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Archeology/Jerusalem: J. King – Recent Discoveries on the Temple Hill at Jerusalem (1884 PDF)
Ancient Revelations

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Ancient Revelations:
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Second Temple “Gabriel Stone”
Heaven and Earth Shaking Passage 24-25

Knohl:

12. [ ] .. from my house Israel and I will talk about the greatness of

Jerusalem

13. [Thus] said the Lord, God of Israel, now all the nations

14. … enc[amp] on Jerusalem and from it are exi[led]

15. one two three forty Prophets and the elders

16. and the Hasidim. My servant David, ask of Ephraim

17. [that he] place the sign; (this) I ask of you. For thus said

18. the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, my gardens are ripe,

19. My holy thing for Israel. By three days you shall know, for thus said

20. the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, the evil has been broken

21. before righteousness.

Lines 19-21: “Leshloshet yamin tayda ki-nishbar hara melifnay hatzedek” (“In three days you will know that evil will be defeated by justice”)

24. his seat. In a little while, I will shake

25. .. the heavens and the earth.

Line 57: “dam tvuhey yerushalayim” (“the blood of the slain of Jerusalem”).

 

“Bible experts are still debating the writing’s meaning, largely because much of the ink has eroded in crucial spots in the passage and the tablet has two diagonal cracks the slice the text into three pieces. Museum curators say only 40 percent of the 87 lines are legible, many of those only barely. The interpretation of the text featured in the Israel Museum’s exhibit is just one of five readings put forth by scholars.

“All agree that the passage describes an apocalyptic vision of an attack on Jerusalem in which God appears with angels on chariots to save the city. The central angelic character is Gabriel, the first angel to appear in the Hebrew Bible. “I am Gabriel,” the writing declares.”

Time Magazine | Knohl: “in three days you shall live” | Gabriel’s Revelation Wiki

Second Temple “Gabriel Stone” Displayed in Jerusalem

“All agree that the passage describes an apocalyptic vision of an attack on Jerusalem in which God appears with angels on chariots to save the city. The central angelic character is Gabriel, the first angel to appear in the Hebrew Bible. “I am Gabriel,” the writing declares.”

An ancient limestone tablet covered with a mysterious Hebrew text that features the archangel Gabriel is at the center of a new exhibit in Jerusalem, even as scholars continue to argue about what it means.

The so-called Gabriel Stone, a meter (three-foot)-tall tablet said to have been found 13 years ago on the banks of the Dead Sea, features 87 lines of an unknown prophetic text dated as early as the first century BC, at the time of the Second Jewish Temple.

Scholars see it as a portal into the religious ideas circulating in the Holy Land in the era when was Jesus was born. Its form is also unique — it is ink written on stone, not carved — and no other such religious text has been found in the region.

Curators at the Israel Museum, where the first exhibit dedicated to the stone is opening Wednesday, say it is the most important document found in the area since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

“The Gabriel Stone is in a way a Dead Sea Scroll written on stone,” said James Snyder, director of the Israel Museum. The writing dates to the same period, and uses the same tidy calligraphic Hebrew script, as some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a collection of documents that include the earliest known surviving manuscripts of Hebrew Bible texts

The Gabriel Stone made a splash in 2008 when Israeli Bible scholar Israel Knohl offered a daring theory that the stone’s faded writing would revolutionize the understanding of early Christianity, claiming it included a concept of messianic resurrection that predated Jesus. He based his theory on one hazy line, translating it as “in three days you shall live.”

His interpretation caused a storm in the world of Bible studies, with scholars convening at an international conference the following year to debate readings of the text, and a National Geographic documentary crew featuring his theory. An American team of experts using high resolution scanning technologies tried — but failed — to detect more of the faded writing.

Knohl, a professor of Bible at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, eventually scaled back from his original bombshell theory but the fierce scholarly debate he sparked continued to reverberate across the academic world, bringing international attention to the stone. Over the last few years it went on display alongside other Bible-era antiquities in Rome, Houston and Dallas.

Bible experts are still debating the writing’s meaning, largely because much of the ink has eroded in crucial spots in the passage and the tablet has two diagonal cracks the slice the text into three pieces. Museum curators say only 40 percent of the 87 lines are legible, many of those only barely. The interpretation of the text featured in the Israel Museum’s exhibit is just one of five readings put forth by scholars.

All agree that the passage describes an apocalyptic vision of an attack on Jerusalem in which God appears with angels on chariots to save the city. The central angelic character is Gabriel, the first angel to appear in the Hebrew Bible. “I am Gabriel,” the writing declares.

The stone inscription is one of the oldest passages featuring the archangel, and represents an “explosion of angels in Second Temple Judaism,” at a time of great spiritual angst for Jews in Jerusalem looking for divine connection, said Adolfo Roitman, a curator of the exhibit.

The story of how the stone was discovered is just as murky as its meaning. A Bedouin man is said to have found it in Jordan on the eastern banks of the Dead Sea around the year 2000, Knohl said. An Israeli university professor later examined a piece of earth stuck to the stone and found a composition of minerals only found in that region of the Dead Sea.

