• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, June 3, 2024

A new History Channel docuseries about legendary religious and cultural artifacts that have never been found takes the correct approach to its reporting.

The show itself does not go in search of missing objects such as the Ark of the Covenant and Noah’s Ark -- the subjects of Episode One of “Holy Marvels with Dennis Quaid” -- but instead reports on the many searches undertaken by others.

On so many other shows, searches for Bigfoot, ghosts and buried treasures revolve around the eccentric searchers themselves. 

The results of these searches are mixed at best, but mostly they utterly fail to persuade anyone that a house is haunted or Bigfoot can be glimpsed behind a tree 100 yards away in a forest.

The searches for the arks in the episode of “Holy Marvels” titled “Where Ark Thou” also produce mixed results.

Predictably, various gung ho explorers travel to remote locations often based on little more than hearsay.

There, they come across buried pieces of wood (in the case of Noah’s Ark) or in the case of the Ark of the Covenant, a remote village where everyone claims the Ark sits safely under lock and key.

But there is just one catch. The village elders will not permit any outsiders to enter the vault and look at it.

The results of these expeditions are then reported to the world’s press.

But sometime later these “discoveries” become shrouded in skepticism when scientists take a closer look at the evidence and decide that the claims are valueless.

Whether or not the findings are worthless, the stories do not fail to fascinate. 

The show’s vivid storytelling comes from narrator Dennis Quaid and an array of historians and professors who give the histories of the objects, based on stories in the Bible and other texts, and explain their cultural and religious importance throughout history.

One forms the impression that at least part of the power that is said to reside in them stems from the very fact that they are lost and even their existence is in doubt.

If and when these objects are ever found, they might lose their mystique in the imagination of humankind when brought into the light of day.

“Holy Marvels with Dennis Quaid” consists of eight one-hour episodes. Other objects covered in the series include the Holy Grail (the legendary chalice depicted in the above photo), the Fountain of Youth, the Mayan Calendar, the Philosopher’s Stone and the Crown of Thorns.

“Holy Marvels with Dennis Quaid” premieres Monday, June 3, at 10 p.m. Eastern on History Channel.