Speaker 1: And the Philistines took the Ark of God and brought
Speaker 1: it from Ebenezer unto Ashdod. When the Philistines took the
Speaker 1: Ark of God, they brought it into the house of
Speaker 1: Dagon and set it by Dagon. And when they of
Speaker 1: Ashdod arose early on the morrow, behold, Dagon was fallen
Speaker 1: upon his face to the earth before the ark of
Speaker 1: the Lord. And they took Dagon and set him in
Speaker 1: his place again. And when they arose early on the
Speaker 1: morrow morning, behold, Dagon was fallen upon his face to
Speaker 1: the ground before the ark of the Lord, and the
Speaker 1: head of Dagon, and both the palms of his hands
Speaker 1: were cut off upon the threshold. Only the stump of
Speaker 1: Dagon was left to him. Therefore, neither the priests of Dagon,
Speaker 1: nor any that come into Dagon's house tread on the
Speaker 1: threshold of Dagon and Ashdod unto this day. But the
Speaker 1: hand of the Lord was heavy upon them of Ashdod,
Speaker 1: and he destroyed them and smote them with immrods, even
Speaker 1: Ashdod and the coast thereof. And when the men of
Speaker 1: Ashdad saw that it was so, they said, the ark
Speaker 1: of the God of Israel shall not abide with us,
Speaker 1: for his hand is sore upon us, and upon Dagon,
Speaker 1: our God. They sent therefore and gathered all the lords
Speaker 1: of the Philistines unto them, and said, what shall we
Speaker 1: do with the Ark of the God of Israel. And
Speaker 1: they answered to let the ark of the God of
Speaker 1: Israel be carried about unto God. And they carried the
Speaker 1: Ark of the God of Israel about thither. And it
Speaker 1: was so that after they had carried it about, the
Speaker 1: hand of the Lord was against the city with a
Speaker 1: very great destruction. And he smote the men of the city,
Speaker 1: both small and great. And they had immrods in their
Speaker 1: secret parts, emmiads in their secret parts, immrods in their
Speaker 1: secret parts, emirods in their secret parts, emads in their
Speaker 1: secret parts. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from
Speaker 1: how Stuffworks dot Com. Hey you welcome to Scuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. And if you couldn't guess by that opening,
Speaker 1: obviously we're gonna be talking about the Ark of the
Speaker 1: Covenant today. Robert. I think it was when I came
Speaker 1: back from Thanksgiving break that you were like, we're doing
Speaker 1: the Arc of the Covenant on the show, and I
Speaker 1: was like, what the heck are you talking about? Now?
Speaker 1: You know, I'm always up for an exploration of some
Speaker 1: kind of weird ancient artifactory something like that. So so
Speaker 1: we're we're good to go. But why did you want
Speaker 1: to talk about the arc on this show? Robert, Well,
Speaker 1: it's like nothing we've gone after before. Jah. I was like,
Speaker 1: um no, that that the arc is. I guess it
Speaker 1: basically comes down to the arc has along fascinated me.
Speaker 1: I grew up watching Raiders of the Lost Arc, the
Speaker 1: Indiana Jones movie. I had it on VHS and I
Speaker 1: would sit there and watch said and solved in slow motion.
Speaker 1: Pretty much every special effect in the film I would
Speaker 1: watch in slow motion, from the melting of Nazis to just, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, more practical stuff as well. Uh and you
Speaker 1: like sit your parents down and your grandparents into a
Speaker 1: frame by frame face melting analysis, that sort of thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it just it always fascinated me. And then if you're
Speaker 1: setting in church, and I grew up attending church, you
Speaker 1: you pick up the Bible and you flip around and
Speaker 1: you look at you read the interesting passages and certainly
Speaker 1: the passages about the Ark of the Covenant are some
Speaker 1: of the more fascinating. Uh, this's just there's just they
Speaker 1: just resonate with mystery and like what is this about?
Speaker 1: And so I feel like throughout my life I have
Speaker 1: come back to it, and uh, in each time I've
Speaker 1: I've looked at it with new eyes, and more recently
Speaker 1: I've been thinking, uh, you know what, what are some
Speaker 1: scientific possible scientific explanations, even if they're a bit fringy
Speaker 1: in places regarding the arc, surely they exist, and lo
Speaker 1: and behold they do well. The way that the Arc
Speaker 1: connects to a lot of scientific topics is very interesting. Generally,
Speaker 1: it tends to connect to them and kind of uh yeah,
Speaker 1: like you say, fringey often kind of like uh pseudo
Speaker 1: pseudo scientific kind of ways, but gives you a good
Speaker 1: mysterious jumping off point to talk about real science. So yeah,
Speaker 1: we want to talk about the myth today. We want
Speaker 1: to talk about some weird fringe and pseudoscience believes people
Speaker 1: have had about the arc and how that connects to
Speaker 1: weird ideas about ancient technology to talk about real science
Speaker 1: and technology potential in the ancient world. And uh, I
Speaker 1: think it's gonna be a lot of fun. Now, I
Speaker 1: have to admit it. As much as I love the
Speaker 1: discussion module our Facebook group, it is associated with stuff
Speaker 1: to build your mind. I actually checked in with the
Speaker 1: Movie Crushers this is the group associated with Chuck Bryant's
Speaker 1: Movie Crush podcast, because I was curious what it what
Speaker 1: it was, what it is like a two have never
Speaker 1: seen Raiders of the Level Lost Arc, and also what
Speaker 1: it is like to have seen Raiters of the Lost
Speaker 1: Arc but with some sort of underlying understand thing pre
Speaker 1: existing understanding of the Ark of the Covenant, because I
Speaker 1: can relate to to to neither of those like the
Speaker 1: Ark of the Covenant as it's revealed, and Raiders of
Speaker 1: the Lost Art has pretty much always been there in
Speaker 1: my life. Essentially, Raiders is a book of the Bible
Speaker 1: in a way. Yeah really, I saw that, and then
Speaker 1: later on I learned how to read and came back
Speaker 1: into and learned what the Bible had to say about it.
Speaker 1: But you know, in Sunday School, we just never got
Speaker 1: the mrods. I don't know why they left the mrods out.
Speaker 1: I would have loved that when I was seven. Well
Speaker 1: we'll get we'll get to this, but I think one
Speaker 1: of the issues, of course his translation. In some translations,
Speaker 1: they're referred to as tumors. I think that's where I
Speaker 1: encountered the first time, and I was like, whoa, back up,
Speaker 1: The Ark of the Covenant is giving the enemies of
Speaker 1: God tumors. Uh, And that's what that's one of This
Speaker 1: was post Raiders, but then I was But then I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, I'm really hooked now, Like this is
Speaker 1: this is even more you know, Eldric horror heaped upon
Speaker 1: the mystery of the arc. It makes you want to
Speaker 1: imagine an alternate universe in which Raiders to the Lost
Speaker 1: Ark was not made by Spielberg and Lucas, but was
Speaker 1: made by David Cronenberg. And so when they open the arc,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like the tumor gun from Videodrome. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: I think that again, that's one of the things about
Speaker 1: about The Ark of the Covenant is is it's just
Speaker 1: so weird, and we're going to keep touching in on
Speaker 1: that weirdness, and we're also going to keep referring to
Speaker 1: Raiders of the Lost Arc throughout this episode because this episode,
Speaker 1: more than anything that we've covered before, because it's just
Speaker 1: free license to talk about that movie at nausea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of fascinating stuff just in the original
Speaker 1: Arc mythology, but the the Indiana Jones treatment of the
Speaker 1: story partially merges it with something kind of like Pandora's Box,
Speaker 1: Like it becomes just a container of unknown and unutterable
Speaker 1: mystery where there isn't quite so much that feeling in
Speaker 1: the Bible stories, though it is a strange and sacred
Speaker 1: object of profound power. Now, two of the big questions
Speaker 1: that are generally mold over concerning the Arc, uh, first
Speaker 1: of all, what was it? And then secondly, where is
Speaker 1: it now? Now we're mostly going to ruminate over the
Speaker 1: first question, because the second is one of those questions
Speaker 1: that tends to lead to one of two places. Either
Speaker 1: the fact that it's simply lost to history, likely destroyed
Speaker 1: in some prior age or or hidden away and lost,
Speaker 1: assuming that there was such an object, and that's the
Speaker 1: other possibility is that it simply did not exist um
Speaker 1: Or it leads one to various speculative or even downright
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories involving you know, the Knights templars perhaps, Or
Speaker 1: there's the notion that it's it's currently hidden out of
Speaker 1: sight in the chapel of the tablet in northern Epethiopia,
Speaker 1: which is possible, but there's no no proof or that
Speaker 1: it was taken to heaven, an answer that requires more
Speaker 1: of a speculative lead than the notion that the arc,
Speaker 1: like so many treasures of history, simply failed to survive history. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the main things that we're going to be
Speaker 1: exploring in this look at the Arc is that the
Speaker 1: Arc of the Covenant is yet another one of these
Speaker 1: ancient stories, these objects of ancient myth, which there have
Speaker 1: been great efforts by modern writers to ground the myth
Speaker 1: and what we now know about science and technology, reimagining
Speaker 1: what the ancients believe to be magic as some kind
Speaker 1: of lost powerful science or technology. And we've discussed before
Speaker 1: some of the risks of technologizing the myth. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily always wrong, but it's an impulse that's not all.
