The Destruction of Baalbek

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The Destruction of Baalbek
city of the gods....

Mankind has been repeatedly destroyed and reborn. Civilizations are everywhere buried under rubble. Ruins lie abandoned in the middle of deserts and rainforests. What happened? Modern scientific studies combined with research in archaeology and mythology is revealing dramatic new facts. The ascent and demise of nations is controlled by nature's chaotic whims and does not lie under mankind's own hand. Each episode visits an ancient site revealing the shattering events that altered the destiny of empires and nations. We will witness massive cataclysmic destructions unknown in modern times. Will they occur again? Can we prevent them?

The citizens of Baalbek feared the sky god Jupiter but why? And who were the mysterious people the Dejanon who built Baalbek? Legend has it that they half demon half angel working under king Solomon Yet this amazing citadel, built with massive one thousand ton blocks, repeatedly succumbed to ruination. Was Jupiter responsible for the earthquakes that laid it waste on numerous occasions? We investigate this amazing scenario.

"Hi I'm Peter Mungo Jupp archaeologist. All around the world I investigate ancient cataclysmic destructions. Our world is a hotbed of archaeological mystery .The ancient Syrian plains .The Central American plateaus home of the Maya and Aztecs. The Indian subcontinent and the jungles of Asia. Everywhere we find cities buried under rubble and sand or abandoned in the middle of deserts. You've got to ask yourself what happened to these civilizations. Why were they abandoned? Now some say tsunamis. Volcanoes such as Santorini or Krakatau .Massive continent wide earthquakes. Harvey Weiss, the eminent archaeologist working in Syria, blames sudden vicious climate change. Even comets and meteors are mentioned. Certainly the massive Chixolub impact is blamed for the extinction of the DinosaurBut what about only four thousand years ago. Did similar but smaller events devastate mankind? We're going to dig right in and find out. We're going to take a fresh look at archaeology. First case Baalbek city of the Gods It's been devastated by earthquakes many times. We'll talk to the locals about their legends Mankind's legends such as the Trojan wars are often ignored by modern archaeologists. We speculate they hide massive bones of truth.

Lebanon is a country that has seen a lot of conflict through out history. For the last 40 years was has hampered modern Archeological investigation in this area. I want find out more about the Lebanese people.Have these people always been the same? Have they always meandered through these bazaars with its lively chatter and smell of sweet spices? Its history is both fascinating and chaotic.

David Roberts, the English artist arrived here in 1854, after painting the ruins of Egypt and the Holy land. He was staggered by the mystery of these immense shattered ruins. The Bedouin tribesman who camped amongst the ruins also pondered over its mysteries. Ildrizzi, the Arab geographer, claims it was built by Giants under the legendary King Nimrod after the Deucalion flood. Other mythology talks about King Solomon, even Genies.

Apart from the ravage of earthquakes ,Baalbek has at random times suffered damage due to the deposition of rubble ,till and clay over its body. When Roberts reached Baalbek he portrayed a site partially obscured by rubble. In this regard it is like the Egyptian monuments, most of which were buried by sand. Witness here the gateway to the Temple of Bacchus which in Roberts's day was buried some six meters up its ramparts. It was the German archaeologists under Wilhelm II who first revealed the depth of the damage. This was certainly not placed by the occupiers so what agent caused it to be dumped over and beyond the entire huge megalithic site. In nearby Byblos, some seventy kilometers away we again see Phoenician sites buried under many meters of rubble. In fact a Tsunami in around 500 AD ravaged the whole of the Lebanese coastline, burying Beirut and other cities. This was accompanied by extremely destructive earthquakes. But this was merely the last of a devastating series that have ravaged this area. Certainly rubble and muck may have been washed down from the Lebanese mountain range that Baalbek nestles under. In the close of the early Bronze Age Harvey Weiss notes extreme flooding in the local Syrian rivers despite drought and winds that persisted for some three centuries. Erratic and chaotic weather conditions led to unusual flooding and earth deposits.

Today we see the Acropolis of Baalbek in ruins. Many civilizations have had their influence here. Our only definitive knowledge is from the time of the Romans who rebuilt it around 100AD under the emperors Nero and Trajan. They consulted it as an oracle. In these days it had three temples dedicated to three deities. Baal king of the Gods we now recognize as the Roman god Jupiter. Secondly came Bacchus also known as Mercury, was worshipped with full Bacchalian rites. The third deity was the mysterious Athena, or as we now knows her Venus.

These citizens were petrified of Baal, for he was god of the dark cloud, king of the Gods.

All these deities were sky gods or planets with real influence over the peoples' daily lives. Eventually these sky gods took on human forms and personalities.

Baalbek's history certainly reaches back beyond the Romans. The Phoenicians, Israelites and probably other conquerors played their part in the history of this mighty Acropolis. Delving back before these civilizations Baalbek was inhabited by a mysterious race of Megalith builders who employed those massive blocks to make BAALBEK EARTHQUAKE PROOF.

Who could have moved and carved these massive blocks? Were they the mythical race of giants under King Nimrod who have faded into obscurity? The remains of these huge base stones were used by later civilizations to rebuild Baalbek. Recorded history from Roman times relates that Baalbek was devastated by earthquakes many times. One in 570 AD. Three more in crusader times around 1100 AD. A further one in 1759 AD when Baalbek was abandoned by the Turkish garrison. The last earthquake was in 1870 AD when thee more massive columns collapsed.

Homer told how Mighty Zeus cast thunderbolts on the earth and tumbled the walls of Troy with his earthquakes. The inhabitants of Baalbek feared Baal. They even sacrificed humans in an attempt to pacify him and prevent huge destructive earthquakes. But these earthquakes of roman times were nothing compared to the continent wide earthquakes that had shattered the Middle East in earlier times. What evidence do we have for this? (62 secs) Footage of earthquakes and lightning on Baalbek.

In the mysterious tablets of Ugarit, discovered by Claude Schaeffer, Baal is the god of rain, thunder, and extraordinary bolts of lightning. The worship of Baal extended in this region to the Jews, Canaanites and the Phoenicians. But Herodotus informs us the God was also known under many other names such as Jupiter of the Romans. Zeus of the Greeks, Mazda of the Persians and Amon of the Egyptians. Priests instructed the people that the bright sky god Baal was responsible for droughts, plagues, earthquakes and other calamities. People were often worked up into great frenzies at the prospects of displeasing Baal. In times of great turbulence human sacrifices, particularly children, were made to this father of the gods!

Since the Phoenicians also were superb ship builders the religion and cults of Baal spread throughout the Mediterranean world. The cult was put down at times, but was never permanently stamped out. Kings and other royalty of the ten Biblical tribes worshiped the god. The god's images were erected on many buildings. The religion spawned numerous priests and priestesses with their ceremonies including the burning of incense and offering burnt sacrifices, occasionally consisting of human victims. The officiating priests danced around the altars, chanting frantically and cutting themselves with knives to inspire the attention and compassion of the god. The Bible places Baal as Beelzebub, one of the fallen angels of Satan.

King Ahab was one of the most notoriously wicked king's of the bible. Under the influence of his wife, Jezebel, Ahab built altars to Baal. In the Old Testament we read of king Heels rebuilding of Jericho wherein he sacrificed his first born son Abiram his youngest son Segub. This is an explicit reference to what are called foundational sacrifices. Common enough in the Canaan of biblical times, these rituals sacrificed humans, typically children, to the patron god of the city. The bodies of these victims were placed under the foundations or in the walls of the structure.

Beginning with the founding of the Phoenician colony of Carthage in about 814 B.C., mothers and fathers buried their children who were sacrificed to Baal. The practice was apparently distasteful even to Carthaginians, and they began to buy children for the purpose of sacrifice or even to raise servant children, instead of offering up their own. However, in times of crisis or calamity, like war, earthquakes, drought, or famine, their priests demanded the flower of their youth. Special ceremonies during extreme crisis saw up to 200 children of the most affluent and powerful families slain and tossed into the burning pyre. During the political crisis of 310 B.C., some 500 were killed. On a moonlit night, the body was placed on the arms of an effigy of Baal made of brass. The Priests lit fires that heated the effigies from its lower parts. The victims were placed on the burning hot outstretched hands. As they were burned alive they vehemently cried out. The priests beat a drum sounded flutes, lyres, and tambourines. This drowned out the cries of the anguished parents. The father could not hear the voice of his son, and his heart might not be moved.

Then later, the remains were collected and placed in special small urns. The urns were then buried in the funerary Acropolis. Recent excavations discovered a great number of these urns, proving the accusation of child sacrifice true. The area covered by the funerary Acropolis was probably over an acre and a half by the fourth century B.C., with nine different levels of burials. Archaeologists have discovered evidence of child sacrifice also in Sardinia and Sicily. The ritual of burning was called "the act of laughing" perhaps because when the flames are consuming the body, the limbs contract and the open mouth seemed almost to be laughing. Causing a child to "pass through fire" was the standard euphemism for child sacrifice in the ancient world. The "high places" were sacrificial cults that had grown up in the countryside. Since human sacrifice was the most horrendous of the religious perversions that occurred at these shrines, the term "high places" became a synonym for shrines to Baal engaged in human sacrifice. Baalbek was just such a place.

Now, allow me to turn your attention to Nimrod as Baal was also known. It is important that you know that Nimrod incorporated into his worship system the grisly practice of human sacrifice and cannibalism. Our authority Hislop says, "the priests of Nimrod or Baal were necessarily required to eat of the human sacrifices; and thus it has come to pass that 'Cahna-Bal' (cahna meaning priest & Bal referring to Baal) is the established word (cannibal) in our own tongue for a devourer of human flesh."

After the Romans finally defeated Carthage and totally destroyed the city, they engaged in post-war propaganda to make their arch enemies seem cruel and less civilized. This doubtless happened at Baalbek which was also a Phoenician city conquered by Rome. The Roman scholar Diodorus relates that in their midst stood a bronze statue of Baal its hands extended over a bronze brazier, the flames of which engulf the child. When the flames fall upon the body, the limbs contract and the open mouth seems almost to be laughing until the contracted body slips quietly into the brazier. Thus it is that the 'grin' is known as 'sardonic laughter,' since they die laughing.

Holy Prostitution in the Service of Baal

The most prevalent religious system in the immediate Canaanite context was the worship of Baal. Amongst numerous sources we have the Old Testament and the sacred scripts of Ugarit. Baal religion revolved around the cycles of nature necessary for survival and prosperity in the ancient world, primarily growing crops or raising livestock, as well as the growth of human populations. For a variety of reasons human fertility was an important concern. Lack of fertility in times of stress was widespread. Egyptian texts support these curious phenomena. Stress was the result of conflict and dissatisfaction between the sky Gods of the Cosmos. The Babylonian creation hymn, Enuma Elish, describes a great battle among the gods. However out of this battle between the Sky Gods order returned from chaos .The astral deities returned to their rightful place in the heavens and re-established the cycles of nature. To the Babylonians the Cosmos was an ongoing struggle between order and chaos. Fertility, of humans, growth of crops and the abundant supply of productive weather fell under the influence of Baal. The ancients firmly believed that by their actions they could manipulate and control the gods. In other words, rather than the gods' being sovereignty in control of people, people were in control of the gods. Furthermore, rather than the gods' always initiating relationships with people, the people had to initiate relationships with the gods. This way of thinking no doubt related to the uncertainties of life in the ancient world.

In particular the Ugarit tablets are explicitly concerned with fertility, cast in terms of human sexuality. Worship of Baal involved imitative magic, the performance of rituals, including sacred prostitution. Sexual acts by both male and female temple prostitutes were understood to arouse Baal who then brought rain to make Mother Earth fertile when crops were abundant; Baal was praised and thanked for his abundant rain. It is in this context that drought had such impact throughout the biblical traditions. Not only was lack of rain a threat to survival, it was also a sign that the gods of the Baal myth were unhappy. Which were understood to bring vitality to Baal in his struggle with the other Gods? It takes little imagination to see the connection between the human sexual act and rain watering the earth to produce fruit. The religion gives assurance of some stability in the physical world, assisted by humans.
Let me introduce you to the remarkable French archaeologist Claude Schaeffer. He excavated Enkomi in Cyprus and Ugarit along the Syrian coastline. He also examined over forty around the Middle East. This was around the period from three thousand to six thousand years ago. What amazed him was that of six civilizations laid down, each was separated by a vast destruction layer up to thirty meters of ash. What could have caused this massive damage? Certainly no conquering hoard would have left such fearful devastation. Conventional explanations would not work. A hundred forest fires could not lay down such a fearful evidence of destruction. Ugarit and Byblos, mere kilometers from Baalbek, had been ravaged by earthquake, fire, Tsunamis and inexplicable devastation numerous times. Ugarit was totally covered in debris and the coastline changed dramatically. The city was totally abandoned never to be rebuilt. What agent could totally wipe out a civilization? Not only was one city was destroyed, but an entire network stretching from Troy to ancient Egypt. Claude Schaeffer investigated over one hundred sites in the Middle East and was amazed that each and everyone told the same story. The demise of a civilization followed by a clear cut gap that allowed no interplay or influence from the preceding one. And not just once but at least six times this massive destruction occurred. Across eras separated by two thousand years, from the close of the early Bronze age to the opening of the Iron Age.

Let us be clear these were not slow Darwinian events. This was sudden and dramatic destruction, flying totally in the face of Darwin's theory of slow uniform changes on the face of the Earth. Schaeffer called these massive destruction areas "zones de tremblement". He was bold enough, to assign catastrophic natural events as the agent of mankind's rise and fall of civilizations.
Having for the first time established in Stratigraphy Comparee. those successive crises during the IInd and IIIrd millennium from the Caucasus down to Egypt, I was tempted to look for the causes among which were earthquakes, tidal waves, climatic changes and other natural catastrophic agents.

Schaeffer believed that warfare and politics had little overall effect when compared to the chaotic whims of nature. These affairs of mankind were but mere trifles when compared to natures' dramatic and deadly cataclysms.
For with the new confirmations those crises could no longer be questioned by the great number of skeptical short-sighted archaeologists among which I live now in some sort of scientific isolation, so striking are the proofs and so accurate the dates established by the new discoveries. When their testimony will have been shown, those great crises will explain better than before, the historical development of the most ancient civilizations and its mechanism, and they will definitely take out of the hands of man the command of the great historical happenings we thought he possessed.

He saw these events as the cause of race movements. It clearly explained the theme behind the collapse of nations. This was the cause of subsequent dark ages when mankind lost their ability to write and cooperate in complex societies. Observations of modern Volcanoes and earthquakes only offered a partial explanation. The ancient events were extraordinarily more numerous than recent history describes. According to classical sources, such as the historian Pliny, ancient Earthquakes were far more numerous.

During the Punic wars of 217BC between Rome and Carthage, fifty seven earthquakes were recorded in Rome in one year alone. Nowhere in the modern world is this concentration seen. Schaeffer also noted the ancient volcanoes were incredibly powerful!

He observed that a volcano on the island of Santorini had erupted in July 1956.

There, under our eyes, on a smaller scale, is happening what happened in earlier times on a gigantic scale.

