Weekly Picture from Israel 180131

Pictures from Israel

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+Israel-©-MEA-20180131-(FRD01)-Historical-Icons-of-Israel–Garden-Tomb

Historical Icons of Israel – The Garden Tomb

The Garden Tomb with its neatly maintained gardens and trees, provides a tranquil environment for prayer and reflection. It is located close to the Damascus Gate of Jerusalem’s Old City. Within the garden at a placed called Golgotha (Place of the Skull) is a tomb, a winepress and a water cistern, including burial benches which were made sometime between the 4th and 6th Century of the Byzantine period.

The Garden Tomb is generally regarded by Protestants to be the tomb in which Messiah was buried. However, the Catholic Church favours the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to be the more accurate historical site. The New Testament tells us that after Jesus was crucified, a rich religious leader named Joseph (of Arimathea) was given permission by Pilate to take and bury the body. Also known as Gordon’s Calvary, the Garden Tomb is what you could call the “rival” to the Church of the Hoy Sepulcher. It is called Gordon’s Calvary because in 1883 British General Charles Gordon suggested that this outcropping of rock just across the street from the north city wall was indeed Golgotha. His discovery gained momentum because the garden tomb had been found near this location in 1867, and the words sited in Hebrews 13:12, “He suffered outside the gate,” are used to confirm this.

Interestingly, archaeologists estimate this tomb to have been established between 900 BC and 700 BC, corresponding with the Old Testament later period. This reckoning casts doubt on the claim that this is the same tomb in which Messiah was buried, because there are several references to Messiah’s burial place being a new tomb, e.g. in Matthew 27:60, it says that Joseph (of Arimathea), “…laid it in his new tomb which he had hewn out of the rock; and he rolled a large stone against the door of the tomb, and departed. Also in John 19:41 it says, “Now in the place where He was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid.”

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Weekly Picture from Israel 180124

Pictures from Israel

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+Israel © MEA-20180124 (V101) Historical Icons of Israel -King David’s Harp

Historical Icons of Israel -King David’s Harp

In this picture we see two dedicated musicians playing their harps in two different places in Jerusalem.  The musician on the left is playing within the City of David, currently an archaeological site, while the other musician is playing her harp in an alcove within the walls of the ancient Old City.

The most famous harp in history is the Harp of David. There is much speculation as to the actual shape of this harp. However, what is generally accepted is that it was symmetrical with perhaps 10 strings and known as the Kinnor Harp.  What we know from the sages, is that David was not only an expert harpist and psalms composer, who used harp therapy in the royal court of King Saul, but also a recognized musicologist and builder of classical harp designs.  

Mention of the harp goes back to about 4004 BC, where in Genesis 2:40, the Bible credits the House of Jubal as the maker and players of harps and flutes.  The oldest physical harp to be discovered comes from ancient Sumerian and Egyptian societies. The kinnor is mentioned 42 times in the Old Testament, in relation to “divine worship… prophecy… secular festivals.” Sages record that a minimum number of nine kinnor were to be played in the Temple at any one time.

The Bible says that David also made 1,000 lyres and 7,000 harps to atone for the sins of Israel. As well, cymbals and other instruments were used for singing and praising the God of Israel, of which some were even handed down from the time of Moses with the inscription, “Under his feet was something like a sapphire stone pavement in the essence of heaven’s clarity” from Exodus 24:10.  Interestingly, one etymology viewpoint of the Hebrew word ‘Kinneret’, as in Lake Kinneret’ (Sea of Galilee), is that the shape of the lake resembled that of the kinnor harp, as its name implies.

Copyright exists in all the material on this website and is owned by Messianic Education Australia Ltd. unless otherwise explicitly stated. This copyright extends to the images, logos, layout and presentation styles as well as the text material.