Speaker 1: It's also not always justified. There's a sort of naive
Speaker 1: way of reading ancient texts that says, Okay, let's take
Speaker 1: what they say happened basically at face value, but posit
Speaker 1: a different explanation for it than they would have. And
Speaker 1: while this can be a fun exercise, I love doing it,
Speaker 1: I personally enjoy it. We shoul always remember not to
Speaker 1: start feeling like this is a necessary and especially not
Speaker 1: like it's a parsimonious exercise, when in reality, ancient histories
Speaker 1: of all kinds, religious texts, myths, and so forth are
Speaker 1: likely to be full of narratives that are the result
Speaker 1: of creative imagination and things like exaggeration across time and retellings.
Speaker 1: In other words, there's no event that you ness really
Speaker 1: have to explain, because the events described in these ancient
Speaker 1: stories often just didn't take place. Right. We can't treat
Speaker 1: a description of the arc in uh in the whole
Speaker 1: Testament as being the same as say, you know, fossil
Speaker 1: evidence or a or a crater, right right, We we
Speaker 1: just don't know. I mean, it might be based on
Speaker 1: something that actually happened, but we don't know. But if
Speaker 1: we take the route of saying, well, okay, if these
Speaker 1: stories are based on something people saw, are based on
Speaker 1: something that actually happened. When we look at history that way,
Speaker 1: ancient history with a bit of science under the belt,
Speaker 1: there is this insatiable itch the retro sci fi hermonutic
Speaker 1: which I've been looking for a concise name for, and
Speaker 1: I think I just realized the perfect one for for
Speaker 1: this era of that which I'm gonna I'm gonna start
Speaker 1: calling bronze punk. So you've got Yeah, you've got steampunk
Speaker 1: for the Victorian era, You've got adam punk for the
Speaker 1: atomic age. And I think we should have bronze punk
Speaker 1: as the name for this retroactive technologizing of the time
Speaker 1: period of classical civilizations in the ancient Near East, including
Speaker 1: the Hebrew Bible and its contemporary civilizations and texts. So
Speaker 1: with those important caveats, I think we should begin a
Speaker 1: bronze punk adventure into the ark Bronze Bronze punk does
Speaker 1: have a lot of of of opportunity here. It gives
Speaker 1: us a chance to bring back uh tal Us, the
Speaker 1: Bronze automaton. Oh, that's a classic example we would tell us.
Speaker 1: I think they'd be bronze. I don't want to be
Speaker 1: too rigid about the time period that applies to either,
Speaker 1: because a lot of the stuff we're talking about here,
Speaker 1: I think would technically be bridging Bronze Age and Iron
Speaker 1: Age in the regions that are affected. But all that aside, Yeah,
Speaker 1: anything it doesn't need to stand in the way of
Speaker 1: Talus battling the Ark of the Covenants. Let'm saying, well,
Speaker 1: before we get into all these supposed bronze punk explanations
Speaker 1: of what the arc might have been if it existed,
Speaker 1: and if some of the stories about it are based
Speaker 1: on things people saw, we we should just explore the myth,
Speaker 1: like what is the story of the arc and what
Speaker 1: do the text say about it? All? Right? Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: we're talking here about the airon Hobart, the Arc of God,
Speaker 1: the Arc of Testimony, the Arc of the Covenant, just
Speaker 1: a few names that were used to describe it. Here
Speaker 1: a gold plated wooden chest used by the ancient Hebrews
Speaker 1: to house the two stone tablets of Law given to
Speaker 1: Moses by God, and it was also said to contain
Speaker 1: a couple of other holy relics, such as Aaron's rod,
Speaker 1: a magical item used by Moses brother, as well as
Speaker 1: a pot of manna, the supernatural food stuff that fell
Speaker 1: from the heavens to feed the Israelites in the desert. Now,
Speaker 1: in addition to being made of gold, to the other
Speaker 1: decorative element that is a signature of the art are
Speaker 1: the two cherubim that are depicted atop it. Now. I'm
Speaker 1: not quite sure why this has happened, but in modern
Speaker 1: English usage cherubs or cherubim that has come to mean
Speaker 1: naked baby angels like you would see on those cards
Speaker 1: or the creepy little statues people put on their dressers.
Speaker 1: But cherubim are not naked cute baby angels, right, right,
Speaker 1: Even though, like if we describe something as bearing cherubic
Speaker 1: today we're describing so it's got like a baby with
Speaker 1: fat cheeks, or maybe an adult with a fat with
Speaker 1: fat cheeks and kind of a baby's face. But really
Speaker 1: it should be a horrifying adjective to to heap on something.
Speaker 1: It should mean that it is an object or personification
Speaker 1: of just holy wrath. Right. Classical example would be Angel
Speaker 1: stationed outside the garden of Eden with a flaming sword
Speaker 1: to keep people out. That's right, I mean that that
Speaker 1: is a chair of the true chair of forget the
Speaker 1: Renaissance art here that they're kind of like God's supernatural heavies.
Speaker 1: But as with any sort of mythological creature, you do
Speaker 1: see a lot of variety in the way they're depicted,
Speaker 1: ranging indeed from the bestial to the more human oid
Speaker 1: depictions of the art tend to favor of a version
Speaker 1: of winged humanoids. But we could, and perhaps we should
Speaker 1: do an entire episode on angels and religious traditions in
Speaker 1: the future, because there's so much fascinating material there. So
Speaker 1: we're talking about creatures that would have been for ast
Speaker 1: your second circle and the hierarchy of angels and their
Speaker 1: descriptions include or tend to include the form of a lion,
Speaker 1: the form of a man, the form of an eagle,
Speaker 1: or any hybrid of these forms. I've actually seen it
Speaker 1: described that they sometimes are representative as having four faces, yes,
Speaker 1: and the four the four faces would include the lion
Speaker 1: to represent the beasts of the wild, the man to
Speaker 1: represent the world of humans, I think, an oxen face
Speaker 1: to represent the world of domesticated animals, and then an
Speaker 1: eagle face to represent the world of birds, which I
Speaker 1: guess are somehow different than wild animals. Yeah, these depictions
Speaker 1: of of the chairs often look kind of like emblems, right,
Speaker 1: with like folds of multiple wings and haloed heads of
Speaker 1: these creatures and a human poking out now. According to
Speaker 1: Carol rose Um, folkloreis who I frequently sign on the show.
Speaker 1: In her book spirits, fairies, leprecns, and goblins, and Encyclopedia
Speaker 1: Hebrew religious writings state that images of Chibian guarded the
Speaker 1: Ark of the Covenant, as well as Solomon's temple and
Speaker 1: their divine messengers attending spirits and disseminators of knowledge. Now
Speaker 1: it's possible, Rose points out the Cherubim are derived from
Speaker 1: the Assyrian Lamassu or se Dow, and these were the
Speaker 1: female and male, respectively, benevolent demons in ancient Assyria and Babylon.
Speaker 1: They would have protected palaces and temples, and they were
Speaker 1: there often depicted as winged bulls or lions with human heads,
Speaker 1: and they mostly remained invisible and were assigned in the
Speaker 1: manner of guardian angels to protect an individual human from
Speaker 1: the evil uh tuku. There are some amazing carvings of
Speaker 1: these in the met in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Speaker 1: I believe from the palace of the Assyrian king Ashurbanapul
Speaker 1: the second, or maybe not the palace, but I think
Speaker 1: commissioned by that king, and that they're fearsome and wonderful
Speaker 1: to behold, Yes they are, and to come back to
Speaker 1: Raiders of the Lost Arc. These are of course presumably
Speaker 1: the the the entities we see flying around after the
Speaker 1: Nazi open the Ark of the Covenant at the end
Speaker 1: of the film, the Cherubim, Yeah, yeah, because it first
Speaker 1: thought look like like women, you know, sort of beautiful
Speaker 1: ghost women. And then of course the face changes and
Speaker 1: it becomes this kind of snarling, skeletal lion type face,
Speaker 1: and then of course it's death for all who view
Speaker 1: the ark. Now for a for an artifact that has
Speaker 1: come to be imbued with so much mystery retrospectively, the
Speaker 1: Bible actually does just straightforwardly explain how to build the arc.
Speaker 1: It's like minute specifications on what you're supposed to do
Speaker 1: to make one. Yeah. And also it almost makes you wonder, like,
Speaker 1: what's the big deal about losing it, because clearly you
Speaker 1: have you have a strict set of instructions on how
Speaker 1: to build another one. Well, I mean I think they
Speaker 1: were just like magical beliefs about the sacredness of what
Speaker 1: it contains. Oh yes, certainly, but that but that ultimately
Speaker 1: is the thing, right, The art is a container, a
Speaker 1: fancy container. Uh perhaps even a holy container if you're
Speaker 1: approaching with that worldview, but just a container for other
Speaker 1: otherwise holy relics. That is one thing that I think
Speaker 1: makes it very fascinating and kind of unique. And there
Speaker 1: are probably some other great artifacts like this, but fascinating
Speaker 1: in that it is uh this artifact with all this significance,
Speaker 1: but it is essentially just a vessel for other things.
Speaker 1: It's a container, it's not a statue. Well, should we
Speaker 1: read the instructions from Exodus twenty five in case anyone
Speaker 1: wants to build along as we as we do the podcast.
Speaker 1: Let's build it all right, um, get your your cubit
Speaker 1: ruler ready, and they shall make an arc of shittim wood.