He struggled to explain the cause for these amazing phenomena. But one man knew the answer

Immanuel Velikovsky –scientific heretic

1. picture of Velikovsky

Let me introduce you to Immanuel Velikovsky a man who caused incredible controversy in his time. In the 1950's he wrote a book called 'Worlds in Collision', which had as its main theme the cataclysmic destruction on Earth by planets and comets in the Solar System. He believed mythology and legend should be interpreted literally.

This included the malignant forces attributed to Baal/Jupiter, father of the gods. He earned the wrath of the scientific world. Yet most of his Predictions made in 1960 were absolutely proved by NASA. Jupiter did emanate radio waves and was an electromagnetic body. The surface of Venus was 800 degrees centigrade not the same as Earth. He was right. Conventional science was badly wrong. He claimed the solar system is unstable. Both the Moon and Mars have been ravaged by celestial bodies. Part of his theory was that Venus was once a comet expelled from Jupiter.

Hesiod the ancient Greek philosopher portrayed this in his ancient book 'Theogeny'. Homer in his book the 'Iliad' describes the destructive war between the planets as the major factor governing the destruction of Troy in the Trojan wars. Velikovsky in Worlds in Collision proposed that many myths and traditions of ancient peoples and cultures are based on actual events: worldwide global catastrophes of a celestial origin actually had profound effects on the lives, beliefs and writings of early mankind.

Professor Emilio Spendicato recently commented:

"Worlds in Collision" is a book of wars in the celestial sphere that took place in historical times. In these wars the planet earth participated too. The historical-cosmological story of this book is based on the evidence of historical texts of many people around the globe, on classical literature, on epics of the northern races, on sacred books of the peoples of the Orient and Occident, on traditions and folklore of primitive peoples, on old astronomical inscriptions and charts, on archaeological finds, and also on geological and paleontological material."

After reaching the number 1 spot in the best-sellers list, Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision was banned from a number of academic institutions, and created an unprecedented scientific debacle that became known as The Velikovsky Affair. In 1956 Velikovsky wrote a sequel, Earth in Upheaval, to present conclusive geological evidence of terrestrial catastrophism.
"I have excluded from [these pages] all references to ancient literature, traditions, and folklore; and this I have done with intent, so that careless critics cannot decry the entire work as "tales and legends". Stones and bones are the only witness."

However for forty years these highly controversial theories remained an anathema to the academic world. Then in June 1994 an event occurred that radically changed scientific thought and gave credibility to Velikovsky's theories. Myth and legend, once dismissed, had to be reexamined. What was this catastrophic event?

Shoemaker Levy 9 collides with Baal-Jupiter-Zeus

In June 1994 a rogue comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 approached Jupiter. Observers on Earth soon realized that it was on a collision course. But what happened next was totally unexpected. Without warning it split into twenty three large pieces. Then one by one these pieces plummeted into Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system. It tore huge craters into this massive planet; the size of each crater was four times the size of earth these craters persisted for months afterwards on the unstable surface of Jupiter. Simultaneously a gaseous cloud was released that went on to envelope the surface of the planet. This toxic cloud persisted for months. For the first time modern man had witnessed a comet collide with a planet! What was thought to be stable solar system, was now a place where the unexpected could happen. Could this have occurred on Earth? Had mankind actually witnessed such an event? Could it happen to Earth in the future? No one could now deny any of these possibilities. Perhaps Baal, alias Jupiter, does have an effect on Earth. The proof is not final, but no longer is it a wild heretical theory based on fantasy. Velikovsky could be taken seriously.

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Interview with Physicist Wal Thornhill regarding Velikovsky and the development of the Electric Universe

Peter:  As a Plasma physicist what is your view on Velikovsky's books.

Wallace: I think he nailed some important truths. Certainly I think he nailed the planets as the cause of cataclysmic events on Earth. But as importantly he perceived the truth of the electrical universe which touches on all parts of the solar system down to mankind's history and evolution. Modern research is now revealing the dramatic electronic connection between volcanoes, earthquakes, the weather and the sun. This research at the plasma level offers a tool to understanding those calamities that devastated mankind in his early history.

Peter: So do we have evidence of electric discharges between Earth and other planets or comets? If we do, were they connected to massive earthquake damage and electrical resculptoring of the Earth? Wallace Thornhill is a physicist who has come to some highly controversial conclusions. Wal have thunderbolts from planets or comets struck Earth in mankind's early history?

Wallace: What happens on earth today is but a tame shadow of mankind's earlier history. "The evidence suggests that only a few thousand years ago planets moved close to Earth, producing electrical phenomena of intense beauty and terror. Ancient sky worshippers witnessed these celestial wonders and far-flung cultures recorded the events in great myths, symbols and ritual practices of antiquity". I think they witnessed celestial bodies immersed in the charged particles of the solar system's dense plasma. These bodies, including Earth, spoke electrically to each other and produced heaven spanning electrical discharges. These planets were the gods. Mankind at once feared and worshipped them. During chaotic restructuring of the solar system cosmic lightning evolved violently from one discharge configuration to another. They followed patterns observed in high energy plasma experiments. These electric phenomena have also been recently observed in deep space.

Peter: Wal you say mankind witnessed these cosmic displays. What evidence do we have for that?

Wallace: Throughout the world our early ancestors carved pictures of these electric formations upon rocks. They bear a close similarity to each other whether from the Americas, Australia, Europe or Asia. In their myths they called them, "Thunderbolts of the gods". More incredibly they bear a remarkable resemblance to plasma discharges produced in laboratories or on super computer modeling.

Peter: This seems to fly in the face of conventional interpretations of mythology. ? Why the resistance to these ideas?

Wallace: I think for two reasons. Firstly the idea of a solar system that is electrically driven flies directly in the face of conventional cosmology. This is firmly bound up in a gravitational model even though NASA, day by day reveals facts that cannot be explained by gravity alone. Cosmology is the Queen of the sciences yet electrical theory and plasma science is rarely touched on by its disciples. Physicists and electronic scientists are familiar with the force of electricity which is a billion, billion, billion times stronger than gravity. Cosmologists need to radically rethink their gravitational bias. Secondly, I believe the doctrine of uniformitarianism is universally preached in many of the scientific disciplines. That is, by and large, nothing has occurred on Earth that doesn't occur today. Slow gradual change is the rule. In particular this dogma holds that the Solar System has been stable for millions of years and has barely changed. I believe this is totally incorrect. A mere look at the changing universe as NASA witnesses it today makes us aware that the stars are continually evolving and responding to an electrical universe.

Peter:  So much of Mythology and the ancient cataclysmic destructions start to make sense when we interpret them with the aid of the Electrical Universe model. The effect of electromagnetism in all walks of our life will be explored.

Summary
Jupiter-Baal-Zeus-the driver of the Solar system?


So what is Baalbek all about? If the people of Baalbek feared Baal alias Jupiter could this sky god have driven their destiny? Both myth and legend go much further to support the malignant role of Jupiter and other planets in Mankind's affairs. Remember Jupiter goes by many names. In ancient Phoenicia he is Baal of our Baalbek. In Israel he is Zedek. In Egypt Amon. In Iran he is Mazda. In Babylon Enlil. In India he is Shiva. In Greece the mighty Zeus king of the Gods. Jupiter in all cases is the supreme sky god. The supreme planet. In all these cases he is blamed for hurling massive thunderbolts against the Earth and causing earthquakes. Could this of happened? Today Jupiter/Baal hurls thunderbolts at its moon Io. Thus interplanetary discharges do occur. In a near approach of Jupiter perhaps Earth too was subject to the sky god's wrath? The ancient Greek historian, Homer in the Odyssey, specifically blames Baal / Zeus / Jupiter for hurling thunderbolts and destroying Troy with earthquakes. Baal shattered the Earth. That is why the citizens of Baalbek feared and worshipped this Sky God. They trembled under his destruction and even offered human sacrifice to calm him.

In another ancient text from the Greek Hesiod, we find Baal / Zeus responsible for giving birth to the planets Mercury and Venus. Is this at all possible? Let us investigate. What do we know about Jupiter? Certainly next to the Sun it is the largest mass in the Solar System. But Jupiter's' most salient driver is its great red spot, four times the size of Earth. This constantly swirls as a giant vortex sucking up all clouds that are in its way. Moreover it spits them out. If Jupiter can absorb comets such as shoemaker levy 9 can it in its turn spit them out as it does the clouds on its surface? Remember the scientific principle "to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Hesiod claimed Jupiter gave birth to Venus and Mercury. Is Jupiter about to regurgitate shoemaker levy 9 as a new comet or indeed as Velikovsky claims a pre planet? Is it only a matter of time until mankind suffers another cosmic attack? Jupiter even now has captured a smaller comet. Will this in its turn disintegrate and be swallowed. In fact does Earth have the power like Jupiter to attract comets and have them impact on our surface. In the past we have had massive extinctions due to cosmic events. Do we live in a fool's paradise that denies such bazaar possibilities even though our ancestors lived in fear of just such an event? In the first century of the present era the Romans at one time counted fifty comets in their skies. This is unheard of today. Were the skies over Rome the end of a bloody era that only in recent centuries has become stabilized? Can there be bones of truth in this mythology?

So here is our challenge. How do we explain these dreadful cataclysms that decimated mankind. Conventional science is a lost puppy. It rejects mythology. It clings to outmoded scientific concepts. It is bogged down in theory laden ideas. Come with us as we reveal the truth. What happens on planet Earth today is nothing compared to events of the recent past? It is time to challenge some of the fundamentals of science. Darwin's concept of uniformitarianism or slow adaptive evolution is plainly wrong. New paradigms are needed. The age of cataclysmic evolution and the mechanics of the chaotic electric solar system have arrived. As we develop our arguments in the next episodes we will reveal the glaring truth. How have we been so blind?


http://www.ancientdestructions.com/site/paper2.php


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Beyond the Mountains of Darkness

This short discourse is not a part of the chronological problem discussed in the work of reconstruction of ancient history; it deals with historical geography—the whereabouts of the places of exile of the Ten Tribes of Israel.

The sentence (II Kings 17:6) which relates how the King of Assyria took Samaria and carried Israel away into Assyria and "placed them in Halah and in Habor by the river Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes," caused much deliberation among the historians. The mystery of the Ten Lost Tribes produced also fantastic convictions such as the belief that the Britons are the descendants of the Lost Tribes who, after much wandering, reached Albion.

The sentence in II Kings 17:6 is repeated almost verbatim in 18:11. In I Chronicles 5:26, the exile of the Transjordan tribes—Reuben, Gad and the half-tribe Manasseh—to Halah, and Habor and Hara, and to the river Gozan is ascribed to "Pul king of Assyria" and to "Tilgath-pileser king of Assyria." Modern scholars consider Pul and Tiglath-pileser to be one and the same king, Pul having been his name in Babylonia.(1)

It is generally agreed that the location of Halah (in Hebrew with two letters kheth, transcribed as h in scholarly texts), or Khalakh, is not given to identification.(2) As to Gozan, the texts of II Kings 17:6 and 18:11 speak of Habor by the river Gozan; also I Chronicles 5:26 speaks of the river Gozan. In Isaiah 37:12 it can be understood as a region or a people of a region. The correct translation of the two passages in the Second Book of Kings is "to the confluence (habor)(3) of the river Gozan."

Biblical scholars who sought for the place of exile of, first, the two and a half tribes of Israel by Tiglath-Pileser and then of all the tribes of Israel by Sargon upon the fall of Samaria, decided that the river's name was Habor and Gozan was the region. They have therefore identified Gozan with Guzana, modern Tell Halaf in northeastern Syria. But this interpretation is a violation of the texts. Looking for a river Habor, they thought to identify it with the tributary of the river Euphrates mentioned in Ezekiel I:3 "the word of the Lord came . . . unto Ezekiel . . . in the land of the Chaldeans by the river Chebar." However the spellings in Hebrew of Habor and Chebar are different, the river Khvor (Chebar) is not Habor, and the latter is not a river at all. Furthermore, the co-called river Chebar is actually an irrigation canal.(4)

In explaining why the misfotune of exile befell the population of the Northern Kingdom, the Book of Kings says that the Children of Israel "worshipped all the host of heaven and served Baal," and "caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire, and used divination and enchantments," and therefore "the Lord was very angry with Israel, and removed them out of his sight: there was none left but the tribe of Judah only" (II Kings 17:17, 18).

"Removed them out of his sight" seems to signify that the people of Israel were removed far away, out of every contact with the remnant Judah, not even by a chance messenger.

When one hundred and thirty-eight years later, in the beginning of the sixth century, the people of Judah were also led into exile—by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon—they did not find the exiled tribes of Israel in Babylonia, though they dwelt by the river Chebar (Khvor, i.e., Khabur), which flows in the central region of that country.

It appears that the places to which the Ten Tribes were removed by the Assyrian kings must have been far more remote than northeastern Syria.

Assyria, with its capital cities of Nimrud (Calah), Dur Sharrukin (Khorsabad), and Nineveh—all on the Tigris—expanded greatly in the days of its warrior kings Tiglath-Pileser, Sargon, and Sennacherib. Repeatedly, the Assyrian kings led their troops across the Caucasus northward. Not satisfied with the passage along the coastal road of the Caspian Sea, they also explored the mountainous passes. Sargon, the conqueror of Samaria, wrote in his annals:

I opened up mighty mountains, whose passes were difficult and countless, and I spied out their trails.

    Over inaccessible paths in steep and terrifying places I crossed . . .(5)

The descriptions of Tiglath-pileser and Sargon of their campaigns in the north lead us to recognize that they passed the mountains of the Caucasus and reached the steppes between the Don and the Volga. When the barrier of the mountains was overcome, they could proceed northward in a scarcely populated area barren of natural defenses, where they would have met less resistance than in the foothills of the mountains. It is unknown how far they may have let their armies of conquest march across the steppes, but probably they did not give the order to return homeward until the army brought its insignia to some really remote point: it could be as far as the place of the confluence of the Kama with the Volga, or even of the Oka, still farther north. The middle flow of the Volga would be the furthermost region of the Assyrian realm.

The roads to the Russian steppes along the Caspian and Black seas were much more readily passable than the narrow path along the river Terek and the Daryal Canyon that cut the Caucasus and wind at the foot of Mount Kazbek, over sixteen thousand feet high.

The fact that the "confluence of the river Gozan" is considered a sufficient designation suggests that it must have been a great stream.

A large river in the plain behind the crest of the Caucasus is the Don, and a still larger river—the largest in Europe—is the Volga. If the Assyrians did not make a halt on the plain that stretches immediately behind the Caucasus and moved along the great rivers without crossing them to conquer the great plain that lies open behind the narrow span where the rivers Don and Volga converge—then the most probable place of exile might be reckoned to be at the middle Volga. The distance from Dur Sharrukin to this region on the Russian (Scythian) plain is in fact much less than the distance from Nineveh to Thebes in Egypt, a path taken by Assurbanipal several decades later. Under Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal, Assyrian armies repeatedly invaded "Patursi and Kusi" —Upper Egypt and Ethiopia (Sudan). But Assyrian occupation of Scythia is not a mere conjecture: it is confirmed by archaeological evidence. "The earliest objects from Scythia that we can date," writes a student of the region's antiquities, "referred to the VIIth and VIth centuries B.C., are under overwhelming Assyrian influence. . ." (6)

The exiles who were removed from Samaria, a city of palaces and temples, no doubt, bewailed the capital they had heroically defended for three years against the army of what was, in its time, the world's most powerful nation. Accordingly they might have called their new settlement Samaria (in Hebrew Shemer or Shomron; Sumur in the el-Amarna letters).

