Brick Making in Antiquity

 

Unexcavated brick wall at Harappa in India.

Brick makers were a skilled class of people in the ancient world. They served the regional chiefs who constructed fortifications, palaces, temples and pyramids. Many structures built in the Bronze Age were made of stone. However, bricks were used to lay out the foundation of a new building. Stacked bricks served as markers. Some buildings contained bricks that were inscribed with prayers and dedications, as is done today on the corner stones of some public buildings and churches.

Mud bricks date back to Mehrgarh (4500 B.C.), and baked bricks were a hallmark of the Indus Valley Civilization. Archaeologists have found clay or mud brick structures, often in ruins, dating to as early as 4800 B.C.

The bricks were pressed into molds and then dried in the sun or baked in ovens (kilns). The molds made it possible to produce bricks that were uniform in size and shape.

Baked bricks form this wall. The strength and height are increased by alternating rows of bricks running in different directions.

Kiln-baked bricks were stronger and were used for the outer defensive walls and for structures near flood zones. 

Brick kilns (shown below) were discovered at Egyptian Teudjoi (Ankyronpolis) south of Beni Suef, on the east bank of the Nile. 

Genesis 11:3 tells us that the towers in Mesopotamia were built of fired brick. Mud or clay bricks were used to build temples, palaces, entrances to royal tombs, houses, walls, and pyramidal towers called ziggurats. The Mesopotamian ziggurats were built with a core of sun-dried mud brick and an exterior covered with kiln-baked brick. The term "ziggurat" comes from the Akkadian word ziqqurratu, which means "rising building" (from the ancient Akkadian zaqâru, "to rise high").

The Sumerians used bricks to create arched entrances to royal tombs. Sumerian arches were made by stacking bricks on top of each other in steps that met in the center. Around 3000 B.C, builders created a special wedge-shaped brick mold that allowed the bricks to fit even more closely together above a doorway.

The Sumerians and ancient Egyptians built shrine cities and fortifications using clay bricks mixed with straw. According to Exodus 5:7, Pharaoh ordered the Egyptian taskmasters: "You are no longer to supply the people with straw for making bricks; let them go and gather their own straw."

To increase the brick production teams of brick makers competed against each other. This image (above) of men making bricks appears on the wall of the tomb of Rekmara, a ruler of the Eighteenth Dynasty (1550-1292 BC). 

The land of Canaan and its principal cities, such as Hazor, Kadesh, and Jerusalem, were under Egyptian rule during the Eighteenth Dynasty. Cities under Egyptian rule were fortified with walls many feet thick. The north wall protecting Lachish was 17 feet thick and the outer walls of Gezer were 14 feet thick. These fortified shrine cities are called the "high places" in the Bible. 

Jerusalem was named Jebus because it was the city of the Jebusites who built their royal complex on the south-eastern hill of Jerusalem. The old Jebusite wall was made of stone. Most monuments and fortification walls built by high kings were made of stone. It appears that stone masons were a rank above brick makers.

Related reading: Bricks and Urbanization in the Indus Civilization Rise and Decline; The High Places; Ancient Twin Cities; The Tower of Babel; Tar as an Adhesive and Sealant; Pharaoh's Brick Makers

3000 Year Temple Seal

In 2014, Matvei Tcepliaev, a 10-year-old Russian tourist, volunteered to sift through dirt at Jerusalem’s Temple Mount and found this 3000 year seal. The limestone seal bears the image of an animal, likely the totem of the family to which it belonged.

The seal dates to the early Iron Age, the time of the Jebusite occupation of Jerusalem (Jebus/Yehu) and King David's reign (10th century B.C.). The Temple Mount and the royal compound were constructed during David's later years and during the reign of his son, Solomon.

Ancient clay seals (called bullae) were used to secure documents by the personal authority of an official or a king. These seals were created by the impression of a signet on a lump of clay. A rolled papyrus or parchment document was tied with a cord and the cord was sealed with the piece of clay bearing the impression.

Dr. Gabriel Barkay, co-founder and director of the project, explained that this discovery is significant because it originated from the Temple Mount itself. Only one other Iron Age II seal of this peculiar style has been found in Jerusalem. It was found by archaeologist Eilat Mazar in the Ophel, the area between the City of David and the Temple Mount.

1 Chronicles 27:3 says that King Jotham “did much building on the wall of the Ophel” in the mid-8th century B.C., and the site’s history stretches back well before this construction. The root of the word ophel is OP and pertains to a complex of interrelated ideas: seeing (optic); armed guards (opiltes); walled towns (oppida), and sun shrines (O'piru) served by a priest caste known in the ancient world as Ha'piru, Ha'biru (Hebrew) and 'Apiru.

