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Proof of Jeremiah Unearthed in Jerusalem
and other News, Reports & Commentary of Biblical Relevance
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P. O. Box 100223
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Shalom in Christ Jesus,
Some of my favorite topics to cover in the alert are those discoveries that continue to disprove the skeptics such as the many archeological finds that show the Bible has been correct all along.
This alert is a compilation of such articles plus others regarding signs in the heavens and developments in Israel with the Temple Mount and other Biblical locations.
May this alert be an encouragement in these very dark last days.
BE/\LERT!
Scott Brisk
Ps - You may have noticed the different design of the last couple of alerts. I am in the process of trying to come up with what template works best so please be patient as the look may change a bit over the next few weeks before settling down. |
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John 1:1-3
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.
Colossians 1:16-17
For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities--all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.
Isaiah 40:8
The grass withers, the flower fades,
But the word of our God stands forever.
Luke 21:33
"Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away.
Isaiah 44:6-8
"Thus says the LORD, the King of Israel
And his Redeemer, the LORD of hosts:
`I am the first and I am the last,
And there is no God besides Me.
`Who is like Me? Let him proclaim and declare it;
Yes, let him recount it to Me in order,
From the time that I established the ancient nation.
And let them declare to them the things that are coming
And the events that are going to take place.
`Do not tremble and do not be afraid;
Have I not long since announced it to you and declared it?
And you are My witnesses.
Is there any God besides Me,
Or is there any other Rock?
I know of none.' "
Revelation 22:13
"I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end."
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| Proof of Jeremiah Unearthed in Jerusalem |
 ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Hana Levi Julian - August 4, 2008
Archaeologists have unearthed proof of another Biblical story at Jerusalem's ancient City of David, this time corroborating the Book of Jeremiah.
A completely intact seal impression, or "bula", bearing the name Gedaliahu ben Pashur was uncovered. The bula is actually a stamped engraving made of mortar.
Gedaliahu ben Pashur's bula was found a bare few meters away from the site where a second such seal, this one belonging to Yuchal ben Shlemiyahu was found three years ago, at the entrance to the City of David.
In the Book of Jeremiah (38:1-4), both men are mentioned as ministers to King Tzidkiyahu, who reigned from 597-586 BCE. The two, along with another pair, demanded the death penalty for the prophet Jeremiah in response to his plea for the king to surrender the city to the oncoming hordes of the Babylonian conqueror Nebuchadnezzer.
According to Professor Eilat Mazar of Jerusalem's Hebrew University, who led the dig, the ancient Hebrew letters "are very clearly preserved." The seal impression was found in clay, she said.
The verses read as follows:
Shephatiah son of Mattan, Gedaliah son of Pashur, Yuchal son of Shelemiah and Pashur son of Malchiah heard the things that Jeremiah was speaking to the people saying:
"Thus said Hashem: Whoever remains in this city will die by the sword, by the famine or by the pestilence, whereas whoever goes out [in surrender] to the Chaldeans will live; he will have his life as a booty, and he will live.
"Thus said Hashem: This city will surely be delivered into the hand of the army of the king of Babylonia, and he will capture it."
And the[se] officers said to the king, "Let this man be put to death now, because he is weakening the hands of the soldiers who remain in this city, and the hands of all the people, by speaking to them such things. For this man does not seek the welfare of this people, but rather [their] detriment."
"How absolutely fantastic and special this find is, can only be realized when you hold in your hand this magnificent one-centimeter piece of clay and know that it survived 2,600 years in the debris of the destruction, and came to us complete and in perfect condition," said Mazar.
Mazar's team of archaeologists focused its efforts on the layer of artifacts from the First Temple period located just outside the walls of the Old City, near Dung Gate.
The seal impression that was found three years ago was uncovered inside a stone structure that Mazar said she believed was the Palace of David. Gedaliahu's seal impression was unearthed at the foot of the external wall of the same structure, under a tower that appeared to have been built in the days of Nechemia in the fifth century BCE.
Mazar has been excavating the site since 2005. She is a senior fellow at the Shalem Center, a Jerusalem-based research and educational institute, and heads its Institute of Archaeology. The Ir David (City of David) Foundation was the principal sponsor of the excavation, together with the Israel Antiquities Authority, the Hebrew University, and the Shalem Center.
Original Report Here | |
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Hebrew tablet tells of resurrection before Jesus
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'Christians will find it shocking - a challenge to their theology'
WORLDNETDAILY - July 6, 2008
A stone tablet written in Hebrew is generating debate as some scholars are saying its words point to a suffering messiah who was killed and rose again three days later decades before Jesus of Nazareth.
Daniel Boyarin, a professor of Talmudic culture at the University of California at Berkeley told The International Herald Tribune, "Some Christians will find it shocking - a challenge to the uniqueness of their theology - while others will be comforted by the idea of it being a traditional part of Judaism."
The tablet itself, about three feet tall and containing 87 lines of Hebrew in two neat columns, is a rare find because its words are written in ink, rather than engraved. Experts who have analyzed the writing date the stone from the late first century B.C., and a chemical examination conducted by a professor at Tel Aviv University showed no reason to doubt the date.
The content of the writing, however, remains much in doubt, as evidenced by a handful of articles on the stone and several due to be published in coming months.
The tablet was discovered roughly ten years ago, purchased from a Jordanian antiquities dealer and stored until recently in a private collection in Zurich. According to the Tribune, news of the tablet excited scholars last year when Ada Yardeni, an Israeli scholar of Hebrew scripts, published a long analysis of the stone in Cathedra, a Hebrew-language history and archaeology quarterly.
David Jeselsohn, the tablet's owner, told the Tribune, "I didn't realize how significant it was until I showed it to Ada Yardeni, who specializes in Hebrew writing, a few years ago. She was overwhelmed. 'You have got a Dead Sea Scroll on stone,' she told me."
The tablet, called "Gabriel's Revelation," is broken and faded, making much of its content debatable. The words tell of a vision, supposedly given by the angel Gabriel, of the apocalypse.
Lines 19 through 21 of the tablet contain words, which translated read: "In three days you will know that evil will be defeated by justice."
Line 80 of the tablet begins with the words "L'shloshet yamin," meaning "in three days," but then fades. Some scholars see the next word as illegible, but Israel Knohl, a professor of Bible studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, says the word is Hebrew for "live," followed by even more difficult-to-read words that he claims complete a command meaning, "I three days you shall live, I, Gabriel, command you."
Knohl told the Tribune that he interprets the tablet to tell of a messianic figure named Simon, whose death was recorded by the Jewish historian Josephus. The tablet, Knohl contends, was likely written by Simon's followers and demonstrates that messianic followers even before Jesus looked to their leaders rising again, thus nullifying the frequent claim that Jesus' resurrection was a uniquely developed story.
If Knohl's interpretation of "Gabriel's Revelation" is correct, it would lend evidence to his previous theories, published in his 2002 book, "The Messiah before Jesus." Knohl is one of several scholars who suggest Jesus may not have been unique in his claim to face suffering, death and resurrection, but that sources, like this tablet, suggest a common messianic story that New Testament writers may have merely been copying.
"This should shake our basic view of Christianity," Knohl told the Tribune. "Resurrection after three days becomes a motif developed before Jesus, which runs contrary to nearly all scholarship. What happens in the New Testament was adopted by Jesus and his followers based on an earlier messiah story."
Moshe Bar-Asher, president of the Israeli Academy of Hebrew Language and emeritus professor of Hebrew and Aramaic at the Hebrew University, however, remains skeptical of Knohl's interpretation of the tablet.
"There is one problem," he told the Tribune. "In crucial places of the text there is a lack of text. I understand Knohl's tendency to find there keys to the pre-Christian period, but in two to three crucial lines of the text there are a lot of missing words." Bar-Asher plans to publish his own paper on the tablet in coming months.
If the stone tablet does represent a "Dead Sea Scroll on stone," the debate over its meaning will likely continue for many years. The Dead Sea Scrolls, originally discovered in 1947 in caves near the Dead Sea, contain pre Christian-era copies of the Hebrew Scriptures, the oldest known copies at the time.
The Scrolls continue to be studied and debated, and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Scrolls' discovery, begins a three-day "The Dead Sea Scrolls and Contemporary Culture" conference today. Israel Knohl is scheduled to speak at the conference about the "Gabriel's Revelation" stone.