Speaker 1: Two cubits and a half shall be the length thereof,
Speaker 1: and a cubit and a half the breadth thereof, and
Speaker 1: a cubit and a half the height thereof. And thou
Speaker 1: shalt overlay it with pure gold within and without shalt
Speaker 1: thou overlay it, and shalt make upon it a crown
Speaker 1: of gold round about. And thou shalt cast four rings
Speaker 1: of gold for it, and put them in the four
Speaker 1: corners thereof, And two rings shall be in the one
Speaker 1: side of it, and two rings in the other side
Speaker 1: of it. And thou shalt make staves of shittim wood
Speaker 1: and overlay them with gold. And thou shalt put the
Speaker 1: staves into the rings by the sides of the arc,
Speaker 1: that the arc may be born with them. The staves
Speaker 1: shall be in the rings of the arc. They shall
Speaker 1: not be taken from it. Now I want to jump
Speaker 1: in here and said, they say that this is exactly
Speaker 1: the kind of description of the arc that is disappointing
Speaker 1: when you're a child, you've seen raiders and then you
Speaker 1: want to read about it in the Bible, and you
Speaker 1: just find this this kind of boring description of how
Speaker 1: to build one. Oh, there are better stories. We got
Speaker 1: the m roads. We're gonna get to some more later. Well,
Speaker 1: this this description is about to get a lot more interesting,
Speaker 1: and certainly we'll tie into some stuff we're gonna discuss later.
Speaker 1: And thou shalt put into the arc the testimony which
Speaker 1: I shall give thee. And thou shalt make a mercy
Speaker 1: seat of pure gold. Two cubits and a half shall
Speaker 1: be the length thereof, and a cubit and a half
Speaker 1: the breath thereof. And thou shalt make two cherubims of
Speaker 1: gold of beaten work. Shalt thou make them in the
Speaker 1: two ends of the mercy seat. And make one cherub
Speaker 1: on the one end and the other cherub on the
Speaker 1: other end, even of the mercy seat. Shall ye make
Speaker 1: the cherubims on the two ends thereof, So, in other words,
Speaker 1: make the two cherubs face each other on the ends
Speaker 1: of the mercy seat. Believe a space, because that space
Speaker 1: is important. Anyway continues, And the cherubims shall stretch forth
Speaker 1: their wings on high, covering the mercy seat with their wings,
Speaker 1: and their faces shall look one to another toward the
Speaker 1: mercy seat. Shall the faces of the cherubims be, And
Speaker 1: thou shalt put the mercy seat above upon the arc,
Speaker 1: and in the arc thou shalt put the testimony that
Speaker 1: I shall give THEE, and there I will meet with THEE.
Speaker 1: And I will commune with THEE from above the mercy
Speaker 1: seat from between the two cherubims, which are upon the
Speaker 1: arc of the testimony of all things which I will
Speaker 1: give THEE in commandment unto the children of Israel. Okay,
Speaker 1: So this thing is a container, as we've been saying,
Speaker 1: but it's also a chair, and it's a chair for
Speaker 1: God himself. Right, the ideas that that mercy seat is
Speaker 1: where God is going to manifest It sounds from the
Speaker 1: instructions like there is going to be a presence of
Speaker 1: the Lord there, and uh and Moses and perhaps you know,
Speaker 1: some other priests. Whoever is in charge, whoever is authorized
Speaker 1: to do so, will actually commune with God. It is,
Speaker 1: in the words of Belloc, a radio for speaking to God.
Speaker 1: A transmitter. But it's really more like a video phone
Speaker 1: than than just a transmitter. Right, yeah, it's like FaceTime,
Speaker 1: you know. On that note, let's take a quick break,
Speaker 1: and when we come back, we'll discuss the story of
Speaker 1: the arc, because that too will be important as we
Speaker 1: get into some of these scientific ideas regarding the arc.
Speaker 1: Than alright, we're back. Alright, So if the arc was
Speaker 1: actually built, about when do we think that would have happened.
Speaker 1: It would have been about three thousand years ago. Now
Speaker 1: we've seen the instructions in the Bible where they believed
Speaker 1: God had sent his people, uh, you know, the detailed
Speaker 1: plans on how to make the arc. But what do
Speaker 1: they do with it once they've got it. Well, after
Speaker 1: they've they've built it, they carried around with them and
Speaker 1: they use it as a central part of their religious observations.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's essentially a mobile altar piece. Right, I
Speaker 1: mean it's it's a it's a temple that you can
Speaker 1: pick up and move. So think back again to that
Speaker 1: part about the mercy seat. This is the point from
Speaker 1: which God speaks to the children of Israel. And if
Speaker 1: Raiders is any indication, it's also from Wincey sends out
Speaker 1: his smiting laser beams of Holy Nazi frying death. Now
Speaker 1: the wording here is interesting because it is the and
Speaker 1: I'm I'm possibly a butchering this of course, but the
Speaker 1: haw copperette well and coufer that's k k a p
Speaker 1: h a r means to cover, but kapareth means a
Speaker 1: thing of wiping out or cleansing. So they carry it
Speaker 1: a bit before them when during the Exodus, and it
Speaker 1: was said to clear impediments and poisonous animals in their path,
Speaker 1: and it was even said to stop the flow of
Speaker 1: the river Jordan's so that they could cross into the
Speaker 1: Promised Land. But it was also conceived of as a
Speaker 1: kind of a magical weapon of war. Right, Yeah, they
Speaker 1: marched with it at the Siege of Jericho. Of course
Speaker 1: that you know, they were blowing those trumpets, but still
Speaker 1: the arc was there. And as they're blowing those trumpets.
Speaker 1: Eventually the walls come tumbling down. But then in five
Speaker 1: seven and five BC, the Babylonian Empire conquered the Israelites,
Speaker 1: and the arc was supposedly taken from the temple in
Speaker 1: Jerusalem and from their advantishes from history. So if it
Speaker 1: did indeed exist, as as to some degree as the
Speaker 1: stories are told, this is where it stops. We don't
Speaker 1: know what happens after this, right, this is this is
Speaker 1: where it becomes the lost. Now, as with any Bible
Speaker 1: artifact of any significance, I would bet that there are
Speaker 1: some people out there who claimed to have found it. Yes,
Speaker 1: and but but before we we touch on those, I
Speaker 1: do want to point out just a wonderful fragment of
Speaker 1: a quote here came to It came to us from
Speaker 1: National Geographic Society fellow Fred Hybert. He told the website
Speaker 1: Nationally Geographic that it's not really something that you can
Speaker 1: go after. You can't really search for the arc because
Speaker 1: the arc exists at quote the crossroads between myth and reality.
Speaker 1: And I think that's that's essential to keep in mind
Speaker 1: for the entirety of this episode. In the next well,
Speaker 1: I would say, for example, I think the arc probably
Speaker 1: has a better chance of being in some way based
Speaker 1: on a real historical artifact than something like Noah's Ark.
Speaker 1: But people constantly go looking for Noah's Ark, and every
Speaker 1: time they go looking they find it. You know, there's well,
Speaker 1: here's some wood on a mountain and turkey here it is, right,
Speaker 1: And likewise the arc is simply essentially just wood and gold,
Speaker 1: uh and is not is even less of a feat
Speaker 1: to build. Like we have the instructions you could, if
Speaker 1: you had the materials, you could build one today. So
Speaker 1: even if we were to uncover an ARC candidate, it's
Speaker 1: not really possible to tell though, if you have the
Speaker 1: Arc of the Covenant, I mean, there could probably be
Speaker 1: multiple arcs out. They're saying that they're the arc, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there and there have been cases where they're
Speaker 1: where marchaeologists have found something that is like an arc,
Speaker 1: a box that has perhaps excited a few people here
Speaker 1: here and there, but ultimately, uh, you know, it doesn't
Speaker 1: pan out. I mean, I suppose if you had a
Speaker 1: strong candidate, you could do carbon dating on the on
Speaker 1: the relic, perhaps the wood, especially if there are any
Speaker 1: women into the wood remaining, to at least know if
Speaker 1: it's old enough, yeah to know if it's it's old enough,
Speaker 1: but again it could just be another box from that
Speaker 1: time period. That being said, some of the possible final
Speaker 1: resting places for the arc include has already already alluded
Speaker 1: to St. Mary of Zion Cathedral in Oxom, Ethiopia, under
Speaker 1: the care of the Ethiopian Orthodox, to a head O church,
Speaker 1: and more specifically, under the care of a single caretaker
Speaker 1: who alone gets to see the arc. Naturally, that means
Speaker 1: no one gets to verify what they actually we have
Speaker 1: or don't have much less study it. Some claim that
Speaker 1: it was hidden beneath the First Temple in Jerusalem before
Speaker 1: the Babylonians destroyed it in five eighty six b C.