The Sifting Project at Jerusalem Temple Mount is run by Bar-Ilan University and the City of David Foundation. Tourists are invited to help comb through the 400 truckloads of dirt dumped in a valley outside the Old City of Jerusalem in 1999 by the Islamic trust.

Matvei Tcepliaev holding the 3000 year seal

Volunteers have also discovered hundreds of 10th century B.C. pottery sherds and a rare bronze arrowhead believed to be from the same period.

Read more here.

Related reading: Yahu Seals; Proto-Saharan Pottery Marks; Purity Seal From Herod's Temple; What We Learn From King Ahaz's Seal; A List of Seal Impressions and Ostracon

Jerusalem Pilgrimage

Prayer for the Peace of Jerusalem from Psalm 122:6-8

May they prosper who love you.
Peace be within your walls,
Prosperity within your palaces.
For the sake of my brethren and companions, I will now say, "Peace be within you."

Long before there was a city of Jerusalem, humans and herds were sustained by the perpetual natural Gihon spring. This spring sustained the life of humans and herds for countless generations. Evidence of human occupation in the Chalcolithic Period (Copper Age) includes pottery shards found near the Spring and depressions which were used to grind grain or press oil from olives. The Gihon Spring, the only source of water for the city, emerges in the Kidron Valley, across from the Mount of Olives. To protect the access to the Gihon Spring a fortress was built. This Spring Citadel has 23-foot-thick walls comprised of stone blocks up to ten feet wide. This is a large structure for a Chalcolithic site. The older shrine city of Jericho has a mound that is 70 feet high and about 10 acres in size.

Gihon Spring, the only source of water for the city, emerges in the Kidron Valley, across from the Mount of Olives. The Spring emerged in a cave on the eastern slope of the City of David above the Kidron Valley. The water flowed into the valley below, watering the terraced agricultural land on the slope of Zion. This area is called the "King's Garden" in II Kings 25:4; Jeremiah 52:7; and Nehemiah 3:15.

The shafts and most of the tunnels that allow access to the water were natural karstic fissures in the rock that the excavators took advantage of when cutting passages from the city to the spring.

To protect the access to the Gihon Spring a fortress was built. This Spring Citadel has 23-foot-thick walls comprised of stone blocks up to ten feet wide, and represents the largest Chalcolithic fortress discovered thus far in Israel.

Jebus or Yebu (2220-1250 BC)

Jerusalem under the Jebusites

Stepped structure of the ancient Jebusite Wall

View from the area of the Jebusite fortress looking down to the Kidron Valley near the source of the Gihon Springs.

The main water source of the original City of David (Ir David) was the Gihon Spring located at the base of the eastern slope of the city in the Kidron Valley.

A 3,500 year fortress has been found that guarded the entrance to the Gihon Spring.

The Gihon Spring provided water year round by gushing forth several times a day. This water naturally flowed into the Kidron Valley. In the earliest days of Jerusalem’s occupation, reservoirs where built to collect the water from the Gihon Springs. Three systems were eventually designed to use this water: Warren's Shaft, Siloam Channel (Tunnel), an Hezekiah's Tunnel.


Hezekiah's Tunnel

Hezekiah’s Tunnel is the most recent water work, cut during the reign of King Hezekiah at end of 8th century BC. This is described in a paleo-Hebrew inscription, cut into the rock near the exit:

"…breakthrough and this was the account of the breakthrough. While the laborers were still working with their picks, each toward the other, and while there were still three cubits to be broken through, the voice of each was heard calling to the other, because there was a zdh [crack?] in the rock to the south and to the north. And at the moment of the breakthrough, the laborers struck each toward the other, pick against pick. Then the water flowed from the spring to the pool for 1,200 cubits. And the height of the rock above the heads of the laborers was 100 cubits."

II Kings 20:20, we read how Hezekiah "...made a pool, and a conduit, and brought water into the city…" and again in II Chronicles 32:30: "This same Hezekiah also stopped the upper watercourse of Gihon, and brought it straight down to the west side of the city of David."

Hezekiah’s Tunnel is about 2 feet wide and 5 feet high at the entrance near the Gihon Springs, as seen in this photo. Notice the fresh water still moving through this tunnel as it has for 2,700 years.

This tunnel was discovered by Edward Robinson in 1838 and was cleared by Montague Parker’s team during the years 1909-1911.

Ancient Tombs in Silwan

Looking south into the Kidron Valley from near the south east corner of the Temple Mount. The Arab town of Silwan is on the left (east) of the photo. This is where the tombs of important persons have been found.

