Amedeo

(A)

ARCHEOLOGY DIRECTORS PSEUDO-HISTORIANS

Big news --
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science...eltunnel_N.htm

announced by Israeli archeology-directors Reich and Shukron after explaining historically what the finds were all about.

What was discovered was an "underground drainage tunnel" under what later became the main road in Jerusalem. It is also called a channel (since it has been called a "drainage tunnel"). They say they think that the channel leads to the Kidron River, which empties in the Dead Sea.

No evidence was given for calling it a drainage tunnel or channel to begin with. In the debris filling the tunnel, they found pottery shrads, vessel fragments, and coins from the end of the Second Temple period. So, the Directors have inferred that the date of the tunnel is attested by the finds in the rubble, which, as they state, was about 2000 years ago. [Today we are in 2007.]

The Directors explain -- without the minimal evidence -- that the tunnel is significant in its role "as an escape hatch for Jews desperate to flee the conquering Romans." This conquering enterprise must refer to the forced entry into Jerusalem in retaliation of the "great revolt" that started in 66 A.D. and ended up with the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 A.D. So, the drainage tunnel was built, for precautionary reasons nearly 70 years before desperate Jews would try to flee from the Romans.

To be sure, 70 years before the destruction of the Temple, the Romans were in Jerusalem and other parts of Palestine, and there was no state of war between Jews and Romans. (Tiberius was the ruler of the empire, and Herod the Great, ruler of Judea, died in 4.B.C. By one account, Jesus of Nazareth was born before Herod died, for the infant was almost killed by the king.) So, all that the coins and shards in the rubble attest to is that the tunnel was in disuse around year 2000 years ago and that, as it had plenty of debris, it could not have been used as an escape hatch by the Jews around the year 70. So, the Directors are making pseudo-history.

They state that the tunnel was covered by heavy slab stones, on which the main road was then built. But they found also "manholes"... which is rather strange, if the disused "drainage" channel was covered with slabs for the sake of constructing a road on top of it. Were they manholes?

They state that the walls of the tunnel are built with ashlar [cut] stones which are 3 feet deep. As a photograph shows, one of these building blocks is probably 6 feet long. In places, the tunnel is 10 feet high. That's quite a size for a drainage channel!

The tunnel appears to me to be a megalithic structure which may be more than 3000 (rather than 2000) years old, built by people before Jerusalem fell in the hands of the Israelites. The Directors noticed that "portions of the original plastering remain" and it never crossed their minds that, whenever the plastering was done, it was certainly before the tunnel became a dumping ground, and that plaster may have been used in a structure frequented by humans.

It is interesting to ponder on the irony that in 66 A.D. the Roman procurator Florus took some money from the Temple in order to build an aqueduct which would bring needed water to Jerusalem (which is what sparked the revolt), and the current pseudo-history that the Jews built a monumental drainage system in Jerusalem with the foresight of Roman destructiveness!
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Big news:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11813638

Underground chambers built during Jewish revolt against Romans nearly 2000 years ago.

Experts say that the chambers were built to keep supplies, for they prepared to hide from the Romans during the revolt of A.D. 66-70. (The evidence for this is as big as the evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.) So, it was in 66 that some of the Temple money was taken, which occasioned the revolt, but the Jews (actually the Galileans who had the chambers) foresaw the whole sequence of events -- appropriated money, revolt, and retaliation -- and built hideouts by digging under their homes (which did not collapse) and produced a system of pits and low tunnels for supplies and for their safety.

"Built like igloos, the chambers are wide at the base and small at the top." [Or like some Mycenean vaults. Or like the inverted conical roofs of the trulli in Apulia.] They are built of housing materials; other refuges from the time of the revolt are hews out of rocks [as burial chambers used to be hewn, too]. So, they say, these chambers give information about life in Galilee in the first century on the eve of the revolt. (Did the experts ever wonder how long it would take to construct such refuge chambers under a house?)


Now we come to some useful and pertinent information:

The ancient Jews [Israelites] at the Kfar site [where the underground chambers were found] built their houses over the ruins of a fortified Iron Age city, reusing some of the stones from the old settlement. The original settlement is from the 10th to the 9th century B.C., as dated from pottery remains, a ceramic seal, etc. And the archeologists added what they must have seen back in time: They -- on the eve of the revolt -- dug through 5 feet of debris to build their hidehout complex. That's what the industrious and farsighted Jews did to be safe from the nasty Romans.
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(B)

OTHER JERUSALEM DUCTS

The main road in the City of David, in ancient Yerushalyim, is from the Second temple period = the TYROPEAN ROAD.

A page in the site of the Museum Bais HaMikdash, is about "room 21", which shows excavations of the Tyropean Road. It includes a picture of what is called The Sewer. (It is a barrel-vault tunnel [true tunnel] made of large stone blocks. It has nothing to do with the just discovered slab-covered passageway.)
http://www.campsci.com/museum/room21.htm

or click on the next URL and > "Tyropean Road"
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Hezekiah's Water System
http://www.community.gospelcom.net/Brix?pageID=4816

Before David captured Jerusalem, around 1000 B.C., the Jesubites dug a shaft from the city into the cave from which water sprang. This, the Spring of Gihon, was the main water supply for Jerusalem.
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Around 700 B.C. King Hezekiah of Jerusalem ordered the construction of a tunnel connecting Jerusalem to Gihon Spring (outside its walls) to ensure a source of drinking water. The water collected at the Pool of Siloam.

An inscription [in Phoenician or archaic Greek letters] inside the pool described the meeting of workers from both ends.
As the the plaque was taken away for safety by the Turks more than 100 years ago, now the plaque is on loan in Jerusalem.
One source:

Wednesday, September 5, 2007
Turkey to Return Ancient Artifact to Israeli Control

Very interesting cooperation: Hezekiah Inscription to return to Israel

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(C)

Major Roman-style cities founded in Galilee and regions of the north, in Palestine, under the Herods, in the period 4 B.C. - 70 A.D.

This was a very economically and culturally flourishing period in Palestinian [Land of Israel] history. But power-hungry rebel groups created political problems. The Zealots fought against the Romans as well as against Judaeans who did not cooperate with them. The so-called "Jewish Revolt" of 66-70 is a modern Jewish invention; the truth is that the violent rebel groups spoiled the peaceful, free, and prosperous life of all the Israelites. (There is no evidence of any building of escape hatches and of hidehouts because of expected persecution and destructivess of the Romans in Palestine!)

Cf.: THE WORLD OF THE HERODIANS
http://www.christianleadershipcenter.org/bibarch17.htm

Archaeological finds in:

Tiberias
(Capital city of Herod Antipas, Galilee.) Roman layout of the city [vertically and horizontally crossing streets (as was typical of military encampments], colonnades, baths, palace, forum, gate (of 16-22 A.D.), etc.

Sepphiris (Diocaesarea)
Theater, mosaic floors, colonnades, scultures, TUNNELS prepared for water, AQUEDUCTS, cisterns, etc. A coin inscription: "Diocaesaris, the holy city, city of shelter, loyal friendship and alliance between the Sanhedrin and the Senate of the Roman People."

Scytopolis
Theater, amphitheater, bathhouses, colonnades, etc.

Caesarea Philippi
mosaics, frescoes, stucco, stone tables, pottery, peristyle, etc.

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