27/10: The Ark of the Covenant, in Ethopia?
Category: Religion and History
Posted by: an okie gardener
The Ark of the Covenant, according to the Bible, was a wooden box, overlaid with gold, in which were the Tablets of the Law. Housed in a movable tent for centuries, it later was placed in the Temple in Jerusalem that Solomon built. It is generally assumed that the Ark disappeared when the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple, hauling the treasures back to Babylon.
However, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church believes they have the Ark, kept safe and guarded for millenia in Ethiopia.
Story from The Smithsonian Magazine.
However, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church believes they have the Ark, kept safe and guarded for millenia in Ethiopia.
Story from The Smithsonian Magazine.
Martian Mariner wrote:
It brings up some very interesting theological points for me. I've been raised Reformed, and returned to that system after some dabbling in other Protestant belief systems. But over the past year or so I've become a lot more familiar with Orthodox beliefs (a family member recently converted to Orthodoxy), and have found that on many issues I'm closer to an Orthodox belief than Evangelical.
One sticking point for me has been made very clear in this article - traditions can sometimes just be traditions, and it's hard to root out what is important theologically and what is just cultural. Many of the beliefs represented in the article seem to be superstition more than anything else - the curse on Queen Sheba's bathtub?
Then again, Evangelicals have their own dearly held beliefs that are not rooted in Sola Scriptura - they're just more difficult to identify because they are a part of the modern culture that surrounds us everyday. [The Enlightenment took away the power of superstition for many, but that doesn't mean its worldview is automatically more Christian than pre-Enlightenment Christianity.] I think about any faith system will have its cultural peccadilloes to go with its theological truths (within Christianity, of course; don't worry, gardener, I'm not going po-mo on you).
Maybe we could invite an Orthodox Christian on for a guest blog to address relevant cultural differences?