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Tablet ignites debate on messiah and resurrection
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INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE [NYTimes Group/Sulzberger] - By Ethan Bronner - July 5, 2008
JERUSALEM: A three-foot-tall tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew that scholars believe dates from the decades just before the birth of Jesus is causing a quiet stir in biblical and archaeological circles, especially because it may speak of a messiah who will rise from the dead after three days.
If such a messianic description really is there, it will contribute to a developing re-evaluation of both popular and scholarly views of Jesus, since it suggests that the story of his death and resurrection was not unique but part of a recognized Jewish tradition at the time.
The tablet, probably found near the Dead Sea in Jordan according to some scholars who have studied it, is a rare example of a stone with ink writings from that era - in essence, a Dead Sea Scroll on stone.
It is written, not engraved, across two neat columns, similar to columns in a Torah. But the stone is broken, and some of the text is faded, meaning that much of what it says is open to debate.
Still, its authenticity has so far faced no challenge, so its role in helping to understand the roots of Christianity in the devastating political crisis faced by the Jews of the time seems likely to increase.
Daniel Boyarin, a professor of Talmudic culture at the University of California at Berkeley, said that the stone was part of a growing body of evidence suggesting that Jesus could be best understood through a close reading of the Jewish history of his day.
"Some Christians will find it shocking - a challenge to the uniqueness of their theology - while others will be comforted by the idea of it being a traditional part of Judaism," Boyarin said.
Given the highly charged atmosphere surrounding all Jesus-era artifacts and writings, both in the general public and in the fractured and fiercely competitive scholarly community, as well as the concern over forgery and charlatanism, it will probably be some time before the tablet's contribution is fully assessed. It has been around 60 years since the Dead Sea Scrolls were uncovered, and they continue to generate enormous controversy regarding their authors and meaning.
The scrolls, documents found in the Qumran caves of the West Bank, contain some of the only known surviving copies of biblical writings from before the first century AD In addition to quoting from key books of the Bible, the scrolls describe a variety of practices and beliefs of a Jewish sect at the time of Jesus.
How representative the descriptions are and what they tell us about the era are still strongly debated. For example, a question that arises is whether the authors of the scrolls were members of a monastic sect or in fact mainstream. A conference marking 60 years since the discovery of the scrolls will begin on Sunday at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, where the stone, and the debate over whether it speaks of a resurrected messiah, as one iconoclastic scholar believes, also will be discussed.
Oddly, the stone is not really a new discovery. It was found about a decade ago and bought from a Jordanian antiquities dealer by an Israeli-Swiss collector who kept it in his Zurich home. When an Israeli scholar examined it closely a few years ago and wrote a paper on it last year, interest began to rise. There is now a spate of scholarly articles on the stone, with several due to be published in the coming months.
"I couldn't make much out of it when I got it," said David Jeselsohn, the owner, who is himself an expert in antiquities. "I didn't realize how significant it was until I showed it to Ada Yardeni, who specializes in Hebrew writing, a few years ago. She was overwhelmed. 'You have got a Dead Sea Scroll on stone,' she told me."
Much of the text, a vision of the apocalypse transmitted by the angel Gabriel, draws on the Old Testament, especially the prophets Daniel, Zechariah and Haggai.
Yardeni, who analyzed the stone along with Binyamin Elitzur, is an expert on Hebrew script, especially of the era of King Herod, who died in 4 BC The two of them published a long analysis of the stone more than a year ago in Cathedra, a Hebrew-language quarterly devoted to the history and archaeology of Israel, and said that, based on the shape of the script and the language, the text dated from the late first century BC
A chemical examination by Yuval Goren, a professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University who specializes in the verification of ancient artifacts, has been submitted to a peer-review journal. He declined to give details of his analysis until publication, but he said that he knew of no reason to doubt the stone's authenticity.
It was in Cathedra that Israel Knohl, an iconoclastic professor of Bible studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, first heard of the stone, which Yardeni and Elitzur dubbed "Gabriel's Revelation," also the title of their article. Knohl posited in a book published in 2000 the idea of a suffering messiah before Jesus, using a variety of rabbinic and early apocalyptic literature as well as the Dead Sea Scrolls. But his theory did not shake the world of Christology as he had hoped, partly because he had no textual evidence from before Jesus.
When he read "Gabriel's Revelation," he said, he believed he saw what he needed to solidify his thesis, and he has published his argument in the latest issue of The Journal of Religion.
Knohl is part of a larger scholarly movement that focuses on the political atmosphere in Jesus' day as an important explanation of that era's messianic spirit. As he notes, after the death of Herod, Jewish rebels sought to throw off the yoke of the Rome-supported monarchy, so the rise of a major Jewish independence fighter could take on messianic overtones.
In Knohl's interpretation, the specific messianic figure embodied on the stone could be a man named Simon who was slain by a commander in the Herodian army, according to the first-century historian Josephus. The writers of the stone's passages were probably Simon's followers, Knohl contends.
The slaying of Simon, or any case of the suffering messiah, is seen as a necessary step toward national salvation, he says, pointing to lines 19 through 21 of the tablet - "In three days you will know that evil will be defeated by justice" - and other lines that speak of blood and slaughter as pathways to justice.
To make his case about the importance of the stone, Knohl focuses especially on line 80, which begins clearly with the words "L'shloshet yamin," meaning "in three days." The next word of the line was deemed partially illegible by Yardeni and Elitzur, but Knohl, who is an expert on the language of the Bible and Talmud, says the word is "hayeh," or "live" in the imperative. It has an unusual spelling, but it is one in keeping with the era.
Two more hard-to-read words come later, and Knohl said he believed that he had deciphered them as well, so that the line reads, "In three days you shall live, I, Gabriel, command you."
To whom is the archangel speaking? The next line says "Sar hasarin," or prince of princes. Since the Book of Daniel, one of the primary sources for the Gabriel text, speaks of Gabriel and of "a prince of princes," Knohl contends that the stone's writings are about the death of a leader of the Jews who will be resurrected in three days.
He says further that such a suffering messiah is very different from the traditional Jewish image of the messiah as a triumphal, powerful descendant of King David.
"This should shake our basic view of Christianity," he said as he sat in his office of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem where he is a senior fellow in addition to being the Yehezkel Kaufman Professor of Biblical Studies at Hebrew University. "Resurrection after three days becomes a motif developed before Jesus, which runs contrary to nearly all scholarship. What happens in the New Testament was adopted by Jesus and his followers based on an earlier messiah story."
Yardeni said she was impressed with the reading and considered it indeed likely that the key illegible word was "hayeh," or "live." Whether that means Simon is the messiah under discussion, she is less sure.
Moshe Bar-Asher, president of the Israeli Academy of Hebrew Language and emeritus professor of Hebrew and Aramaic at the Hebrew University, said he spent a long time studying the text and considered it authentic, dating from no later than the first century BC His 25-page paper on the stone will be published in the coming months.
Regarding Knohl's thesis, Bar-Asher is also respectful but cautious. "There is one problem," he said. "In crucial places of the text there is lack of text. I understand Knohl's tendency to find there keys to the pre-Christian period, but in two to three crucial lines of text there are a lot of missing words."
Moshe Idel, a professor of Jewish thought at Hebrew University who has just published a book on the son of God, said that given the way every tiny fragment from that era yielded scores of articles and books, "Gabriel's Revelation" and Knohl's analysis deserved serious attention. "Here we have a real stone with a real text," he said. "This is truly significant."
Knohl said that it was less important whether Simon was the messiah of the stone than the fact that it strongly suggested that a savior who died and rose after three days was an established concept at the time of Jesus. He notes that in the Gospels, Jesus makes numerous predictions of his suffering and New Testament scholars say such predictions must have been written in by later followers because there was no such idea present in his day.
But there was, he said, and "Gabriel's Revelation" shows it.
"His mission is that he has to be put to death by the Romans to suffer so his blood will be the sign for redemption to come," Knohl said. "This is the sign of the son of Joseph. This is the conscious view of Jesus himself. This gives the Last Supper an absolutely different meaning. To shed blood is not for the sins of people but to bring redemption to Israel."
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| Prehistoric giant animals killed by man, not climate: study |
AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE - August 12, 2008
Genesis 10:8-9
Now Cush became the father of Nimrod; he became a mighty one on the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the LORD; therefore it is said, "Like Nimrod a mighty hunter before the LORD."