Speaker 1: But this can't be verified either, because that means it
Speaker 1: would be somewhere beneath the Dome of the Rock Shrine,
Speaker 1: which of course is a holy site in his Lam. Now,
Speaker 1: there's another claim mentioned in that nat Geo article that
Speaker 1: I sided earlier, that it was buried beneath the hill,
Speaker 1: and not just any hill, but the very hill that
Speaker 1: would later be known as Galgatha, the place of the Skull,
Speaker 1: which is the place where it is said that Jesus
Speaker 1: was crucified right, and according to this story, when he's crucified,
Speaker 1: his blood like drains down into the hill and eventually
Speaker 1: to the arc itself buried beneath him and U. This
Speaker 1: relates to a quote unquote find of amateur adventurer Ron
Speaker 1: Wyatt who lived nineteen thirty, who claimed to have found,
Speaker 1: among other things, Noah's Ark, the Ark of the Covenant,
Speaker 1: the Tower of Babel, the graves of Noah and his wife,
Speaker 1: as well as the blood of Christ itself. Needless to say,
Speaker 1: one should take his account with all the salt that
Speaker 1: Wyatt claimed to have also discovered at the ruins of Sodom. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was not a true archaeologist. Now, this guy is
Speaker 1: not unique and essentially being um, somebody who is an
Speaker 1: apologist for their religion who goes out I mean I
Speaker 1: mainly know of this within within Christian you know, like
Speaker 1: somebody who's basically a Christian apologist, a defender of the faith,
Speaker 1: who goes out seeking artifacts. That has always struck me
Speaker 1: as a kind of odd thing to want to do.
Speaker 1: I guess I get it. On the level of these
Speaker 1: are people who are trying to prove that the Bible
Speaker 1: is literally true and everything, all the stories in it
Speaker 1: literally happened on Earth at a certain number of years ago.
Speaker 1: But it seems like kind of a profaning of the
Speaker 1: the orientation towards their myths. If they're going out and
Speaker 1: saying like, I'm going to find the bones of this
Speaker 1: person who's the you know in the stories that I believe,
Speaker 1: or I'm going to find the had left over from
Speaker 1: the boat. Yeah, I mean, I guess you can approach
Speaker 1: it from a few different points of view. I mean,
Speaker 1: I always the way I always approach it is that
Speaker 1: that the you know, the deep mythology of a given
Speaker 1: faith need not be factual to have power and h
Speaker 1: and therefore there's no reason to go and try and
Speaker 1: find fragments of it or expect them to be there
Speaker 1: to be there. Uh, you could, I guess, approach it
Speaker 1: as someone who needs to find those items because that
Speaker 1: again supports their religion. Perhaps the racist doubt if only
Speaker 1: I could find a piece of the arc, then I
Speaker 1: know it was real and I can silence these doubts.
Speaker 1: The other way of looking at it, of course, is
Speaker 1: someone who has no doubts whatsoever, and they're like, hey,
Speaker 1: the arc was obviously real. Um I gotta prove it
Speaker 1: to everybody else. Yeah, I need to prove it to
Speaker 1: everybody else, or I just I just want to find it.
Speaker 1: It's out there somewhere. Why has nobody found it. I'm
Speaker 1: going to be the one to do it. And to
Speaker 1: your point, if you go into this read these regions,
Speaker 1: there is just so much history that especially somebody's just
Speaker 1: bumbling around and they don't really know what they're doing,
Speaker 1: They're going to find something that they can pass off,
Speaker 1: they can believe in. I don't know. They end up
Speaker 1: being kind of like the Villains and all the Indiana
Speaker 1: Jones movies who want to possess some powerful, mysterious action artifact,
Speaker 1: but they want to possess it for some earthly purpose,
Speaker 1: like you know, then I can show everybody this thing
Speaker 1: or something. It's sort of the moral of Raiders of
Speaker 1: the Lost Dark at the end that Indie, Indie loses
Speaker 1: his his sort of profane curiosity and he realizes I
Speaker 1: can just let this thing be sacred and not have
Speaker 1: to look inside and not have to want to own
Speaker 1: it and control it and show the world. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think that's a's a solid read on Raiders of the
Speaker 1: Lost Dark. You know, well, while we're talking about Raiders.
Speaker 1: So let's let's go ahead and uh and discuss a
Speaker 1: few of the details about it, because I'm I'm assuming
Speaker 1: most people have seen Raiders, but I know there are
Speaker 1: some individuals out there who just haven't seen the film yet. Uh,
Speaker 1: And I certainly encourage everyone to see it because it
Speaker 1: is a damn near perfect motion picture. Is there a
Speaker 1: better action adventure movie? I can't think of. I mean
Speaker 1: you could, you could say Star Wars, right, you could
Speaker 1: point to other yeah, things of that nature. But but
Speaker 1: I mean, it's such a tentpole film in terms of
Speaker 1: like big summer action films. It is the film that
Speaker 1: so many other motion pictures have have tried to be. This,
Speaker 1: of course, is a film came out in one directed
Speaker 1: by Steven Spielberg, screenplay by Lawrence Kasden's story by George
Speaker 1: Lucas and Philip Kaufman. Uh. Philip Kaufman, by the way,
Speaker 1: is uh is the person who reportedly brought up the
Speaker 1: idea of using the arc in the story, and he
Speaker 1: was He was also the grandson of German Jewish immigrants
Speaker 1: to the US. Spielberg's parental grandparents were Jewish Ukrainians. Uh
Speaker 1: so I one would assume that the that this played
Speaker 1: into the the use of the Arc in the film,
Speaker 1: but also some of these themes regarding the you know,
Speaker 1: the struggle of the Jewish people against depression. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: one of the unspoken subtexts to the film, I think
Speaker 1: is that ultimately the Arc ends up fulfilling its destiny
Speaker 1: as the weapon that protects the Jewish people in the end.
Speaker 1: It's it's destroying Nazis, right, and it's recreating a tale
Speaker 1: that will touch on in a bit, the idea that
Speaker 1: the Arc is stolen by an enemy force and then
Speaker 1: uses its power against that enemy force. Yeah, it's sort
Speaker 1: of a retelling of the of the Amrods story almost. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I should also point out that John Williams did the
Speaker 1: score for the film, and I'm usually I'm I'm kind
Speaker 1: of over John Williams scores for the most part. I
Speaker 1: don't know what you're talking about, dude, How can you
Speaker 1: not love John Williams. Well, the thing is in rewatching
Speaker 1: portions of this film for this episode, I I still
Speaker 1: I have to give him all the credit in the
Speaker 1: world because that that the scene when they finally opened
Speaker 1: the Arc and the Arc unleashes it's um, it's wrath
Speaker 1: upon the Nazis. The music is perfect in that it
Speaker 1: just really adds to the sense of just holy mystery
Speaker 1: that is unfolding. There. Take any movie with the John
Speaker 1: Williams score and take the score out, replace it with
Speaker 1: something else. You wouldn't have half the movie. But what
Speaker 1: if it was Tangerine Dream, then I can only imagine it.
Speaker 1: It might be just a little better. Maybe, well, I
Speaker 1: love Tangerine Dream too, But you're wrong about this, no,
Speaker 1: well maybe so. Now key scenes in the film for
Speaker 1: our purposes, because there's a lot of stuff in there
Speaker 1: that is of course added on and uh um, you know,
Speaker 1: historically inaccurate, certainly, But there are a few key scenes
Speaker 1: that that that match up with a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: we're talking about here today. There's a scene in which
Speaker 1: the arc burns the swastick off of the crate containing
Speaker 1: the arc. And then of course there's that fabulous scene
Speaker 1: at the end where the Nazis opened the arc, uh
Speaker 1: and those Cherubim emerge. And then you also have the
Speaker 1: burning light of God finally emerging as well and just
Speaker 1: eradicating everybody that has their eyes open, and the idea
Speaker 1: of a fire that burns people emerging from the Arc
Speaker 1: is absolutely biblical and we will explore more of those
Speaker 1: stories later on. Now, a side question that I saw
Speaker 1: come up on the internet. Does Indie actually impact the
Speaker 1: situation with the Arc and the Nazis at all? Because
Speaker 1: outside of saving Marian's life Marian the romantic interest, does
Speaker 1: he accomplish anything? No, And I think that's the genius
Speaker 1: of it. The movie ends with with Indie. It doesn't.
Speaker 1: It's an action movie that doesn't end with a fist fight.
Speaker 1: There's no fight of any kind at the end. The
Speaker 1: the hero of the movie at the end is completely
Speaker 1: powerless and his victory at the end is assuming a
Speaker 1: posture of humility in the presence of the sacred Yeah, totally,
Speaker 1: because to remind everybody, at the end, he and Marian
Speaker 1: are tied up. The Nazis have the Arc and UH
Speaker 1: and Bellock is opening it in the full regalia, in fact,
Speaker 1: wearing some version of the vestiments that are described UH
Speaker 1: alongside the instructions for the for the construction of the Arc.
Speaker 1: And then the arcis murders all of the bad guys
Speaker 1: and UH and Harrison Ford is left to pick up
Speaker 1: the pieces. Okay, we can't just fully turn this into
Speaker 1: a movie crush episode. Now we've got a get back to,
Speaker 1: so we should probably get into exploring some of the
Speaker 1: weird scientific tangents people have gotten into on the subject
Speaker 1: of the Arc, and one of them that you can
Speaker 1: clearly look at is the idea of the immerrods and
Speaker 1: what happened with the Arc in the presence of the
Speaker 1: Philistines if you assume this story is based on any
Speaker 1: kind of historical memory or even an exaggerated version of
Speaker 1: something that people remembered, right, Yeah, because this is getting
Speaker 1: to one of my favorite things about the Arc, the
Speaker 1: idea that it brings plague and or madness to those
Speaker 1: who should not possess it, that it is a dangerous artifact.
Speaker 1: So should we explore the idea of the Arc as
Speaker 1: a sort of bio weapon. Yeah, let's talk about the
Speaker 1: Arc as plague bearer. I just want to remind everybody
Speaker 1: that previous passage that we read, and it was so
Speaker 1: that after they had carried it about, the hand of
Speaker 1: the Lord was against the city with a very great destruction,
Speaker 1: and he smoked the men of the city, both small
Speaker 1: and great, and they had immerrods in their secret parts.
