The Meaning of the Ark of the Covenant through the Logos Heuristics

Abstract

By placing the Ark of the Covenant in the first Jewish Temple in the 10^th century before the Common Era (BCE), King Solomon relieved Levite priests from carrying the Ark. Three centuries later, King Josiah of Judah asked the Levites to return that container to the Temple, implying that it was no longer there. The gold-plated Ark enclosed more than an unvarying law in the Decalogue and in the ‘obedience-classical-computing’ of the crystal Thummim sewed into the Ephod worn by Aaron, the first high priest. Aaron’s vest also contained the crystal Urim, or flexible variations between obedience and disobedience, in the quantum computing epitomized by the ‘tree-of-the-knowledge-of-good-and-evil’ (Genesis 2). Together, the Thummim and Urim crystals embody the Wisdom ascribed to nature’s Nature and to the Tree-of-Life. Solomon shared this Wisdom with the visiting Queen of Sheba. Although the Ark may have never followed Sheba’s return into Ethiopia, her mariners could have shared Solomon’s Wisdom with Greek, Hindu, Chinese, and Olmec sages. This hypothesis addresses the simultaneous rise in the 6^th century BCE of the Logos posited by Heraclitus in Greek-Ionia; of Dharma in Hinduism, of the Buddhist-Sanskrit name “Tathāgatha”; of Social Intelligence in the meeting of Laozi with Kong-Fuzi in China; and, among the Mesoamerican Olmecs, of the legend about the bird-serpent that the Aztecs called later “Quetzal-coatl.” The power of the returning Quetzalcoatl to save humans and nonhuman species from obliteration matches the will of readers eager to catch the esoteric meaning of the vanished Ark.