Ark of the Covenant

i charge a lot of people with not reading, but really i don't think that's the problem. it's not the reading, it's the comprehension. speaking as a former fundamentalist, there's something that gets in the way. the book is treated as holy and infallible and the word of god, but for some reason it's dry and boring for the most part. people like the prooftexts because those are the only things they see as exciting or pertinant. and something gets lost between the eyes and the brain.perhaps this view of divine authorship sucks all the humanity and personality of the text. perhaps it's just the translations people like (ie: why high schoolers don't like shakespeare). perhaps it's that the text is just so intricate and gigantic that it's a daunting task to even approach. or perhaps people just don't pay much attention when they read, as they skate through looking for things that confirm their beliefs and ignoring all else.

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"was it real?" "is it real?" and "is it in ethiopia?" are all separate questions.i would actually gamble that it was real at one point, though i cannot answer the other two. it seems reasonable to me to assume that at least some parts of the more historical books of the bible (ie: king) are grounded in factual information, and that the temple in jerusalem presumably existed and had holy objects associated with it. there might be reason to doubt the story invented to explain where the ark came from (moses et al), but i don't see any reason to doubt that it was a real object.

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uh, that's not true. maybe the emphasis is on "as described," but judah and israel certainly existed. we have records from other invading empires that say so. i'm sure there's archaeological evidence as well.

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the 1812 overture is about napoleon invading russia. it has nothing to do with the american war of 1812. well, yes. it was important to us. the authors of the bible wrote about what was important to them: israel and judah. tchaikovsky wrote about what was important to him: russia.

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