Did Antiochus Epiphanes take The Ark of The Covenant to Antioch?

So I have new thoughts about what happened to The Ark.  Many theories say that around the time of the First Temple's Destruction the Ark was hidden in a secret hiding place under or near The Temple.

1 Maccabees 1:21-24 says Antiochus Epiphanes took from The Temple the Menorah, Altar of Incense, Table of Showbread and many other gold and silver vessels.  And in verse 23 "also he took the hidden treasures which he found".  None of this was ever returned or retrieved, Judas Maccabeus had new sacred vessels made in 1 Maccabees 4:47-49.

This isn't like accounts in The Canonical Bible where it's easy to say they would have specified the Ark if it was taken then.  The books of Maccabees are not Scripture but official propaganda of the Hasmoneans, they may have wanted to hide The Ark also being taken, yet none the less included this cryptic statement about him taking "hidden treasures", what other "hidden treasures" could there be since all the other major sacred relics of The Temple were singled out in the prior verse?

Hidden Treasures is in plural, I talked in a prior post about the Rod of Aaron, Jar of Manna and Torah Scroll that were placed in the Ark by Moses but seemingly not there anymore when Solomon placed it in his Temple.  Perhaps Solomon removed them to place them in a hidden chamber that would later wind up also hiding The Ark itself?

Antiochus most likely took them to Antioch, perhaps kept them in the royal palace on the island, or maybe put them somewhere in the Fourth Quarter which was his expansion of the city.  The royal palace was later built over by a Church Constantine built, which itself was destroyed by several earthquakes and wars over the city's history.

Some Islamic Prophecies foretell that The Mahdi will discover the Ark of The Covenant and other Biblical treasures buried at Antioch.  Back when I first read about that researching for my prior Mahdi posts I had no idea what theoretically could have brought them there because I had overlooked this detail of I Maccabees.

"The reason he is called the Mahdi (a.s.) is that he guides the way to a hidden thing. He will bring forth the  Ark of the Covenant  from a place known as Antioch."  (Jalal-uddine AsSuyuti's  Al-Urf Al-Wardi fi Akhbar Al-Mahdi, a part of Al-Hawi li Al-Fatawa)

"He is called the Mahdi (a.s.) because he is the key to something nobody knows. He will bring forth the Ark of the Covenant from the Cave of Antioch." (Nuaim bin Hammad's book Kitab Al-Fitan) and (Ibn Hajar Haithami Al-Makki's book Al-Qawl al-Mukhtasar fi Alamat al-Mahdi al-Muntazar)

Tamin Ad-Dari said " I said, 'O Messenger of Allah  صلى الله عليه وسلم , I have never seen a Roman city like the city of Antioch ( in Turkey, but historically, is part of Syria) and I have never seen more rain than it has.' Whereupon the Messenger of Allah,  صلى الله عليه وسلم , said: 'Yes, that is because the Torah, Rod of Moses, Tablets (of the Ten Commandments), and the Table of Solomon, the son of David, (made of gold and ornamented with precious jewels, emeralds, pearls and rubies) are in its caves. There is not a single cloud that comes from any direction to it that does not pour its blessing in that valley. And the days and night will not pass until a man from my musked children live in it. His name is like my name and his father's name is like my father's name; his manners are like my manners. He will fill the world with fairness and justice just as it had been filled by harm and transgressions'." (Ibn Hibban's book Ad-Dua'fa and Shaykh Abdullah bin Sadek, Grand Muhaddith of Morocco, 's book Al-Mahdi, Jesus and Dajjal)

Ka'b said: "The Mahdi ... excavates Tabout Al-Sakina (Ark of Covenant) from a cave in Antioch (in it, will be the Torah that Allah (t) revealed to Moses and the Gospel that Allah (t) revealed to Jesus..." (Nuaim bin Hammad's Kitab Al-Fitan)

Now I'm not one of those Islamic Antichrist theorists saying we should actually believe these Islamic Prophecies will come true (maybe the "antichrist" will be a Muslim claiming to be the Mahdi I'm undecided on those issues).  Instead these Hadiths may have just recorded some Prophecies given after the fact.  Perhaps referring to discoveries made by Caliph Umar who first captured Antioch for the Arab Empire, or later by Al-Mahdi (775-785).  Or maybe they just come from Ancients who knew things now forgotten related to what I've theorized above.  Maybe they descend from local beliefs the Christians of Antioch had in antiquity before Islam even emerged.