On the middle flow of the Volga, a city with the name Samara exists and has existed since grey antiquity. It is situated a short distance downstream from the point where the Volga and the Kama join. Russian conquerors of the ninth century found this city in existence. The medieval Arab geographer Yakubi, basing himself on accounts of the ninth-century traveller Ibn Fadlan, speaks of the Khazars who dwelt in Samara.(7) This people dominated southern and eastern Russia possibly as early as the third,( but especially during the tenth and eleventh centuries. They passed the Caucasus mountains to participate in the wars of the Romans and the Persians, dominated the Ukraine as far as Kiev, concluded treaties with the emperors of Byzantium, and their influence and suzerainty sometimes reached as far west as Sofia.(9)

The ruling class of the Khazars used Hebrew as its language, and the Hebrew faith was the official religion in the realm of the Khazars. There was a system of great tolerance, unique in the Middle Ages, in respect to other religions; the Supreme Court was composed of two persons of Jewish faith, two Moslems, two Christians, and one idolater of the Russian population; but it was not a confusion of creeds as it had been in old Samaria, which tolerated many creeds, the monotheism of Yahweh being a protesting ingredient of the confusion.

Were the Khazars or their ruling aristocracy converted to Judaism in a later age? This position was based on what was said in a letter of the Khazar king Joseph, written about the year 961, to the Jewish grandee, Hasdai ibn-Shaprut, at the court of Cordoba. 'Abd-al-Rahman al-Nasir, the Moorish ruler of Spain, had asked the King of the Khazars to provide any available information about his people, Hasdai's brothers in religion. In the letter of reply the Khazar king recited a tradition or a legend; advocates of three religions came to some prior king of the Khazars, and he picked the Jewish faith because the Christian and the Mohammedan alike gave preferrence to the Jewish religion above that of their respective rival.(10)

The story exposes its mythical character. In the seventh or eighth centuries of the present era, the adepts of the Jewish faith were persecuted by the Christians and also by the Moslems, and would hardly be chosen to become the religion of the state. A similar legend of "choosing" a religion is told about Vladimir of Kiev: in this legend the Khazars were the delegates representing the Jewish faith.

Had the Khazars been converted to Judaism, it would be almost incredible that they would call their city by the name Samara. Samaria was a sinful city from the point of view of the nation that survived in Palestine after the fall of Samaria, and out of which eventually grew the rabbinical Judaism of later centuries.

The conversion to the Jewish religion would also not imply the adoption of the Hebrew language. It is remarkable that the state language of the Khazars was Hebrew; the king of the Khazars was quite capable of reading and answering a Hebrew letter.

Long before the correspondence between Joseph and Hasdai of the tenth century, the Khazar monarchs had Hebrew names. The dynasts previous to king Joseph were in the ascending order: Aaron, Benjamin, Menahem, Nisi, Manasseh II, Isaac, Hannukah, Manasseh, Hezekiah, and Obadiah. A conversion to Judaism in the seventh or eighth century of the present era would bring with it names common to Hebrews in the early Middle Ages, like Saadia or Nachman; the Judaism of the early Christian age was rich in names like Hillel, Gamliel, while Hellenistic names like Alexander, or Aristobul were not infrequent. Again, the Biblical names of an early period would give prominence to names like Joab, Gideon, or Iftach, and still an older group of names would be Gad, Issahar, Zwulun or Benjamin.

It is peculiar that some of the king of the Khazars were called by the names used in Israel at the time that Samaria was captured by the Assyrians. Hezekiah is said to have been the king of Jerusalem at that time (II Kings 18:10), and the name of his son and successor was Manasseh. Obadiah was one of the most common names at that time and in the preceding century. It seems not arbitrary to assume that the Khazars absorbed, or even originally were, the remnants of some of the tribes of Israel.

It is most probable that the religious reform among the Khazars, about which some tradition was preserved until the tenth century, is to be interpreted as an act of purification of the half-pagan religion that the exiles from Samaria brought into and developed in their new abodes on the Volga, and as an act of return to the old Hebrew religion of Yahweh. This might have been performed with the help of some Hebrews who perchance left the schools of Sura and Pumbadita, where the Babylonian Talmud was composed. Old Jewish authors(11) actually mention the fact that teachers of rabbinical Judaism were invited to the kingdom of the Khazars as early as the eighth century. Possibly, the name "Khazars," despite a difference in writing, is to be interpreted as "Those Who Return." A long, probably illiterate period, when Hebrew was used only in speech, may have preceded the period of revival of learning and purification of faith.

I would like to express here the belief that excavation in or around Samara on the Volga may disclose Hebrew signs of the eighth and seventh centuries before the present era. Other sites of old settlements on the Volga, too, may disclose remnants of old Hebrew culture.

The Hebrew (most probably also Assyrian) name for the Volga, Gozan, seems to have survived in the name Kazan. The city Kazan is located to the north of Samara, a very short distance beyond the place of confluence of the Volga and the Kama, two equally large streams. A tributary by the name Kazanka, or "small Kazan," flows there into the Volga.

In the days of the Khazar realm, the river Volga was called not by its Assyrian, nor by its present name, but by the name Etel (the name is given also as Itil or Atil). This name appears to derive from a Semitic root; it is also used by the medieval Arab geographers.

Many place names in southern Russia seem to be of Hebrew derivation. The name of the river Don may go back to the name of the Israelite temple-city Dan. The Caspian Sea is best explained as "The Silver Sea" from the Hebrew caspi (of silver). Rostov means "The Good Harbor" in Hebrew. Orel, read in Hebrew, would mean "uncircumcised" ; Saratov may mean "to make an incision." (12) With our identification of Gozan—one of the places of exile of the Ten Tribes—as the Volga, we may now investigate the question, what place is Khalakh, the other place of exile mentioned in II Kings 17:6? This place name is generally regarded as unidentifiable.

The eastern coast of the Black Sea was the goal of the Argonaut expedition in its search for the Golden Fleece. This expedition, engineered by Jason, was undertaken on the boat Argo. The land on the eastern coast of the Black Sea was called Colchis in ancient times, and the region is still known by this name. In Russian literature it is called Kolkhida.

I consider western Georgia—to which Colchis belongs, to be the Biblical Khalakh. Those of the expatriates of Samaria whose destination was Khalakh arrived there some decades after the Argonaut expedition, which was regarded by the later Greeks as an historical event and chronologically placed two or three generations before the Trojan War.(13)

In the mountainous region of western Georgia, adjacent to the Colchian coast, live the so-called Georgian, or Mountain Jews. They claim to be of the Ten Tribes of Israel, their ancestors having been exiled there upon the destruction of the kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians. Ben Zvi (the second president of the modern state of Israel) tells of these people and their claims.(14) He writes that "there is no reason to doubt the existence of a continuous Jewish settlement in both the north and south of Caucasia, whose roots were laid in very ancient times, perhaps as early as the days of the Second Temple, perhaps even earlier." Yet he does not express any suspicion that Khalakh may have been Colchis.

The third place of exile of the Ten Tribes according to the Book of Kings were the "cities of the Medes." Is it possible to locate also this last destination? The Medes first appear in Assyrian annals in the time of Shalmaneser III: it was in his days that they started to penetrate across the mountains of Iran to infringe on the boundaries of the Assyrian kingdom. They appear once again in the annals of Sargon II, who claims to have repelled "the distant Medes on the edge of the Bikni mountain." (15) Some scholars maintain that the homeland of the Medes before their occupation of the Iranian plateau in the seventh and sixth centuries was in Turan, that is, West Turkestan. Sargon's reference to "distant Medes" would then designate their homeland in Turan.

In this context it is interesting to note that the Jews of Bukhara, the great trading city and metropolis of West Turkestan, (Turan) claim direct descent from the Ten Tribes.(16) Some writers are even prepared to admit the possible veracity of this claim,(17) though no one so far seems to have attempted to place the "cities of the Medes" in this region. While the greater part of the Jewish community of Bukhara may well be descended from migrants from the time of the Babylonian Exile or the Diaspora of Roman times or even later, it is not excluded that the oldest group among them are remnants of those tribes dispatched by Sargon to the "cities of the Medes."

References
   1.
      E.g., H. W. F. Saggs, The Greatness that was Babylon (New York, 1966), pp. 104, 557.
   2.
      H. Graetz, History of the Jews, Vol. I (Philadelphia), p. 265.
   3.
      [Cf. Strong's Concordance of the Bible, p. 36 where (Hebrew section) habor is translated from the root word meaning "to join." ]
   4.
      [See Atlas of the Bible, (ed. by J. L. Gardener, 1981), p. 145; also consult W. Gesenius, Hebrew Lexicon (Brown, Driver, Briggs), p. 140, "Kebar" —"a river (or perhaps a canal) of Babylonia, not at present identified . . ." —LMG/WBS]
   5.
      Luckenbill, Records of Assyria II, par. 54.
   6.
      Ellis H. Minns, Scythians and Greeks (Cambridge, 1913), p. 263.
   7.
      Yakubi, Kitab al-Buldan, 262 (in Bibl. Geogr. Arab, VII, ed. De Goeje).
   8.
      Masudi hands down a tradition that the Sassanid king Ardashir fought against the Khazars. Masudi, Muruj al-Dhabab, ed. Barbier de Meynard and Pavet de Courteille (Paris, 1861-78), VI, 124ff.
   9.
      For general discussion and sources, see D. M. Dunlop, The History of the Jewish Khazars, (Princeton, 1954).
  10.
      Cf. A. Koestler, The Thirteenth Tribe, pp. 63-64.
  11.
      Jehudah bar Levi, The Khazar. [Such names were perhaps chosen to describe the inhabitants of the respective areas.—LMG]
  12.
  13.
      [Herodotus (II. 104) reports that in his time the people of Colchis practiced circumcision and claimed descent from Egypt. Although his inquiries in Egypt evinced no remembrance of the Colchians from among the Egyptians, Herodotus concluded that they must have been descended from the remnants of the army of the semi-legendary Sesostris. It seems to me that the Colchians may have told Herodotus the Mosaic tradition of the Exodus from Egypt—if they were Jews, they would have had to answer in the affirmative the question posed by Greek historian, as to whether their ancestors had come from Egypt.—JNS]
  14.
      Itzak Ben-Zvi, The Exiled and the Redeemed (Philadelphia, 1957), p. 62.
  15.
      Luckenbill, Ancient Records of Assyria II, par. 54. The location of "Bikni mountain" is uncertain.
  16.
      See the eighteenth-century report of Joseph Maman of Tetuan, summarized in A. Ya'ari, "Emissaries of the Land of Israel" (Hebrew) (Jerusalem, 1951), p. 664.
  17.
      Itzak Ben-Zvi, The Exiled and the Redeemed, p. 62.

http://www.varchive.org/ce/baalbek/khazars.htm

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

On The Location of the
First and Second Temples in Jerusalem

by Lambert Dolphin and Michael Kollen

    Because of our sins we were exiled from our country and banished from our land. We cannot go up as pilgrims to worship Thee, to perform our duties in Thy chosen house, the great and Holy Temple which was called by Thy name, on account of the hand that was let loose on Thy sanctuary. May it be Thy will, Lord our God and God of our fathers, merciful King, in Thy abundant love again to have mercy on us and on Thy sanctuary; rebuild it speedily and magnify its glory. (The Jewish Prayer Book)



View of the Temple Mount looking towards the southeast.

    Under the level pavement at the top left of the photo are vaulted chambers known as "Solomon's Stables," traditionally said to date from Herod's enlargement of the Mount. To the right, at the top, is the gray dome of Al Aqsa Mosque. The far right hand edge of the photo shows the Western Wall (the Kotel), the Jewish prayer area. The Dome of the Rock is especially beautiful because of the recent addition of new gold leaf to the anodized aluminum dome. The traditional location of the First and Second Temples lies in the immediate vicinity of the Dome of the Rock. The proposed Northern site for the Temples is just to the left at the stairs in the bottom left of the photo. The southern Site for the Temples lies midway between the Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa mosque, under an Islamic ablution fountain known as El Kas. The level of the bedrock of Mount Moriah outcrops within the Dome of the Rock and is just beneath the paving stones of the surrounding platform. However, to the south the bedrock drops steeply towards the City of David and the junction of Hinnom and Kidron Valleys.

The Temple Mount: Site of the Ancient Jewish Temples

The Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem measures today approximately 45 acres in extent. It is surrounded by a trapezoidal wall: The south wall measures about 910 feet, the North about 1025, the east wall about 1520 and the west wall about 1580 feet in length. The average height above sea level on the platform is about 2400 feet above sea level. Most of the buildings and surface features are Islamic - no visible traces of the First or Second Temples can be found on the platform today. The area is park-like in its settings with plants of trees and shrubs and many ancient buildings and monuments added over the past 1300 years of Moslem stewardship of the site.

The present-day platform area of the Temple Mount lies topographically just below the peak of a Jerusalem ridge system known as Mount Moriah. This is the site David purchased from a Jebusite named Ornan late in his reign. King David prepared the area in order build a permanent House of God to replace the Tabernacle of Moses which accompanied the Jews after their Exodus from Egypt to the Promised Land. David had the plans drawn up for a building whose dimensions were twice those of the Tabernacle, and he amassed great quantities of building materials: stone, cedar, and much gold and silver. However, it was his son Solomon who actually built the First Jewish temple (1 Chronicles 22:14-15, 28:11-20).

The ridge system where the Temple Mount is now located is believed by many reputable sources to be the site where Abraham was told to sacrifice Isaac (Genesis 22:1-2). While Solomon built the First Temple about 3000 years ago, Abraham's visit to Mt. Moriah was about a thousand years earlier.
Consecrated Ground
According to Rabbinical sources both the First and Second Temples were built on the same foundations, at the same location somewhere on the Temple Mount. The site had to be consecrated ground that had not been previously used for tombs and that was not a previous pagan worship site ("high place"). The innermost sanctuary of the Temple, the Holy of Holies, or Kodesh Hakodeshim, where the Ark of the Covenant was placed, marked the exact center of the world, and was the innermost zone in holiness or sanctity in Jewish thought. The manifest presence of God, the Shekinah, was centered between the cherubim of the Ark and especially noted at the dedication of the First Temple---

    When Solomon had ended his prayer, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the glory of the LORD filled the temple. And the priests could not enter the house of the LORD, because the glory of the LORD filled the LORD's house. When all the children of Israel saw the fire come down and the glory of the LORD upon the temple, they bowed down with their faces to the earth on the pavement, and worshiped and gave thanks to the LORD, saying, "For he is good, for his steadfast love endures for ever." (2 Chronicles 7:1-3)


Moving outwards from the Holy of Holies one came to The Holy Place, and then to the Courts of the priests, and of the women and of the Jewish people, then the Court of the Gentiles, and so on, out into the world in decreasing degrees of holiness.