Speaker 1: Now let's talk about those m rods. So those emorrods
Speaker 1: are often interpreted as hemorrhoids. Okay, that would there seems
Speaker 1: to be a cognate issue there, and a lot seems
Speaker 1: to have been written about them over the years, in
Speaker 1: part because it seems like anytime you have a hemorrhoid paper, yes,
Speaker 1: and there are a lot of hemoroid papers out there,
Speaker 1: the doctor's writing them often like to throw in a
Speaker 1: little bit of biblical flavor at the beginning. Yes, how
Speaker 1: many times has this story been cited in the International
Speaker 1: Journal of Hemorrhoid Research, Right, yeah, right at the very
Speaker 1: beginning of any paper, Because you're ultimately just going to
Speaker 1: talk about swollen veins and the lower part of the
Speaker 1: rectum and anus. But if you can make it a
Speaker 1: little magical right at the start, you can hook readers. Right,
Speaker 1: So for people who don't actually know, can you just
Speaker 1: briefly explain what a hemorrhoid is? Yeah, it is swollen
Speaker 1: veins and the lower part of the rectum and anus. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's all it is. Yeah, that basically, I mean, you
Speaker 1: can get more detailed in describing what causes them, and
Speaker 1: of course the treatments that are necessary. But it's been
Speaker 1: a problem for a long time. Obviously, it's something that
Speaker 1: may have been described here in the Bible. Uh and
Speaker 1: just throughout human history people have had to deal with hemorrhoids. Now,
Speaker 1: if the story actually does mean that the Philistines got hemorrhoids,
Speaker 1: I know it's been translated in other ways, But if
Speaker 1: it did mean that, would the story be best interpreted
Speaker 1: as something that's supposed to be humorous? Is it like
Speaker 1: a joke on the Philistines? You know this comes down,
Speaker 1: oh man, if you you kind of end up asking
Speaker 1: a big question about humor there, right, because I don't
Speaker 1: think hemorrhoids are ever humorous to the individual that has them.
Speaker 1: But clearly we have a lot of jokes about hemorrhoids.
Speaker 1: It's really funny when your enemies get one, I guess,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's it's kind of an insulting curse
Speaker 1: from a powerful god figure. Right, It's not just like
Speaker 1: causing them to go blind or something. It's giving them
Speaker 1: this this annoying health problem. And then there's this other
Speaker 1: apart to it as well. So the Philistines suffer these
Speaker 1: after they steal it and they locked it up in
Speaker 1: the temple of Dagon, and we see the statue of
Speaker 1: Dagon fall over multiple times. Um and the the arc
Speaker 1: of course not only mutilated there with their god's statue,
Speaker 1: it also caused these uh, these emrods, as well as
Speaker 1: a plague of rampaging mice. The emeralds again are also
Speaker 1: sometimes referred to as tumors. So a lot of people
Speaker 1: have have looked at these examples and tried to figure
Speaker 1: out what could possibly be going on here, because if
Speaker 1: these these immrods be they hemorrhoids or some sort of
Speaker 1: a tumor, well, that's that's a symptom. That's something we
Speaker 1: can look look to that we can analyze via modern medicine,
Speaker 1: and then maybe we can look at some of these
Speaker 1: other elements and try and piece something together as well. Now,
Speaker 1: just to be clear, once again, we mentioned this earlier,
Speaker 1: but we don't we don't have direct evidence that this
Speaker 1: story actually happened. We right, we don't know that this
Speaker 1: is based on something that people remember, but it could
Speaker 1: be it could be based on some kind of historical event, right,
Speaker 1: And likewise, a lot of a lot of work has
Speaker 1: been done looking at Okay, we had we had immerrods
Speaker 1: and we have mice. What's the connection there, when in
Speaker 1: reality you could have two separate stories that end up
Speaker 1: being combined into a story that has imrods and mice. So,
Speaker 1: as I said, a number of people have written about this.
Speaker 1: Two of the earlier ones where nineteenth century historians Gaston
Speaker 1: Maspero and Archibald Henry Says, who summarized the quote the
Speaker 1: Philistine soothsayer, being consulted at the end of seven months,
Speaker 1: ordered that the solemn sacrifices should be offered up and
Speaker 1: the arc restored to its rightful worshippers, accompanied by expiratory
Speaker 1: offerings of five gold mice and five gold tumors, one
Speaker 1: for each of the repentant cities. So they're not only saying, here,
Speaker 1: take your arc back because it is causing mice to
Speaker 1: be everywhere and has given us some weird growths. They're saying,
Speaker 1: here it is back, but also here's here's some golden
Speaker 1: mice and some golden hemorrhoids or or tumors or something
Speaker 1: uh too, sort of as pay aiment or perhaps warning
Speaker 1: to her whoever gets the arc next. Now, I don't
Speaker 1: want to get too far ahead of things here, but
Speaker 1: I can't help but notice, if you've got mice and
Speaker 1: you've got tumors or lumps of some kind, I'm going
Speaker 1: to start thinking about bubonic plague. That's right, because bubonic
Speaker 1: plague does result in bu bos, which are swellings of
Speaker 1: the lymph nodes. So that could sort of be classed
Speaker 1: as something like a tumor. You get a lump under
Speaker 1: your skin, right, And if you if you want to
Speaker 1: do a Google search, you can find images of these, uh,
Speaker 1: these swellings, and indeed they look kind of like like
Speaker 1: lumpy tumor like growths. Frank R. Freeman, in a two
Speaker 1: thousand five Royal Society of Medicine article, highlighted some some
Speaker 1: other writings on the topic, including a two thousand argument
Speaker 1: by JP Griffin that it was in fact plague that
Speaker 1: was afflicting the Philistines here. But then one W. M. S.
Speaker 1: Russell insisted that the tumors were amorroids due to dysenterry
Speaker 1: and that quote the rat carrier of the plague wasn't
Speaker 1: in the region at time of the described events, but
Speaker 1: that quote Since then, advances in archaeology have shifted the
Speaker 1: weight of evidence towards Griffin. Moreover, the emrods of the
Speaker 1: King James Bible appear in all modern translations as tumors.
Speaker 1: So if you're just trying, really trying to make it
Speaker 1: work as hemorrhoids, you're probably out of luck. Right. It
Speaker 1: seems like like like tumors are more likely interpretation, and
Speaker 1: that leads a number of people to say, well, maybe
Speaker 1: it was it was debonic plague. Here's another quote from Freeman.
Speaker 1: Recent archaeological evidence has caused a rethinking of plague in
Speaker 1: the ancient Near East. Fossilized remains of the plague flea
Speaker 1: have been found in large numbers in Amarana, Egypt, and
Speaker 1: since a Marna was occupied for only a few years,
Speaker 1: we can date this contact between human beings and plague
Speaker 1: fleas accurately to about fifty b C, which is before
Speaker 1: the events described in the Book of Samuel. Moreover, archaeological
Speaker 1: studies in the Nile Valley indicate that our Rattus was
Speaker 1: introduced at this time, probably via ships from India. Evidence
Speaker 1: of bubonic plague has not been seen in Egyptian mummies,
Speaker 1: but all the vectors were in place. Okay, so this
Speaker 1: is saying based on some evidence we have there, the
Speaker 1: historical setting is is there like you could imagine that
Speaker 1: there could be bubonic plague at the right time, in
Speaker 1: the right place for this to be what is what
Speaker 1: is described in the story about the arc in the Philistines.
Speaker 1: That being said, I don't think anybody is arguing that
Speaker 1: the arc was full of plague infested mice. This would
Speaker 1: just be a situation where the soothsayers made sort of
Speaker 1: a connection between plague mice and the illness, but instead
Speaker 1: of connecting those two things together, they just assumed they
Speaker 1: were both curses of the arc. Now, in a minute,
Speaker 1: I do want to come back and discuss the possibility
Speaker 1: of bio warfare and germ warfare in the ancient world. Yes,
Speaker 1: and now before we get to that, I do I
Speaker 1: do want to also mentioned that one doctor Otto news
Speaker 1: Stator in nineteen forty considered that the swellings described here
Speaker 1: might be possible. It might possibly be due to syphiletic infection,
Speaker 1: which is that the Philistines would have contracted syphilis from
Speaker 1: the Ark of the Covenant, or or again that an
Speaker 1: outbreak of syphilis lined up with the presence of the
Speaker 1: arc or was attributed to the presence of the arc
Speaker 1: in some fashion. Is there anything that syphilis doesn't explain.
Speaker 1: But I mean, yeah, if we go back to to
Speaker 1: our earlier discussions of syphilis on this uh, this podcast,
Speaker 1: it it seems like you can pretty much describe just
Speaker 1: about everything if the only thing is you probably get
Speaker 1: into an argument about when syphilis would have impacted a
Speaker 1: given region. No, by that, I didn't mean that syphilis
Speaker 1: is a good explanation for everything. I just people have
Speaker 1: tried it on everything. It's like every powerful force in
Speaker 1: human history. For sure, every historical event has a syphilis hypothesis,
Speaker 1: as will come up repeatedly in this episode. It's not
Speaker 1: necessary to invoke bronze punk bio warfare explanations to just
Speaker 1: a file legends of the Ark. But it is certainly,
Speaker 1: I think plausible that forms of biological warfare were practiced
Speaker 1: in the ancient world. That who knows that the ancient
Speaker 1: the ancient Hebrews, or or any of the other peoples
Speaker 1: of the time period could have figured out how to
Speaker 1: do germ warfare and could have used it. And in fact,
Speaker 1: we have some pretty interesting evidence that it did actually happen,
Speaker 1: at least in one case, uh, in the second millennium BC.