The chance discovery of the remains of a prehistoric giant kangaroo has cast doubts on the long-held view that climate change drove it and other mega-fauna to extinction, a new study reveals.
The research, published this week in the US-based journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, argues that man likely hunted to death the giant kangaroo and other very large animals on the southern island of Tasmania.
The debate centres on the skull of a giant kangaroo found in a cave in the thick rainforest of the rugged northwest of Tasmania in 2000.
Scientists dated the find at 41,000 years old, some 2,000 years after humans first began to live in the area.
"Up until now, people thought that the Tasmanian mega-fauna had actually gone extinct before people arrived on the island," a member of the British and Australian study, Professor Richard Roberts, told AFP Tuesday.
He said that it was likely that hunting killed off Tasmania's mega-fauna -- including the long-muzzled, 120 kilogram (264 pound) giant kangaroo, a rhinoceros-sized wombat and marsupial 'lions' which resembled leopards.
Roberts, from the University of Wollongong south of Sydney, said the idea that climate change could account for the death of the animals was disputed by the fact the area had a very stable climate in the critical time period.
"Things were very climatically stable in that part of Australia and yet the mega-fauna still managed to go extinct," he said. "So it's down to humans of one sort or another."
Roberts said because the large animals were slow breeders, it would not have required an aggressive campaign to see them quickly die out.
"A lot of people still have in their minds an axe-wielding, spear-wielding people, bloodthirsty, out there slaughtering all over the place -- it wasn't like that at all," he said.
"It was basically just one joey (baby kangaroo) in the pot for Christmas. And that's all you've got to go to do to drive slow-breeding species to extinction."
Roberts said the Tasmanian results back up the theory that man was responsible for the death of the mega-fauna on mainland Australia, estimated by some to have occurred shortly after human occupation about 46,000 years ago.
The reasons behind the mass extinction of giant animals, which took place around the world towards the end of the last ice age, has been hotly contested with theories ranging from climate change to human and extraterrestrial impacts.
The finding of the latest study has already been contested, with Judith Field of the University of Sydney saying the idea that humans killed the giant creatures was "in the realms of speculative fantasy".
"Humans cannot even be placed at the scene," she told the Sydney Morning Herald.
Original Report Here
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Date Tree Sprouts from 2000-Year-Old Seed Found on Masada
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ARUTZ SHEVA - By Hana Levi Julian - June 13, 2008
The desolate cliffs of Masada are disturbed by little other than the dry desert winds and a seldom sprinkle of winter rain - the perfect place for a 2,000-year-old seed to wait out the millennia until an Israeli scientist could rescue and resuscitate it.
Methuselah, as the 26-month-old plant has been named (after the oldest human being who ever lived), appears to be healthy, almost 4 feet tall, and growing strong, according to an update reported in the June 13 2008 issue of the journal Science.
Famed archaeologist and former IDF Chief of Staff Yigal Yadin, who led the excavations at Masada, stored the pile of seeds he had found at Bar Ilan University, where they sat for another 40 years.
In 2005, medical plant researcher Dr. Sarah Sallon came along, asked for, and received, five of the seeds. Two were sent for analysis to the University of Zurich for radio-carbon dating, as were the shell fragments that later clung to Methuselah's roots.
The other three seeds were given to Elaine Solowey, a plant specialist at the Arava Institute of the Environment, who soaked them in warm water, fertilizer and hormones. Finally the seeds were planted on the holiday of Tu B'Shevat (Jewish Arbor Day) on January 19, 2005.
Eight weeks later, Methuselah's first green shoot peeked through the soil. It was the only one to survive.
The Radio-Carbon Laboratory estimated that the seeds were approximately 2,000 years old, an analysis that made sense; Masada was built 2,044 years ago and destroyed by the Romans approximately 100 years later..
The seeds were indeed most likely remnants of the fruit stored by the Jews who lived in the fortress, hoping to avoid the invaders who had destroyed Second Holy Temple in Jerusalem. The young date palm is a sprout of an ancient Judean variety that was believed to be extinct for thousands of years.
The Dead Sea region, where Masada is located, and the Jordan River Valley which extends to the Sea of Galilee, were once a lush forest of such date palms. The large, sweet fruit was famous throughout the civilized world both for its distinctive flavor as well as for its medicinal properties, which are mentioned in the Bible.
Today, however, Israel's date palms are of imported stock.
Researchers say it is still not clear whether the sprout is a male or female - but if it's a "girl", the research team led by Sallon at the Louis L. Borick Natural Medicine Research Center, part of the Hadassah medical organization, says "she" could bear fruit as early as 2010.
Original Report Here
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Jesus-era date is the oldest seed to germinate
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NEWSCIENTIST.com News Service - By Catherine Brahic - June 12, 2008
Forget cryopreservation - hot and dry conditions might be all you need to awake far into the future. A date palm seed some 2000 years old - preserved by nothing more than storage in hot and dry conditions - has germinated, making it the oldest seed in the world to do so. . . .
To determine their age, an Israeli and Swiss team carbon dated the two dud seeds and found them to be approximately 2000 years old - making them possible contemporaries of Jesus.
When the germinated date was 15 months old, the researchers moved it to a new pot and retrieved fragments of the seed shell so they too could be carbon dated.
Although the plant is now just 26 months old, the dating process indicated that the seed was around 1750 years old - 250 years or so younger than the seeds which had not germinated. However, this figure was not a true reflection of its great age.
"During its growth the date plant had taken up modern carbon and this affected the carbon dating results," explains Sarah Sallon of the Louis L Borick Natural Medicine Research Center in Jerusalem.
The modern carbon skewed the result and made the seed appear about 250 to 300 years younger, she says.
Previously, the oldest seed to have germinated was a 1300-year-old Chinese lotus seed, but the plant that grew from it had serious genetic abnormalities.
Useful genes?
Sallon thinks that the extreme dryness and heat of the Dead Sea region may have helped conserve the seed in a way that it was able to germinate 2000 years later.
In the first century AD, the area was famous for its high-quality dates, but the plants were later lost. Preliminary genetic analysis suggests the ancient date plant is quite different to its modern cousins, but the researchers caution that with only one plant to test, the results are not conclusive. They are seeking more ancient seeds to carry out more genetic studies.
If the ancient dates are very different, they could carry genes that make modern varieties more successful or resilient.
Journal reference: Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.1153600)
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| Mt. Zion Gate Dedicated Again - on 468th Birthday |
ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Hillel Fendel - July 30, 2008In the presence of the Mayor of Jerusalem and War of Independence warriors, Old Jerusalem's Zion Gate was re-dedicated this week.
This week marked the 468th birthday of the Zion Gate, which was built in 1540 for Suleiman the Magnificent, the longest-reigning Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. The re-dedication ceremony, in the presence of Mayor Uri Lupoliansky, marked the occasion, following six months of intensive restoration work. The inner area and front face were refurbished, as was the wording of the dedication to Suleimon which appears above the gate. The bullet and shell holes that have been there since the 1948 battles were not changed in the restoration process. . . .
Zion Gate is named for its location on Mount Zion, though it is also known as David's Gate, because it passes near King David's tomb. Large cars sometimes have trouble negotiating the L-shaped gate, which leads to the road connecting Jaffa Gate and the Jewish Quarter. - - - -
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Ancient Christian Shrine Possibly Found in Jordan
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ASSOCIATED PRESS - June 10, 2008
AMMAN, Jordan - Archaeologists in Jordan say they have discovered a catacomb underneath one of the world's oldest churches that may be an even more ancient site of Christian worship.
Archaeologist Abdel-Qader Hussein, head of the Rihab Center for Archaeological Studies, says the catacombs were unearthed in the northern Jordanian city of Rihab after three months of excavation and show evidence of early Christian rituals.
Shortly after the death of Jesus Christ, disciples founded churches in the area, many of them underground to escape persecution.
The catacomb lies under St. Georgeous church, built in 230 A.D, making it one of the oldest churches, along with one unearthed in the Jordanian southern port of Aqaba in 1998 and another in Megiddo, Israel discovered in 2005.
Original Report Here
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| Will Judean Desert find shed light on Shroud of Turin? |
 THE JERUSALEM POST [Mirkaei Tikshoret/CanWest] - By Etgar Lefkovits - May 29, 2008
Can a 6,000-year-old shroud uncovered in the Judean Desert in 1993 help illuminate the centuries-old debate over the Shroud of Turin?