The long history of the First and Second Temples is detailed both in the Bible and in many extra-biblical sources. For more details on the history of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount see the separate historical essays listed on the main menu.

Both ancient Jewish Temples are of interest to Christians as well as to Jews. The Second Temple was modest in size and furnishing until Herod the Great began his grand remodeling plans which continued for 40 years. It was in this enlarged and expanded Second Jewish Temple and its grand courts where the naming and circumcision of Jesus took place (Luke 2:21-39). Later, Jesus astonished the religious leaders with his understanding and insight as a twelve-year-old boy (Luke 2:41-50). On two separate occasions Jesus entered and cleansed the temple by throwing out the money changers and commercial vendors from the courts. (John 2:12-25; Matthew 21:23-26)

In one of his final discussions with his disciples (Matthew 24), Jesus predicted the destruction of the Second Temple. It was in fact leveled to the ground on the 9th day of the month of Av in 70 C.E. The temple was thoroughly razed and the site has been so extensively modified during the late Roman, Moslem and Crusader eras that considerable doubt exists as to where the temples actually stood.



Map of the Temple Mount Today

Where did the Temple stand?

Among the numerous controversies about the Temple is the precise location of the original. There are three primary conjectures under active discussion in recent years. These three areas of interest on the Temple Mount have been the focus of intense investigation, much debate and discussion, and growing controversy. Behind many of these discussions lie serious plans by a number of Orthodox Jewish groups for the building of a Third Jewish Temple on the site when political conditions will permit this.

The primary areas on the Temple Mount which are seriously discussed in regard to the actual location of the First and Second Jewish Temples are:

   1. The present site of the Dome of the Rock. This is the so-called "traditional location." There are two variations on this model.
   2. North of the Dome of the Rock. Physicist Asher Kaufman proposed the Northern location about two decades ago.
   3. South of the Dome of the Rock. Tuvia Sagiv, a Tel Aviv architect, has proposed a Southern location for the Temples with extensive documentation and research during the past five years.



Aerial Photo of the Temple Mount Today

The Traditional Site

The traditional site of the Temple is said to lie beneath or very near to the Moslem shrine known as the Dome of the Rock. Certain historical accounts say that this building was built by the Moslems to overlay the location of the original Jewish Temple(s) and most rabbis in Israel today associate the original Temple location with this site. Dr. Leen Ritmeyer has researched and written on the original 500 cubit square boundaries of the original Temple Mount site based on this assumption.

Recent journal articles still support this view. (1) Former Jerusalem District archaeologist Dr. Dan Bahat vigorously defends the traditional location - drawing on his years of experience and study of the entire city and its history. His lectures on the subject are thorough, convincing and captivating. However, so also are the alternative theories currently proposed!



Traditional Site of the Temples

The Northern Conjecture

Based on a number of topological and archaeological considerations, research by Dr. Asher Kaufman over the past two decades has resulted in serious consideration being given to a site 330 feet to the north of the Dome of the Rock.

The Mt. Moriah bedrock outcrops within the Dome of Rock, as is well known. Although the bedrock elevation drops sharply to the south in the direction of the City of David, the level of the bedrock is just beneath the paving stones for over 100 meters to the North of the Dome of the Rock shrine. One particular level outcropping of this bedrock lies under a small Islamic shrine known as "The Dome of the Tablets" or "The Dome of the Spirits," to the Arabs. Both names suggest an association with the Jewish Temples. It is under this small, unimpressive canopy supported by pillars that Dr. Kaufman locates the Temple site. (2)



The Northern Placement of the Temples

The Southern Conjecture
Many people who have been following these developments may not yet be aware of a third view, which might well be called "the Southern Conjecture." Since this model is less well known, it will be more fully described here and on these web pages. This view has been championed in the past five years by Tuvia Sagiv, a prominent Israeli architect.

There are a number of problems with each of the previously mentioned locations. To fully appreciate some of the difficulties, it is necessary to visualize the topography of the Temple Mount area.



Topographic Map of Jerusalem
(Contour interval 10 meters)

        North is at the top of the map. The Mount of Olives is on the far right, Mount Zion on the left. Mount Moriah rises as a long ridge at the south end of the City of David and continues on past the present Temple Mount, and reaches its highest point outside the Northern walls of the Old City, at the top of the map.

The bedrock rises when going northward from the base of the City of David to highest ground north of the Temple Mount area. (This is obscured on site since the Temple Mount Platform itself is a large flat area surrounded by retaining wall.) The southern end of the Platform is actually built up on tall underground pillars and arches.

To the east of the Temple Mount lies the Kidron Valley, and the Mount of Olives. To the south, the City of David and the Hinnom Valley. To the west, the famed Western Wall (called in earlier times the "Wailing Wall"). To the north of the Temple site was the Roman military Antonia Fortress, and then, further, the high ground outside the city walls, which many believe was the site of Golgotha. The bedrock of Mt. Moriah continues to rise to the north - outcroppings in the Northern wall reveal road cuts that have been made in the bedrock at the North end of the Old City outside the Damascus Gate and along the main road to the east. The crest of Mt. Moriah is just above the present Garden Tomb.

Critical Issues in Locating the Temple Site:

When one compiles all the known factors into a three-dimensional computer model of the Temple Mount area, several problems emerge:

1. Where was the Antonia Fortress?

Ancient Jerusalem was protected on the east, south, and west by valleys. The Antonia Fortress was located to the north to protect the weaker north side of the city. (In fact, it was from the north that Titus Vespasian breached the walls in his famous attack in 70 C.E.)

According to ancient sources, the fortress was on a hill about 25 meters high. The current El Omriah school building is on a rock only 5 meters high. From many stratigraphic and other considerations it is doubted by some experts that his was the actual location of the Antonia Fortress. Tuvia Sagiv's papers discuss the critical issue of the actual location of the Fortress Antonia, which he believes was well to the south, perhaps at the location of the Dome of the Rock.

2. The Location of the Ancient North Moat (the Fosse)

Traditional renderings show a deep, filled-in fosse (moat), north of the Temple Mount, lying south of the Antonia Fortress, between the fortress and the Temple Mount.

According to ancient sources, however, the Antonia Fortress and the Temple Mount were adjacent to each other. The moat should be to the north of the Tower for protection, placing the Antonia about where the Dome of the Rock stands today! Asher Kaufman's location of the Temples places the moat immediately to the North of the spot where the Temples stood. In fact, Dan Bahat jokes that Kaufman's temple would "fall into the moat!"

3. The Hulda Gates

The Hulda Gates were the primary access to the Temple area from the south. According to the Mishna, the difference in heights between the Hulda Gates and the Holy of the Holies was approximately 10 meters, with about 39 m between the entrance to the Temple mount and the level of the Temple itself. The traditional Dome of the Rock proposals require 20 meters and 80 m separations.

The current assumptions regarding Hulda Gate tunnels are not mentioned in the ancient sources. The discrepancies suggest a lower, and therefore, more southerly, location. Tuvia Sagiv in his essays discusses the problem of the Southern Gates and their elevation with respect to the Temples.

4. The View from the North

Josephus Flavius describes the fact that the Bizita Hill (Golgotha?) was located north of the Temple Mount and obscured the view of the Temple from the north.

If the Temple stood at the Dome of the Rock, it would be visible from as far away as the town of Ramallah. In order to obscure the view from the north, it would have to be at a lower level, that is, to the south.

5. King Herod Agrippa's View of the Temple from the West

Josephus, in The Jewish Wars, describes the fact that King Herod Agrippa could look out from his Hasmonean Palace (at or near the present Citadel at the Jaffa Gate), and view the sacrifices at the Azarah, at the altar of the Second Temple. This incensed the Jews, who then built a wall extending the height of the western rear wall of the Temple proper in order to block the view. Roman soldiers, patrolling the western threshold - thus unable to view the Azarah - demanded that the wall be demolished. The Jews objected, and even obtained the consent of Emperor Nero to leave the wall in place.

If the Temple were at the location of the Dome of the Rock, it would have required a Palace tower height of 75 meters to view into the Azarah. There never was a building of such a height in Jerusalem. This all implies a lower, more southern location of the Temple.

6. The Jerusalem Water Aqueduct from the Judean Hills

The water canals that supplied Jerusalem began in the area of the Hebron mountains, passed through the Solomon's Pools near Bethlehem, and flowed to Jerusalem. The lowest canal reached the Temple Mount through the Jewish Quarter and the Wilson Bridge. According to the ancient authorities, the water conduit supplied water to the High Priests' mikveh (ritual bath) located above the Water Gate, and it also supplied water for the rinsing of the blood off the Azarah. Portions of this aqueduct are plainly visible to this day.

"Living water," that is, fresh, flowing water, not water from a cistern, was required for the ritual bath (mikveh) used by the temple priests, and for the washings of the temple in connection with the sacrifices.

A survey of the level of the aqueduct reveals that if the Temple had been located at the same elevation as the present Dome of the Rock shrine, the aqueduct would be over 20 meters too low to serve either the Azarah or the Water Gate. From this survey, it appears that the Temple must have been 20 meters lower, and, thus, to the south.

7. Electronic Measurements

Preliminary ground penetrating radar probes by Tuvia Sagiv, while not conclusive, suggest vaults, perhaps "kippim" (rabbinical arches), and other structures which one would expect below the Temple, to the south. The northern sites are virtually solid rock.

More recently Sagiv has conducted thermal-infrared scanning of the walls and the platform. During the day the sun heats the Temple Mount uniformly, but at night the cooling (by conduction and radiation) is not uniform, thus revealing subsurface anomalies. In the images shown below, "hotter" areas are bright indicating massive foundations beneath the paving stones. The radar and IR research is discussed in Sagiv's third paper, Penetrating Insights Into the Temple Mount.



Nighttime Thermal Infrared Imagery of the Dome of the Rock

    These black-and-white images taken from the original false-color IR scanner images clearly reveal a pentagonal ancient foundation under the Dome. These results are discussed by Tuvia Sagiv in his papers.

8. Research into Later Roman Temple Architecture

After the Bar Kochba revolt in 132 C.E., the Romans leveled the entire city of Jerusalem and a built a Roman city, Aelia Capitolina, on the ruins. To obliterate any Jewish presence on the Temple Mount, they built a temple to Jupiter on the site.

A similar temple, built by the same builder at about the same time, has been discovered at Baalbek, Lebanon.

The Roman architectural practices of the time featured a rectangular basilica, and a polygon structure opposite a courtyard. When this architecture is overlaid on the Temple Mount, it matches the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock exactly.

This unique architectural similarity suggests that the Roman Temple to Jupiter may have been on this very site, converted for Christian purposes in the 4th Century, and then served as the foundation for the present Moslem structures, the Al Aqsa Mosque an the Dome of the Rock, which were built in the 7th Century.



The Roman Temple at Baalbek, Lebanon

Jerome's commentary on Isaiah mentions an equestrian statue of the Emperor Hadrian being placed directly over the site of the Holy of the Holies. If the Baalbek architecture is the correct model, this would place the Holy of the Holies somewhere beneath the present El Kas foundation.

When a map of the Baalbek Temple is overlaid on the present structures of the Temple Mount a striking similarity can be seen:



Baalbek Temple plan overlaid on the Temple Mount

Which Conjecture is Correct?

In Israel it is often said that if you have two Jews you will have three opinions! Only time will tell which of the above views is correct. These conjectures will continue to be debated until Israel is able to conduct a thorough archaeological investigation beneath the Temple Mount itself. (3)

Unfortunately, the Temple Mount presently remains under the supervision of the Waqf, the Supreme Moslem Council, and they have prevented any systematic archaeological studies. In fact, the Waqf has gotten increasingly resistive to investigations of any kind on the Platform - which they consider to be a huge outdoor mosque sacred to Islam.

Who knows what events developing in the history of Jerusalem will one day change the status quo, allowing scientific investigation of the entire Temple Mount, below ground as well as above? Then, according to the hopes and dreams of devout Jews for centuries, a Third Temple can be built on the foundations of the First and Second Temples and temple worship according to the Torah restored.



If Tuvia Sagiv is correct, the Temple site lies due east of the Western Wall,
under the clump of trees between the Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa Mosque.

Addendum: Personal Notes
For more than twenty years one of us (Dolphin) has maintained an active interest in archaeology in Israel, and especially in the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

Dr. Asher Kaufman, retired Professor of Physics at the Racah Institute of Physics of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and I began corresponding in the early '80's and have been good friends ever since.

I have followed with great interest Asher's hypothesis that the First and Second Temples were located 110 meters North of the Dome Rock on the Mount. The area in question would put the Holy of Holies and the Foundation Stone under a small Islamic structure known as the Dome of the Tablets or the Dome of the Spirits. Exposed bedrock outcrops beneath this small structure.

Dr. Dan Bahat, former District Archaeologist for Jerusalem, and now Professor at Bar Ilan University, is also a good friend. His arguments, vast knowledge, and experience convince him that the First and Second Temples are located in the immediate vicinity of the Moslem Dome of the Rock. His case is also a persuasive one. Dr. Leen Ritmeyer's PhD thesis involved his research delineating the original 500 cubit square Temple Mount.

Several years ago my good friend (since 1982), Stanley Goldfoot in Jerusalem introduced me to Tuvia Sagiv, a talented and enterprising Tel Aviv architect. Tuvia has spent hundreds of hours and many thousands of dollars of his own money researching the temple locations and has now built a strong and convincing case that the Temples were immediately east of the present Western Wall, with the Holy of Holies probably located under the El Kas Fountain. This fountain lies approximately midway between the Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa Mosque.

The bedrock drops rapidly just south of the Dome of the Rock. If Tuvia's model is correct the Temples would be lower that the outcropping bedrock under the Dome of the Rock. In fact, Tuvia's recent research suggests the Dome site may have been originally a Canaanite High Place with tombs beneath, and later (until the reforms of Josiah) the location of an Ashoreh pillar.

For further information on the political, religious and archaeological aspects of the Temple Mount in our time, we recommend the briefing package The Coming Temple by Chuck Missler, available from Koinonia House. This briefing package contains two audio cassette tapes and 22 pages of notes with 30 diagrams.

Each year for four years (1992-1995) Chuck Missler and Lambert Dolphin co-hosted an annual International Conference on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem in conjunction with Chuck Missler's tour group visit to Israel. Video and audio tapes of speakers at these outstanding meetings are also available from Koinonia House and are highly recommended.

For further information on ground penetrating radar and other modern geophysical methods useful in archaeology see Lambert Dolphin's Library.

Nancy DelGrande, a former physicist at Lawrence Livermore Labs, has been for many years the principal adviser to Asher Kaufman, Tuvia Sagiv and others in Israel, concerning the science of Thermal Infra-Red Imaging. Email: ritmeyer@dial.pipex.com).

2. Dr. Asher Selig Kaufman, Biblical Archaeological Review, March/April 1983; Tractate Middot, Har Yearíeh Press, Jerusalem, 1991.

3. Audio tapes featuring speakers at recent Temple Mount Conferences in Jerusalem defending all three proposed locations for the Temples may be obtained from Koinonia House, PO Box D, Coeur d'alene, Idaho 83816-0347.