The Silwan necropolis is probably the most important ancient cemetery in Israel and is assumed to have been used by the highest-ranking officials residing in Jerusalem. Its tombs were cut between the 9th and 7th centuries BC. The tombs face David's city, the oldest part of Jerusalem.

Remnants of the Monolith of Silwan, a tomb dating to the time of Solomon's Temple. It was once thought to be the burial site of Solomon's Egyptian queen.


Ophel

The gold medallion shown below is one of the prize finds of the "Ophel treasure" recovered during the 2013 excavations of Dr. Eilat Mazar in this area between the City of David (Zion) and the Temple Mount (Moriah). This area shows signs of human occupation from at least 3,500 BC.

Ophel (Hebrew עֹ֫פֶל) refers to a high place, an elevated site, or a fortified mound. The root of the word ophel is OP and pertains to a complex of interrelated ideas: seeing (optic); armed guards (opiltes); a walled town (oppida), and a sun shrine served by a caste of priests known in the ancient world as O'piru. Variants of O'piru include Ha'piru, Ha'biru (Hebrew) and 'Apiru.

Acra

The Acra was the Seleucid stronghold built in 186 BC against the south wall of Solomon’s Temple Mount on the Ophel. It was used between the years of 186-141 BC as a military post to control the city's population and to monitor activities at the Temple.

The Western Wall ("The Wailing Wall")

The portion of the Western Wall inside the black box is the portion that remains from the Temple Mount retaining walls built by Herod. The seven courses of stones inside the black box are all Herodian blocks.

Looking east at another cornerstone on the southwest corner of the Wall. The pavement and steps are original Herodian pavement placed here in the first century.

This is a Turkish wall and tower built by the Ottoman ruler Suleiman. Notice the outcropping of the bedrock under the tower.

Mount Moriah (Temple Mount)

Looking across the pavement built over Mount Moriah to create a level surface. This is the site of the ancient Temple Mount. The Dome of the Rock stands where Herod's Temple formerly stood.

David purchased a threshing floor from the Jebusite Araunah. It would have been located at a high elevation so that the wind could carry the chaff. It is believed it may have been on Mount Moriah.

Dome of the Rock

The Dome of the Spirits covers the exposed bedrock of Mount Moriah that some believe to be the bedrock that was inside the Holy of Holies.


Gethsemane and the Mount of Olives

Old olive trees in the Garden of Gethsemane

Sunset looking back at Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives

The Church of the Holy Sepulcher

The cross on the grey dome over Calvary in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

Front facade of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher

The Tomb of the Virgin Mary

View looking down the steps to the Tomb of the Virgin Mary

The Church of the Sepulchre of Saint Mary was built over the burial site believed to be that of the Virgin Mary. The location of the Tomb of Mary is across the Kidron Valley from St Stephen’s Gate in the Old City walls of Jerusalem, just before Gethsemane, at the foot of Mount of Olives.

Floods in 1972 enabled excavations by the archaeologist Bellarmino Bagatti, who concluded that the place where Mary had been buried was clearly located in a cemetery used during the first century. The large crypt containing the empty tomb in the Church is all that remains of an early 5th-century church, making it one of the oldest nearly complete religious building in Jerusalem.


Related reading: Does Political Zionism Align with the Bible?; The City of Jerusalem by Col. C. R. Conder (1909)

Destruction of the Temple: Rabbinic Interpretations

Literary critic Adam Kirsch is reading a page of Talmud a day, along with Jews around the world. This article appears here.

Last month, in Tractate Shekalim, Daf Yomi readers encountered two priestly families known as the House of Avtinas and the House of Garmu. Each of these clans was the hereditary keeper of one of the Temple rituals: The House of Avtinas was responsible for making the incense burned in the Temple in Jerusalem; and the House of Garmu was in charge of baking the shewbread. In this week’s Daf Yomi reading, in Tractate Yoma, we heard once again about how these families refused to share their recipes, treating them as a kind of trade secret. This irritated the Temple authorities, who tried to bring in craftsmen from Alexandria as replacements; but the replacements proved unable to do things the right way, and the families had to be hired back at twice their old salary.

What should we think of the House of Avtinas—were they greedy and selfish for withholding their incense recipe, or did they have some more respectable motive? In Yoma 38a, the Gemara offers contrasting opinions about this. After the Temple was destroyed, Rabbi Yishmael recounts, he was walking along the road and he came across a descendant of the House of Avtinas. “I said to him: Your fathers sought to enhance their honor and sought to diminish God’s honor.” But now that the Temple was gone and the priestly families had lost their prestigious roles, “The honor of God remains as it was, and he diminished their honor.”