Speaker 1: That's right, we're talking about the hit tights of Asia
Speaker 1: Minor going back to what BC around then, so I
Speaker 1: think in the fourteenth century BC. So there was an
Speaker 1: epidemic at the time in the fourteenth century BC, known
Speaker 1: to historians as the hit Tite plague, that spread throughout
Speaker 1: the Middle East, And historical records of this pestilence appear
Speaker 1: in correspondence Stella to the Egyptian pharaoh akinat In from
Speaker 1: around thirteen thirty five BC, and they say that there's
Speaker 1: a horrible play that spread throughout the land. It's affecting
Speaker 1: some Phoenician cities, and there was a fear that it
Speaker 1: was being spread by donkeys, which led to them barring
Speaker 1: people from infected cities from coming into other cities and
Speaker 1: from preventing donkeys from being used in traveling caravans. And
Speaker 1: so there is a paper I wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: published in Medical Hypotheses in two thousand seven by a
Speaker 1: microbiologist named Zero E. G No trevis Sinato called the
Speaker 1: Hittite plague an epidemic of tularemia and the first record
Speaker 1: of biological warfare. And this is a really interesting hypothesis.
Speaker 1: So Trevisano believes that the evidence indicates that the Hittite
Speaker 1: plague was in fact an epidemic of tularemia, which is
Speaker 1: a bacterial infection caused by the bacterium francis sella to lawrensis.
Speaker 1: Tularemia can spread between animals and humans, so it's potentially
Speaker 1: zoonotic infection UH and it can spread via several routes,
Speaker 1: including tick bites and by just direct contact or inhalation
Speaker 1: of infected aerosols. It has different symptoms depending on the
Speaker 1: route of transmission, including high fever and ulcers and swelling
Speaker 1: of the lymph glands, and the pneumonic version of this
Speaker 1: infection leads to a cough, chest pain, difficulty breathing, and
Speaker 1: can definitely be deadly to Tularemia is actually often known
Speaker 1: to kill off large numbers of rabbits, which has led
Speaker 1: to it being commonly known as rabbit fever, and especially
Speaker 1: without modern medical intervention, primarily antibiotics, it can be fatal
Speaker 1: to humans, so it is a deadly dangerous disease. Trevis
Speaker 1: Sinato says that after the outbreak of this plague hit
Speaker 1: the Phoenician city of Simura, the Hittites also known as
Speaker 1: the nest Shites, attacked the area and looted it, so
Speaker 1: you've got the city weakened by disease. The Hittites say, hey,
Speaker 1: some free stuff, so they run in. They attacked the
Speaker 1: city and they loot it, taking along livestock among the
Speaker 1: many spoils of war. But soon after they returned, the
Speaker 1: Hittite raiders were hit within outbreak of disease that Trevis
Speaker 1: Sano Trevis Sinato also thinks was tularemia, and this would
Speaker 1: make sense because they brought the livestock. The animal hosts
Speaker 1: were arcs if you will, for the bacteria. Then while
Speaker 1: the Hittites were weakened with this epidemic, another people known
Speaker 1: as the Arzawans attacked them. Then Trevis Sinato writes that
Speaker 1: their historical records that indicate strange incidents and when like
Speaker 1: wandering rams appeared in our Zawa, and the Arzawans of
Speaker 1: course wouldn't pass up free live stock, so they incorporated
Speaker 1: these rams into their flocks. But then they were hit
Speaker 1: with the disease, probably tularemia. And Trevis Sinato also mentioned
Speaker 1: the story that there was this Arzawan leader called Uasdis
Speaker 1: who was struck by a divine thunderbolt in the knee
Speaker 1: disabling him. Quote a ruler infected with the plague and
Speaker 1: symptoms thereof being observed in the knees or in a
Speaker 1: region euphemistically and or puritanically described as the knees at
Speaker 1: the metaphor. Oh, this is the idea where like if
Speaker 1: an individual is wounded in the in the groin, they
Speaker 1: describe it as the knee instead, or like the foot,
Speaker 1: like often in the Bible. The use of the word
Speaker 1: foot is clearly a euphemism for the genitals. So here's
Speaker 1: Trevis Sinato's hypothesis. It's that the Hittites, who had experience
Speaker 1: with this epidemic, deliberately planted disease carrying rams among their
Speaker 1: enemies in order to deliberately spread the rabbit fever the
Speaker 1: tularemia and weaken those enemies. And if that's true, it
Speaker 1: seems like it worked. The Lands were unable to defeat
Speaker 1: the Hittites after the fever hit them, And we've got
Speaker 1: historical records that the Hittite king wished plague upon the lands,
Speaker 1: and that there was this Hittite scapegoat ritual in which
Speaker 1: a ram and a female attendant were sent out on
Speaker 1: the road spreading disease where they went, So we don't
Speaker 1: have direct evidence that the Hittites knew exactly what they
Speaker 1: were doing, you know, that they knew they were spreading disease,
Speaker 1: or that they understood how the spread of disease was happening. So,
Speaker 1: while the evidence for this is very interesting, I would
Speaker 1: not say it's a proven case of germ warfare and
Speaker 1: that it doesn't seem like this has become accepted theory
Speaker 1: about what happened in this case. But it does seem
Speaker 1: like a very promising hypothesis. But despite not having a
Speaker 1: germ theory of disease, I think it's certainly feasible that
Speaker 1: ancient people's could work out basic principles of epidemic transmission,
Speaker 1: such as that infected or maybe cursed animals would spread
Speaker 1: the disease to people they came in contact with, and
Speaker 1: using this basic knowledge, it's possible that ancient people's could
Speaker 1: have deliberately spread diseases among their enemies. And it's clear
Speaker 1: that later armies with not much more scientific understanding than
Speaker 1: the ancient people's had did this. Yeah, indeed, I mean
Speaker 1: two of them. The most probably famous examples of this
Speaker 1: would be throwing dead things, be they animals or soldiers
Speaker 1: UH over the walls into a besieged city, or throwing
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff down a well to try and
Speaker 1: destroy poison uh an enemy's drinking water. Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: just wanted to mention a few examples that are cited
Speaker 1: in a paper called the History of Biological Warfare by
Speaker 1: Friedrich Frishnecht, and this these would all be before the
Speaker 1: germ theory of disease, but he mentions that in eleven
Speaker 1: fifty five, Emperor Barbarossa poisons water wells with human bodies
Speaker 1: in Italy. In thirteen forty six, the Mongols catapulted bodies
Speaker 1: of plague victims over the city walls of Kafa and
Speaker 1: the crime Crimean Peninsula, And in fourteen the Spanish mixed
Speaker 1: wine with blood of leprosy patients to sell to their
Speaker 1: French enemies in Naples Cocktail. So while I would absolutely
Speaker 1: say that we do not need to resort to explanations
Speaker 1: like this to explain the origins of these stories, at
Speaker 1: the same time, I think it's fascinating and highly plausible
Speaker 1: that there could have been cases where ancient people's used
Speaker 1: biological or germ based why bends to hurt their enemies
Speaker 1: like you can imagine a vessel or a container as
Speaker 1: some kind of biological trojan horse, tricking enemies into taking
Speaker 1: home some disease vector with them. What if you you
Speaker 1: get people to steal your ARC and it's actually a
Speaker 1: box full of rabbit corpses covered into laremia ticks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just I would have assumed they'd look inside it
Speaker 1: before they take it home. I mean that just seems
Speaker 1: like like this is common sense. Well, maybe you make
Speaker 1: a crafty one with like some hidden you know, containers
Speaker 1: on the compartment stuff on the hidden compartments, with grates
Speaker 1: for the ticks to get out. You can you can
Speaker 1: get really creative with this. So there are no instructions
Speaker 1: about that, though in the biblical account it's true there
Speaker 1: are not. Again, but I'm not saying that this actually
Speaker 1: happened and explains the story. I don't think you need
Speaker 1: to go there. All right, we're gonna take one more break,
Speaker 1: and when we come back, we'll talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about radiation and uh, the idea of the arc being
Speaker 1: indeed a radio for talking to God. All right, we're back.