On the Location of the First and Second Temples

by Lambert Dolphin and Michael Kollen



Email Lambert Dolphin

Lambert Dolphin's Web Pages: (http://ldolphin.org/)

/center> Created July 21, 1995. Updated, July 20, 1996. Typographical corrections June 16, 2000, with thanks to Jon E. Schoenfield (http://www.templemount.org/theories.html

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

BAALBEK

In the valley that gives birth to two rivers of Syria—the Orontes flowing to the north, and the Litani flowing to the south and west, between the mountains of Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon, where roads from Palestine in the south, Damascus in the east, and the sea-coast on the west meet and run from there to Hamath in Upper Syria—lie the ruins of Baalbek.

When we compare the ruins of Baalbek with those of many ancient cities which we visited in Italy, Greece, Egypt, and in other parts of Asia (and Africa), we cannot help thinking them to be the remains of the boldest plan we ever saw attempted in architecture. Is it not strange then, that the age and the undertaker of the works, in which solidity and duration have been so remarkably consulted, should be a matter of such obscurity...? 32

From the time when this was first written, in the fifties of the eighteenth century, and till today, nothing was added to dispel the obscurity which envelops the origin of this temple city.33 The excavations undertaken there brought no solution to the problem of its origin or the nature of its cult.34 No early inscriptions were found.

Throngs of travelers who spend their day wandering among the ruins of a magnificent acropolis go away without having heard what the role of the place was in ancient times, when it was built, or who was the builder. The pyramids, the temples of Kamak and Luxor, the Forum and Circus Maximus in Rome were erected by builders whose identity is generally known.

 

The marvelous site in the valley on the junction of roads running to Hamath is a work of anonymous authors in unknown ages. It is as if some mysterious people brought the mighty blocks and placed them at the feet and in front of the snow-capped Lebanon, and went away unnoticed. The inhabitants of the place actually believe that the great stones were brought and put together by Djenoun, mysterious creatures, intermediate between angels and demons.35


SOLOMON'S BAALBEK

Local tradition, which may be traced to the early Middle Ages, points to a definite period in the past when Baalbek was built: the time of Solomon.

Ildrisi, the Arab traveler and geographer (1099-1154), wrote:

    "The great (temple-city) of astonishing appearance was built in the time of Solomon." 36

Gazwini (d. 1823 or 4) explained the origin of the edifices and the name of the place by connecting it with Balkis, the legendary Queen of the South, and with Solomon.37

The traveler Benjamin of Tudela wrote in the year 1160 of his visit to Baalbek:

    "This is the city which is mentioned in Scripture as Baalath in the vicinity of the Lebanon, which Solomon built for the daughter of Pharaoh. The place is constructed with stones of enormous size." 38

Robert Wood, who stayed at Baalbek in the 1750's, and who published an unsurpassed monograph on its ruins, wrote:

    "The inhabitants of this country, Mohomedans, Jews and Christians, all confidently believe that Solomon built both, Palmyra and Baalbek." 39

Another traveler who visited Syria in the eighties of the eighteenth century recorded:

    "The inhabitants of Baalbek assert that this edifice was constructed by Djenoun, or genies in the service of King Solomon." 40
     

ON - AVEN

The identification of Bikat Aven, referred to in Amos 1:5 with the plain of Coele-Syria is generally accepted.41 The text, already quoted, reads: "I will break also the bar of Damascus, and cut off the inhabitant from the plain of Aven . . ."

The Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Bible by the Seventy, renders the above text as "the valley of On," written the same as On (or Heliopolis) in Egypt. The Hebrew spellings of Aven and On do not differ in consonants; and vocals were inserted in the texts by the Masoretes in a late period.

 

On is the Hebrew name of Heliopolis in Egypt, pronounced also as Aven, as in Ezekiel 30:17; Bikat Aven is the name of the plain of Baalbek in Amos. Tradition has it also that the cult of Baalbek was brought there from Heliopolis in Egypt.42

Hosea, however, called by the name of Aven (Beth-Aven) the cities of Bethel and Dan;43 and he spoke of "high places" there, and in the instance where he referred to "the sin of Israel" he obviously meant Dan.44

Amos, who in the eighth chapter speaks against the worshippers at Dan, in chapter one speaks against the plain of Aven—and thus, comparing Hosea and Amos, one wonders whether Amos 1:5 speaks of Baalbek or of Dan.

The expression Bikat Aven, or the Valley (Plain) of Aven in Amos impelled the exegetes and commentators to refer the place to Coele-Syria, and this because Bi'qa is the specific name of the Coele-Syrian plain—still in use today. The very name Baalbek is generally explained as the Baal of Bi'qa or Bekaa—of the valley.

Baalbek is situated in the valley between Lebanon and Hermon. Of Dan it is also said that it was situated in a valley:

    "...And it was in the valley that lieth by Beth-Rehob. And they built a city, and dwelt therein." 45
     

BAALATH, BAAL GAD, BAAL ZAPHON, BAAL MELECH

Is Baalbek the Scriptural Baalath, as Benjamin of Tudela thought? About Baalath it is said:

    "And Solomon built . . . Baalath, and Tadmor in the wilderness." 46

Tadmor is Palmyra, far to the northeast of Baalbek. Baalath is said to have belonged to the tribe of Dan.47

Or, is Baalbek the Scriptural Baal Gad? deliberated a few scholars.48 It is said:

    "Baal Gad in the valley of Lebanon under mount Hermon." 49

In the valley of Lebanon under mount Hermon lies Baalbek. If this identification is correct then Baalbek was inside the Israelite kingdom. However, against this supposition of Baal Gad in the valley of Lebanon it was argued that the Israelite kingdom never embraced the area of Coele-Syria, or the valley between Lebanon and Hermon (Anti-Lebanon).50

Some writers would regard Baalath and Baal Gad as two names of one place and would locate it at Baalbek.51

If Solomon built in Palmyra in the desert between Syria and Mesopotamia, the region of Coele-Syria between Lebanon and Hermon could certainly be in the area of his building activity, argued these scholars. But placing Baal Gad in Coele-Syria, where would they place Dan, the northernmost point of the Kingdom of Israel? To keep Dan in Galilee and to place Baal Gad, an Israelite city, one hundred fifty kilometers farther to the north will not stand up against the indisputable fact that Dan was the northernmost city in Israel.

Some scholars, looking for Baalbek in the Scriptures, identified it with Baal-Hamon, referred to in the Song of Songs.52 And again, Baal Hamon is supposed to be another name for Baalath and Baal Gad.53

Also Baal Zaphon, or Zeus Cassius, was proposed as Baalbek.544 In this connection it can be said that, according to the Talmud, Gad was the name of the planet Jupiter;55 and Zeus Cassius signifies Jupiter of Lebanon; and Hamon was supposed to be a Syrian form of the name Amon56 who, according to the Greek authors, was Zeus-Jupiter.57

All this together, if correct, points toward the cult of Jupiter in Baalbek, a matter to which we shall return in one of the next sections.

Besides Baal Gad, Baal Zaphon or Zeus Cassius, Baal Hamon, and Baalath, one more name is identified as Baalbek: Baalmelech, or "the royal Baal".58


THE TRILITHON

Already in the last century it was observed that the Acropolis of Baalbek and the temples built on it date from different epochs. The massive substratum—the great base of the acropolis—appears to be of an earlier date; the three temples on the substratum, of a later date.

It is even probable that the wall of the acropolis did not originate in one epoch. Among the stones of which it is built there are three of an unusual size—almost twenty meters long. Each of them weighs about one thousand tons. These huge monoliths are incased in the wall. The question arises whether they are not the survivals of the original cyclopean structure—that which carried the name Rehob, or Beth-Rehob, and which served as a landmark for the scouts dispatched by Moses in their survey of Canaan, and for the emissaries of the tribe of Dan in their search for the territory in the north.

 

Like Stonehenge in Great Britain, or Tiahuanaco in the Andes, it may have originated in an early time—not necessarily Neolithic, since it appears that these stones are subjected to hewing by metal tools.

In the quarry a mile away is found another stone of comparable size, cut out of the rock from all but one side; it appears that this stone of more perfect cut was quarried in a later time, possibly in the days of Jeroboam, or even later; but, for probably mechanical considerations, the work was not finished and the stone not removed, and the emulation of the early builders not completed.59

In another place I intend to return to the problem of the Trilithon of Baalbek, when treating cyclopean buildings and the mechanical means of quarrying and transporting these monoliths.


THE EMBOSSED QUADERS

Aside from the incased trilithon, the attention of the visitor to Baalbek who inspects the wall of the acropolis is drawn to stones of a bossed shape with an indented rim on all four sides of the face of the stone.

O. von Richter in 1822 60 and S. Wolcott in 1843 61 drew attention to the fact that the quaders of the wall of the temple area of the acropolis of Baalbek have the same form as the quaders of the Temple of Solomon, namely, of the surviving western (outer) wall, or Wailing Wall. The Roman architects, wrote Wolcott, never built foundations or walls of such stones; and of the Israelite period it is especially the age of Solomon that shows this type of stone shaping (chiseling).

 

The photograph of the outer wall of Baalbek's temple area illustrates that the same art of chiseling was employed in the preparation of stones for its construction. Whatever the time of construction of other parts of Baalbek's compound—neolithic, Israelite, Syrian, Greek, or Roman—this fundamental part of the compound must have originated in the same century as the surviving (western) wall of the area of Solomon's temple.


THE TEMPLES OF THE ACROPOLIS

The buildings on the flat plateau of the Acropolis have columns with capitals of Corinthian style. The time of the origin of these temples is disputed. An author of the last century62 brought forth his arguments against a late date for the temples atop the acropolis; he would not agree to ascribe them to the Roman period, or Greek period; he dated them as originating in an early Syrian period: the Romans only renovated these buildings in the second century of the present era.

The opinions of scholars are divided over whether these buildings can be ascribed to Roman times, though the source of the designs on the doorways and the ceiling and in the capitals of the columns speak for a Roman origin. When the Roman authorship of the buildings is denied, the Romans are credited only with renovating the structures.

The Emperor who is sometimes said to have built the largest of the temples in the temple area—that of Jupiter—is Aelius Antoninus Pius (138-161). The source of this information is the history of John of Antioch, surnamed Malalas, who lived not earlier than in the seventh century of this era, and wrote that Antoninus Pius built a temple for Jupiter at Heliopolis, near the Lebanon in Phoenicia, which was one of the wonders of the world.63

Julius Capitolinus, who wrote the annals of Antoninus Pius and enumerated the buildings he erected, offers no material support for the assertion made by the Syrian writer of the early Middle Ages. Though Antoninus Pius did build in Baalbek, as is evidenced by his inscriptions found there,64 his activity was restricted to reparation of the temples or the construction of one of the edifices in the temple area.65

 

The work in its entirety could not have been his because Lucian, his contemporary, calls the sanctuary of Baalbek already ancient, and because Pompey had already found it in existence and Trajan consulted its oracle.

The style of the temples caused the same divergence of opinion as the style of the surviving ruins of Palmyra. Some regard them as Roman,66 others as Hellenistic and Oriental.67 They are sometimes called East-Roman.68 In the case that only the ornamentation is of the Roman period the question may arise whether the walls and the columns of these buildings could be of as early a period as the seventh century before the present era, or the time of Manasseh, of whom Pseudo-Hippolytus says that he reconstructed Baalbek, built originally in the time of Solomon.69


THE CALF

It was almost a common feature in all places where pilgrims gathered to worship at a local cult that diminutive images of the deity were offered for sale to them. Also small figures of the god or of his emblem in precious or semi-precious metals were brought by worshippers as a donation to the temple where the large scale figure had its domicile.

In Baalbek archaeological work produced very few sacred objects or figures that could shed light on the worship of the local god.

    "It was a disappointment, next to the brilliant success of so rich an excavation, that nothing was learned of the nature of the deity and the history of its worship." 70

Figures of Jupiter Heliopolitanus standing between two bullocks or calves have been found at Baalbek, dating from Roman times.71 In addition, an image of a calf was also found.

The only figure of an earlier time found in Baalbek is an image of a calf. Since it is to be expected that images found in an ancient temple are reproductions of the main deity worshipped in the holy enclosure, it is significant that the holy image in the temple of Baalbek was that of a calf, and of no other animal.

The name Baal-Bek (Baal-Bi'qa) is sometimes transmitted by Arab authors as Baal bikra, or Baal of the Steer or Calf, which is the way of folk etymology to adapt the name to the form of the worship practiced in the temple. This, together with the finding of the images of the calf in the area of the temple, strengthens the impression that the god of Baalbek was a calf.


THE ORACLE OF BAALBEK

Baalbek or, as the Romans called it, Heliopolis, was venerated in the Roman world as the place of an old cult of an ancient oracle, and it rivaled successfully other venerated temples of the Roman Empire.

It is known that the Emperor Trajan, before going to war against the Parthians in the year 115, wrote to the priests of Baalbek and questioned its oracle. The oracle remained in high esteem at least as late as the fourth century of the present era, when Macrobius in his Saturnalia wrote of Baalbek:

    "This temple is also famous for its oracles." 72

Was it the ancient oracle of Micah? In the words of Jeremiah, shortly before the Babylonian exile of -586 in which he spoke of "a voice... from Dan",73 we had the last biblical reference to the oracle of Micah. In the days of Jeremiah the oracle must have been seven or eight hundred years old. Did it survive until the days of Trajan and even later, until the days of Macrobius?

In the Tractate Pesahim of the Babylonian Talmud is written the following sentence: "The image of Micah stands in Bechi." 74 Bechi is known as the Hebrew name for Baalbek in the time of the Talmud. As we have seen,  in the Book of Exodus it is recounted that the Danites, migrating to the North, took with them Micah and his idol, and that it was placed in Dan of the North. The Talmud was composed between the second and the fifth centuries of the present era.

This passage in the Tractate Pesahim is a strong argument for the thesis of this essay, namely that Baalbek is the ancient Dan.75


TWO PROBLEMS: A SUMMARY

The problems will be put side by side. Dan was the abode of the old oracle of Micah. Jeroboam built there a "house of high places", or a temple. Previously, he was the builder of Jerusalem's wall under Solomon; before becoming king of the Northern Kingdom he lived as an exile in Egypt. He introduced the cult of the calf in Dan.

The new temple was built to contest and to surpass the temple of Jerusalem. It became the gathering place of the Ten Tribes, or "the sin of Israel", and pilgrims from Judah also went there.

The prophets, who opposed the cult of Dan, called the place Aven, like Aven, or On (Heliopolis) in Egypt.

Its oracle was still active in the days of Jeremiah, in the beginning of the sixth century.

Dan was the northernmost city of the Kingdom of the Ten Tribes, and the capital of the tribe of Dan. It was situated in a valley. If Baal Gad, between the Lebanon and the Anti-Lebanon was not the same place, Dan must have been more to the north.

The place was at the point where the roads meet that run toward Hamath.

No ruins of this temple-city are found. Where was Dan and its temple?
 


