WERE THERE MULTIPLE ARKS?

It’s possible that there were multiple arks that could have been used at the same or different times. “Before all the cultic affairs of the Israelites were concentrated exclusively in the capital, Jerusalem, there had been arks, probably of different sorts, wherever [God] was worshipped,” wrote Tudor Parfitt, a professor of religion at Florida International University, who has done extensive research on the Ark of the Covenant. These early arks would have been “simple wooden containers”. After Israeli worship became centralised in Jerusalem, the story may have been retold to describe one elaborate Ark of the Covenant made of gold.

The Book of Deuteronomy tells the story of the construction of a much more modest wooden ark