This anecdote suggests, though obliquely, what an enormous upheaval the destruction of the Temple must have created in Judean society. The priestly hierarchy was large and well-established, constituting the upper class of the nation; now they were suddenly rendered useless, like aristocratic émigrés during the French Revolution. There is even a hint of satisfaction in Yishmael’s words. The Talmud makes no secret of the fact that the priests’ ostentation and hunger for prestige sometimes made them unpopular. The fall of the House of Avtinas must have looked to some people like their just deserts.

Here, as often, it is useful to supplement the Talmud’s account of Second Temple-era Jerusalem with the one offered by the historian Josephus in The Jewish War. Josephus was himself a priest, and his sympathies were wholly with the established upper class of first-century Judea. But reading between the lines, it’s possible to see that the great Jewish revolt of 66-70 C.E., which attempted to cast off Roman rule and ended in catastrophe, was in large part a class revolt as well. The priests ruled Jerusalem under Roman authority, and during the war the priesthood was constantly urging the people to reconcile with their Roman overlords. The movement known as the Zealots—radical anti-Roman militants, who occupied the Temple at the beginning of the rebellion—were fighting against not just foreign rule, but priestly collaboration as well. (One of the first acts of the rebels was to burn down the offices containing debt records, a move that surely increased their popularity with the Jewish poor.)

It is typical of the Talmud’s apolitical approach that none of these conflicts are visible in the rabbis’ discussion of the priesthood and the Temple. The unpopularity of the House of Avtinas is attributed simply to their stinginess about the incense recipe, not to any larger economic or political grievance. And even this black mark is wiped away in another story told by Rabbi Yochanan ben Nuri.

One day after the destruction of the Temple, Yochanan relates, he came across an elderly survivor of the House of Avtinas, who handed over a scroll containing the formula for making incense. “As long as the House of my forefathers was extant, they would not pass it on to anyone,” the old man said. But now the chain of transmission was broken, and he had no choice but to entrust it to Yochanan: “Be careful with it,” he begged. Now that they were so humbled, Akiba ruled that their bad reputation had been erased: “It is prohibited to mention them unfavorably.” The episode is like a parable of the way religious authority was handed over, after the Temple’s destruction, from the priests to the rabbis who interpreted Jewish law.

The fall of the House of Avtinas leads the Gemara to reflect on the matter of posthumous reputations. The rabbis mention a man named Ben Kamtzar, who knew a technique for writing with four pens simultaneously but refused to teach it to anyone. “About Ben Kamtzar and his counterparts,” the Gemara quotes a phrase from the book of Proverbs: “But the name of the wicked shall rot.” What this means, the rabbis explain, is that the names of wicked people become unpopular, so that people no longer give them to children—much as no one today would name a child Adolf.

More troubling is the rabbis’ conclusion that certain names are so tainted by wickedness that people who bear them are subject to divine punishment. In I Samuel 22, for instance, we read about one Doeg the Edomite, who carries out an order from King Saul to slaughter a family of priests who were in league with David against him. Doeg’s rampage—he is said to have murdered 85 priests in one day—is a good reason for him to be counted among the wicked whose names will rot.

In Yoma 38b, the rabbis tell about a young boy who lived during the time of the Jewish rebellion, named Doeg ben Yosef. This Doeg was his mother’s favorite: “Each day his mother measured his height in handbreadths and donated gold equivalent to the weight that he gained to the Temple.” When the Romans laid siege to Jerusalem, however, the city fell victim to starvation, and Doeg’s mother ended up killing and eating him. (Josephus, too, reports cases of cannibalism during this terrible period.) Why did this happen to Doeg? The rabbis answer that it was because of his name, which was a wicked name: “See what befell him.”

Did the rabbis really believe that people deserve to die because their names? This seems manifestly unjust, and indeed it seems to have bothered Rabbi Elazar, who quickly revises the rule: “A righteous person is praised for his own actions, and a wicked person is cursed not only for his own actions but also for the actions of his wicked counterpart.” By this logic, a good person with a bad name will not suffer for it, but someone who lives up to the wickedness of his name will receive extra punishment. (Where this leaves poor Doeg ben Yosef, who was just a child, remains unclear.)

