Gary A. Byers<\/b><\/p>\n
\u201cMoses as High Priest and Sorcerer? A Response to Graham Hancock\u2019s Egyptian Explanation for the Ark of the Covenant.\u201d This was the title of a fascinating paper presented by Michael Heiser of Pilsbury Baptist Bible College at the Near Eastern Archaeological Society\u2019s Annual Meeting in Chicago last November. Heiser\u2019s remarks were prompted by Hancock\u2019s book, The Sign and the Seal: The Quest for the Lost Ark of the Covenant,<\/i> published by Crown Publishers in 1992. Approaching bestseller status, it was even featured on National Geographic\u2019s Explorer series. While Hancock\u2019s views have attracted the fascination of the American public, Old Testament scholars find little new or even believable in his book.<\/p>\n
Heiser\u2019s paper does not address the viability of Hancock\u2019s views as to the fate of the ark. Instead, he addresses what he calls Hancock\u2019s \u201cmisdirected research steered by manipulation of the Biblical data, fallacious linguistical evidence and consistently faulty logic.\u201d<\/p>\n
Heiser attacks several of Hancock\u2019s presuppositions, including his assertions that:<\/p>\n
1. The Ark, itself, possessed genuine powers.<\/p>\n
2. The powers of the Ark stemmed from two pieces of radioactive material (perhaps a crashed meteorite) which Moses found at Mount Sinai. He placed them in the Ark and duped the Israelites into believing they were tablets of stone written by Yahweh<\/i> and containing His laws.<\/p>\n
3. Moses received training as an Egyptian magician and became one of the \u201cpossessors\u201d of secret knowledge.<\/p>\n
4. Moses\u2019 training in Egypt gave him the ability to tap into the power of this radioactive material and turn it into a controllable weapon.<\/p>\n
5. Moses borrowed both the physical design and religious meaning of the Ark from Pharaoh Tutankhamen and the ancient Egyptian festival of Apet.<\/p>\n
6. Moses used the Ark like a high-tech secret weapon. He turned it on Israel\u2019s enemies and even on the Israelites, themselves, when they got out of line.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, Hancock\u2019s book reads better as science fiction than investigative reporting. One could get as good an understanding of the Ark of the Covenant from Hancock\u2019s <\/p>\n
BSP<\/i> 8:3 (Summer 1995) p. 74<\/p>\n
book as they would from tabloids at the supermarket checkout line. While public interest in Biblical material is encouraging, this kind of journalism does nothing for the cause of Biblical truth.<\/p>\n
Heiser, on the other hand, does a masterful job exposing the failures of Hancock\u2019s logic and evidence. This includes Hancock\u2019s lack of knowledge in Egyptian language, chronology and religion, as well as minimal understanding of both current scholarship and the Old Testament.<\/p>\n
But, Heiser\u2019s paper does more than effectively neutralize Hancock\u2019s ideas on an academic level. It is written in a readable and enjoyable manner. The Associates for Biblical Research have arranged with Prof. Heiser to make copies of his thorough 15-page paper available for $5.00 each to our readers. We would not recommend purchasing Hancock\u2019s book, but for those interested in the subject, we would recommend purchasing a copy of Michael Heiser\u2019s paper.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gary A. Byers \u201cMoses as High Priest and Sorcerer? A Response to Graham Hancock\u2019s Egyptian Explanation for the Ark of the Covenant.\u201d This was the title of a fascinating paper presented by Michael Heiser of Pilsbury Baptist Bible College at the Near Eastern Archaeological Society\u2019s Annual Meeting in Chicago last November. Heiser\u2019s remarks were prompted … Continue reading “THE
\nARK OF THE COVENANT:
\nMOSES\u2019 SECRET WEAPON?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15189\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}