Speaker 1: So I I mentioned earlier, you know, the influence of
Speaker 1: fiction on our considerations of the arc and I definitely
Speaker 1: remember being I guess this was like junior high reading
Speaker 1: Stephen King's The Stand and then also looking around in
Speaker 1: the Bible and thinking about the arc of the Covenant,
Speaker 1: because of course this this wonderful sequence throughout the later
Speaker 1: portions of Stephen King's The Stand And which what was
Speaker 1: his name? Do you remember this character? Which character? The
Speaker 1: character is dragging the the atomic bomb across the trash
Speaker 1: trash can man? Yeah, Donald Merwin, Albert, that's good. Do
Speaker 1: you remember his whole name? Yeah? I just remember him
Speaker 1: just being like the melty bomb guy, because he's just
Speaker 1: he's just ravaged by radiation, sickness and mutation. He's just
Speaker 1: his skins basically dripping off his body as he drags this, uh,
Speaker 1: this bomb into the final scene of the entire book. Well,
Speaker 1: based on a kind of atomic age monster movie understanding
Speaker 1: of how radioactivity works, you could certainly imagine somebody looking
Speaker 1: at the story of Oh the you know, they took this,
Speaker 1: this thing killed people and sometimes at one time point
Speaker 1: people took it and they got tumors. This must be radioactive.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's a plutonium bomb. Yeah, it sounds like something
Speaker 1: right out of a Fallout game or a plan of
Speaker 1: the Apes movie. Right, yeah, Um, but of course we
Speaker 1: we can't really seriously consider any explanation that involves an
Speaker 1: ancient atomic weapon. No, there's just no explanation for why
Speaker 1: that would have occurred, right. I think the use of
Speaker 1: germ warfare among the ancients, even though they might not
Speaker 1: have had a germ theory of disease, I do think
Speaker 1: it's plausible given what they could have figured out just
Speaker 1: based on experience. It is not plausible at all that
Speaker 1: they I mean not even close, that they came up
Speaker 1: with any kind of highly radioactive materials, right, Because, of course,
Speaker 1: the other side of the equation is, hey, we have
Speaker 1: naturally occurring radioactive materials. Perhaps they just dug that stuff
Speaker 1: up and stuff the arc full of it, because I mean,
Speaker 1: certainly there are you have sites like Ramsar Iran that
Speaker 1: that have a lot of naturally occurring radioactive materials there,
Speaker 1: but they still don't produce anything near the high level
Speaker 1: doses required to cause radiation sickness. Yeah, digging uranium out
Speaker 1: of the ground, even it's not going to be anything
Speaker 1: like that. The highly radioactive elements we would find in
Speaker 1: like nuclear reactor fuel or nuclear weapons exist only in
Speaker 1: extremely tiny trace amounts naturally, and to produce significant amounts
Speaker 1: of something like uranium two thirty five or plutonium two
Speaker 1: thirty nine, you have to subject naturally occurring rocks containing
Speaker 1: mostly more stable elements like uranium two thirty eight to
Speaker 1: some kind of process. Right, You've gotta like bombard it
Speaker 1: with neutrons and a reactor, or you've got a centrifuge
Speaker 1: it to separate out the more dangerous you two thirty five.
Speaker 1: The greatest natural terrestrial source of human exposure to ionizing
Speaker 1: radiation seems to be radon gas. Radon is one of
Speaker 1: the radioactive decay products of uranium, along with other elements
Speaker 1: like radium and thorium. And I just haven't found any
Speaker 1: evidence of a natural terrestrial radiation source strong enough to
Speaker 1: cause acute or noticeable radiation poisoning within a short span
Speaker 1: of time. Exposure to natural terrestrial radiation sources can be dangerous,
Speaker 1: for example rad on gas, but this is more because
Speaker 1: it tends to increase something like your risk of cancer
Speaker 1: over long periods of time. For example, rate on gas
Speaker 1: is believed to be the number one cause of lung
Speaker 1: cancer among non smokers and the number two cause of
Speaker 1: lung cancer overall. So even the most potent natural radiation sources,
Speaker 1: they're not gonna do anything to you that you could
Speaker 1: detect I think without modern science. So I find it
Speaker 1: extremely unlikely that anybody in the ancient world could have
Speaker 1: an acutely lethal radiation source in a box. I think
Speaker 1: we've got to rule that one out. Take that junior
Speaker 1: high Robert lamp I'm sorry, I'm not out he had
Speaker 1: it kind of now you made me feel like a jerk. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: this is this is this is not at all. I mean,
Speaker 1: this was something I was curious about when I was
Speaker 1: in junior high, and then later on you get to
Speaker 1: look into it and realize that, well, that didn't really
Speaker 1: pan out. Now, I do want to mention something that
Speaker 1: I think we should come back and explore in a
Speaker 1: future episode, which is the idea of natural nuclear reactors.
Speaker 1: I don't believe any exists today, but there is evidence
Speaker 1: that billions of years ago, long ago, in Earth's history,
Speaker 1: when the when the elements in the Earth's crust were younger,
Speaker 1: there were some natural fission reactions that were sustained within rocks,
Speaker 1: in in rock formations within the Earth's crust, like it
Speaker 1: h I know it. At least one side in Western Africa,
Speaker 1: there are these two billion year old natural fission reactors
Speaker 1: that we found all this evidence of that there was
Speaker 1: essentially a nuclear fission reactor happening naturally under Earth's crust,
Speaker 1: and that's led to even these really strange hypotheses, like
Speaker 1: all heternative hypotheses for the origin of the Moon, which
Speaker 1: say that it was the result of a natural fission
Speaker 1: reaction explosion in Earth's crust billions of years ago, which
Speaker 1: that I know that is not a favorite hypothesis, but
Speaker 1: it has been put forward. I believe this was also
Speaker 1: the underlying science in the more recent American Godzilla film.
Speaker 1: Oh wait what Yeah, I believe so. Like the idea
Speaker 1: was that Godzilla is this ancient organism from back when
Speaker 1: you had naturally occurring high levels of radiation on Earth
Speaker 1: and the eight radiation, and that's their the whole reason
Speaker 1: for being gigantic radiations viewing monsters, what's the I don't
Speaker 1: think they get into. The one I've seen recently is
Speaker 1: shin Godzilla, which is absolutely amazing, But they don't really
Speaker 1: explore the origin, do they know? I don't think they do.
Speaker 1: They're more they're hyper concerned with the present. How do
Speaker 1: we react to this, What do we have legal authority
Speaker 1: to do? Where to hold the meeting? Yeah, that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. So there's a with really fun movies in
Speaker 1: their their their own right. So at this point, let's
Speaker 1: let's come back to again that that fabulous quote from
Speaker 1: belloc Are it's a transmit to a radio for speaking
Speaker 1: to God. As a little more Peter Lauri. But you know,
Speaker 1: any of the idea the more earthly indies says, you
Speaker 1: want to talk to God, we'll go see him together
Speaker 1: right now? Yeah, you know, it's it's a fun moment
Speaker 1: in the film. But the the idea is central to
Speaker 1: the whole purpose of the arc. As we've discussed already,
Speaker 1: it's described as not only a place to how sacred relics,
Speaker 1: but as a focus of ritual, an altar of sorts,
Speaker 1: a mobile altar God manifests upon the Mercy Seat and
Speaker 1: speaks to the priests, instructing the priests of God's will. Okay,
Speaker 1: so if this is how they believed the arc to
Speaker 1: function in their worship, what are the ways you could
Speaker 1: interpret this? Well, I think the most likely explanation of
Speaker 1: all would be that it just would simply serve as
Speaker 1: a focal point of devote in the same way that
Speaker 1: any altar or any statue or religious work of art
Speaker 1: does so, without the need for supernatural occurrences or ancient
Speaker 1: you know, technological devices or weird traps or what have
Speaker 1: you know, bells and whistles required. You know, I also
Speaker 1: can't help but compare it to the notion of a
Speaker 1: focal point or a drift in yoga. And this is
Speaker 1: where you're you're not even looking necessarily at anything in particular.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're looking at a you know, a line on
Speaker 1: the wall or just a point in space, and you're
Speaker 1: focusing your attention on that and in doing so, hopefully
Speaker 1: entering some sort of meditative state. Right. The goal is
Speaker 1: to to center consciousness, to crowd out other thoughts entering right,
Speaker 1: And I imagine a lot of our listeners out there
Speaker 1: you've had that experience, either by focusing on nothing, focusing
Speaker 1: on and say a clock on a wall or a
Speaker 1: wall socket, or perhaps some bit of religious art, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, an altarpiece across what have you in a
Speaker 1: various Hindu iconography as well, Like these conserves just a
Speaker 1: way to to focus our mind and also think about
Speaker 1: perhaps what is illustrated in the work itself, and this is,
Speaker 1: you know, all ultimately very much a form of induction
Speaker 1: or a formally ritualized procedure whose function is the narrowing
Speaker 1: of consciousness by focusing attention. I also can't help but
Speaker 1: think that with a golden item like the like the arc.
Speaker 1: So you have the arc, it's covered in gold. You
Speaker 1: have it in a like a dark pavilion, and what
Speaker 1: kind of illumination do you have around you? Well, you
Speaker 1: might have burning sacrifices, so they're indoors. You generally probably
Speaker 1: have firelight, but you could also have a sacrifice burning
Speaker 1: at the altar. That would be a sort of like
Speaker 1: a fire there. And I have to think also that
Speaker 1: there there would generally be smoke in this environment you
Speaker 1: do burning something in sensors, So you have you have
Speaker 1: you probably have smoke, You have some some firelight of
Speaker 1: some sort. You have this gleamy golden artifact, not even
Speaker 1: getting into the cherubim that are on it, but it
Speaker 1: seems like that the light would play off of it
Speaker 1: in curious ways. The smoke would add to the mystique.