As the discussion goes on, the Gemara turns to other biblical examples of righteousness—such as Abraham—and wickedness—such as the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. Rabbi Elazar uses a biblical allusion to support the beautiful idea that “Even for one righteous person the world is created”: After all, when God created the world, he “saw that it was good,” “and good means nothing other than righteous.” Rabbi Yochanan adds that God never allows the world to be completely without righteous people: “No righteous person [tzaddik] departs from this world until another comparable righteous person is created.” Tzaddikim are rare, but God “planted some of them in each and every generation.” This statement seems to be connected to the Jewish folk tradition that there are 36 tzaddikim in each generation, though we might not know exactly who they are.

Toward the end of chapter 3 of Yoma, the Gemara turns to consider a line from Proverbs: “If it concerns the scorners, he scorns them, but to the humble he gives grace.” According to Reish Lakish, this saying is connected with the mystery of sin and free will. God gives us the freedom to sin, and he won’t stop us from doing evil; but if we resolve to do good, he will actively help us. Reish Lakish offers a metaphor: Imagine a merchant who is selling both foul-smelling naphtha and sweet balsam. If a customer comes to purchase naphtha, the merchant will sell it, but he says, “Measure it for yourself”: He doesn’t want to get too close to the bad smell. With balsam, on the other hand, the merchant says, “Wait for me until I can measure it with you, so that you and I will both be perfumed.” As always, the moral realism of the rabbis is impressive: They don’t deny the human propensity to evil, but they insist that goodness remains possible and divine.

***

Alice C. Linsley

In response to Adam Kirsch's article, I would like to address the following four points:

1. Adam Kirsch makes the excellent observation that the ruler-priest class in the first century had become quite corrupt. To maintain power they had compromised with the Roman authorities. They made a display of righteousness, but were motivated by greed and the desire for power. When Jesus appeared they lumped him with the zealots, but some who knew him, recognized that he fit the pattern of the Messiah. These righteous priests accused others in the Sanhedrin of bringing false charges against Jesus and of trying to destroy him by acting contrary to the Law. This caused further division within the Sanhedrin and at least two priests risked everything to serve Jesus: Joseph, of the prestigious priestly line of Matthew, and Nicodemus. The two priests buried Jesus' body and bore witness to the empty tomb.

2. Names tainted by evilness include Cain, Esau, Onan, Er and Korah. Cain, though a murder, was granted grace and mercy and became a great ruler who established cities. He is one of the "mighty men of old."

Judah's sons Er and Onan were destroyed when they refused to fulfill the Levirate law and spilled their seed on the ground (Gen. 38). However, Er's line was not cut off. The name Er appears in Luke's ruler list as one of the Virgin Mary's ancestors. This is Er, the son of Joshua, shown in the diagram at left.

In Genesis, Esau is the victim of trickery and betrayal by his brother Jacob. When Jacob returns from Paddan-Aram, Esau greets him warmly and offers to help him settle his wives, children and flocks in the land. In this action, Esau embodies forgiveness. It has been noted that the name Esau is also spelled Issa and Yeshu, both variants of the name Jesus.

There are two named Esau in Genesis and both represent respected leaders among their people. Esau the Elder married the daughter of Elon. Their son Eliphaz married a daughter of Seir the Horite (Gen. 36). Esau the Younger, Jacob's brother, married a high ranking Horite woman named Oholibamah. Her name means Exalted Tent or High Tabernacle, and she is a type of the Virgin Mary.

Likewise, Korah, Moses' half brother, was destroyed in the rebellion in the wilderness, yet the name Korah is attached to many Psalms. The rabbinic attempt to paint all people with certain names as cursed clearly fails when we turn to the Scriptures themselves. Unfortunately, in modern Judaism the Talmud has greater authority than the Scriptures.

The Talmud encourages this perception: “My son, be more careful in the observance of the words of the Scribes than in the words of the Torah." (Talmud Erubin 21b)

SUNY history professor, Robert Goldberg, writes; “The traditional Jew studies Talmud because it communicates ultimate truth—truth about God, truth about the world, and most important, truth about how God wants the holy community of Israel to live.”

Note that the Talmud is not studied for information about Messiah. It is largely anti-Christ in tone. In Sanhedrin 43a it says that Jesus the Nazarene was executed because he practiced sorcery. Sanhedrin 106a says Jesus' mother was a whore: “She who was the descendant of princes and governors played the harlot with carpenters.” The Talmud teaches that Jesus was illegitimate and was conceived during menstruation; that he had the soul of Esau; that he was a fool, a conjurer, a seducer; that he was crucified, buried in hell and set up as an idol ever since by his followers.

The elevation of Talmud over Torah began well before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. The hard line against Christians became more evident after the Sanhedrin relocated to Jamnia. The present form of the Talmud dates to about AD 500. By this time the rabbinic Judaism had hardened against the followers of Jesus Christ.

