The symbol of God's sacred covenant with his chosen people was, essentially, a Leyden Jar, a device capable of producing thousands of volts of static electricity!  The word electricity is derived from the Greek word for amber; the generation of a static charge by rubbing substances such as amber and wool was documented by Thales of Miletus in 600BC. Amber would be considered as the only substance that could produce static for the next 2,200 years.

In 1938, Dr Wilhelm Knig, a German arch ... ologist appointed director of the National Museum of Iraq, found the controversial Baghdad Batteries' in the museum's collection. These were small clay jars, each of which had an asphalt stopper, through which ran an iron rod surrounded by a copper cylinder. Knig had also come across copper vases that had once been plated with silver, and speculated that the batteries' had been used to accomplish this. Interestingly, the batteries' were dated to roughly 250BC but, rather surprisingly, the vases appeared to date from around 2,500BC and to come from Sumerian sites.

Although the dates differed, these discoveries suggested that the principles of electrochemical reaction were known and used in the process called electrolysis, or electroplating, at least 1,000 years before the Ark and 4,300 years before Volta. (In fact, the electroplating process was not used commercially until the middle of the 19th century.)

Clearly, the existence of these artefacts supports the idea of electricity being used in intelligent and highly developed ways long before we laid claim to its discovery. Perhaps the idea that the Ark of the Covenant was a device capable of storing electricity, to be used intelligently to achieve certain effects, is not quite as unlikely as it first appears.

Anyone who reads the biblical descriptions of the Ark's behaviour would be struck by the details of the deaths of those foolhardy or unfortunate enough to have touched it. In Leviticus X:12, for instance, Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, approach the Ark in the Tabernacle: they "took either of them his censer, and put fire therein, and put incense thereon, and offered strange fire before the Lord, which he commanded them not. And there went out fire from the Lord, and devoured them, and they died before the Lord".

Later, in II Samuel VI:67, as David is bringing the Ark to Jerusalem, Uzzah "put forth his hand to the ark of God, and took hold of it; for the oxen shook it. And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzzah; and God smote him there for his error; and there he died by the ark of God".

What kind of power could have caused this to happen? Why could some people handle the Ark and live, but not others? Could the power of God the Creator reside in a gold-covered chest, as tradition would have us believe? And, of course, it's rather disconcerting that this divine power should be, on the one hand, so indiscriminate and uncontrollable, and on the other so easily confined.

The entire structure and purpose of the Temple was to create and harness massive charges of static electricity. Everything about it was designed to enhance and amplify this energy to maximum effect, for reasons that we are, perhaps, only too familiar with. Within this structure, the Ark played a crucial role as catalyst, but it was a single component of a larger system; outside of the Temple walls in which it was designed to function, the Ark was of limited use, except, perhaps as a symbol. It is somewhat ironic that so much attention has been focused upon the mystery of the Ark in recent years, when in fact the key to the greatest secret of the ancient world lies in the overlooked, in the Tabernacle in the Wilderness.

Both the Ark and Temple are superbly designed pieces of organic technology that utilise the power of the natural elements, simply and efficiently, for a specific purpose. Everything about the construction and use of this technology is entirely in keeping with what we know and understand about the concepts and realities of the ancient world. There is nothing fantastic or alien about it it is readily understandable in practical terms that most of us are familiar with.”