Remains of a great temple-city are preserved in Baalbek. At the beginning of the present era it was described as already ancient. It bore the name of Heliopolis, like the Egyptian On, or Aven (Ezekiel); and Amos, who spoke against the worshippers at Dan, prophesied the desolation of Bikat-Aven, or the Valley of Baalbek.

Its cult was introduced from Egypt. During excavations, the figure of a calf was unearthed.

The temple possessed an old oracle. The Talmud contains the information that the oracle of Micah (which according to the Book of Judges was in Dan) stands in Baalbek.

Local tradition assigns the building of the temple of Baalbek to the time of Solomon. The wall of the temple area is built of great stone blocks of the same peculiar shape as those of the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, the remains of the outer wall of the temple area erected by Solomon.

Baalbek lies in a valley (Bi'qa) between the Lebanon and the Anti-Lebanon, and on the junction of the roads that connect Beirut from the west and Damascus from the east with Hamath in the north.

The history of the temple-city of Baalbek in pre-Roman times is not known, neither is its builder known, nor the time when it was built.
 


Two problems—when was Baalbek built and who was its builder, and where was Dan and what was the fate of its temple—have a common answer.

The tradition as to the age of the acropolis and temple area of Baalbek is not wrong. Only a few years after Solomon's death the house of the high places of Dan-Baalbek was built by Jeroboam.* Possibly, Solomon had already built a chapel for the oracle, besides the palace for his Egyptian wife.

The Djenoun who, according to Arab tradition, built Baalbek for Solomon were apparently the tribesmen of Dan. In the Hebrew tradition, too, the tribesmen of Dan, because of the type of worship in their capital, were regarded as evil spirits. In the corrupted name of Delebore, who, according to Macrobius, was the king who built Baalbek and introduced there the cult of Heliopolis from Egypt, it is possible to recognize the name of Jeroboam who actually returned from Egypt before he built "the house of the high places".
 


EDITORIAL POSTSCRIPT:

    Velikovsky's essay on Baalbek was planned to include a discussion of the names by which this place was known in Egyptian texts. This part was not written, but a few notes of his, scattered among his papers, may help us to follow his reasoning. One note reads:

        "Dunip (Tunip) of the el-Amarna letters and other ancient sources was Dan. It was also Kadesh of Seti's conquest. Finally, the place is known as Yenoam ('Yahwe speaks') which refers to the oracle."

    Tunip: As Velikovsky noted in "From the End of the Eighteenth Dynasty to the Time of Ramses II" (KRONOS III.:3, p. 32) certain scholars (e.g., Gauthier) have identified Tunip with Baalbek, though others (e.g., Astour) have disputed the link.

     

    Thutmose III recorded the capture of Tunip in the 29th year of his reign; an inscription recounts the Egyptian king's entering the chamber of offerings and making sacrifices of oxen, calves, etc. toAmon and Harmachis. The el-Amarna letters indicate that the same gods were worshipped at Tunip as in Egypt.

    On the walls of a Theban tomb of the time of Thutmose III (that of Menkheperre-Seneb), among paintings of foreigners of various nations, there is one of a personage from Tunip, carrying a child in his arms. Velikovsky thought that, possibly, it was a depletion of Jeroboam, and that the painting illustrated the passage in the First Book of Kings (II :40):

        "And Jeroboam arose, and fled into Egypt, unto Shishak, king of Egypt..."

    Among the considerations which led Velikovsky to identify Tunip with Dan-Baalbek were,

        (1) Tunip was located in the general area of Baalbek, with some scholars asserting that the two were one and the same.

        (2) There was a temple of Amon at Tunip; the Roman equivalent of Amon - Jupiter - was worshipped at Baalbek.

    Kadesh of Seti's Conquest: This identification was given in brief in Velikovsky's article in KRONOS III:3, mentioned above. The relevant passage reads:

        "There is a mural that shows Seti capturing a city called Kadesh. Modern scholars recognized that this Kadesh or Temple City was not the Kadesh mentioned in the annals of Thutmose. Whereas the Kadesh of Thutmose was in southern Palestine, the Kadesh of Seti was in Coele-Syria. The position of the northern city suggested that it was Dunip, the site of an Amon temple built in the days of Thutmose III. Dunip, in its turn, was identified with Baalbek."

    Pseudo-Hippolytus (Sermo in Sancta Theophania in J.P. Migne, Patrologiae Cursus Completus [Graeca] Vol. 10, col. 705) gives the information that Manasseh, son of Hezekiah, restored Baalbek. In his forthcoming Assyrian Conquest, Velikovsky suggests that this could have been a reward for Manasseh for his "loyalty to the Assyrian-Egyptian axis".

    Yenoam: Regarding Yenoam, I find only the following among Velikovsky's notes:

        "Yenoam-Dan (Yehu probably introduced the cult of Yahwe at Dan)."

    Yenoam, read in Hebrew, could be interpreted as "Ye [Yahwe] speaks"; Velikovsky evidently saw in the name a reference to the oracle at Dan.

     

    Yenoam is mentioned among the towns taken by Thutmose III (he captured it soon after taking Megiddoj. In the el-Amarna letter no. 197 there is a reference to a town named Yanuammu. Later, Seti recorded the despatching of an army against Yenoam, in the first year ofhis reign. Yenoam is once again mentioned on Merneptah's so-called Israel Stele; the claim is that it was "made non-existent." In Ramses II and His Time this deed is ascribed to Nebuchadnezzar.

    - Jan Sammer


References

       1.

          I Kings 11:27, 28.
       2.

          I Kings 12:26, 27.
       3.

          I Kings 12:28, 29.
       4.

          I Kings 12:32. 33.
       5.

          I Kings 12:28.
       6.

          I Kings 12:30.
       7.

          I Kings 12:31.
       8.

          II Kings 23: 15.
       9.

          Judges 20:1; I Samuel 3:20.
      10.

          See Israel Exploration Journal, Vol. 16 (1966), pp. 144-145; ibid., vol. 19 (1969), pp. 121-123. [In 1980, an arched city gate was reportedly uncovered at this site. - LER]
      11.

          Anriquities V.3.i.
      12.

          Similarly, the passage in the Book of Enoch (13:7), which refers to Dan to the "south of the western side of Hermon" must not be treated as an historical location.
      13.

          Numbers 13:21.
      14.

          Numbers 34:3,7-8.
      15.

          Judges 18:27-29.
      16.

          Judges5:17.
      17.

          Judges 18:30.
      18.

          Judges 18:1.
      19.

          Judges 17:4, 7-13.
      20.

          Judges 18:30.
      21.

          Samuel 24:6.
      22.

          Kings 15:20.
      23.

          Amos 8: 14.
      24.

          I Kings 12:30.
      25.

          Hosea 4:15.
      26.

          Hosea 10:5.
      27.

          Joshua 7:2; cf. Joshua 18:11-12: "and the lot . . . of Benjamin . . . and their border . . . at the wilderness of Beth-Aven." Cf. also I Samuel 13:5 and 14:23.
      28.

          Hosea 10:18.
      29.

          I Kings 12:28-30.
      30.

          Amos 1:5.
      31.

          Jeremiah 4:15.
      32.

          Robert Wood, The Ruins of Palmyra and Baalbek (Royal Geographical Society, London, 1827), Vol. Ill, p. 58; first published as The Ruinen of Baalbec (1757).
      33.

          "Wir wissen aussert wenig von dem Schicksal Baalbeks in Altertum", O. Puchstein, Führer durch die Ruinen von Baalbek (Berlin, 1905), pp. 3-4.
      34.

          "Es war leider bei den an glanzenden Erfolgen so reichen Ausgrabungen eine Enttauschung, dass sie uber das Wesen des Gottes und die Geschichte seiner Verehrung nichts gelehrt hat." H. Winnefeld, Baalbek, Ergebnisse der Ausgrabungen und Untersuchungen von 1895-1905, ed. by Th. Wiegand, Vol. II (Berlin, 1923), p. 110.
      35.

          C. F. Volney, Voyage en Syrie et en Egypte, pendent les années 1783-1785 (Paris, 1787), p. 224.
      36.

          Idrisi in P. Jaubert, Geographie d'Edrisi (Paris, 1836-1840), I, p. 353; quoted by C. Ritter, Die Erdkunde, Vol. XVII (Berlin, 1854), p. 224.
      37.

          Al-Qazwini Zakariya ibn Muhammad, Kosmographie, H. F. Wüstenfeld ed. (Berlin, 1848-49), II, p. 104.
      38.

          A. Asher tr. and ed.. The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela (N.Y. 1840-41).
      39.

          R.Wood, TheRuins of Palmyran Baalbek (London, 1827),p.58.
      40.

          C. F. Volney, op. cit., p. 224.
      41.

          E. Robinson, Biblical Researches in Palestine and the Adjacent Regions (London, 1874), Vol. Ill, pp. 519-520.
      42.

          Lucian, De Dea Syria, par. 5; Macrobius, Saturnalia I. 23: Assyrii quoque Solem sub nomine Jovis, quem Dia Heliopoliten cognominant, maximis ceremoniis in civitate, que Heliopolis nuncupatur. Ejus dei simulacrum sumtum est de oppido Aegypti, quod et ipsum Heliopolis apellatur, regnante apud Aegyptios Senemure; perlatum est primum in eam per Opiam, legatum Deleboris, regis Assyriorum, sacerdotesque Aegyptios, quorum princeps fuit Partemetis, diuque habitum apud Assyrios, postea Heliopolim commigravit.
      43.

          Hosea 10:5.
      44.

          Hosea 10:8.
      45.

          Judges 18:28.
      46.

          I Kings 9:17-18.
      47.

          Joshua 19:44.
      48.

          Michaelis, Supplementa ad lexica hebraica (Gottingen, 1784-1792), pp. 197-201; Ritter, Die Erdkunde, Vol. XVII, pp. 229-230; E. F. C. Rosenmüller, The Biblical Geography of Asia Minor, Phoenicia and Arabia, tr.by N. Morren (Edinburgh, 1841), 1. ii., pp. 280-281; W. H. Thomson, "Baalbek" in Encyclopaedia Britannica (14th ed.), Vol. II, p. 835.
      49.

          Joshua ll:17;cf. St. Jerome, Onomastica, article "Baalgad".
      50.

          E. Meyer, Geschichte des Alterthums, Vol. I (first ed., Berlin, 1884), p. 364, note; Robinson, Biblical Researches, III, p. 410, n. 2.
      51.

          Cf. Robinson, Biblical Researches, III, p. 519; Ritter, Die Erdkunde Vol. XVII, pp. 229-230.
      52.

          Song of Songs 8:11.
      53.

          G. H. von Schubert, Reise in das Morgenland in den Jahren 1836 und 1837 (Erlangen, 1838, 1839); Wilson, Lands of the Bible, Vol. II, p. 384.
      54.

          O. Eissfeldt, Tempel und Kulte syrischer Stadte in hellenistischromischer Zeit (Leipzig, 1941), p. 58.
      55.

          F. H. W. Gesenius, Thesaurus philologicus linguae hebraeae et chaldeae Veteris Testamenti (Leipzig, 1829), p. 264.
      56.

          Michaelis, Supplementa ad lexica hebraica, p. 201; Rosenmüller, Biblical Geography, I. ii, p. 281, Wilson, Lands of the Bible, II, p. 384.
      57.

          Herodotus, Histories II. 42; Diodorus Siculus 1.13.2.
      58.

          G. Hoffman, "Aramäische Inschliften.''Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, XI (1896), p. 246.
      59.

          See the recent discussion by Jean-Pierre Adam, "À propos du trilithon de Baalbek, Le transport et la mise à l'oeuvre des mégalithes," Syria LIV (1977), pp. 31-63.
      60.

          O. von Richter, Wallfahrt, p. 88; quoted by Ritter, Die Erdkunde, XVII, p. 231.
      61.

          S. Wolcott, "Notices of Jerusalem; and Excursion to Hebron and Sebeh or Masada; and Journey from Jerusalem northwards to Beirut, etc." in Bibliotheca Sacra (1843), p. 82; quoted by Ritter, Die Erdkunde, XVII, p. 232.
      62.

          See von Schubert, Reise in das Morgenland, op. cit.. Vol. III, p. 325.
      63.

          Chronographia in Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae 11, p. 280.
      64.

          Robinson, Biblical Researches, III, p. 509.
      65.

          Robinson suggested that "Antonine rebuilt the great temple of the Sun: and erected the lesser temple to Jupiter Baal" (Biblical Researches, III, p. 520, n.6).
      66.

          O. Puchstein in Th.Wiegand ed. Palmyra (Berlin, 1932).
      67.

          B. Schulz in Wiegand ed., Palmyra
      68.

          H. Winnefeld, B. Schulz, Baalbek (Berlin, Leipzig, 1921, 1923).
      69.

          L. Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews (Philadelphia, 1928), VI, p. 375.
      70.

          Winnefeld in Wiegand,Baalbek, op. cit., Vol. II (1923), p. 110:
      71.

          Rene Dussaud, "Jupiter heliopolitain," Syria 1 (1920), pp. 3-15; Nina Jidejian, Baalbek Heliopolis "City of the Sun" (Beirut, 1975), ill. no. 135-140.
      72.

          Sat. i. 23. 12.
      73.

          Jeremiah 4:15.
      74.

          Pesahim 117a; see Ginzberg, Legends of the Sews, VI, p. 375.
      75.

          The readers of this passage probably understood it in the sense that Micah's oracular image, after being removed from the temple of Dan, was placed in Baalbek. Baalbek being Dan, such an interpretation is superfluous.

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/arque ... lbek_5.htm

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Deconstructing the walls of Jericho    
Written by A. Kafel  
Monday, 14 August 2006
http://lib1.library.cornell.edu/colldev ... erques.htm

Friday, October 29, 1999
Deconstructing the walls of Jericho

Following 70 years of intensive excavations in the Land of Israel, archaeologists have found out: The patriarchs' acts are legendary, the Israelites did not sojourn in Egypt or make an exodus, they did not conquer the land. Neither is there any mention of the empire of David and Solomon, nor of the source of belief in the God of Israel. These facts have been known for years, but Israel is a stubborn people and nobody wants to hear about it

By Ze'ev Herzog

This is what archaeologists have learned from their excavations in the Land of Israel: the Israelites were never in Egypt, did not wander in the desert, did not conquer the land in a military campaign and did not pass it on to the 12 tribes of Israel. Perhaps even harder to swallow is the fact that the united monarchy of David and Solomon, which is described by the Bible as a regional power, was at most a small tribal kingdom. And it will come as an unpleasant shock to many that the God of Israel, Jehovah, had a female consort and that the early Israelite religion adopted monotheism only in the waning period of the monarchy and not at Mount Sinai.Most of those who are engaged in scientific work in the interlocking spheres of the Bible, archaeology and the history of the Jewish people - and who once went into the field looking for proof to corroborate the Bible story - now agree that the historic events relating to the stages of the Jewish people's emergence are radically different from what that story tells.


