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REVIEWS ARK OF THE COVENANT place 20 feet under the "Skull Hill" crucifix- by Jonathan Gray ion site on Mount Moriah in Jerusalem. Publisher: J. Gray, Australia, 1997 Having checked out Wyatt's evidence and ISBN: 0-646-3073-3 (600pp s/c) visited the site with him, Gray is convinced Price: AUD$39.95 + p&h; NZD$30.00; that Wyatt's claims can be believed. STGE16.00 + p&h; USD$30.00 + p&h Meantime, Wyatt's excavation has had to Available: Aust—Jonathan Gray, PO Box be abandoned and the Ark is staying under- 3370, Rundle Mall, SA 5000, ph (08) 8398 round for now, partly because of difficul- 3862; NZ—PO Box 148, Rangiora, ph (03) ties with excavation and costs, but also 313 8908: UK—PO Box 14540, - because it is a political ‘hot potato’ for the Dunfermline KY12 9ZD phifax 01 383 Israeli Government and even for peace 852863; USA_PO Box 623, Thorsby, AL Pos bok a ompelling personal trav- 35171, ph (205) 646 3290. ; » pers ° : ‘logue, rich with photos, diagrams and illus- f the most sought-after relics of the © O8U®> Pnotos, diag! pele ost sought afer reles ofthe guns and makes porns the Old and Ark of the Covenant which disappeared New Testaments come very much alive. from historical records with the fall of the First Temple in Jerusalem in 586 BC. The THE BIBLE CODE golden Ark is believed to have been con- by Michael Drosnin : structed to house the stone tablets inscribed Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, UK, with the Ten Commandments, and to have 1997; Simon & Schuster, USA, 1997 possessed supernatural powers. ISBN: 0-297-81995-X (h/c); The search for the lost Ark has been an 0-297-84091-6 (264pp s/c) obsession for many biblical archaeologists Price: AUD$19.95; NZD$29.95; in the meantime, and leads as to its where- STG£20.00 (h/c only); USD$25.00 abouts have taken in Israel, Ethiopia and Available: Aust—Cameron Books, ph Jordan. But what if the Ark was never (047) 58 7676; NZ—Penguin Books, ph removed from Jerusalem? (09) 444 4965; UK—Bookshops; USA— Author/explorer Jonathan Gray is one of Simon & Schuster, New York. many amateurs and professionals who have nly 12 years ago, brilliant Israeli mathe- been on the track of this lost artefact for matician Eliyahu Rips heard about the years. His latest book, Ark of the Covenant, existence of secret codes in the Old is partly a record of his delving into the his- Testament of the Bible. So he set about test- torical records, rumours and prophecies ing this idea with group theory and comput- associated with the Ark (not to be confused _ er power, using the first five books from with Noah's Ark). But it is also the story of | Genesis to Deuteronomy—304,805 letters in the efforts of another explorer, American all—as the basis for his calculations. amateur archaeologist Ron Wyatt, who By deleting spaces between words, Rips claims to have discovered the real hiding found that any number of skip sequences, from one to thousands, can access meaning- ful networks of words and phrases far beyond statistical chance. His "Bible code" calculations have not been disputed yet. He was amazed to discover hidden names, words and dates covering a vast spectrum of past, present and even future events. New York-based journalist Michael Drosnin has been researching the Bible code with Rips since 1992, and became suffi- ciently convinced that it's for real that he wrote this book about it. The turning point came with Yitzhak Rabin's assassination in 1995: a year earlier, Drosnin had found a pointer to this event in the code and tried to warn Rabin—to no avail, as it turned out. Drosnin and Rips have tested the code against all manner of Earth- and cosmos- shaking events, and you name it, it's there: the Gulf War, the Hebron massacre, Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, the Kobe earthquake, the Oklahoma bombing. They've also checked for future atomic holocaust (2000 and 2006 are two probabilities) and comet or asteroid impacts (2006, 2010, 2012). ARK OF THE COVENANT by Jonathan Gray Publisher: J. Gray, Australia, 1997 ISBN: 0-646-3073-3 (600pp s/c) Price: AUD$39.95 + p&h; NZD$30.00; STGE16.00 + p&h; USD$30.00 + p&h Available: Aust—Jonathan Gray, PO Box 3370, Rundle Mall, SA 5000, ph (08) 8398 3862; NZ—PO Box 148, Rangiora, ph (03) 313 8908; UK—PO Box 14540, Dunfermline KY12 9ZD, ph/fax 01383 852863; USA—PO Box 623, Thorsby, AL 35171, ph (205) 646 3290. ne of the most sought-after relics of the Judaeo-Christian world is the fabulous Ark of the Covenant which disappeared from historical records with the fall of the First Temple in Jerusalem in 586 BC. The golden Ark is believed to have been con- structed to house the stone tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments, and to have possessed supernatural powers. The search for the lost Ark has been an obsession for many biblical archaeologists in the meantime, and leads as to its where- abouts have taken in Israel, Ethiopia and Jordan. But what if the Ark was never removed from Jerusalem? Author/explorer Jonathan Gray is one of many amateurs and professionals who have been on the track of this lost artefact for years. His latest book, Ark of the Covenant, is partly a record of his delving into the his- torical records, rumours and prophecies associated with the Ark (not to be confused with Noah's Ark). But it is also the story of the efforts of another explorer, American amateur archaeologist Ron Wyatt, who claims to have discovered the real hiding DROSNIN NEXUS - 83 AUGUST - SEPTEMBER 1997