Speaker 1: It sounds like an environment that is generous to the
Speaker 1: creation of altered states of consciousness exactly again with no
Speaker 1: drugs or or magical interpretations required. Yeah, exactly. Now. I
Speaker 1: know some of you out there that have listened to
Speaker 1: the show for a while are probably thinking at this point, well,
Speaker 1: what about the bicameral mind, right, because clearly, this whole time, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this whole time, we've been talking about a way of
Speaker 1: speaking to God, a way of hearing God's voice, right,
Speaker 1: so it it seems like it would naturally be a
Speaker 1: part of all that. Well, first of all, let's just
Speaker 1: refresh about the bicameral mind and the idea of bicameral
Speaker 1: hallucinations in the origin of consciousness. In the Breakdown of
Speaker 1: the Bicameral Mind, Julian James, the late Julian James argued
Speaker 1: that ancient humans heard hallucinated voices and that human consciousness
Speaker 1: as we know it today began roughly three thousand years
Speaker 1: ago as a cultural invention, which of course would kind
Speaker 1: of line up with the time frame that we're talking
Speaker 1: about here with the arc. It's an unproven hypothesis and um,
Speaker 1: we've discussed some objections to it in the in past episodes,
Speaker 1: but it remains possible that at least some aspect of
Speaker 1: it is correct. In a way, it's a very safe
Speaker 1: kind of idea for James to have proposed, because there
Speaker 1: was in remains no real way of proving or disproving
Speaker 1: it right. You can't prove it because it's in history.
Speaker 1: But I do think it's subject to undermining by evidence.
Speaker 1: I mean, like one of the things that I think
Speaker 1: would help undermine it is if you can just find
Speaker 1: more and more ancient examples of people demonstrating inner consciousness
Speaker 1: in ancient literature. I mean, like he he pointed to
Speaker 1: some examples of ancient literature and said, oh, they're remarkably
Speaker 1: devoid of the idea of an inner, inner voice or
Speaker 1: inner thoughts. So I think one pretty easy way of
Speaker 1: saying no, he was probably wrong is just to look
Speaker 1: at ancient texts that do show signs of of consciousness
Speaker 1: an inner, inner monologue. And then also he was very
Speaker 1: open about the fact that he basically just looked at
Speaker 1: Western and classical examples, classical literature, classical architecture for evidence
Speaker 1: of the bicameral mind. He didn't really look at Eastern
Speaker 1: examples because he did not speak the linkage. Now you
Speaker 1: mentioned and we've said this before that it's it's one
Speaker 1: of these ideas that is probably wrong but really interesting
Speaker 1: and could be correct in some ways, like some sub
Speaker 1: parts of the the hypothesis could have something to them.
Speaker 1: I think that I've been convinced that James is probably
Speaker 1: wrong about his model of consciousness, where consciousness came from
Speaker 1: and all that very likely wrong there, but could very
Speaker 1: well be right about the idea that ancient religions involved
Speaker 1: much more visions and hallucinations than modern religions do. I
Speaker 1: think that that's entirely plausible. And there's a lot of
Speaker 1: about reading, at least about ancient religious practices that seems
Speaker 1: to indicate that that maybe is true. Yeah, because there
Speaker 1: is there is lot of listening to the voices of
Speaker 1: the gods, seeking the voices of the gods, and then
Speaker 1: we still see it reflected in our in in hymns
Speaker 1: and prayers that are said every day, asking to hear
Speaker 1: some voice. Even though we do not hear the voice,
Speaker 1: the voice does not actually speak to us in our minds. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so yeah, I think even if the main part
Speaker 1: of his hypothesis, the idea of you know, the development
Speaker 1: of consciousness in these different stages. If that's completely wrong,
Speaker 1: he could have been on on the right track looking
Speaker 1: at all these ancient examples of the almost ubiquitous religious
Speaker 1: visions and hallucinations in ancient worship right now. M. James's
Speaker 1: ultimate argument was that modern consciousness was a learned development
Speaker 1: tied to metaphorical language, and that that this change wouldn't
Speaker 1: occurred all at once. Then it would have been something
Speaker 1: that's spread, and it wouldn't have affected like everybody within
Speaker 1: like a given talent at once. It wouldn't be like everybody, Ope,
Speaker 1: you got the new consciousness. Shot, We're all good to go.
Speaker 1: You would have had a lot of confusion, a lot
Speaker 1: of of chaos. The voices of the gods they grow fainter,
Speaker 1: but then they can be reached again via various practices.
Speaker 1: Like essentially, it was becoming harder to hallucinate now. James
Speaker 1: did mention the arcs specifically in his original book. He
Speaker 1: said quote poetry then was divine knowledge, and after the
Speaker 1: breakdown of the bicameral mind, poetry was the sound and
Speaker 1: tenor of authorization. Poetry commanded where prose could only ask
Speaker 1: it felt good. In the wanderings of the Hebrews, after
Speaker 1: the exodus from Egypt. It was the sacred shrine that
Speaker 1: was carried before the multitude and followed by the people.
Speaker 1: But it was also the poetry of Moses that determined
Speaker 1: when they would start and when stop, where they would
Speaker 1: go and where stay. And this is of course referring
Speaker 1: to the fact that the Moses would speak to through
Speaker 1: the arc. It authorized his decision making. So James didn't
Speaker 1: really get into the arc all that much in the
Speaker 1: book or in other papers of his that I've seen.
Speaker 1: It's possible and sain something because I haven't read everything
Speaker 1: that James wrote, but I did run across some, uh,
Speaker 1: some writings by Brian J McVeigh, a scholar of Asia
Speaker 1: specializing in Japan, and he also studied under Julian Jays
Speaker 1: as a graduate student, and he discussed this a bit
Speaker 1: in his paper Biblical Evidence of bicameral Mentality Vestiges of
Speaker 1: super Religiosity in the Old Testament. He discussed how the
Speaker 1: art could have functioned as an object of hallucinatory focus
Speaker 1: or o h F, and a portable one at that
Speaker 1: for the ancient Hebrews as they wandered the desert and
Speaker 1: wandered out of the bicameral mindset. So this is his
Speaker 1: quote from the paper. He's describing what an o h
Speaker 1: F is quote hallucinatory aids, broadcast instructions, commandments, warnings, speaking idols,
Speaker 1: living statues, effigies treated as if alive, fed, paraded, taken
Speaker 1: on journeys and into battles. These emitted holy power and
Speaker 1: authorized decision making, in some cases portable. Ohf we're used,
Speaker 1: an example being the Israelites Ark of the Covenant. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's interesting. I mean, again, as I said a minute ago,
Speaker 1: you you don't really have to accept the bicameral framework
Speaker 1: for for consciousness and the the origin of these hallucinations
Speaker 1: in order to think, well, maybe that they're they're just
Speaker 1: physical objects that aid the mind in having religious visions
Speaker 1: or religious experiences, much in the in the like in
Speaker 1: the example of induction, like we were talking about earlier
Speaker 1: with the object of focus in say Hindu or Buddhist meditation. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: The bi cameral explanation, as fascinating as it is, it's
Speaker 1: not completely necessary for understanding why individuals would carry around
Speaker 1: a sacred item, carried it into battle and uh and
Speaker 1: also use it in their rituals. Isn't it so interesting
Speaker 1: the way religions around the world, so many of them
Speaker 1: have what you call scene setting, all these all this paraphernalia,
Speaker 1: the like different clothing, different sights and smells, physical objects
Speaker 1: to hold or be in the presence of, to look at, smoke.
Speaker 1: Uh you know, uh, washing of the body, like all
Speaker 1: these different things that are in order to get you
Speaker 1: into a different mind state than you are. The rest
Speaker 1: of your life. You're out walking around getting your groceries,
Speaker 1: going to work, doing your stuff. But when you enter
Speaker 1: a religious space, you have to go through a process
Speaker 1: and surround yourself with things that put you in a
Speaker 1: different state of mind. And this seems to be core
Speaker 1: to to not every version of religion around the world,
Speaker 1: but a whole lot of them. Oh yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: if it's not a particular icon a representation, because certainly
Speaker 1: there are religions that that frown upon that depicting individuals
Speaker 1: or deities, etcetera, there's still is often like a focus
Speaker 1: on our texture or space. Oh yeah, exactly. Like in Islam,
Speaker 1: you're generally not gonna have representative art, but you do
Speaker 1: have a lot of attention to the creation of a
Speaker 1: sacred feeling environment. Uh, you know, the interior architecture of
Speaker 1: many mosques around the world. Is is beautiful and it
Speaker 1: puts you in a different mind state. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: hopefully we've put everybody in a different mind state today
Speaker 1: as we discussed the Ark of the Covenant. And hey,
Speaker 1: here's the fun part. We're not done. There's gonna be
Speaker 1: another episode on the Ark of the Covenant looking at
Speaker 1: a particular idea, the idea that, okay, what if the
Speaker 1: Ark of the Covenant was a machine. I'm gonna give
Speaker 1: a spoiler. We don't think it was a machine, but
Speaker 1: there there that does lead us down some other interesting
Speaker 1: paths that that will be a lot of fun to explore.
Speaker 1: All right. In the meantime, you can check out all
Speaker 1: the episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind at Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com. That's the mothership, that's
Speaker 1: we'll find them all. That's where we'll find links out
Speaker 1: to our social media accounts, including the discussion module pay
Speaker 1: that I mentioned earlier. Obviously, we'd love to hear from
Speaker 1: everybody about the Ark of the Covenant. Um, your thoughts
Speaker 1: on it, crazy theories you've read about it, your thoughts
Speaker 1: on Raiders of the Lost Arc, all of it is
Speaker 1: fair game. Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio
Speaker 1: producers Alex Williams and Tarry Harrison. If you would like
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us directly, let us know
Speaker 1: feedback on this episode or any other to uh say hi,
Speaker 1: let us know where you listen from. To suggest a
Speaker 1: topic for the future. You can always do that. Blow
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