Secret Location of 'King David's Castle' to be Revealed

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/176020#.UtVBvRYxn8v

Main > News > Jewish World

Secret Location of 'King David's Castle' to be Revealed
A major archaeological find points to a Davidic royal castle in Nahal Refaim. Location was secret, until now.
By Gil Ronen
First Publish: 1/7/2014, 1:01 PM


Statue of King David, King David's Tomb
Flash 90
The location of a major archaeological find that was kept secret until now will be revealed to the public on Friday, next week. The find is being touted as a royal castle that could have belonged to Israel's most celebrated king – the Bible's King David.
The find is a decorated carved stone known as "a proto-aeolic capital" that is connected to a column. Only 30 such capitals have been found in Israel so far, and only five of them were found in areas in which Biblical-era kings lived.
Unlike all of the other proto-aeolic capitals found in Israel – this one is not separate from the column but connected to it. The weight of the column and capital are estimated to be about five tons.
"For reasons that are not completely clear," wrote newspaper Makor Rishon when the find was first announced, "several authorities in Israel have decided to silence the find, which may mark a breakthrough in the perception of the period of King David and his son, Shlomo [Solomon], and of the entire Judean kingdom."
The site was identified by Binyamin Tropper, of the Kfar Etzion Field School, as he descended into a cave in the area of southern Jerusalem. The capital "apparently indicates that an entire temple or castle is buried beneath it," the newspaper added.
Mysteriously, when Kfar Etzion Field School Director Yaron Rosental contacted the Israel Antiquities Authority to inform them of the find, the person he spoke to reportedly simply said – "Yaron, good for you. You found it, but we already are aware of it. Now forget about the whole thing and keep your mouth shut."
Rosental said that he later found out that the IAA had known about the site for 18 months.
According to Rosental, excavation of the site has potential for uncovering a complete castle and possibly an entire neighborhood from the Judean kings' period, for the first time ever. "We appear to have a complete castle here," he said. "Those who lived here after it did not know of its existence and thus, instead of using its stones to build a new building as was the usual practice, left it intact." The details found inside could be "amazing."
The IAA confirmed to Makor Rishon that the find is an important one that appears to date to the period of Judean kings. However, the IAA added, the subject is "sensitive" and "requires serious and responsible handling."
The Kfar Etzion Field School has announced that it will disclose the location of the find next Friday, January 17, right after a joint Jewish-Arab event for planting trees along the proposed route of the section of the security barrier that is to be constructed nearby. The field school vehemently opposes the construction and says that it will cause irreparable damage to nature, harm the livelihood of local residents and create tensions between Jews and Arabs.
In addition, the planned route of the fence would leave the site of the archaeological find outside of Israeli-controlled territory, in the hands of the Palestinian Authority.
The IDF points out that the barrier is the last section of the security fence that remains to be built for protecting Jerusalem. It has also offered to assist the IAA in moving the proto-aeolic column into Israel.

http://www.livescience.com/42398-ark-of-covenant-fate-revealed-in-hebrew-text.html

MORE @ THIS LINK


Fate of Ark of the Covenant Revealed in Hebrew Text
By Owen Jarus, LiveScience Contributor   |   January 07, 2014 09:07pm ET

This bas-relief image showing the Ark of the Covenant being carried is from the Auch Cathedral in France. A newly translated Hebrew text claims to reveal the locations of treasures from King Solomon's Temple and discusses the fate of the Ark itself. Credit: Photo by I. Vassil, released into public domain through Wikimedia View full size image

A newly translated Hebrew text claims to reveal where treasures from King Solomon's temple were hidden and discusses the fate of the Ark of the Covenant itself.
But unlike the Indiana Jones movie "Raiders of the Lost Ark," the text leaves the exact location of the Ark unclear and states that it, and the other treasures, "shall not be revealed until the day of the coming of the Messiah son of David …" putting it out of reach of any would-be treasure seeker.
King Solomon's Temple, also called the First Temple, was plundered and torched by the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II in the sixth century B.C., according to the Hebrew Bible. The Ark of the Covenant is a chest that, when originally built, was said to have held tablets containing the 10 commandments. It was housed in Solomon's Temple, a place that contained many different treasures. [Religious Mysteries: 8 Alleged Relics of Jesus]


The newly translated text, called "Treatise of the Vessels" (Massekhet Kelim in Hebrew), says the "treasures were concealed by a number of Levites and prophets," writes James Davila, a professor at the University of St. Andrews, in an article in the book "Old Testament Pseudepigrapha More Noncanonical Scriptures Volume 1" (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2013).
"Some of these (treasures) were hidden in various locations in the Land of Israel and in Babylonia, while others were delivered into the hands of the angels Shamshiel, Michael, Gabriel and perhaps Sariel …" writes Davila in his article.
The treatise is similar in some ways to the metallic "Copper Scroll," one of the Dead Sea Scrolls found near the site of Qumran in the West Bank. The Copper Scroll also discusses the location of hidden treasure, although not from Solomon's Temple.

The Treatise of the Vessels (Massekhet Kelim) is recorded in the 1648 Hebrew book Emek Halachah, published in Amsterdam. In the book the Treatise is published as Chapter 11 (one of its two pages shown here). The two pages also contain material from other book chapters.
Credit: Scanned images courtesy www.hebrewbooks.org, they can also be seen here and here.
View full size image
The treatise describes the treasures in an imaginative way. One part refers to "seventy-seven tables of gold, and their gold was from the walls of the Garden of Eden that was revealed to Solomon, and they radiated like the radiance of the sun and moon, which radiate at the height of the world."
The oldest confirmed example of the treatise, which survives to present day, is from a book published in Amsterdam in 1648 called "Emek Halachah." In 1876, a scholar named Adolph Jellinek published another copy of the text, which was virtually identical to the 1648 version. Davila is the first to translate the text fully into English.