I think the Rod of Moses in this Hadiths may actually refer to the Rod of Aaron.  And remember The Ark also had an early Torah Scroll in it

Being in a Cave perhaps fits the Fourth Quarter, which from the map I looked at seems to include some hills and mountains which could possibly have caves.

This post's title is kind of semi click-bait.  While I do think it's possible the Ark was among what Antiochus Epiphanes took, just the fact that he definitely did take the Menorah, Altar and Table of Showbread built by Solomon (the Mosaic ones were never in The Temple) is itself really significant.  I suspect what one of those Hadiths refereed to as the Table of Solomon was really originally Solomon's Table of Showbread.

Antioch is where Believers were first called Christians in Acts, treasures of Solomon's Temple being there during the New Testament era when the city became a major Capital of the True Temple of God is very interesting.

If an early text of one of The Gospels wound up with these treasures, my first hunch is it's Mark's.  Acts 13 implies John Mark was also in Antioch when Paul and Barnabas left on their first journey from there, Chuck Missler argued Mark's Gospel was already written by that time based on what the Greek text calls Mark.  And we know Peter spent time in Antioch as well from Galatians, Mark's Gospel was according to tradition him writing down what Peter had preached.  Still the association of the Nazarenes with this region makes it not impossible a copy of Hebrew Matthew wound up in Antioch, and Hebrew Matthew being what early Muslim sources meant by the original Injil fits some theories I've had about the origins of Islam.  However I can't entirely rule out any of them.

Another note, the person Muslim Tradition remembers as Habib'i Neccar/Habib Al-Najjar is probably Simeon called Niger of Acts 13 in my opinion.

A Muslim scholar named Ibn Hazm of Cordoba (994-1064) claimed that Mark wrote "His Gospel in Greek at Antioch".  Ephrem the Syrian seems to have claimed John's Gospel was written at Antioch in his commentary on the Diatessaron, but remember Mark was also named John so there could be confusion there.

However if these prophecies are going to be taken advantage of by a Muslim Anticrhist's End Times deception, then what they may produce claiming to be the original Gospel might actually be an Ebionite version of Matthew, since the Ebionite view of Jesus is very similar to the Islamic view.

The Roma Cult and Mystery Babylon

I am not making this post to argue absolutely Babylon=Rome in some preterist or Historicist sense.  It should not be controversial to acknowledge that Rome is where Mystery Babylon was at John's time.  Zechariah 5 gives us reason to suspect she moves around.

I disagree with the argument that Babylon is "Code" for Rome in some way meant to hide it from Roman authorities who might read the Book.  It is largely Rome's own cultural symbolism that makes it explicit, applying purely prior Biblical meaning to the same symbols is if anything what weakens it.  A city on Seven Hills which had Seven Kings is how Rome defined itself, not how it's enemies defined it.

People interpreting Revelation have tried to make Seven Hills a defining characteristic of countless cities, I've looked into the argument for applying it to Jerusalem and find it to be pretty bad.  The thing is the only city already defined as a city on Seven Hills (whether that is strictly geographically accurate or not) before Revelation was written was Rome.  And since it was written the only attempts to make a city a Seven Hill city as a positive trait with no regard for the Biblical implications are ones doing so in a desire to claim to be a New Rome or successor to Rome.  It was done with both Constantinople and Moscow for example.

What I want to get into here is some stuff about Rome that may have been particularly relevant to the region of the Seven Churches The Revelation was first given to.

The City of Smyrna was where the Roma cult was founded in 195 BC.  Roma was the City of Rome personified as a Goddess.  Mellor has proposed her cult as a form of religio-political diplomacy which adjusted traditional Graeco-Eastern monarchic honours to Republican mores.  Athens and Rhodes accepted Roma as analogous to their traditional cult personifications of the demos (ordinary people).  In 133 BC when Pergamon became part of the Empire it quickly became another major center of the Cult of Roma.

We can't be certain what colors Roma would have usually be depicted wearing, what we know about how she was depicted comes largely from coins.  But we know that during The Roman Triumph the Triumphitor wore Purple and their face was painted Red, so I feel Purple and Scarlet as the colors of Roma fits.  Some want to point out Purple and Scarlet being the colors of the Veil of The Tabernacle/Temple of Solomon to support the Jerusalem as Mystery Babylon theory, but every-time the Veil is refereed to as Purple and Scarlet/Crimson in Exodus 25-28, 35-39 and 2 Chronicles 2-3 the color Blue is also mentioned, usually first, and no Blue is in Revelation 17-18.  The Veil of The Temple is basically the Bisexual Flag.