That is the question posed by Olga Negnevitsky, a conservator at the Israel Museum who was involved in the conservation of the lesser-known shroud for the Antiquities Authority after it was discovered inside a small cave near Jericho.
The idea to use the older shroud to learn more about the famous one came to Negnevitsky this week after she listened to an address on the Shroud of Turin at the International Art Conference in Jerusalem on the conservation of cultural and environmental heritage.
"If we reexamine the [Jericho] shroud with all the latest modern technology, then maybe we will find out more information that will help solve the secrets of the Shroud of Turin," Negnevitsky said Wednesday.
The finely-decorated shroud, which is 7 meters by 2 m., was found by Israeli archeologists at the entrance to what has been dubbed the Cave of the Warrior, during a search for additional Dead Sea Scrolls near Wadi el-Makkukah.
Instead of finding biblical scrolls, the archeologists stumbled on the 6,000-year-old tomb of a nobleman whose body was wrapped in an elaborate linen shroud.
The skeleton was accompanied by a long flint blade, wooden bowls, sandals of thick leather, and bows.
The shroud, like the Shroud of Turin, had signs of blood on it, likely from a wound suffered by the bandaged warrior, Negnevitsky said.
After painstaking preservation, the shroud was displayed at the American Museum of Natural History in New York in 1998 and then at the Israel Museum in 2003 before being placed in the storeroom of the Antiquities Authority in Jerusalem, she said.
The Shroud of Turin is a linen cloth, about 4.3 m. long and 90 cm. wide, that is kept in a cathedral in Turin, Italy. It bears the faint image of a blood-covered man and is believed by some to be Jesus's burial cloth.
A 1998 radiocarbon test dated the cloth from some time between 1260 and 1390 CE, ruling out any connection with Jesus.
Other studies suggested that the radiocarbon test was flawed and that the shroud was anywhere from 1,300 to 3,000 years old. Researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have said that pollen and plant images on it put its origins in Jerusalem sometime before the eighth century.
Despite numerous tests carried out over the years, the Shroud of Turin, which was first documented in 1357 in Lirey, France, has remained a puzzle as debate continues over whether it is a major Christian find, a fascinating example of medieval folk art, or a fraud.
The hope is that, provided the Antiquities Authority gives the go-ahead, a comparison with the Jericho-area shroud - found relatively near where scholars believe the Shroud of Turin was discovered - will lead to a more accurate estimate of the latter shroud's age, as well as other information.
"This is another source that could shed light on the mystery of the Shroud of Turin," said Prof. Amos Notea of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, who is the Israel chairman of the conservation conference that brought together scholars from around the world.
"It was here the whole time, but no one connected it until now," Notea said.
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| Flamboyant archeologist believes he has identified Cleopatra's tomb |
THE SUNDAY TIMES of LONDON [News Corporation/Murdoch] - By Sara Hashash - May 25, 2008
A flamboyant archeologist known worldwide for his trademark Indiana Jones hat believes he has identified the site where Cleopatra is buried.
Now, with a team of 12 archeologists and 70 excavators, Zahi Hawass, 60, the head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, has started searching for the entrance to her tomb.
And after a breakthrough two weeks ago he hopes to find her lover, the Roman general Mark Antony, sharing her last resting place at the site of a temple, the Taposiris Magna, 28 miles west of Alexandria.
Hawass has discovered a 400ft tunnel beneath the temple containing clues that the supposedly beautiful queen may lie beneath. "We've found tunnels with statues of Cleopatra and many coins bearing her face, things you wouldn't expect in a typical temple," he said.
A fortnight ago Hawass's team discovered a bust of Mark Antony, the Roman general who became Cleopatra's lover and had three children with her before their ambitions for an Egyptian empire brought them into conflict with Rome.
They committed suicide - he with his sword, she reputedly by clutching an asp to her breast - after being defeated by Octavian in the battle of Actium in 31BC. "Our theory is that both Cleopatra and Mark Antony are buried here," said Hawass.
The archeologist, best known in Britain for demanding the return of the Rosetta Stone from the British Museum and for promoting the Tutankhamun exhibition at the O2 dome in London, believes the temple's location would have made it a perfect place for Cleopatra to hide from Octavian's army.
Work on the site has been suspended until the summer heat abates and is due to resume in November, when Hawass will use radar to search for hidden chambers.
The queen's life and death were immortalised in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, and the Hollywood movie Cleopatra - starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, who fell in love during the filming - but the location of her tomb has remained a mystery.
If Hawass is right, he could make the greatest archeological discovery in Egypt since Tutankhamun's tomb was uncovered by the British archeologist Howard Carter in 1922.
Other experts are cautious, though. John Baines, professor of Egyptology at Oxford University, warned that searching for royal tombs often proved a "hopeless" task. He also doubted that Antony would be buried alongside his lover. - - - -
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Signs In the Heavens, What's Coming, Part I
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 KMPH-TV FOX 26/28 FRESNO, CALIFORNIA [Pappas Telecasting Companies] - By Monty Torres and Kyra Jenkins - July 31, 2008
The second coming of Jesus Christ has a few names; the rapture and Armageddon.
Those events have captivated Christians and non-Christians for over 2,000 years.
Now a group of Jewish and gentile believers are reaching back to the ancient past for answers to our future.
And what one pastor recently found is stirring debate and excitement all across the country, a timetable when it all could happen.
At the Beth David Messianic Synagogue in Fresno the old ways come to life.
"As I started investigating the scriptures more deeply, I came upon scriptures in Jeremiah that said we needed to get back to the ancient paths...splice...and of course Christianity comes right out of Judaism. So those are the ancient paths," said Pastor Bruce Dowell.
To follow those ancient paths, about 125 members meet every Friday night at St. James Anglican Cathedral Community Hall in Fresno.
They celebrate "Shabbat," the Sabbath at the time and in the manner they say God originally commanded in the bible.
"What the messianic movement is, is Jews and gentiles together worshipping the Messiah of Israel in a Hebraic way with Davidic praise and worship as King David would have done with flags and banners," said Rabbi Harlon Picker, Messianic Rabbi.
These believers in Jesus Christ are part of a fast growing global movement who say it is the ancient ways, the historic, biblical ways that matter most.
Not only because they were given by God himself in the Torah, but because they foreshadow our future.
"It's very interesting, all of what we call the Moe din, or appointed times," said Picker.
"Leviticus 23, I believe is the most important or I should say the most prophetic chapter in the entire word of God. It tells about the 7 festivals that Adonai has proclaimed to his people and of course the Shabbat as well. This is a prophetic timetable of what God is going to do in these end times," said Dowell.
Now using that prophetic timetable and modern science, another messianic pastor says he's found something that could be a sign of things to come soon.
February 20th, 2008, at Temple Mount in Jerusalem, Pastor Mark Biltz of El Shaddai Ministries in Bonney Lake Washington saw something, a total lunar eclipse also called a "blood moon" for its reddish hue.
"I thought 'wow' that looks just like what the Lord was talking about in the last days," said Pastor Mark Biltz with El Shaddai Ministries.
In the book of Joel, Chapter 2, verse 31 it says, "The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of the Lord come."
"So I did a comparison. I went to NASA's website to see if there would be any total solar or lunar eclipses in the next 10 years, said Biltz.
And what he found were four in a row.
"To my surprise, in 2014 NASA has what it calls a Tetrad-4, total lunar eclipses back to back," said Biltz.
And two significant solar eclipses as well. In 2014, on March 20th to 21st, April 15th and October 8th.
And in 2015 on April 4th, September 13, and September 28th. But it wasn't the number of eclipses that caught his attention. It was the dates on the Jewish calendar on which they fell.
"There was a total lunar eclipse on the 1st day of Passover and a total lunar eclipse on the 1st day of tabernacles," said Biltz.
"The feast of trumpets, there's a solar eclipse and there's also a total solar eclipse beginning the religious year," said Biltz.
In the Bible, Revelations 6 verse 12 "...and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood."
These kinds of celestial phenomena are prophetically significant to messianic believers, Biltz says.
"I see with what's going on in the world today with all the turmoil; with earthquakes and famines, hurricanes and floods, I think it's a wake up call to both Jews and Christians that we need to wake up and start looking for the Messiah," said Biltz.
And according to Luke chapter 21 verse 25, "...and there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring."
But we won't have to wait until 2015 to find out if what Pastor Biltz and his messianic colleagues believe is true. We could all know, they say, in as little as two months.