The stone eventually made it into the hands of Ghassan Rihani, a Jordanian antiquities dealer based in Jordan and London, who in turn sold the stone to Swiss-Israeli collector David Jeselsohn in Zurich for an unspecified amount. Rihani has since died. The Bible scholar traveled to Jordan multiple times to look for more potential stones, but was unable to find the stone’s original location.

Israel Museum curators said Jeselsohn lent the stone to the museum for temporary display.

Lenny Wolfe, an antiquities dealer in Jerusalem, said that before the Jordanian dealer bought it, another middleman faxed him an image of the stone and offered it for sale.

“The fax didn’t come out clearly. I had no idea what it was,” said Wolfe, who passed on the offer. It was “one of my biggest misses,” Wolfe said.

What function the stone had, where it was displayed, and why it was written are unknown, said curators of the Israel Museum exhibit.

“There is still so much that is unclear,” said Michal Dayagi-Mendels, a curator of the exhibit. Scholars, she said, “will still argue about this for years.”

———

Follow Daniel Estrin at www.twitter.com/danielestrin

 

Franks Casket – “Here fight Titus and the Jews”

“Here the inhabitants flee from Jerusalem”

Epigraphical Evidence for the Reigns of Vespasian and Titus (1901 PDF)

“IMP[ERATOR] CAESAR VESPASIANUS AUG[USTUS]…”

This is the beginning of the Latin inscription on this triumphal column dedicated to Titus, who led the siege against Jerusalem. The abbreviation “LEG-X-FRE” appears at the bottom, indicating that the column was erected by the Tenth Roman Legion. Most likely, this column stood at on of the entrances to the Roman temple in Jerusalem. The column was discovered as part of the foundation to a Moslem palace south of the Temple Mount.” (Picture by Zev Radovan)

Evidence of the crossing of the Red Sea
Peter’s Tomb Found? A Roman Triumphal Arch on the Temple Mount In Jerusalem?
  • 2010 Unique Second Temple inscription discovered  in Jerusalem “The 10-line Aramaic script, which is clear but cryptic, is being deciphered by a team of epigraphic experts in an effort to determine the meaning of the text, said Prof. Shimon Gibson, of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, who is co-directing the excavation. “This is a difficult script, not one that is worn or graded, which demands research,” Gibson said.  He estimated that it would take a couple of months to determine what the inscription says.  “It is like digging out grandparents’ hand-written letters,” he quipped.
  • 12/15/5: Jesus: Written on Stone – Scott Stripling (Another Must Read from American Vision) “The discovery of this seven word Aramaic inscription (without the punctuation marks), firmly dated to the mid-first century A.D., is a watershed moment in the study of the backgrounds of early Christianity. What the Dead Sea Scrolls were to the study of Second Temple Judaism, this inscription is for the study of the primitive Christian church. Hershel Shanks, the editor of Biblical Archaeology Review (BAR) whose bimonthly periodical announced this dramatic story on October 21, 2002, stated that, “The James ossuary (bone box) may be the most important find in the history of New Testament archaeology. Ossuary burial, known as ossilegium, was only practiced in Jerusalem about 89 years (from 20 B.C. to 70 A.D.), less when we consider that it was probably abandoned at the outset of the First Jewish Revolt in 66, rather than at its conclusion in 70.”
  • 11/20/5: Ivory Emperor Emerges From Roman Forum – “Emperor Vespasian (69-79 AD) built the temple in 72 AD to house the spoils from the suppression of the First Jewish Revolt by his son Titus – later emperor 79-81 AD – along with Greek masterpieces collected by Nero (54-68 AD) .  The ivory-statue coup comes shortly after another jackpot find – a huge marble head of Emperor Constantine (305-337 AD) discovered in July at Trajan’s Forum . The 60cm-high head, which was found in good condition, showed Constantine in stylised glory, at the time of his triumphant entry into Rome after beating rival Emperor Maxentius at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge (312 AD).”
  • Secular scholars back Christian claims against “Jesus Tomb” “Prominent non-Christian experts, using many of the same arguments as Christian scholars, have dismissed recent claims of the discovery of Jesus’ family tomb as a publicity stunt without scientific backing.”
  • “Jesus Tomb” may be a hoax… but what about “Peter Tomb” in Jerusalem?
  • 8/19/5:  Stone Inscriptions – This is a scan of a group of letters on CIL VI 12139. The top panel is the photographic image. The middle panel is the iron fluorescence; while there is iron fluorescence visible, it becomes very weak in areas that have been significantly worn away. The bottom panel is lead fluorescence. Even in areas that have been significantly weathered, the fluorescence is strong enough to clearly read the text. (Image courtesy of Cornell University)

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Date: 17 Jan 2010
Time: 04:59:46

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Bizonyára Péter apostol kérte hogy legyen neki osszuáriuma itt. De mivel Romába feszitették keresztre feleségével egy napon,67-ben, már semmi lehetösége nem volt senkinek öt-hamvait Jerusalembe vinni, mert 64-ben már felkelés indult, és 67-ben már jorészben körbe volt véve Jerusalem a romai légiokkal.Izraelben háboru folyt!Igy az osszuárium üresen maradt. A földrengések miatt leszakadt sziklák összetörték az osszuáriumokat. Németh Zoltán in Hungary