In the Hellenistic world typically Male deities had male Priests and Goddesses had Priestesses.  But the Roma Cult was explicitly an exception to this, her worship was lead by male Priests.  And so I think that is partly what the False Prophet may have been seen as to the book's earliest readers in these cities.

In either 30 or 29 BC the worship of the Emperor in the provinces began, and in Asia particularity it was essentially just merged with the Roma Cult. Pergamon was the first city where the Imperial cult was established. From here on Roma increasingly took the attributes of an Imperial or divine consort to the Imperial divus, but some Greek coin types show her as a seated or enthroned authority, and the Imperial divus standing upright as her supplicant or servant.  Thus her as a woman riding the Beast.

The reason Smyrna and Pergamon were the churches most facing persecution is because in these cities the worship of the Emperor was required by law, most Pagans didn't see it as a conflict.  Jews were usually excepted as theirs was an ancient religion, but Christianity was new and so once it stopped being seen as a sect of Judaism the Christians had a problem in these cities.

Aphrodite/Venus as the mother of Aeneas mythical progenitor of Rome naturally become identified with Roma sometimes, like in the Temple Hadrian built.  And in the context of Revelation I've already noted possible Aphrodite imagery for the Beast out of the Sea.

People who like to argue the United States is Babylon could easily draw attention here to how the concept of Roma is basically the same as the concept of Columba/Columbia.  But other such feminine personifications of the state exist in the modern world, the Pan-Europa movement has taken Europa of Green Mythology and made her more of a Roma type figure.  I'm pretty sure Athena was originally just the Demos of Athens before Pan-Hellenism turned her into an Olympian all of Greece had to recognize.  And of course I believe the Woman of Revelation 12 is the Demos of Israel being symbolically personified in a similar way.

A possibly new view on The Flood

I am a 6 Day Young Earth Creationist, I tend to favor Creation dates older then Ussher's, but I still view about 7 Thousand years ago as the maximum.

Most importantly I believe everyone not just is a descendant of Adam and Eve, but every line of ancestry you have goes back to children Eve bore to Adam after the events of Genesis 3.  And by everyone I mean everyone modern science classifies as Homo-Sapien, and humans modern science doesn't want to classify as the same "species" as us like the Neanderthals and Homo Floresiensis and even Homo Erectus.

I did say fairly recently that I am more open to being convinced of a local Flood model then I am an Old Earth model.

What I have been considering is something between a traditional Global Flood model and a purely Local Flood model.  A Catastrophe that was Global in scale, but still no single moment at which the entire surface was covered in water.  Such a model could still allow the Ark to land on a completely different part of the planet then where it was first built.

And therefore allowing the possibly that there were some Flood survivors outside of Noah's family on The Ark.  But those survivors would still be descendants of Eve.  And it still definitely massively bottle necked the Earth's population.

Michael Hesiser's local Flood arguments are perhaps the most sensible, but still reflect his "Ancient Near Easter perspective" bias.  There have also been different theories about the Flood being a result of a Comet or Asteroid striking the Earth, theories which go back to Newton it seems.

This is perhaps a good time to bring up my ideas that have come from studying Y Chromosomal Haplogroups.  Here is a Tree I obtained from a completely secular source.

I think Y Chromosomal Adam is probably a Genesis 5 name more recent then Adam since this tree doesn't account for those so called Non-Human Humans I mentioned above, maybe Enos.

I think C is Japheth and DE is Ham, with E specifically being Mizraim. Because of the Mixed Multitude we should not be surprised to find people descended from Mizraim among Ashkenazim and other Jewish Populations.

F then is Shem.  My hunch is that G is Lud, H is Elam and J is Aram.  J also existed among Jewish populations which again shouldn't be surprising given the Biblical history.

K is Arphaxad, L and T are the descendants of Joktan,  It is both R and Q I view as being definitely descendants of Jacob and perhaps even more specific then that.  The people this theory makes Paterlineal descendants of Peleg are very plausibly more then half the Earth's total population.

I've also considered models that would switch Shem and Ham, both models give Semitic descent to Ashkenazim Jews as well as Mizraimite descent, and maybe can both be made compatible with connecting Japan to the Ancient Israelites as well.

Update: So InspiringPhilosophy has argued something like this.  But I still think it happened more recently then he does.  Currently favoring a Flood date of 3337 BC thanks to my considering the Samaritan Text correct on Genesis 11.  And I don't agree with his view on where Eden was, I've considered a few models but his is the least likely to be correct.
https://youtu.be/lLSyiJ9KUCo

Update December 2020: I'm now switching Aram and Arphaxad, Arphaxad is J and Aram is K.  And I support identifying Y Haplogroup I with Asshur.