3. The idea that there are 36 tzaddikim in each generation is the rabbinic version of the Asian bodhisattva. The number 36 is half of the number 72 which was the number of deified rulers who would judge the world. They are called Horim. It was believed that half stayed in heaven and half served on earth. In the Qur'an these are called Houris. They have been cast as virgins in popular Islam. In a note to his fellow hijackers, September 11 ringleader Muhammad Atta reminded them of their impending "marriage in Paradise" to the 72 virgins promised in the Qur'an to the faithful departed. However, Islamic scholar Dr. Maher Hathout says that Houris refers to "beings of distinction."

These are deified rulers and to them we must add the saints. The seven angels with their seven trumpets of Revelation are accompanied by an angel who offers the prayers of the saints with a great amount of incense (Rev. 8:3). This angel is among the hosts that stand before the throne of God and who appear with the Lord at the Judgment. Consider Deuteronomy 33:2: "The Lord came from Sinai and dawned from Seir upon us; he shone forth from Mount Paran; he came from the ten thousands of holy ones, with flaming fire at his right hand." Seir was one of the principal regions belonging to the Horites (Gen. 36).

4. The various orders of the Temple were sub-castes including door guards, incense burners, makers of shewbread, lectors, tanners (tahash), and guardians of archives, etc. As castes, these were required to protect their trade secrets and attempts to force them to share the secrets represent a break with the traditions of the Fathers/Horim. The rabbinic interpretation that the Temple was destroyed because of the failure to share trade secrets is unfounded and represents obfuscation of the truth. Destruction of the Temple began at the very hour that Jesus hung on the Cross and the temple veil was torn from top to bottom. Jesus foretold this event when he told his disciples that the day was coming when not a single stone would remain in place. The destruction of the Temple in 70 AD was the final act in the great drama of Israel's self-destruction through the rejection of Messiah, the celestial Temple.

The true priesthood continued in the persons of Joseph of the Horite line of Matthew (Hara-mattayim or Hari-matthea), Nicodemus, and Jesus the Christ who today bestows the mantle of Melchizedek upon those He calls. In this sense, the Christian priesthood is the organic continuance of the one true priesthood that can be traced back to Eden.


Related reading: Who was Jesus?; Who was Melchizedek?; Horite Temples; Messianic Jews and the Antecedents of Judaism; Matthew's Testimony Concerning the Empty Tomb; Mary's Ruler-Priest Lineage; The Talmud Versus the Doctrine of the Lord; David's Royal City; Evidence of Castes in the Book of Ruth

Jerusalem Under the Jebusites

Stepped structure of the ancient Jebusite wall

Alice C. Linsley

Under Jebusite rule and earlier, Jerusalem was divided into two cities, the western part called Jeru (Yiru) and the eastern part called Salem (Shalem). Genesis speaks of Melchizedek, the righteous ruler-priest of Jerusalem (Jebu/Yebu). He was likely of the royal house/lineage of Sheba and a kinsmen of Abraham, the Horite Hebrew.

The Jebusites are listed as a people of Canaan in Exodus 3:8, Joshua 12:8, Deuteronomy 7:1, II Chronicles and I Kings 9:20. Genesis 15:19-21 provides this list: "the Kenites, the Kenizzites, Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Raphaim, the Amorites, the Girgashites and the Jebusites."

David purchased a threshing floor from the Jebusite chief Araunah and offered sacrifice there. This would have been located at a high elevation where the wind could carry away the chaff. Threshing floors were sacred places for the Jebusites, the Horite Hebrew, and other peoples in the R1b Haplogroup. It may be that Judah's intercourse with a shrine qadesh took place at Timnah, which had a temple dedicated to Hathor, the overshadowed one. Timnah was directly north of Abdullum in Jebusite territory. Judah went to Timnah to visit with his friend from Abdullum and to help with the harvest. The harvest was a time for the hieros gamos, or sacred marriage. Naomi told her daughter-in-law Ruth to approach Boaz at the threshing floor. 

The hieros gamos may have been a ritual in which it was hoped that the Messiah would be conceived. Among the Horite Hebrew devotees of Hathor this ritual likely did not involve sexual intercourse, but the expectation of solar overshadowing. The threshing floors often had the shape of a sun and the "woman" of Genesis 3:15 (not Eve) was excepted to conceive the Seed by divine overshadowing (cf. Gabriel's explanation to Mary in Luke 1). It appears that the stories of Judah-Tamar and the Boaz-Ruth share narrative elements that should be considered in greater depth.
Prince Rotimi Obadofin believes that the biblical Jebusites were Africans. He has written, “perhaps the Jebusites, that is the original of Jerusalem were Ijebu people of today, since Oke-Eri is owned and inhabited by Ijebu people.”