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| Signs in the Heavens, What's Coming Part II |
KMPH-TV FOX 26/28 FRESNO, CALIFORNIA [Pappas Telecasting Companies] - By Monty Torres and Kyra Jenkins - July 31, 2008
In Part I, we told you about a series of solar and lunar eclipses coming in 2014 and 2015 that some believe may herald the second coming of the Messiah and Armageddon.
But are those eclipses unique? And why the year 2015?
In Part II of "Signs in the Heavens, What's Coming," we'll show you why we won't have to wait 7 years to find out. We could know within two months.
For Dr. Steven White, Director of Fresno State's Downing Planetarium, eclipses are something special.
"Actually, it's very, very special because the only place in the entire solar system where you get a total solar eclipse is on the earth," said White.
But is it prophetic?
"I didn't know that people were trying to tie biblical prophecy with lunar eclipses and solar eclipses. I'm not surprised that these lunar eclipses are falling on or near Jewish holidays because they use a lunar calendar," said White.
With 2 to 5 lunar eclipses each year and 230 this century, including 85 blood moons, even Tetrads of four total lunar eclipses in a row, White says they aren't rare.
"It's going to happen again in 2014, 2015, so I'm sure we'll have some interest here at the planetarium," said White.
But Tetrads that fall on the Jewish high holy days are rare.
Messianic Pastor Mark Biltz contends this is also significant for the Jewish people.
"I noticed the last time this happened was in 1967, after Jerusalem was recaptured by Israel and it happened again in 1949 and 1950, which is right after Israel became a nation in 1948," said Biltz with El Shaddai Ministeries.
More importantly, Pastor Biltz and his colleagues agree that it's not the eclipses but the ancient Jewish feast days, given by God in the Bible that mark the signs of the times. Four of which they say have already come to pass.
"When the Messiah came, he fuflfilled the four spring feasts...he fufilled Passover, he fufilled the feast of unleavened bread, he fufilled first fruits, he rose on first fruits it's called "Yom Hav Bikareem" and he also, through the Holy Spirit, fufilled "Shavout" or Pentecost," said Rabbi Harlon Picker with Beth Yachad Messianic Congregation.
And Rabbi Picker says the next one could be the biggest event of all.
"And it's believed by a lot of people that the feast of trumpets would be when the Messiah comes back to take his bride to be with him for the marriage supper of the lamb," said Picker.
"When it says we won't know the day or the hour, what it's actually referring to was the feast of trumpets. The feast of trumpets was the feast day where no one knew the day or the hour that it would begin because it was based on the sighting of the new moon," said Biltz.
The feast of trumpets, or Rosh Hashanah, is the day of the blowing of the ancient Jewish trumpet, the "Shofar."
According to I Corinthians 15:52, "In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump; for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed."
But is Rosh Hashanah on September of 2015 the date of that last trumpet signaling the return of Jesus Christ, as the Messianic Pastors suggest?
At Cornerstone Church in Downtown Fresno, the sounds and focus are more contemporary.
"Our mission here is bring our city back to God. We want to see our city changed positively," said Pastor Jim Franklin of Fresno Cornerstone Church.
The expectation of something coming very soon is the same. But Pastor Franklin says we don't have to rely only on eclipses.
"I think without a doubt we are living in the last days. We can look at signs in the heavens. Scripture is very clear that it talks about those but there's also several other clear signs, 30 that point to the fact that these are the end days we're living in," said Franklin.
Matthew 24:7-8 says, "For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places."
More importantly, Franklin says, we don't have to wait till 2015 to find out if that's the year.
It could all come clear within the next 2 months.
"The event that the Bible says will take place is basically a peace treaty that will be made with Israel and it's enemies around it," said Franklin.
A seven-year peace treaty that Franklin says will start the countdown is a treaty that headlines show Israel badly wants right now. If that 7 years is to end by Rosh Hashanah, mid September of 2015, it would have to start by the end of September or early October of this year, 2008.
"The scene is set. The Bible has never missed it prophetically," said Franklin.
But whatever happens 2 months from now, all the pastors we spoke to agree.
"From a Jewish eschatological point of view and a Christian, we're both looking for a Messiah and its like the times are upon us," said Biltz.
"I would say get ready, I would say ask God what he would like you to do," said Picker.
"I get excited. I think we need to be on our toes... or should I say on our knees. We need to be looking to the Lord," said Dowell.
"I'm not ready to run to the mountains, store up a bunch of food and that, Jesus was very clear, occupy till I come and he wasn't talking about occupying there... just live you're life everyday. Take advantage of the situations and blessings that are in your life to be a blessing to those that are around you," said Franklin.
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See Also:
Four 'blood-red' total lunar
eclipses will fall on Passover
and Sukkot in 2014 and 2015,
the same back-to-back occurrences
at the time of 1492, 1948 and 1967
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Trumpet blasts to Jesus: 'We're awake' on Earth
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Worldwide wave of horns, shouting planned in time zones across planet
WORLDNETDAILY - By Joe Kovacs - July 3, 2008
An American pastor who made news in April by studying NASA's eclipse calendar to speculate on the return of Jesus Christ to Earth is now planning a worldwide blast of trumpets this fall to get God's attention.
Mark Biltz of El Shaddai Ministries in Bonney Lake, Wash., is organizing the global "Day of Shouting" for the evening of Sept. 29, marking the annual biblical holiday known as the Feast of Trumpets.
The event is still in its early planning stages, with Blitz posting this invitation on his website:
You know how at sporting events they have "the wave" where one group starts it and then it cycles all the way around back to the beginning? Do you remember how at the year 2000 they showed on television all the New Year celebrations going on around the world as the new millennium began? ...
Let's have an around the world shofar assembly in every time zone on the Feast of Trumpets at sunset announcing to Messiah we are awake and anxiously anticipating His return. What a dress rehearsal! Won't that stir His heart?
We will list on our website all the cities in the different time zones that are participating and hopefully we can get people from every tongue, tribe and nation participating as we join in proclaiming Yeshua (Jesus) as our coming King!
A shofar is a trumpet-like instrument made from the horn of a ram or other biblically clean animal, and was sounded not only at the new year and new moons, but also as a call to wake up and repent.
Trumpet blasts are common in both the Old and New Testaments, including:
- A trumpet was sounded for a long duration when God met Moses and the ancient Israelites at Mount Sinai. (Exodus 19:19)
- There was shouting and trumpet blasts when God brought down the walls of the ancient city of Jericho. (Joshua 6:20)
- The apostle Paul spoke of the last trumpet blast when believers will be resurrected and given immortality. (1 Corinthians 15:52)
Participants in the 2008 trumpet wave are asked to include the name of "the King" so people can shout it during the event. Besides Jesus, many have posted names such as Master, Prince of Peace, Lamb of God and Yeshua ha Meshiach (Jesus the Messiah).
Since announcing his plan, Biltz told WND, "The response has been phenomenal with people responding from Arabic countries as well as Asia, Europe, Africa and America."
Indeed, a chart of time zones and participants on his website shows residents in many time zones already signing up.
"Very happy to be part of this," writes Dawn Piper of Durban, South Africa. "Maranatha!"
Trevia Jimenez of Brooklyn, N.Y. said, "This is so cool. You go, Pastor Mark!"
As WND previously reported, Biltz, a minister who promotes the Old Testament roots of Christianity, suggests a rare string of lunar and solar eclipses said to fall on God's annual holy days seven years from now could herald what's come to be known as the "Second Coming" of Jesus.
"God wants us to look at the biblical calendar," he said. "The reason we need to be watching is [because] He will signal His appearance. But we have to know what to be watching as well. So we need to be watching the biblical holidays."
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Eclipse darkens NW China, a week before Olympics
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REUTERS [Thomson-Reuters] - By Lucy Hornby - August 1, 2008
JIAYUGUAN, China - Darkness fell over the last outpost of the Great Wall of China on Friday, where a rare total solar eclipse ended its journey across the earth, delighting skywatchers one week before the Olympics open in Beijing.
The stellar spectacle - when the moon passes between the sun and the Earth - began in Canada, tracked across Greenland and crept into Siberia, before ringing in the momentous month of August in China, when it will host the Games.
In northwest China, cheers went up from the Jiayuguan Fort as hordes of tourists welcomed the eclipse.
