What happened to the lost Ark — Babylon's inventory, the Ethiopian theory, and 2 Maccabees 2

Pitre clears away the common theories. The Bible's own inventory of what Babylon took from the Temple does not list the Ark. The claim that it sits in a church in Ethiopia cannot be checked, since only the guardian monks may enter — 'making it impossible for outsiders to verify or falsify the claim.' The oldest evidence we possess is 2 Maccabees, in the Catholic Old Testament: the prophet Jeremiah, himself a priest, took the tent and the Ark to the mountain where Moses had seen the promised land, sealed them in a cave, and declared that the place would stay unknown 'until God gathers his people together again and shows his mercy. And then the Lord will disclose these things, and the glory of the Lord and the cloud will appear.'

• 2 Kings 25:13 — Babylon's inventory — no Ark.
• 2 Maccabees 2:4 — Jeremiah hides the Ark on the mountain of Moses.
• Jeremiah 3:16 — the Ark will not be missed in the coming age.

The chapter's whole first third exists to establish that first-century Jews were waiting for the Ark, and had been told how they would know it: by the cloud of the Lord's glory. Everything Luke does with Mary presupposes that expectation.

• Josephus — Jewish War 5.219 (p 52) · read
• Tacitus — Histories 5.9 (p 52) · read