What follows is a short account of the brief history of archaeology, with the emphasis on the crises and the big bang, so to speak, of the past decade. The critical question of this archaeological revolution has not yet trickled down into public consciousness, but it cannot be ignored.
Inventing the Bible stories
The archaeology of Palestine developed as a science at a relatively late date, in the late 19th and early 20th century, in tandem with the archaeology of the imperial cultures of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome. Those resource-intensive powers were the first target of the researchers, who were looking for impressive evidence from the past, usually in the service of the big museums in London, Paris and Berlin. That stage effectively passed over Palestine, with its fragmented geographical diversity. The conditions in ancient Palestine were inhospitable for the development of an extensive kingdom, and certainly no showcase projects such as the Egyptian shrines or the Mesopotamian palaces could have been established there. In fact, the archaeology of Palestine was not engendered at the initiative of museums but sprang from religious motives.

The main push behind archaeological research in Palestine was the country's relationship with the Holy Scriptures. The first excavators in Jericho and Shechem (Nablus) were biblical researchers who were looking for the remains of the cities cited in the Bible. Archaeology assumed momentum with the activity of William Foxwell Albright, who mastered the archeology, history and linguistics of the Land of Israel and the ancient Near East. Albright, an American whose father was a priest of Chilean descent, began excavating in Palestine in the 1920s. His declared approach was that archaeology was the principal scientific means to refute the critical claims against the historical veracity of the Bible stories, particularly those of the Wellhausen school in Germany.

The school of biblical criticism that developed in Germany beginning in the second half of the 19th century, of which Julian Wellhausen was a leading figure, challenged the historicity of the Bible stories and claimed that biblical historiography was formulated, and in large measure actually "invented," during the Babylonian exile. Bible scholars, the Germans in particular, claimed that the history of the Hebrews, as a consecutive series of events beginning with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and proceeding through the move to Egypt, the enslavement and the exodus, and ending with the conquest of the land and the settlement of the tribes of Israel, was no more than a later reconstruction of events with a theological purpose.

Albright believed that the Bible is a historical document, which, although it had gone through several editing stages, nevertheless basically reflected the ancient reality. He was convinced that if the ancient remains of Palestine were uncovered, they would furnish unequivocal proof of the historical truth of the events relating to the Jewish people in its land.

The biblical archaeology that developed from Albright and his pupils brought about a series of extensive digs at the important biblical tells: Megiddo, Lachish, Gezer, Shechem (Nablus), Jericho, Jerusalem, Ai, Giveon, Beit She'an, Beit Shemesh, Hazor, Ta'anach and others. The way was straight and clear: every finding that was uncovered would contribute to the building of a harmonious picture of the past. The archaeologists, who enthusiastically adopted the biblical approach, set out on a quest to unearth the "biblical period": the period of the patriarchs, the Canaanite cities that were destroyed by the Israelites as they conquered the land, the boundaries of the 12 tribes, the sites of the settlement period, characterized by "settlement pottery," the "gates of Solomon" at Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer, "Solomon's stables" (or Ahab's), "King Solomon's mines" at Timna - and there are some who are still hard at work and have found Mount Sinai (at Mount Karkoum in the Negev) or Joshua's altar at Mount Ebal.
The crisis
Slowly, cracks began to appear in the picture. Paradoxically, a situation was created in which the glut of findings began to undermine the historical credibility of the biblical descriptions instead of reinforcing them. A crisis stage is reached when the theories within the framework of the general thesis are unable to solve an increasingly large number of anomalies. The explanations become ponderous and inelegant, and the pieces do not lock together smoothly. Here are a few examples of how the harmonious picture collapsed.

Patriarchal Age: The researchers found it difficult to reach agreement on which archaeological period matched the Patriarchal Age. When did Abraham, Isaac and Jacob live? When was the Cave of Machpelah (Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron) bought in order to serve as the burial place for the patriarchs and the matriarchs? According to the biblical chronology, Solomon built the Temple 480 years after the exodus from Egypt (1 Kings 6:1). To that we have to add 430 years of the stay in Egypt (Exodus 12:40) and the vast lifetimes of the patriarchs, producing a date in the 21th century BCE for Abraham's move to Canaan.

However, no evidence has been unearthed that can sustain this chronology. Albright argued in the early 1960s in favor of assigning the wanderings of Abraham to the Middle Bronze Age (22nd-20th centuries BCE). However, Benjamin Mazar, the father of the Israeli branch of biblical archaeology, proposed identifying the historic background of the Patriarchal Age a thousand years later, in the 11th century BCE - which would place it in the "settlement period." Others rejected the historicity of the stories and viewed them as ancestral legends that were told in the period of the Kingdom of Judea. In any event, the consensus began to break down.

The exodus from Egypt, the wanderings in the desert and Mount Sinai: The many Egyptian documents that we have make no mention of the Israelites' presence in Egypt and are also silent about the events of the exodus. Many documents do mention the custom of nomadic shepherds to enter Egypt during periods of drought and hunger and to camp at the edges of the Nile Delta. However, this was not a solitary phenomenon: such events occurred frequently across thousands of years and were hardly exceptional.

Generations of researchers tried to locate Mount Sinai and the stations of the tribes in the desert. Despite these intensive efforts, not even one site has been found that can match the biblical account.

The potency of tradition has now led some researchers to "discover" Mount Sinai in the northern Hijaz or, as already mentioned, at Mount Karkoum in the Negev. These central events in the history of the Israelites are not corroborated in documents external to the Bible or in archaeological findings. Most historians today agree that at best, the stay in Egypt and the exodous occurred in a few families and that their private story was expanded and "nationalized" to fit the needs of theological ideology.

The conquest: One of the shaping events of the people of Israel in biblical historiography is the story of how the land was conquered from the Canaanites. Yet extremely serious difficulties have cropped up precisely in the attempts to locate the archaeological evidence for this story.

Repeated excavations by various expeditions at Jericho and Ai, the two cities whose conquest is described in the greatest detail in the Book of Joshua, have proved very disappointing. Despite the excavators' efforts, it emerged that in the late part of the 13th century BCE, at the end of the Late Bronze Age, which is the agreed period for the conquest, there were no cities in either tell, and of course no walls that could have been toppled. Naturally, explanations were offered for these anomalies. Some claimed that the walls around Jericho were washed away by rain, while others suggested that earlier walls had been used; and, as for Ai, it was claimed that the original story actually referred to the conquest of nearby Beit El and was transferred to Ai by later redactors.

Biblical scholars suggested a quarter of a century ago that the conquest stories be viewed as etiological legends and no more. But as more and more sites were uncovered and it emerged that the places in question died out or were simply abandoned at different times, the conclusion was bolstered that there is no factual basis for the biblical story about the conquest by Israelite tribes in a military campaign led by Joshua.

The Canaanite cities: The Bible magnifies the strength and the fortifications of the Canaanite cities that were conquered by the Israelites: "great cities with walls sky-high" (Deuteronomy 9:1). In practice, all the sites that have been uncovered turned up remains of unfortified settlements, which in most cases consisted of a few structures or the ruler's palace rather than a genuine city. The urban culture of Palestine in the Late Bronze Age disintegrated in a process that lasted hundreds of years and did not stem from military conquest. Moreover, the biblical description is inconsistent with the geopolitical reality in Palestine. Palestine was under Egyptian rule until the middle of the 12th century BCE. The Egyptians' administrative centers were located in Gaza, Yaffo and Beit She'an. Egyptian findings have also been discovered in many locations on both sides of the Jordan River. This striking presence is not mentioned in the biblical account, and it is clear that it was unknown to the author and his editors.

The archaeological findings blatantly contradict the biblical picture: the Canaanite cities were not "great," were not fortified and did not have "sky-high walls." The heroism of the conquerors, the few versus the many and the assistance of the God who fought for his people are a theological reconstruction lacking any factual basis.

Origin of the Israelites: The fusion of the conclusions drawn from the episodes relating to the stages in which the people of Israel emerged gave rise to a discussion of the bedrock question: the identity of the Israelites. If there is no evidence for the exodus from Egypt and the desert journey, and if the story of the military conquest of fortified cities has been refuted by archaeology, who, then, were these Israelites? The archaeological findings did corroborate one important fact: in the early Iron Age (beginning some time after 1200 BCE), the stage that is identified with the "settlement period," hundreds of small settlements were established in the area of the central hill region of the Land of Israel, inhabited by farmers who worked the land or raised sheep. If they did not come from Egypt, what is the origin of these settlers? Israel Finkelstein, professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University, has proposed that these settlers were the pastoral shepherds who wandered in this hill area throughout the Late Bronze Age (graves of these people have been found, without settlements). According to his reconstruction, in the Late Bronze Age (which preceded the Iron Age) the shepherds maintained a barter economy of meat in exchange for grains with the inhabitants of the valleys. With the disintegration of the urban and agricultural system in the lowland, the nomads were forced to produce their own grains, and hence the incentive for fixed settlements arose.

The name "Israel" is mentioned in a single Egyptian document from the period of Merneptah, king of Egypt, dating from 1208 BCE: "Plundered is Canaan with every evil, Ascalon is taken, Gezer is seized, Yenoam has become as though it never was, Israel is desolated, its seed is not." Merneptah refers to the country by its Canaanite name and mentions several cities of the kingdom, along with a non-urban ethnic group. According to this evidence, the term "Israel" was given to one of the population groups that resided in Canaan toward the end of the Late Bronze Age, apparently in the central hill region, in the area where the Kingdom of Israel would later be established.
A kingdom with no name
The united monarchy: Archaeology was also the source that brought about the shift regarding the reconstruction of the reality in the period known as the "united monarchy" of David and Solomon. The Bible describes this period as the zenith of the political, military and economic power of the people of Israel in ancient times. In the wake of David's conquests, the empire of David and Solomon stretched from the Euprates River to Gaza ("For he controlled the whole region west of the Euphrates, from Tiphsah to Gaza, all the kings west of the Euphrates," 1 Kings 5:4). The archaeological findings at many sites show that the construction projects attributed to this period were meager in scope and power.

The three cities of Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer, which are mentioned among Solomon's construction enterprises, have been excavated extensively at the appropriate layers. Only about half of Hazor's upper section was fortified, covering an area of only 30 dunams (7.5 acres), out of a total area of 700 dunams which was settled in the Bronze Age. At Gezer there was apparently only a citadel surrounded by a casematewall covering a small area, while Megiddo was not fortified with a wall.

The picture becomes even more complicated in the light of the excavations conducted in Jerusalem, the capital of the united monarchy. Large sections of the city have been excavated over the past 150 years. The digs have turned up impressive remnants of the cities from the Middle Bronze Age and from Iron Age II (the period of the Kingdom of Judea). No remains of buildings have been found from the period of the united monarchy (even according to the agreed chronology), only a few pottery shards. Given the preservation of the remains from earlier and later periods, it is clear that Jerusalem in the time of David and Solomon was a small city, perhaps with a small citadel for the king, but in any event it was not the capital of an empire as described in the Bible. This small chiefdom is the source of the "Beth David" title mentioned in later Aramean and Moabite inscriptions. The authors of the biblical account knew Jerusalem in the 8th century BCE, with its wall and the rich culture of which remains have been found in various parts of the city, and projected this picture back to the age of the united monarchy. Presumably Jerusalem acquired its central status after the destruction of Samaria, its northern rival, in 722 BCE.

The archaeological findings dovetail well with the conclusions of the critical school of biblical scholarship. David and Solomon were the rulers of tribal kingdoms that controlled small areas: the former in Hebron and the latter in Jerusalem. Concurrently, a separate kingdom began to form in the Samaria hills, which finds expression in the stories about Saul's kingdom. Israel and Judea were from the outset two separate, independent kingdoms, and at times were in an adversarial relationship. Thus, the great united monarchy is an imaginary historiosophic creation, which was composed during the period of the Kingdom of Judea at the earliest. Perhaps the most decisive proof of this is the fact that we do not know the name of this kingdom.

Jehovah and his consort: How many gods, exactly, did Israel have? Together with the historical and political aspects, there are also doubts as to the credibility of the information about belief and worship. The question about the date at which monotheism was adopted by the kingdoms of Israel and Judea arose with the discovery of inscriptions in ancient Hebrew that mention a pair of gods: Jehovah and his Asherah. At two sites, Kuntiliet Ajrud in the southwestern part of the Negev hill region, and at Khirbet el-Kom in the Judea piedmont, Hebrew inscriptions have been found that mention "Jehovah and his Asherah," "Jehovah Shomron and his Asherah, "Jehovah Teman and his Asherah." The authors were familiar with a pair of gods, Jehovah and his consort Asherah, and send blessings in the couple's name. These inscriptions, from the 8th century BCE, raise the possibility that monotheism, as a state religion, is actually an innovation of the period of the Kingdom of Judea, following the destruction of the Kingdom of Israel.

The archaeology of the Land of Israel is completing a process that amounts to a scientific revolution in its field. It is ready to confront the findings of biblical scholarship and of ancient history. But at the same time, we are witnessing a fascinating phenomenon in which all this is simply ignored by the Israeli public. Many of the findings mentioned here have been known for decades. The professional literature in the spheres of archaeology, Bible and the history of the Jewish people has addressed them in dozens of books and hundreds of articles. Even if not all the scholars accept the individual arguments that inform the examples I cited, the majority have adopted their main points.

Nevertheless, these revolutionary views are not penetrating the public consciousness. About a year ago, my colleague, the historian Prof. Nadav Ne'eman, published an article in the Culture and Literature section of Ha'aretz entitled "To Remove the Bible from the Jewish Bookshelf," but there was no public outcry. Any attempt to question the reliability of the biblical descriptions is perceived as an attempt to undermine "our historic right to the land" and as shattering the myth of the nation that is renewing the ancient Kingdom of Israel. These symbolic elements constitute such a critical component of the construction of the Israeli identity that any attempt to call their veracity into question encounters hostility or silence. It is of some interest that such tendencies within the Israeli secular society go hand-in-hand with the outlook among educated Christian groups. I have found a similar hostility in reaction to lectures I have delivered abroad to groups of Christian bible lovers, though what upset them was the challenge to the foundations of their fundamentalist religious belief.

It turns out that part of Israeli society is ready to recognize the injustice that was done to the Arab inhabitants of the country and is willing to accept the principle of equal rights for women - but is not up to adopting the archaeological facts that shatter the biblical myth. The blow to the mythical foundations of the Israeli identity is apparently too threatening, and it is more convenient to turn a blind eye.
 
(c) copyright 1999 Ha'aretz. All Rights Reserved
Last Updated ( Tuesday, 15 August 2006 )

http://mideastfacts.org/facts/index.php ... &Itemid=34

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

The archeological find of the lost nation of "Elba" in the 1970s, in some ways is as important as the Dead Sea scrolls for uncovering the state of "Israel" which appears to not have a been a state at all about this time 2300BC.  There is some debate about the "cities" researchers claimed are found described in the Elba tablets such as Soddom and Gomorrah. It seems several claims were made not based on clear translations of the Semitic Cuneiform texts.  What is found is a highly advanced civilization with complex "Code" laws before Moses received his tablets.  In fact, the ancient Jews probably copied these codes completely from the Elba kingdom.  

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Elba

Archaeological Affirmations (7/10)
Posted July 10, 2008
Filed under: Apologetics, Archaeology, Bible, Religion |

A few weeks ago, we published a post on confirmation of the Bible offered by Archaeology. The post was purposefully general. However, I would like to start addressing specific archaeological finds that affirm the biblical record and give us more evidence to believe. I cannot say how frequent or how consistent these will be, but I guess we'll see.  

