THE EXODUS
divided perpendicularly into J E D P, the fact of the ark and enough of its details are given even in the very oldest sources to show that all the authors, as well as all later writers to Josephus, understood the ark to be a glorified book-chest in or near which were kept written documents: the tables of stone, the inscribed rod, and all the testimony given from the Mercy-Seat which formed its lid, and perhaps the Book of Deuteronomy. The ark is in fact much the size and shape for a portable bookcase, and the LXX translation renders the word by an ordinary technical Greek word for the book-chest (kibõtos, cf. Birt Buchw. 248-9). It appears also to have been the later Hebrew word for book-chest (cf. Jew E 2 : 107 sq.), the use of the word "tebah" having perhaps arisen from the same spirit which forbade pronouncing the word Jehovah.
It is tempting to believe that this was not only a chest with lid for the tables,
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