Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 1.djvu/795

ARK had gone in. Apart from Noe's family, the Ark was intended to receive and keep animals that were to fill the earth again (Gen., vi, 19, 20; vii, 2, 3) and all the food which was necessary for them. After the Flood, the Ark rested upon the mountains of Armenia (Gen., viii, according to Vulgate and Douay, the mountains of Ararat, according to Author- ized Version). Tradition is divided as to the exact place where the Ark rested. Josephus (Ant., I. iii. 6), Berosus (Eus., Prap. Ev., IX, ii. P. G., XXI, 697), Onkelos, Pseudo-Jonathan, St. Ephrem, locate it in Kurdistan. Berosus relates that a part of Xisuthrus's ship still remained there, and that pilgrims used to scrape off the bitumen from the wreck and make charms of it against witchcraft. Jewish and Arme- nian tradition admitted Mount Ararat as the resting place of the Ark. In the first century B. C. the Armenians affirmed that remnants of it could yet The first Christians of Apamea, in Phrygia, erected in this place a convent called the Monastery of the Ark, where a feast was yearly celebrated to commemorate Noe's coming out of the Ark after the Flood-Suffice it to remark that the text of Genesis (viii, 4) mentioning Mount Ararat is somewhat lacking in clearness, and that nothing is said in the Scripture concerning what became of the Ark after the Flood. Many difficulties have been raised, especially in our epoch, against the pages of Holy Writ in which the history of the Flood and of the Ark is narrated. This is not the place to dwell upon these difficulties, however considerable some may appear. They all converge towards the question whether these pages should be considered as strictly historical throughout, or only in their outward form. The opinion that these chapters are mere legendary tales, Eastern folk-lore, is held by some non-Catholic scholars; according to others, with whom several Catholics side, they preserve, under the embroidery of poetical parlance, the memory of a fact handed down by a very old tradition. This view, were it supported by good arguments, could be readily accepted by a Catholic; it has, over the age-long opinion that every detail of the narration should be literally interpreted and trusted in by the historian, the ad- vantage of suppressing as meaningless some diffi- culties once deemed unanswerable. ARK OF THE COVENANT.-The Hebrew word 'ārim, by which the Ark of the Covenant is expressed, does not call to the mind, as that used for Noe's Ark, a large construction, but rather a chest. This word is generally determined in the sacred text; so we read of the Ark of the Testimony (Ex., xxv, 16, 22; xxvi, 33, etc.), the Ark of the Testament (Ex., xxx, 26), the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord (Num., x, 33; Deut., x, 8, etc.), the Ark of the Covenant (Jos., iii, 6. etc.), the Ark of God (I Kings, iii, 3, etc.), the Ark of the Lord (I Kings, iv, 6, etc.). Of these, the expression Ark of the Covenant has be- come most familiar in English. The Ark of the Covenant (1) Description and use.- was a kind of chest, measuring two cubits and a half in length, a cubit and a half in breadth, and a cubit and a half in height. Made of setim wood (an in- corruptible acacia), it was overlaid within and with- out with the purest gold, and a golden crown or rim ran around it. At the four corners, very likely towards the upper part, four golden rings had been cast; through them passed two bars of setim wood overlaid with gold, to carry the Ark. These two bars were to remain always in the rings, even when the Ark had been placed in the temple of Solomon. The cover of the Ark, termed the "propitiatory" (the corresponding Hebrew word means both and "that which makes propitious"), was likewise of the purest gold. Upon it had been placed two cherubim of beaten gold, looking towards each other, and spreading their wings so that both sides ht cover ARK of the propitiatory were covered. What exactly these cherubim were, is impossible to determine; however, from the analogy with Egyptian religious art, it may well be supposed that they were images, kneeling or standing, of winged persons. It is worth noticing that this is the only exception to the law forbidding the Israelites to make carved images, an exception so much the more harmless to the faith of the Israelites in a spiritual God because the Ark was regularly to be kept behind the veil of the sanc- tuary. The form of the Ark of the Covenant was probably inspired by some article of the furniture of the Egyptian temples. But it should not be repre- sented as one of those sacred bari, or barks, in which the gods of Egypt were solemnly carried in procession; it had, very likely, been framed after the pattern of the naos of gold, silver, or precious wood, containing the images of the gods and the sacred emblems. According to some modern historians of Israel, the Ark, in every way analogous to the bari used upon the banks of the Nile, contained the sacred objects worshipped by the Hebrews, perhaps some sacred stone, metcoric or otherwise. Such a statement proceeds from the opinion that the Israelites during their early national life were given not only to idola- try, but to its grossest form, fetishism; that first they adored Yahweh in inanimate things, then they worshipped him in the bull, as in Dan and Bethel, and that only about the seventh century did they rise to the conception of an invisible and spiritual God. But this description of Israel's religious history does not tally with the most certain conclusions derived from the texts. The idolatry of the Hebrews more than their polytheism; is not proven any hence the Ark, far from being viewed as in the opinion above referred to, should rather be regarded as a token of the choice that Yahweh had made of Israel for his people, and a visible sign of his invisible presence in the midst of his beloved nation. The Ark was first destined to contain the testimony, that is to say the tables of the Law (Ex., xl, 18; Deut., x, 5). Later, Moses was commanded to put into the tabernacle, near the Ark, a golden vessel hold- ing a gomor of manna (Ex., xvi, 34), and the rod of Aaron which had blossomed (Num., xvii. 10). According to the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews (ix, 4), and the Jewish traditions, they had been put into the Ark itself. Some commentators, with Calmet, hold that the book of the Law written by Moses had likewise been enclosed in the Ark; but the text says only that the book in question was placed "in the side of the Ark" (Deut., xxxi, 26); moreover, what should be understood by this book, whether it was the whole Pentateuch, or Deuter- onomy, or part of it, is not clear, though the context seems to favour the latter interpretations. How- ever this may be, we learn from III Kings, viii, 9, that when the Ark was placed in Solomon's temple, it contained only the tables of the Law. The holiest part of the Ark seems to have been the oracle, that "Thence", the Lord had said is to say the place whence Yahweh made his pre- scriptions to Israel. to Moses, "will I give orders, and will speak to thee over the propitiatory, and from the midst of the two cherubims, which shall be upon the Ark of the testimony, all things which I will command the children of Israel by thee" (Ex., xxv, 22). And indeed we read in Num., vii, 89, that when Moses "entered into the tabernacle of the covenant, to consult the oracle, he heard the voice of one speaking to him from the propitiatory, that was over the ark between the two cherubims". Yahweh used to speak to his servant in a cloud over the oracle (Lev., xvi, 2). This was, very likely, also the way in which he communicated with Josue after the death of the first leader of Israel (cf. Jos., vii, 6-11). The oracle was, so to say, the very heart of the sanctuary, the