The biblical figure Bob uses, on iON's authority, to explain how human power gets stored in — and reclaimed from — objects. In Bob's telling iON "makes a big deal out of the Ark": after the Exodus the Jews "put their power" into it, making it a weapon (he reaches for Raiders of the Lost Ark, where it "consumed" the Nazis). The Ark is the template for the whole tech-body drama — power externalized into iconography, which our "super-civilized subatomic lives" could finally take back, except that the Tech Body now re-captures it and leaves us "slaves... like the Jews were to the Ark." Introduced here; the entry point is the Ark-as-iconography analogy, not the scripture.
Across the dialogues
Enters as the cosmology's biblical template — the vessel of power put into iconography, and the figure for what the Tech Body now re-captures
The cosmology's biblical prototype — after the Exodus the Jews stored their power in the Ark, making it "a weapon," an iconographic vessel of transferred human power that iON invokes to explain the whole scheme.
"and it makes a big deal out of the Ark of the Covenant that the Jews put their power, once they escaped Egypt, they put their power into the Ark of the Covenant."
The analogy's payoff — modernity was finally able to reclaim the power humanity had externalized into icons, but the Tech Body ("everybody's staring at their black mirror") re-captures it, re-enslaving us as the Ark once enslaved its keepers.
"our super-civilized subatomic lives got to the point where we actually could take our power back that we had put into iconography."
The analogy re-keyed to Cameron's reframing — the Jews "gave" their power to the Ark as people now "give" theirs to the black mirror, so the transfer is a giving-away, not a taking
The Ark returns to carry Cameron's correction — what looks like the Tech Body "taking" power is really a "giving away" of it, the Jews giving theirs to the Ark as people now give theirs to the black mirror, "and that's the Tech Body."
"the Jews gave their power to the Ark of the Covenant, and nowadays people are giving their power to the Black Mirror."
Connections
iON's stock biblical example — the Ark is where the Jews stored their power, the model for power externalized into iconography that iON exists to give back.
The power reclaimed from iconography is re-captured by the Tech Body — modern "black mirror" watching re-enslaves us "like the Jews were to the Ark."