Is the Ark of the Covenant in Ethiopia? - The BAS Library
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Is the Ark of the Covenant in Ethiopia?

By Ephraim Isaac

Ever since the premiere of the popular movie Raiders of the Lost Ark, hardly a year passes without someone claiming to have found the Ark of the Covenant, the disappearance of which is one of the most famous Biblical mysteries. According to a very well-known, ancient Ethiopian tradition, how ever, the Ark did not disappear, but came to Ethiopia in the time of King Solomon. Now Graham Hancock, a much-published journalist formerly with The Economist, uses this tradition to claim that he has located the Ark of the Covenant in “a secluded sanctuary chapel” in Axum, Ethiopia. As it […]

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Endnotes

1.

B.T.A. Evetts, transl. and ed., Abu Salih, Churches and Monasteries of Egypt and Some Neighboring Countries (Oxford, 1895), pp. 105b, 106a. The Arabic text appears on p. 133.

2.

For example, Ephraim Isaac, “An Obscure Component in Ethiopian Church History,” Le Museon 85 (1972), pp. 225–258; Isaac, A Text-Critical Introduction to Mashafa Berhan (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1973), pp. 109, 116, 118, etc.; E. Hammerschmidt, Jewish Elements in the Cult of the Ethiopian Church,” Journal of Ethiopian Studies (1965), pp. 1–12; E. Ullendorff, Ethiopia and the Bible (Oxford The British Academy/Oxford Univ. Press, 1968), pp. 82–87; M. Rodinson, “Sur la question des influences juives en Ethiopie,” Journal of Semitic Studies 9 (1964), pp. 11–19; H. Ludolf, Commentarius ad suam Historiam Aethiopicam (Frankfort, 1961); J.S. Trimmingham, Islam in Ethiopia (London Frank cass. 1952); C. Rathjens, Die Juden in Abessinien (Hamburg, 1921), p. 48; H.M. Hyatt, The Church of Abyssinia (London, 1928), pp. 169ff; T. Bent, The Sacred City of the Ethiopians (London, 1893), pp. 55ff.

3.

Scholars have shunned a public discussion of the book on the grounds that it is not a scholarly work. A presentation by Hancock planned for the University of Toronto about a year and a half ago was abruptly canceled when, according to reports, some scholars vehemently opposed it.