Eri is related to the huge archaeological monument of Eredo. Eridu is also the name of an ancient Sumerian city. In Akkadian Eridu means "home away from home."

Obadofin supports his position by suggesting that “since Queen of Sheba was said to be visiting home when she met king Solomon, I feel strongly that she must have been one of the descendants of those Ijebu (Jebusites) driven away from Jerusalem by king David." Read more here.


The Jebusites are an extant people

Today the Jebu are classified as Yoruba, but the term "Yoruba" applied only after the 18th century. The Jebu identify themselves as distinct from other Yoruba sub-groups by calling themselves Nago-Jebu. The Jebu are also called Ijebu, and in the Bible they are called "Jebusites."

According to African legend, the Yoruba migrated to the Atlantic coast of Nigeria from the east. Some stopped in the region of Lake Chad where they had kin in Bor'no (land of Noah). Their kin were likely the Kanuri tribe, which may explain why some Yoruba have tribal marks similar to those of the Kanuri.

In 1892, the New York Times reported on the Jebu tribe, which controlled the water systems of the Port of Lagos. The king of the Jebu levied taxes on all products carried through his territory. This is consistent with the biblical information concerning Abraham’s cattle-herding Proto-Saharan ancestors who controlled water systems in Central Africa, the Nile, Canaan, and Mesopotamia.

The Jebusites may be related to the Ijebu, an extant people of Nigeria and Benin. The biblical Jebusites were also related to the Edomites who are called "Edo." The Jebusites had close connections with the Horites of Edom whose rulers are listed in Genesis 36. Abraham's territory was entirely in ancient Edom. It extended between the settlements of his two wives. Sarah resided in Hebron and Keturah resided in Beersheba.

Related reading: Kushite Diversity and Unity; The Jebusites Unveiled; History Channel's Bible Series Scores a C; History Channel's Bible Series: Episode 2; Hazor's Destruction: Another Theory

The Judges Deborah, Samuel and Huldah

Alice C. Linsley


When it comes to Samuel and Deborah, the place called Ramah always comes up. These two judges share Ramah as a point of reference. The region of Ramah-Dedan-Sheba was ruled by Ramah, the Kushite grandson of Noah. His brother Nimrod ruled in the Tigris-Euphrates valley. Kush and his sons Ramah and Nimrod ruled between BC 2417-2215. Sheba and Dedan were the ruling sons of Ramah, each ruling over his own region in Arabia. Dedan controlled the eastern coastline of the Reed Sea (Yam Suph).

Ramah was also a population center in Canaan. Other population centers in Judges 4–9 can be identified with reasonable certainty. These include Hazor, Bethel, Kedesh-Naphtali, Taanach, Ophrah, Tabbath, Succoth, Shechem, Arumah, and Thebez. However, only Hazor, Bethel, Taanach, Succoth, Shechem, and Thebez have been thoroughly excavated.

Judges 4:4-6 tells us, “Deborah, the wife of Lappidoth, was a prophet who was judging Israel at that time. She would sit under the Palm of Deborah, between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim, and the Israelites would go to her for judgment."

Though Deborah had great authority, she didn’t rule over all of Israel. She lived before the monarchy in Israel, a time which according to the book of Judges, had at least a dozen judges: Othniel, Ehud, Shamgar, Deborah, Gideon, Tola, Jain, Jephthah, Ibzan, Elon, Abdon and Samson. Though they are presented in what appears to be chronological order, some of these judges were contemporaries, each with his or her tribal jurisdictions.

Deborah's duties would have been like those of other judges. She helped to settle disputes, gave direction to people from God, and upheld the religious traditions of her Horim (Horite Hebrew ancestors). She also deliberated about and launched a counterattack against her enemy Jabin of Hazor and his military commander Sisera. Afterwards, the land had peace for forty years under Deborah's rule, according to Judges 4 and 5.

Deborah's Palm was halfway between Ramah (high of lifted up) and Bethel (House of God). Ramah and Bethel are on a north-south axis. Mircea Eliade, a Romanian sociologist of religion, wrote about the significance of the sacred center in his book "Cosmos and History: The Myth of the Eternal Return." Archaic cultures regarded their most sacred places as the center of the cosmos. The ancient Incas regarded Cuzco as the "ombligo" or "omphalos" (navel) of the earth. In the Psalms, Mount Zion is portrayed as the sacred center to which all the peoples would come to worship.