"It's really doubly special, because I'm standing here on the Great Wall and watching it," said Feng Lei, a backpacker from the China's southwestern province of Sichuan, who was making his way to Beijing for the Olympics.
Eclipses were considered dark omens by ancient Chinese astronomers but many Chinese view this one as particularly fortunate as it comes exactly a week before the torch is lit in Beijing for the opening ceremony of Games designed to restore China's pride and showcase its achievements.
"I have a really deep feeling, especially because it's exactly eight days before the Olympics," said Chuai Rui, college student from Xi'an. Chinese consider eight a lucky number.
In Russia, thousands had flocked from around the world to Novosibirsk, mixing awe with excitement as day turned into night.
All gazed in wonder as an eerie silence descended on the Siberian city and gusts of unusually strong wind tore through the crowd of skywatchers. Birds stopped chirping and the temperature suddenly dropped, a Reuters TV reporter there said.
In Russia's second city of Petersburg, people shouted "Look! Look!" and pointed as the sun's outer corona appeared in the sky.
"You just feel part of nature. ... This is so rare," said Lev, a software specialist in St Petersburg.
Several thousand people turned out at a park in Norway's capital, Oslo, where the eclipse was near 50 percent, to peer up at the sun through dark glasses in cardboard frames and see pictures of the total eclipse beamed onto a large screen from an plane tracking the phenomenon in the Arctic. . . .
The Chinese hope the Olympics will usher in a new era where China is once more as modern, wealthy and important as it was more than 10 centuries ago, when imperial astronomers were among the world's best scientists.
Chinese astronomers in the state of Lu, the present-day Shandong, carefully recorded solar eclipses that can be dated as far back as 720 BC.
Superstitious Chinese courtiers and peasants once banged drums to scare away the dragon they thought was eating the sun. - - - -
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Solar eclipse awes spectators across the globe
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THE TIMES of LONDON [News Corporation/Murdoch] - By Chris Smyth, Richard Lloyd Parry in Khotan, David Lister {note: not the David Lister associated with Moriel} - August 1, 2008
From the wastes of Siberia to the deserts of western China, thousands of people turned out to watch the solar eclipse as it swept across the earth.
The eclipse began in arctic Canada, when the moon first came between the earth and the sun. The shadow then passed across northern Greenland to Russia, where soon after 1000 GMT darkness descended on the Siberian city of Novosibirsk. Birds fell silent and the temperature dropped suddenly. An eerie wind blew through the assembled throng.
It was the largest city under the eclipse path and more than 10,000 tourists descended on the city, local media reported, booking out hotels months in advance. . . .
Scores of tourists from around the world have travelled to remote settlements in Russia and China the event, many of them veteran eclipse-chasers. "I've come all the way from California for this. It's going to be my 11th eclipse, I try to see them all," said Dave Balch, a cancer care adviser.
In Khotan, in Xinjiang in northwestern China, observers turned out to watch the partial eclipse, while others stayed indoors to watch a broadcast of totality from a few hundred miles down the road, transmitted live on Chinese TV. . . .
The ancient Chinese believed that a solar eclipse was caused by a dragon or dog swallowing the sun - and the modern Mandarin word for the phenomenon, rishi, is made up of the characters for "sun" and "eat". Few still believe that, but many in this remote town felt that something very strange was happening.
It could be good or it could be bad - it depends on the interpretation," said Mr Liu, who was selling inflatable penguins beneath a statue of Chairman Mao. "I read a book about it once, but I forgot it all."
Others were certain the eclipse would a harbinger of misfortune. "This kind of thing means trouble," said the woman in the soft drink stall. "It's difficult to explain but it's very abnormal when something happens so suddenly like this."
"It's not bad luck, so much as uncertainty," she said. "How can it be good, when the sun disappears? You don't know what it means, and I don't know what it means. But the Heavens know." - - - -
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May 28, 585 B.C.: Predicted Solar Eclipse Stops Battle
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WIRED NEWS [Advance/Newhouse] - By Randy Alfred - May 28, 2008
585 B.C.: A solar eclipse in Asia Minor brings an abrupt halt to a battle, as the warring armies lay down their arms and declare a truce. Historical astronomy later sets a likely date, providing a debatable calculation point for pinning down some dates in ancient history.
This was not the first recorded solar eclipse. After failing to predict one such in the 22nd or 23rd century B.C., two Chinese astrologers attached to a ruler's court were soon detached from their heads.1 Clay tablets from Babylon record an eclipse in Ugarit in 1375 B.C. Later records identify total solar eclipses that "turned day into night" in 1063 and 763 B.C.
But the 585 B.C. eclipse was the first we know that was predicted. The Greek historian Herodotus wrote that Thales of Milete predicted an eclipse in a year when the Medians and the Lydians were at war. Using the same calculating methods that predict future eclipses, astronomers have been able to calculate when eclipses occurred in the past. You can run the planetary clock in reverse as well as forward. To coin a word, you can postdict as well as predict.
The most likely candidate for Thales' eclipse took place on May 28, 585 B.C., though some authorities believe it may have been 25 years earlier in 610 B.C. Hundreds of scholars have debated this for nearly two millenniums.
Predicting a solar eclipse is not easy. You need to calculate not only when it will happen, but where it will be visible. In a lunar eclipse, when the moon passes through the Earth's huge sun shadow, the event is visible on the whole side of the Earth that's in nighttime, and totality often lasts more than an hour. But in a solar eclipse, the moon's shadow falls across the Earth in a relatively narrow path, and the maximum duration of totality at any given place is only about 7½ minutes.
So you need to know the moon's orbit in great detail -- within a small fraction of a degree of arc. The early Greeks did not have this data.
We do not know the method Thales used to make his prediction. The method may have been used only once, because we have no other records of the Greeks of this era accurately predicting further eclipses. Thales is believed to have studied the Egyptians' techniques of land measurement (geo metry in Greek) later codified by Euclid. One has to wonder whether Thales made the famous eclipse prediction himself, or if he simply borrowed it from the Egyptians.
However he made the prediction, and however precise or vague it may have been, the eclipse occurred. Aylattes, the king of Lydia, was battling Cyaxares, king of the Medes, probably near the River Halys in what is now central Turkey.
The heavens darkened. Soldiers of both kings put down their weapons. The battle was over. And so was the war.
After 15 years of back-and-forth fighting between the Medes and the Lydians, the kings of Cilicia and Babylon intervened and negotiated a treaty. The River Halys, where the Battle of the Eclipse was fought, became the border between the Lydians and the Medes.
Source: NASA, Crystalinks
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Today Marks Ninth of Av Fast Day - Birthday of the Messiah
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ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu - August 10, 2008
Jews around the world are joining those in Israel Sunday to mark the Ninth of the Hebrew month of Av fast day, the day of mourning for the fall of the First and Second Temples. Jerusalem police have closed all entrances to the Old City to vehicular traffic in anticipation of a large number of worshippers to the Western Wall (Kotel).
The prayer area of the holy site was filled with visitors after the end of the Sabbath, when the fast day already had begun at sundown. It ends Sunday night at approximately 8 p.m., depending on one's location.
The Bible records the Ninth of Av as the date of the destruction of the First Temple. Tradition teaches that the date is so heavily marked by tragedy, that the destruction of the Second Temple fell on the same date. Different opinions cite the year as between 68 and 70 in the Common Era (CE).
On the Ninth of Av, Betar, the last fortress to hold out against the Romans during the Bar Kochba revolt, fell in 132 CE and over 100,000 Jews were killed. In 1492, Spain ordered the expulsion of all Jews by the Ninth of Av. In 1914, Germany declared war on Russia on the Ninth of Av (August 1) opening World War I.
Although the Roman Empire destroyed the Second Temple, Jewish tradition teaches that the underlying reason for the destruction was the practice of Jews speaking ill of each other (loshon hara) and spreading "senseless hatred" (sinat chinam).
The day of mourning also is being remembered as the period when the modern Israeli government three summers ago carried out the Disengagement program, which involved the forced expulsion of more than 9,000 Jews from their homes in northern Samaria and the Jewish Gaza region. The government, headed at the time by former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his deputy Ehud Olmert, sent in soldiers and police, many of them dressed in black uniforms and riot gear, followed by bulldozers that destroyed Jewish homes.
The demolished sites, including the synagogues that remained standing, were handed over to the Palestinian Authority (PA). Within minutes, the over 20 Jewish houses of worship were in flames.
