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The Christian theologian Ambrose of Milan quotes 2 Maccabees where Jeremiah hides the ark, altar, and tent in a cave and says they will remain concealed until God restores his people. Ambrose uses it as an authoritative source of history and theology.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
2 Maccabees 2:7
Deuterocanon
5 Jeremiah came and found a cave, he brought the tabernacle, the ark, and the altar of incense into it; then he sealed the entrance. 6 Some of those who followed with him came there that they might mark the way, and could not find it. 7 But when Jeremiah learned about that, he rebuked them, saying, “The place shall be unknown until God gathers the people together again and shows mercy. 8 Then the Lord will disclose these things, and the glory of the Lord shall be seen with the cloud, as it was also shown to Moses, also as Solomon implored that the place might be consecrated greatly, 9 and it was also declared that he, having wisdom, offered a sacrifice of dedication, and of the finishing of the temple.
Date: 160–63 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Early Christian
101 Jeremiah coming to a spot found there a house like a cave, and brought into it the tabernacle, the ark, and the altar of incense, and closed up the entrance. And when those who had come with him examined it rather closely to mark the spot, they could not discover nor find it. When Jeremiah understood what they wanted he said: The spot will remain unknown until God shall gather His people together and be gracious to them. Then God shall reveal these things and the majesty of the Lord shall appear.
Date: 390–395 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... Not all the works that were excluded from the canon were deemed heretical. Some were merely 'of the second rank' or 'among the apocrypha' (works that were 'to be hidden away' because they were not to be read, at least not in the liturgy). For most church fathers, 'the apocrypha' was not a fixed selection but a fluid category for books of dubious status. In modern parlance, the phrase 'the Apocrypha' (or 'the Apocrypha of the Old Testament') is often used to designate those Jewish books (Ben Sira, Wisdom of Solomon, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, Judith, Tobit, etc.) that are included in the Greek or Latin Old Testament of the church but are absent from the Hebrew Tanak of the Jews ..."
Shaye J. D. Cohen, From the Maccabees to the Mishnah, 2nd ed. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2006), 168.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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