant. According to Vendyl, the Ark is hidden somewhere in a "cave with two columns, near the River of the Dome."

Ron Wyatt claims to have actually seen the Ark of the Covenant, hidden beneath Calvary where Christ was crucified. But that's not all. Wyatt also claims to have found every site of archaeological interest to Christians, including Noah's Ark, Sodom and Gomorrah, the Red Sea crossing site and the real Mt Sinai, to name but a few. It should be noted that Wyatt isn't actually a qualified archaeologist. He's a nurse anesthetist. He supposedly made all of these discoveries while on vacation! Where's the proof? Wyatt hasn't been able to produce any.

Some people believe that the Ark is hidden somewhere in or around Mt. Nebo on the Jordan River's east bank. In the apocryphal Second Maccabees, chapter 2, verses 1-8, we read how the prophet Jeremiah "following a divine revelation, ordered that the tent [i.e. the tabernacle of meeting] and the ark [i.e. the ark of the covenant] should accompany him and how he went off to the mountain which Moses climbed to see God's inheritance [i.e. Mt. Nebo; see Deuteronomy 31:1-4]. When Jeremiah arrived there, he found a room in a cave in which he put the tent, the ark, and the altar of incense; then he blocked up the entrance." (vv. 4-5) There is some debate as to whether or not this second-hand account (see v. 1) is trustworthy. Nevertheless, Tom Crotser claims to have actually seen the Ark in the Mt. Nebo region. He claims to have followed a passage way which he discovered on Mt. Pisgah (near Nebo). Croster, like Wyatt, has been unable to produce any proof whatsoever.

There is even an Irish tradition which says that the Ark is buried under the Hill of Tara in Ireland and is the source of the Irish pot-of-gold-at-the-end-of-the-rainbow legend. But where is the Ark of the Covenant really? We don't know. It's that simple. The Ark of the Covenant remains a hidden treasure waiting to be discovered.

This article is also available in Spanish.