Terrorists immediately took over the grounds and began setting up training bases while the expulsion victims were deported to hotel rooms and other temporary housing.
Tisha B'Av is observed as a day of morning, and Jews sit on low stools until midday (approximately 12:45 p.m.) and refrain from greeting one another.
Eicha, the Book of Lamentations, is recited in synagogues around the world in the evening and, according to some traditions, also on the morning of Tisha B'Av. It was written by the prophet Jeremiah, who warned Jews to repent to prevent the fall of Jerusalem, which he prophesized. His advice not only was ignored, but he also was imprisoned for stating views that threatened the king's power.
Torah sages also teach that the Messiah will be born on Tisha B'Av as a sign that there is yet redemption in all the destruction.
Original Report Here
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"Seculars Want Temple', as Fast of Av Begins Saturday Night
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ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Hillel Fendel - August 8, 2008
The fast of Tisha B'Av, the "saddest" day in the Jewish calendar, begins on Saturday night as the Sabbath ends, and ends Sunday evening at sundown. Its name literally means "the ninth day of the Jewish month of Av," the date of some of the gravest tragedies to have befallen the Jewish People. Most notably, both Holy Temples in Jerusalem were destroyed on Tisha B'Av, but the list of calamities includes also the following:
- G-d decreed, following the Sin of the Spies as recounted in Numbers 13-14, that the Children of Israel would not be allowed to enter the Land of Israel until the entire generation had died out.
- The fall of Beitar, the last fortress to hold out during the Bar Kochba revolt in the year 135 C.E., fell to the Romans, marking the last milestone in the beginning of our current Exile.
- A year later, the Temple area was plowed under.
- The Jews of Spain were expelled by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella in 1492.
- World War I erupted in 1914.
- The Jews of Gush Katif spent their last legal day in their homes in 2005, and were expelled three days later.
"Secular Jews for the Temple"
The centerpiece of Tisha B'Av mourning is the destruction of the Holy Temple (Beit HaMikdash). Among the many groups that have sprouted over the past several years promoting awareness of the Beit HaMikdash is one named "Secular Jews for the Temple." Ahuvyah Tabenkin of left-wing Kibbutz Ein Harod said, "It's true that we don't exactly represent a majority of secular Kibbutz members... but the pioneers have always been a minority: the Zionists were a minority among the Jews, those who came to the Land were a minority among the Zionists, those who worked the land were also a minority, and now we are a minority as well. But I hope that soon we will be the leaders."
Tabenkin has nationalist, political and historical reasons why the Temple and the Temple Mount are important. Asked if he has religious considerations as well, Tabenkin told Arutz-7's Ariel Kahane, "Well, the word 'religious' can be the subject of long discussions. Look, the Gerrer Rebbe once said, 'When the Haskalah [Enlightenment] came to the world, with science, physics, etc., we [the religious] left it for the secular Jews; when Zionism came to the world, we gave that too to the secular; and now we have also left the Repentance Movement for the secular.' Accordingly, it looks like we [the secular] will also have to build the Beit HaMikdash."
Asked whether he calls for the actual construction of the Temple, he said, "There are many religious authorities, including Maimonides, who say that the Temple must be rebuilt, and so I think it should be done... As a first step, we must show that we control the Temple Mount... I call upon all of Israel to come to the Mount on [Tisha B'Av] and show that it belongs to the Jewish nation."
Prominent rabbis permit the ascent to parts of the Temple Mount after certain Halakhic precautions have been taken. - - - -
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'Temple Mount points to location of lost Ark'
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New best-selling prophecy book claims resting place is Mt. Nebo
WORLDNETDAILY - August 17, 2008
A new best-selling book on the hidden mysteries of the Jerusalem Temple Mount claims to have discovered the resting place of the lost Ark of the Covenant - the biblical refuge of the Ten Commandments handed down to Moses at Sinai.
In "Temple at the Center of Time: Newton's Bible Codex Deciphered and the Year 2012," by David Flynn, a book that has skyrocketed up the best-seller charts before its official release later this month, says his studies of the Temple Mount strongly suggest the Ark will be found at Mount Nebo in Jordan. . . .
In "Temple at the Center of Time," Flynn makes the case that the Temple Mount, the home of the Jewish temples, was not just a place of religious worship. It is also is a roadmap to future events - a kind of prophetic landmark whose significance is only now revealed through the development of satellite imagery.
The book asserts it has "deciphered Isaac Newton's greatest paradox: None other than 'the unified field theory' of Bible prophecy."
Sir Isaac Newton was not only a great thinker in physics, the book explains, but had extensive knowledge of the Scriptures with a special interest in prophecy. Newton believed there was a hidden code, a type of time-encrypted language. He believed the key to deciphering this code was the Temple of Solomon. He wrote extensively on the length measurements of the Temple and suggested it intersected time and dimension, serving as a prophetic and supernatural structure.
According to Flynn, although Newton never cracked this code, he was on the right track and was limited only by the lack of sophisticated satellite technology.
"The description of Jerusalem as a terrestrial center point, situated in the center of the world, is found in Philo's Legatio and Gaium," Flynn notes. "The world is like a human eyeball. The white of the eye is the ocean surrounding the world, the iris is this continent, the pupil is Jerusalem, and the image in the pupil is the Holy Temple."
Many historians speculate that because Babylon destroyed the Temple of Solomon, it also removed the Ark to Babylon. There it is said the Ark was eventually destroyed along with the other artifacts from the temple, the gold melted down and set into coins for their treasury. But the Book of Daniel makes specific mention of the golden menorah from the temple of Jerusalem in the palace of Belshazzar. The Babylonian king had preserved it, a major artifact from the Jewish temple, in an attempt to demonstrate the superiority of Babylon's gods to the God of the Hebrews. That the menorah was set on display in this manner underscores how unlikely the Babylonians would have been to destroy the Ark, the greatest symbol of the God of the Hebrews. . . .
Meanwhile, the book of 2 Maccabees 2:4 explains that before the destruction of Solomon's temple by the Babylonians in 587 BC, the Ark was hidden by the prophet Jeremiah in a cave at the base of Mount Nebo in the Pisgah range of Jordan. Maccabees, as well as other Apocryphal works, are retained in modern Catholic bibles as well as the Septuagint and Vulgate.
The account of the Ark from 2 Maccabees is also mentioned in the Jewish Talmud, in Huriot 12A and Tractate Yoma 72a. These texts explain that the Ark's location would not be recovered until the Jews were brought back to Israel following the Diaspora, an event that occurred in 1948. The pseudopigraphic book 2 Baruch, written near the 1st century, repeats the prophetic age in which the Ark would be recovered: "Oh earth ... guard them [the temple vessels and the Ark] until the last times, So that, when thou art ordered, thou mayst restore them, So that strangers may not get possession of them. For the time comes when Jerusalem also will be delivered for a time, until it is said, that it is again restored for ever."
The legendary accounts of Jeremiah and the Ark provide a hidden clue to its location at Mount Nebo. This is a symbolic link that exists between the names of the Babylonian king that threatened to destroy the Ark, and the mountain where it was hidden by Jeremiah. Both Nebuchadnezzar and Nebo stem from the Semitic root nebu, meaning the god Mercury. This was also intimated in the prophecies of Ezekiel condemning Jerusalem. The name Nebuchadnezzar means "the prince of the god Mercury." The Hebrew word nebo is from the root neba ("to prophesy" and also "a prophet"), writes Flynn. In the same role as the prophets of the God of Israel, Nebo was worshiped as the celestial scribe of the Assyrians, the "interpreter of the gods, and declarer of their will."
According to the Bible, the greatest prophet of all time was Moses, which states, "And there arose not a prophet (neba) since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face." Ironically, according to the Bible, Mount Nebo was the site of the death of Moses.
The Hebrew words nobe, meaning "high place," and nahab, meaning "to hollow out," "gate," or "pupil of the eye," also correlate with the location for the resting place of the ark in a "hollow cave" on Mount Nebo, described in 2 Maccabees, says Flynn.
Mount Nebo is 25.20 nautical miles due East of Jerusalem - and Flynn finds significance in that distance related to his study of the Temple Mount and its mystical placement "at the center of time and space." - - - -
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Future Temple Jewish Priests Get Fitted For Holy Garments
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ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Ze'ev Ben-Yechiel - July 7, 2008
As the Jewish People continue their national return to their ancestral homeland, tailors at the Temple Institute in Jerusalem's Old City began taking measurements of Kohanim (the priestly tribe designated to run the Temple services) earlier this month in anticipation of an even bigger event -- the dedication of the Third Temple.
