this portion of the wall is still standing. Some say that he meant only to include the structures within the walls of the Temple. Others say that the western wall was merely part of the foundation and therefore, by their reasoning, was not included in Yeshua's prophecy. But according to Josephus, who was present at the Roman siege of Jerusalem, Titus ordered that parts of the city be left standing as a monument to his accomplishments. He wanted everyone to be able to see the kind of fortification he had to overcome to defeat the Jews.'
'So, which interpretation do you hold?' asked Tom.
'I am reluctantly forced to side with those who say the prophecy only included the buildings of the Temple and not necessarily all of the walls.'
'Why do you say 'reluctantly'?' Tom asked.
'Because Yeshua seems to have gone out of his way to make the prophecy all-inclusive, saying that 'not one stone will be left standing upon another.'13 Since the wall is still standing, there are only two other possibilities that I can think of: either Yeshua was wrong – a hypothesis which I cannot accept – or,' Joshua concluded with a strained chuckle, 'at least one of those who was with Yeshua when he prophesied about the Temple two thousand years ago, is still alive.'
'Joshua, forgive my ignorance of such things,' Tom said, 'but this is the Temple where the Ark of the Covenant was kept, right?'
'You are correct,' Rosen said. 'Of course this wall is some distance from where the Ark was. Why do you ask?'
'Oh, nothing really. It's just that I must have seen the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark about half a dozen times over the years and I was just wondering if anyone knows what really happened to the Ark.'
'Well, there are a number of theories. The Bible doesn't mention the whereabouts of the Ark after the Temple was destroyed in the Babylonian invasion. It's assumed that when the invaders plundered the Temple they took the Ark with them. But the Bible says that when Ezra returned from Babylon to rebuild the Temple, he brought back everything that had been taken. Some people have speculated that the Ark may have been taken from the Temple when it was destroyed by Titus in 70 A.D. and that it was either melted down or perhaps locked away and later hidden in some secret treasury room in the Vatican. However, there is some evidence to dispute that theory. In Rome there is an arch which was dedicated to Titus in honor of his successful siege of Jerusalem. Carved into the arch are scenes of the Roman destruction and looting of Jerusalem, including a detailed carving showing the treasures taken from the Temple. The Ark is not among the treasures depicted, even though, as the most highly valued item, it surely would have been included had Titus taken it.
'Some people believe the Ark is in Ethiopia, though there are a number of major weaknesses in that theory. Another theory, based on one of the apocryphal books of the Bible, is that to prevent the Babylonians from finding the Ark, the Prophet Jeremiah hid it in a cave on Mount Nebo in Jordan.'
'What do you mean, 'apocryphal'?' Tom asked.
'Well, of course you know about the Old Testament and the New Testament, or – as we Messianic Jews prefer to call them – the Old and New Covenants.'
Tom nodded.
'Well, not all religious writings were considered worthy of inclusion in the Bible. The other books make up the Apocrypha. Some are simply flights of fantasy, others are obvious fakes written hundreds of years later than their texts would lead you to believe. But there are a few where the question of authenticity is not quite so clear. A number of the apocryphal books appear in the Catholic version of the Old Testament. But these are books that neither the Jews nor the Protestants considered to be inspired by God. The Greek Orthodox Bible also includes the Apocrypha but the Greek Church does not consider them to be inspired. Today, even the Catholic Church downplays their importance.'
'So, where do you think the Ark is?' asked Tom.
'Actually,' Joshua answered, 'I have my own theory. I think that whether it was hidden on Mt. Nebo or taken to Babylon, the Ark was probably returned when the new Temple was rebuilt.'
'But then where is it now?'
'I think it may be somewhere in southern France.'
'France? Why France?'
'Well,' Joshua began, 'like I said, this is just a theory. I never gave it much thought until a few years ago when they announced the results of the carbon 14 dating of the Shroud of Turin.'
A puzzled look came over Decker's face. 'What does all this have to do with the Shroud?' he asked.
'Decker, you remember how impressed we all were with the Shroud,' Joshua said. 'It really isn't important to my faith whether it's real or not, but from a purely scientific point of view, it's just too good to be a fake. But until recently the carbon 14 dating seemed conclusive. Then one day I was reading some of the writings of St. Jerome, who lived in the fourth and early fifth century and was the first to translate the Old Testament directly from Hebrew to Latin. In the piece I was reading, Jerome quotes from a book which he called the 'Gospel of the Hebrews,' a book which unfortunately either no longer exists or is lost. He doesn't quote from it very extensively, but the small piece he does quote reveals a very interesting piece of information about the Shroud. Of course, there's no way of knowing how authentic this gospel really was. It may have been as spurious as some of the other apocryphal writings, but it says is that after Yeshua rose from the dead, he took his burial shroud and gave it to the servant of the High Priest. That's not very much, but it's the only record we have that indicates what happened to the Shroud following the resurrection.'
'Who was the servant of the High Priest?' Tom asked.
'That was my question as well,' Joshua continued. 'Who was he and why would Yeshua give him the Shroud? Well, I mulled that over and then I recalled that there is a reference to the servant of the High Priest in the gospels. In that account, the servant of the High Priest, a man named Malchus, was among those who went to arrest Yeshua on the night before his crucifixion. The Apostle Peter attempted to fend them off with a sword and in the scuffle he cut off Malchus' ear. Yeshua told Peter to put his sword away, and then picked up the ear and placed it back on Malchus' head and instantly healed it.
'This same Malchus would have been in the Temple on a daily basis and would have seen the curtain which separated the people from the Holy of Holies inexplicably torn in two after Yeshua's crucifixion. The Holy of Holies was the most sacred place in the Temple. When Yeshua died, God himself tore the curtain from top to bottom, allowing ordinary men and women – not just the high priests – access to his holy presence. And Malchus, like everyone else in Israel at the time, would have been very much aware of Yeshua's miracles and the evidence of his resurrection. ' It seems reasonable to me to assume that Malchus, having experienced all this – especially the healing of his ear – may well have become a follower of Yeshua himself. If so, it would explain Yeshua's contact with him after the resurrection: the Bible says that Yeshua appeared to more than five hundred people in and around Jerusalem after the resurrection.
'But it still doesn't explain why he would give Malchus the Shroud. That was the toughest question. Then one day, when I wasn't even thinking about it, something just clicked, and I realized it must have been to preserve the Shroud as evidence of the resurrection! I believe Yeshua told Malchus to put the Shroud in the Ark of the Covenant.'
'Why would he do that?' Tom asked.
'It's a little complicated,' Rosen continued. 'As I said, we're pretty sure that the Ark wasn't in the Temple when it was plundered by the Romans in 70 A.D. So where was it? I believe the Ark disappeared a second time; but this time it clearly wasn't stolen. It was hidden by the High Priest.
'Between the time of the Babylonians and the Romans there were several other times that bandits tried to rob the Temple. I think the priests probably developed an evacuation plan to hide the Ark whenever the Temple was threatened. Surely when the Romans conquered Israel, the priests realized that the Temple was once again an extremely attractive target for those seeking their fortune.
'My theory is that the Ark was hidden somewhere in the tunnels beneath the Temple to protect it from the Romans. If so, very few people would have known about it, but certainly the High Priest would have known. And if the High Priest knew, it's likely that his servant – that is, Malchus – would have known as well.'
Decker and Tom nodded tentative agreement.
Rosen continued. 'Okay, now let's move ahead in time about eleven hundred years, during the time of the first Crusade. Not many people realize that the Crusaders, who were mostly French, were quite successful in their first attempts to take the Holy Land from the Muslims. They even succeeded in capturing and holding the city of