The sacred center or cosmic axis is the place of connection between God and Man, between Heaven and Earth. It is where the four compass directions meet. That is the significance of the north-south axis for Deborah and the east-west axis for Abraham. Abraham set up his tent at the the moreh's tree (the prophet's oak) between Bethel and Ai, on an east-west axis. (Gen. 18)  Here God visited Abraham and Abraham deliberated with the Lord about the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah. Here Abraham received the promise that Sarah would bring forth a son. So Abraham, like Deborah, deliberated with the Lord as a judge and prophet at the sacred center marked by a sacred tree.

In many Bibles, oak tree is rendered as terebinth, which is the word that appears in Hebrew. This might indicate the Pistacia terebinthus, also called turpentine tree, a small deciduous tree related to the pistachio and the earliest known source of turpentine. However, it is more likely that in the original telling of this story, terebinth meant the "tree of the priest's the daughter." In Arabic bint (بنت) means "daughter of" and tera is an ancient Ainu word for priest.  All the leading figures of the Pentateuch met their future wives at wells or river shrines maintained by priests.  In the more arid Palestine, the trees were at oases.

Caesarius of Arles explains that since Isaac, Jacob and Moses are all types of Jesus Christ, "for this reason they found their wives at wells, because Christ was to find His church at the waters of baptism." (Sermon 88:1) The church is symbolized by Photini, the Samaritan Woman at Jacob's Well, who asked the Lord for the Living Water.

In Africa and Arabia, the fronds of Tamars (date nut palms) are cut and used at the installation of a sovereign or a priest of high rank. This is the custom that stands behind the greeting of Jesus as he entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. Other trees are also regarded as having sacred uses, such as the Cotton Tree and the Baobab. Jude Adebo Adeleye Ogunade writes in his memoir about growing up Ijebu. He was warned not to touch the leaves of the Igi-Ose tree, because as his Mama Eleni explained: "That tree is the tree whose leaves are used to install Chiefs and Kings of Ijebu and as your grandfather was a custodian of the rites of chieftaincy and kingship you must not play with its leaves."


Samuel's Ramah

Ramah is where the prophet Samuel resided. The word Ramah is associated with the oldest priestly lines. The root is RM. One of Shem's sons was named A'ram (Gen. 10:22) and the priestly lines of Aaron and his half-brother Korah are traced through their Horite priest father Am'ram. David was of the priestly line of Ram. (Ruth 4:19) Samuel was the son of the priest Elkanah. Elkanah had 2 wives, Hannah and Peninnah (1 Samuel 1:2), as was the custom for Horite priests.

The elders of Israel came to Ramah to demand that Samuel appoint a king to rule over them. David fled to Ramah for Samuel's help when Saul sought his life.

The ancient priesthood was associated with the number seven. The number seven is the Priestly Writer's tag in the book of Genesis. God created in six days and rested on the seventh. God commanded Noah to take seven pairs of clean animals (as contrasted with the other version in which he takes only one set). Jeremiah warned that the priests of Israel would not be spared. “The mother of seven will grow faint and breathe her last. She will die, ashamed and humiliated, while it is still daylight” (Jeremiah 15:9).

In ancient Israel, seven sons was as a proverbial expression to describe a family whose future in Israel was guaranteed, but often only one son was born, and this foreshadows the Son of God. When Hannah miraculously conceived and gave birth to Samuel, she said: “The barren has borne seven” (1 Samuel 2:5). After Ruth married Boaz and gave birth to Obed, the women of Bethlehem acclaimed the Moabite mother, telling Naomi that Ruth was better “than seven sons.” (Ruth 4:15)


Huldah, a Judge in Israel

Not all prophets lived at well or oases. Some lived in cities.  II Kings 22:14 reports that King Asaiah sent his priests to consult the “prophetess” Huldah. Her name indicates that she belonged to the tribe of Hul, a son of Aram (Gen. 10:23). Huldah, who lived approximately 655 years after Deborah, resided in Jerusalem, in the "new section." Jerusalem, which was called "Urusalim" in Akkadian, was an important shrine city in David's time, exhibiting typical characteristics of ancient shrine cities. It had flowing water from a perennial spring and was built on a precipice, as was the shrine city Nekhen at El-Kab on the eastern bank of the Nile in Sudan. The region around Amman in Jordan (Gen. 36:35) was likewise famed for its springs and high citadel. By Huldah's time, Jerusalem had expanded and the temple precinct was regarded as the sacred center.


Related reading: Where Abraham Spent His Old Age; The Jerusalem that David Knew; Cousin Brides and their Ruler Sons; The Sacred Center in Biblical Theology; Deborah, Warrior Bee