Yehuda Glick, director of the Temple Institute, presided over the first-ever fitting of Kohanim for their priestly garments. "Today, in this room, Kohanim are being measured for the first time in 2,000 years for the type of garments they will be wearing in the rebuilt Temple," announced Glick to an audience of rabbis, reporters and cameramen on hand to witness the historic event. [See Video Here]
The garments of the Kohanim are described in great detail in the Torah. While scale models of the future Temple can be seen in shop windows and the clothes of the Priesthood can be seen hanging on mannequins, the event marked the first time since the destruction of the Second Temple that real-life Kohanim have been measured for the clothing of their holy work in the Temple.
At the beginning of the ceremony, Rabbi Yisrael Ariel delivered a speech describing the importance of the occasion. "Just like the animal sacrifices atone for the Nation of Israel, so do the clothes of the Kohen," he remarked. A man named Aviad Jerufi was on hand to model the full uniform of the Kohen, while each individual garment was described.
Pamphlets were then distributed to each Kohen being measured, containing a Jewish legal description of the clothes they were to receive. Representatives from the Israel Textile Association recorded each Kohen's head circumference, shoulder width, leg length and other measurements as they were taken before the audience.
Among the Kohanim being measured were Rabbi Nachman Kahane, brother of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, and Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, Chief Rabbi of Efrat. Each Kohen measured received a "Kohen number", with Rabbi Kahane awarded the honorary first number, 1, to much applause, and Rabbi Riskin - number 2.
According to Yaacov Gutfreund and Yitzchak Shechter of the Israel Textile Association, the clothes for which the Kohanim measured during the special fitting, and which they are to receive, are not intended to be worn during actual Temple service. They are rather meant to be identical in fabric and dimension to the Bigdei Kohanim that they hope and pray to wear when the Holy Temple is rededicated.
The fitting of the High Priest, who has a special set of garments, will have to wait until then.
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Israel: Flight of 235 New Immigrants Arrives from US and Canada
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ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By IsraelNN Staff - August 12, 2008
Hundreds of new Jewish immigrants to Israel from the US and Canada touched down and were welcomed in a festive ceremony at Ben Gurion International Airport, outside of Tel Aviv. Click on the video player below to watch the ceremony. [See Video Here]
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Tzipi Livni welcomed the North Americans making aliyah (immigration to Israel) on the flight. Two hundred and thirty-five new immigrants from North America came on Wednesday's flight. Over 2,000 immigrants will move to the Jewish state over the summer from North American and Great Britain under the auspices of the Nefesh B'Nefesh aliyah organization.
The oldest immigrant today is 96 and the youngest is 5 months old. - - - -
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Related:
Messianic Jews and the Law of Return
Posted on the Be Alert! Blog
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First Summer Group of Jews Returns Home
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ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Pinchas Sanderson - July 7, 2008
Nefesh B'Nefesh welcomed its first summer aliyah flight at Ben Gurion International Airport on Thursday. The flight brought 220 new immigrants from North America to Israel. It was the first of thirteen flights expected to bring more than 2,000 new immigrants over the course of the summer. Tracey Levy, formerly of Houston, Texas, who arrived on the flight, is the organization's 15,000th new immigrant.
The new immigrants arrived from more than 21 different US states and two Canadian provinces. The oldest amongst them is 87 years old and the youngest - only two months. The immigrants will be making their homes in communities across Israel, including the major cities of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa, smaller cities such as Beit Shemesh, Tzfat and Rehovot, and various smaller communities and kibbutzim.
Forty-seven single new immigrants arrived on the flight; four young women were met by their Israeli sweethearts at the airport. One of the 39 families on the flight is literally "building a new home in Israel"; their former home on Long Island was struck by a devastating fire. The new immigrants are also brought their pets with them to Eretz Yisrael: four dogs and two cats.
They came from a wide range of backgrounds and professions, including engineers and scientists, hi-tech and business professionals, therapists and artists. A former librarian at the New York Public Library is bringing a very special collection of more than 3,000 books with her. Amongst the immigrants are 15 young men and women who will be inducted into IDF service following their arrival. - - - -
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Secular Don't Want 'Judaism' - But Seek 'Torah'
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ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Hillel Fendel - July 7, 2008
A survey shows that 79% of secular Jews in Israel don't want to learn Judaism. Outreach groups say the situation they encounter is very different.
The survey was commissioned by the Gesher Institute and Ynet, and was carried out by the Motagim polling institute among 500 Jewish adult respondents - hareidi-religious, religious-Zionist, and secular. . . .
Yisrael Ze'ira, head of the Rosh Yehudi (Jewish Mindset) organization, said, "There is big difference between asking secular Jews if they want to learn Judaism or if they want to study Torah. The word Judaism is still associated with the negative way in which religion and religious Jews are portrayed in the media. But we see that in practice, the trend is exactly the opposite; there is a great thirst for 'Torah,' in a big way. In our Rosh Yehudi centers, we see that new people keep coming to join us and to study Torah with us - and they generally ask, 'Where have you been hiding until now?'" - - - -
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Israeli Companies Flex Economic Muscle,Gobble Up Foreign Firms
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ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu - August 4, 2008
Micah 4:13
"Arise and thresh, daughter of Zion,
For your horn I will make iron
And your hoofs I will make bronze,
That you may pulverize many peoples,
That you may devote to the LORD their unjust gain
And their wealth to the Lord of all the earth.
Last year, Warren Buffet paid more than $4 billion for the IsraCar Metal Tools company in the Galilee, marking yet another buyout of Israeli businesses by foreigners. Israeli firms now have turned the tables and are gobbling up foreign companies as homegrown firms flex their economic muscle.
The Israeli-based Ness Technologies has agreed to purchase Logos, a Czech information technology provider, for $68 million, as Israeli firms continue an aggressive purchase of foreign companies. Last month, Teva Pharmaceuticals announced it would pay more than $7 billion for the American-based Barr drug company. . . .
The branching out of Israeli firms has helped reverse the trend of the shekel-dollar rate, which has declined significantly over the past three years. The purchase of Barr necessitates Teva's coming up with $2 billion in cash beyond its current reserves, and the deal means it will have to sell a large amount of shekels. - - - -
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Another Blow to Evolution: Helpful Bacteria May Hide in Appendix
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NEW YORK TIMES [NYTimes Group/Sulzberger] - By Nicholas Bakalar - June 17, 2008
Everyone is born with one, but no one knows what it's for. The human appendix is a small dead-end tube connected to the cecum, or ascending colon, one section of the large intestine. Everyone lives happily with it until it becomes painfully inflamed, when the only treatment is to remove it surgically.
Then everyone lives happily without it. So why is it there in the first place?
Some experts have guessed that it is a vestige of the evolutionary development of some other organ, but there is little evidence for an appendix in our evolutionary ancestors. Few mammals have any appendix at all, and the appendices of those that do bears little resemblance to the human one.
Last December, researchers published a novel explanation in The Journal of Theoretical Biology. The appendix, they suggest, is a "safe house" for commensal bacteria, the symbiotic germs that aid digestion and help protect against disease-causing germs.
Structurally, the appendix is isolated from the rest of the gut, with an opening smaller than a pencil lead, protected from the fecal stream that might be carrying pathogens. In times of trouble like a diarrheal infection that flushes the system, these commensal bacteria could hide out there, ready to repopulate the gut when the coast is clear. . . .
Recent studies have found that biofilms, colonies of beneficial microbes that live outside cells, form in the large intestine, where they are dependent on the mucus that lines the bowel. There, they aid digestion and protect against infection, while enjoying the protection and nutrition of the human host.
The researchers, examining tissue from uninfected human appendices removed in kidney-pancreas transplants, found biofilms on the epithelial lining of the appendix, as well. Under their theory, it is in these biofilms in the appendix, well positioned to avoid pathogens in the rest of the gut, that commensal bacteria take refuge.
If that is true, why is it that removing the appendix apparently does not have negative side effects? The scientists contend that in industrialized countries with modern medical care and sanitation, maintaining a reserve of helpful bacteria has become unnecessary. Widespread outbreaks of intestinal disease are so rare that the commensal bacteria face little danger of extermination. - - - -
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