Relic Quest

The Story of One Man's Pursuit of the Lost Ark of the Covenant

By: Robert Cornuke

Narrated by: Robert Cornuke

Does the near-mythical Ark of the Covenant still exist today? Countless people have thought so, dedicating their lives to finding this holy relic, all to no avail. Now Robert Cornuke, a modern-day adventurer, using the Bible as his guide, thinks he may know the exact location of the Ark. Join Cornuke as he embarks on this exciting and breathtaking adventure.©2005 Robert Cornuke (P)2005 Oasis Audio LLC, under arrangement with Tyndale House Publishers, publisher of the printed book version.

Disappointing and Clumsy

This book was a disappointment. I had expected the author would propose some new location for the ark based on new research and fieldwork, but that was not the case.

The first half of the book is dedicated to describing a series of clumsy attempts to locate the real Mt. Sinai, and while there are a few interesting anecdotes and bits and pieces of compelling evidence, you can't help but laugh at the ridiculous nature of the author's search and the peril in which they find themselves (who climbs a mountain in 100 degree heat with only a couple of bottles of water?). When the book finally gets to the author's search for the ark, it becomes a simple rehash of Graham Hancock's Axum Ethiopia theory, with no new theories on its location.

Given the nature of the story, all of this might have been tolerable if not for the author's clipped and wooden narration (for some strange reason he always reads the letter "a" in its long form, regardless of where it's located in the sentence). Unfortunatly, you would have to listen to the book to understand just how annoying this becomes.

One of the funniest books I’ve ever listened to.

This book is something like a 13 year-old trying to write a Star Wars story. I couldn’t believe it when I looked up the author and apparently he’s a self styled biblical archaeologist. You know what that means those are the folks who are sure they found the manger that baby Jesus laid in or are looking for the rock that Mary sitting on when the angel announced that she was pregnant. The story is just plain silly. Take for example him going to the Red Sea and looking for signs of the crossing of the Red Sea and wondering why he can’t find chariot tracks. His story about looking for Mount Sinai is just truly unbelievable. He decides that it’s in Saudi Arabia, he gets fake visas to get into Saudi Arabia, settle on where it’s at and then have to leave and come back later when they have better visas. Yes getting into Saudi Arabia with Ford visas, . He literally is walking with his Bible and saying oh there’s that, oh over there is the other thing…must be right. That is the altar oh, that’s the rock where somebody hid in a cleft in a rock, and then there’s the oasis they found that must be the same one that Moses recorded 3500 years ago, where there was a bitter spring, And oh hey these rocks up on the top of Mount Sinai are burned so perfectly that it would’ve taken an amazing amount of fire to have burned them and implying that it was God’s presence in him lighting the burning bush. He’s got monks and holy man in Saudi Arabia, and in Ethiopia, who were showing him all of these special relics that no one’s ever seen.

But my favorite is when he’s walking up to the top of Mount Ararat in the middle of the night after crossing through fencing that’s marked do not enter and wondering if he and his friend are the first western people who have ever walked in the path of Moses, literally where Moses walked.