Evidence from Ebla

Ebla Tablet

Two professors from the University of Rome, archaeologist Dr. Paolo Matthiae and epigrapher Dr. Giovanni Pettinato, began their work in 1964 excavating a site at Tell Mardikh in Syria. By 1968, they had uncovered a statue of King Ibbit-Lim with an inscription referencing Ishtar, the godess who "shines brightly in Ebla." This was the first of many phenomenal discoveries to come.

As it turns out Dr. Matthiae and Dr. Petinato had struck the surface of a considerably large civilization. Ebla had a population of some 260,000 people at its height of power in 2300 BC. Within 50 years this kingdom over a quarter of a million strong was destroyed by Naram-Sin, the grandson of Sargon the Great. For over 3 thousand years this once great Kingdom waited to be discovered by the Italian professors.

Since 1974, over 17,000 tablets have been found at the Ebla site. They are all confirmed to be from the time of the Kingdom of Ebla. There is little known of any direct relationship of Ebla to the Biblical world, but there is a wealth of contributions made in the field of biblical criticism. The Tablets reveal invaluable insight to the historical context of the Patriarchal period (the lives of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) as well as confirmation of the historical reliability of the first five books of the Bible written by Moses about 1400 BC, a thousand years after the Elba Kingdom.

Advocates of the Documentary Hypothesis teach that the period described in the Mosaic narrative had to have been prior to all knowledge of writing. But, the findings at Ebla show that there were laws, customs and events recorded in writing a thousand years before Moses, in the same area of the world in which Moses and the patriarchs lived.

Critics have not only taught that it was a time prior to writing but also that priestly code and social laws recorded in the Pentateuch were too far developed to have been written by Moses. It was said that the Israelites were too primitive at that time to have written such intricate legislation and code. Higher criticism taught that it was not until about the 6th century BC during the rule of the Persian empire (538-331 BC) that such detailed law making was recorded.

However, the tablets found at Ebla contain law codes that record elaborate judicial proceedings and case law. Many are comparable to the Deuteronomy law code which critics claim could not have been written as early as the Biblical record depicts.

Another example of the contribution of the Ebla tablets is in relation to Genesis 14. This chapter was for years considered to be historically unreliable. The victory of Abraham over Chedorlaomer and the Mesopotamian kings has been described as fictitious. The five Cities of the Plain – Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim and Zoar – were said to be only legend.

Yet the Ebla archives refer to all five Cities of the Plain from the Genesis account. On one table the cities are listed in the exact same sequence as Genesis 14! The context set by the tablets echo the culture of the patriarchal period and depict that, before the catastrophe recorded in Genesis 14, the area was a prosperous area experiencing prosperity and success, as described by Genesis.

A final contribution of the Ebla archives is concerning Biblical names. These writings verified many names of people and places mentioned in Genesis and other Old Testament books that were, prior to these discoveries, thought to be mythical in nature. The authorship of many Old Testament books came into question because many of these names were formerly thought to be younger than the Biblical record would have them appear.

For example, the name "Canaan" was in use in the Ebla writings, a name skeptics once said was not used as early as the Biblical record depicts. However, not only is the name used, but the geographic depiction coincides with the Bible as well. Also, the word "tehom" (Genesis 1:2) was said to be a word used in much later civilizations than those spoken of in Genesis. It was therefore argued that Genesis must have been written much later then the time of Moses. However, in the writings of the Elba archive, tehom appeared repeatedly as a regular word in their vocabulary, proving its usage some 800 years before Moses.

http://biblicism.wordpress.com/2008/07/ ... tions-710/

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Ebla
By Carol Miller*
   

"Success is a journey, not a destination."
Anonymous

The ruins of an ancient city called Ebla (modern Tel Mardikh) -- whose lavish and richly productive culture, c. 2250 B.C., was amply documented in the Mari archives, and referred to as well in nearly every relevant library, inscription and archive from Carchemish to Qatna -- are strewn across the rolling green landscape of western Syria, some 55 kilometers south of Aleppo and just three kilometers east of the Aleppo-Damascus highway, in the jurisdiction of Idlib, 26 kilometers to the northwest.

Historical Ebla is mentioned specifically as a center of far-reaching political and military impact, as well as commercial influence, in Akkadian texts c. 2300 B.C., inscriptions from Alalakh (Tell Atchanah) in the Amuq plain, c. 1750 B.C., and from Emar (Meskeneh), c. 1400 B.C. References appear as well in the annals of Thutmose III as described on the walls of Karnak, and Hittite texts from Anatolia. Its precise whereabouts, however, was still a mystery, until the eventual soundings across sixty hectares, at a selected location on Tell Mardikh, revealed the ruins of the public buildings, perimeter walls, palaces and temples of the archaeological Ebla, "White Rock", referring to the natural limestone hill which ultimately evolved into the acropolis of a political and economic power stretching from the Taurus mountains to the north, the Euphrates to the east, and Hama to the south.

According to the findings, beginning in 1964, of the Italian archaeological mission from the Rome university of "La Sapienza", under the direction of Paolo Matthiae, Ebla reached its peak during the mid-Third Millennium as the capital of a mighty kingdom, with rich trade connections across the region, as documented in an astonishing cache of 8000 clay tablets unearthed between 1974 and 1976.

The Ebla tablets, written in a Semitic language now defined as Eblaite, were sufficiently detailed and convincing to have led to the revision of every prior assumption regarding Third Millennium urban structure, Amorite expansion of the period, and Ebla's role, not only as an independent kingdom but as a key player among the dominant regional hegemonies, particularly as an ally of the nearby kingdom of Yamkhad, with its capital in Aleppo.

Texts from Emar, says Amelie Kuhrt, along with the virtually contemporary material from Ugarit, texts from Alalakh IV and VII, and the vast archives from Mari, combined with the evidence from Ebla's own archives, provide "an extraordinarily vital picture of a cosmopolitan and distinctive regional Syrian culture", based on independent city-states whose destinies were interwoven as a result of their commercial and political alliances, as well as their inevitable rivalries. "They were frequently dominated by the larger empires to the north, east and south, but they nevertheless preserved their individual cultural identity, which has only begun to be understood more fully over the last half of the twentieth century."

Ebla, one of the most interesting and far-reaching among them all, has yielded invaluable archaeological material, including palaces, library, temples, a strongly fortified city-wall, and subterranean tombs analogous to those found slightly later in Ugarit, all of which indicate the city's ascendance, collapse and revival as an important urban center.

The Italians were initially attracted to Ebla because of indications of Early and Middle Bronze Age occupation, yet excavations revealed even earlier habitation, dating from the site of a late Fourth Millennium village, followed by an early proto-Syrian settlement, containing substantial remains of a singular pottery type known as khirbet kerak.

The "lower town" occupies nearly 45 hectares. It was enclosed by a high, fortified wall, in effect a gigantic rampart of earth and stone, penetrated by four gateways, presumably the accesses to the four quarters of the Bronze Age city, with its population numbering in the tens of thousands. One of these gateways, still on view, is lined with blocks of black and white stone, corresponding to the Middle Bronze Age (level IIIA).

In the center of the enclosure is the tel, or acropolis, crowned by the remains of palaces and administrative structures indicated, among other relics, by Bronze Age basalt basins, their frontal panels, or orthostats, exquisitely carved in relief in varying styles - with influence from Cappadocia to Carchemish to the Euphrates-and a turreted temple. The inscribed fragment of a votive statue, unearthed in this temple during the 1968 archaeological season, bears a cuneiform dedication to Ishtar, with a commemorative text attributed to the Amorite monarch Ibbit-Lim. Sources are divided as to whether he was a king of Ebla or of Mari. It may be reasonable to assume he was king of Mari at a time of Amorite domination of Ebla, thus placing it under Mari's jurisdiction. In any case, the inscription, corresponding to the Middle Bronze Level I period (contemporary with the end of the Third Dynasty of Ur, c. 2000 B.C.), allowed the site of Tell Mardikh to be identified with Ebla.

Excavations in the area of the Ishtar temple revealed a courtyard and two walls that had presumably formed part of a brick palace dating from the Early Bronze Age (Period IIB1, c. 2400-2300 B.C.) A low dais, possibly part of a throne, occupies a space to one side of the entranceway to the courtyard. Adjacent stairs were decorated with mosaics on wooden panels that are now exhibited in the on-site museum a short distance from the excavations.

At right angles to the throne a wider flight of graceful and well-proportioned stone steps rose very gently to an upper level of construction, now vanished. Projecting into the courtyard was the small room where the clay tablets were stored. The palace had been thoroughly and maliciously torched, but the fire, instead of contributing to the deterioration of the mud-brick tablets, served to preserve them, hard as rocks and for all practical purposes, indestructible.

Over two thousand documents were recovered from this one deposit. The tablets had been imprinted by local scribes employing the regional version of the cuneiform tradition. Translations have revealed a variety of letters, treaties, administrative documents dealing with taxes -- usually associated with textiles or metals -- lists of supplies for the royal family, procedures for visitors, rather pragmatic ritual texts, instructions relating to incantations or magical spells without any special theological or mystical obsession, and political chronology. Ebla's most powerful king was listed as Ebrium, or Ibrium, who concluded the so-called "Treaty with Ashur", which offered the Assyrian king Tudia the use of trading post officially controlled by Ebla.

The fifth and last king of Ebla during this period was Ebrium's son, Ibbi-Sipish, the first to succeed in a dynastic line, thus breaking with the established Eblaite custom of electing its ruler for a fixed term of office, lasting seven years. This absolutism may have contributed to the unrest that was ultimately instrumental in the city's decline. Meantime, however, the reign of Ibbi-Sipish was considered a time of inordinate prosperity, in part because the king was given to frequent travel abroad. It was recorded both in Ebla and Aleppo that he concluded specific treaties with neighboring Armi, as Aleppo was called at the time.

The Third Millennium archives offer nothing in the way of literature, as such. They do, however, offer a microcosmic view of an industrious, energetic, well-ordered style of living in a prosperous kingdom, with control over the sources of timber in the mountains to the west; and particularly occupied with the raising of sheep and the producing of woolen textiles. The textiles of Ebla are in fact mentioned in documents from as far away as the Sumerian city-state of Lagash.

Two palace complexes, jointly referred to as "Palace G" - including the so-called "Ceremonial Wing", the "Administrative Wing", the "Residential Wing", and the royal archives -- occupy the area around the base of the tel. Since Ebla was destroyed on two occasions the structures may have been contemporary but more likely they were superimposed. The earlier destruction is generally attributed to Sargon of Akkad, who claimed that Dagan had "given him" Ebla and Mari, among other key sites in the region. On the other hand, it was his grandson, Naram-Sin, who claimed the god Nergal had given him Armanum (possibly Aleppo) and Ebla, "which no king had previously destroyed." Archaeology has nonetheless determined that the archaic palace was occupied in two phases, one in the Early Bronze IV and again in the Middle Bronze II, the second structure built over the ruins of the prior construction, which thus determined its shape, as well as the distribution of the rooms. These included a room filled with appliances for the grinding of grains. Archaeologists have referred to the grain as "corn", which could only have been the case in the event of an exchange with Mesoamerica, feasible, not unlikely, but to date not fully documented.

Objects unearthed in the palace ruins suggested constant contact with Babylonia, or with the styles in vogue there. Decorative items or objects of personal adornment had been confected of gold, lapis lazuli and ivory, while cylinder seals portray variations on Babylonian motifs. Among the most important pieces are the diminutive statuette of a kneeling, human-headed bull, its wooden body covered with gold leaf and the dressed Assyrian style beard of steatite; but limestone figures representing soldiers or priests, deities and deified animals were also found, in an aesthetic similar to the Sumerian style patent in Mari but confected not of crystallized gypsum, as along the Euphrates, but rather of various combinations of steatite, lapis lazuli, white limestone and gold. Especially remarkable is the stylized leopard standing perfectly erect on its hind legs. And really amazing is the rustic abstraction of an anthropomorphic Euphrates ox, with his stylized, almost infantile, beard. Curiously however, the fragments of carved wooden furniture had been inlaid with mother-of-pearl or stone, sometimes gold-plated, in a style more commonly associated with Egypt.

A group of royal tombs was discovered by sheer accident, to one side of the palace complex. The collapse of a roof revealed the rich contents in the chambers below. Pieces discovered inside the "Tomb of the Lord of the Goats", for example, included an Egyptian mace handle in silver, gold and alabaster, bearing the name of a Thirteenth Dynasty pharaoh -- Hetepibre Harnejheryotef, who reigned between 1775 and 1765 B.C. -- as well as lovely gold jewelry in styles associated both with Babylonia and the Levant, and ivory carvings in the Egyptian fashion of the time. These may have been gifts of state from the various rulers across the region.

Ebla was again sacked by the advance of the Hittite armies, under Murshili I or Hattusili I, c. 1600 B.C., bound for their conquest of Amorite Babylonia. Corresponding to this period are the Western Palace (Palace Q, called "The Palace of the Crown Prince") with the royal necropolis, as well as the Northern Palace ("Palace P"), Palace E, and various temples - dedicated to Shamash, the Sun God; to Hadad, God of Storms, Rain and Fertility of the Earth; to Reshef, God of the Underworld; and to the Royal Ancestors, as well as a newer version of a temple to Ishtar -- among other constructions. Yet despite the rampant destruction, Ebla continued to thrive well into the Middle Bronze Age.

The Italian team also found subsequent settlement strata, including traces of occupation during the Aramean period, 720-535 B.C., the Persian period that followed, and into the Hellenistic period until about 200 B.C. Roman remains, however, are practically nonexistent, and Byzantine habitation is confined to the discovery of a small Christian hermitage at the foot of the acropolis, dating from the seventh century A.D. After that, it would appear, Ebla was abandoned and forgotten.

Ebla's importance, however, and its impact on the archaeological assessment of a long period of cultural history over a wide geographical area, can never be overestimated. The beauty of the site, furthermore, and its rich aesthetic, make its ruins as attractive as are its artistic treasures, on display in the on-site museum, as well as in the museums of Idlib, Hama, Aleppo and Damascus.

http://www.syriagate.com/Syria/about/ci ... bla-cm.htm

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

When Meteorites Fell From Mars
ThunderboltsProject 12 videos

[youtube:k8ndxe66]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEWPVkFaEhY[/youtube]k8ndxe66]


http://www.youtube.com/v/zEWPVkFaEhY?version=3


Mother Goddess & the Dragon
[youtube:k8ndxe66]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Clq-GiqvL9o[/youtube]k8ndxe66]


When Saturn Ruled the World
[youtube:k8ndxe66]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11g9wj22J8I[/youtube]k8ndxe66]

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

(I don't subscribe to this but worth a look. I do think it is possible that the earth had different degrees of "gravitational pull" in recent history, different from how a stone falls today. How the stones at Baalbek were created is still a massive mystery..  -- CSR)

[youtube:20zju3l8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N63lhtx2q8o[/youtube]20zju3l8]

[youtube:20zju3l8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18CY7ZaCfzY[/youtube]20zju3l8]