Building Bridges of Time, Places, and People: Volume Ii: Tombs, Temples & Cities of Egypt, Israel, Greece & Italy

BUILDING BRIDGES

OF TIME

PLACES

AND PEOPLE:

TOMBS, TEMPLES & CITIES OF EGYPT,

ISRAEL, GREECE & ITALY,

VOLUME II

J. MARC. MERRILL

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© 2012 by J. Marc. Merrill. All rights reserved.

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Published by AuthorHouse 7/17/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4772-0418-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-0416-0 (e)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-0417-7 (dj)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012905473

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For Tom Tate, whose encouragement throughout the years

has been worth more than ten talents.

(See Matthew 25:14-29)

CONTENTS

1. POMPEII AND HERCULANEUM

2. COLONISTS

3. JUSTICE

4. GRAFFITI

5. CRUSHED

6. FIRE

7. SEPPHORIS

8. BRANCHES

WORKS CITED

A NOTE ON DOCUMENTATION:

Although a few minor modifications have been made, for the most part the Modern Language Association (MLA) style of documentation has been chosen for this work so that readers will not have to turn to the end of each chapter or to the end of the book itself in order to find out what sources are being cited.

With the MLA style the reader is given at least the minimum information of authors’ and editors’ last names (or the titles of sources when no authors or editors are identified) within sentences and paragraphs, along with page numbers, although the word page is included with the page number or numbers only when confusion might result if page is left out. If more than one book or article by the same author is cited anywhere within the text, then the title of that book is provided whenever doubts might arise as to which source is being used.

Quite often authors’ full names and the titles of their books are mentioned in a sentence; in that case, at the end of the sentence or at the end of the appropriate paragraph, only the page number (or numbers) is enclosed in parenthesis.

Full disclosure of all sources can be found at the end of this book in the Works Cited listing. As indicated by Works Cited, only those sources referred to in the body of this book are included. For a more inclusive bibliography readers will need to search out other texts.

A WORD ON ADDING TO DIRECT QUOTES:

Whenever it is deemed desirable to add information or to make a comment for purposes of clarification within a direct quote, the words being inserted will be enclosed by brackets [ ]. In those few cases where brackets are used by the author or authors being quoted, a note to that effect will appear at the end of the quote.

A WORD ON SPELLING:

A number of British sources have been used throughout Building Bridges of Time, Places and People, Volume 2, and for those who might not realize it, British spelling frequently varies from American spelling. For example, the British will write centre, colour, and symbolises whereas Americans will write center, color, and symbolizes. This difference is being pointed out so that only in a few instances will it be necessary to use [sic] in order to indicate that a word in a direct quote is, or at least appears to be, spelled incorrectly.

A WORD ON ITALICIZING TITLES:

Under the MLA system of documentation the Bible and its various books or epistles are not italicized, nor are they enclosed in quotation marks.

Except when noted otherwise, biblical quotations are from The New King James Version. When the King James Version or the New International Version is quoted citations will be written as KJV or NIV.

THE HEBREW ALPHABET

The Hebrew alphabet is comprised of twenty-two letters, all consonants. For the letters themselves, see page 11 of Biblical Hebrew by R. K. Harrison, or the Table of Alphabets in The American Heritage College Dictionary.

THE GREEK ALPHABET

Two of the Greek letters became lost over time: stigma, which is also called digamma by Alexander and Nicholas Humez in Alpha to Omega: The Life & Times of the Greek Alphabet, had the numerical value of 6, while koppa had the value of 90 (187-188).

1. POMPEII AND HERCULANEUM

In the article Sacred Geometry: Unlocking the Secret of the Temple Mount, published in the July/August 1999 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, David Jacobson reports that at this ancient site in Jerusalem the base of a statue of the Roman emperor Antoninus Pius, which was "built into the southern wall… can be seen, with the inscription upside down, above the Double Gate" (64, note # 46; italics added).

Why was the inscription written upside-down? And why was the statue placed above the Double Gate? For the answers, it will be helpful to know a little about Antoninus Pius, who reigned from 138 to 161 AD (Rosalie F. and Charles F. Baker, Ancient Romans: Expanding the Classical Tradition 254), and during that time, says Walter H. Wagner, author of After the Apostles: Christianity in the Second Century, the emperor never left the [Roman] capital or its immediate environs (35). That fact suggests there is something else peculiar about Antoninus’s statue having been built into the temple mount. After all, what other Roman emperors are represented that way in Jerusalem? Apparently none.

Wagner adds this significant note:

Upon examination, Antoninus’s reign was largely free from major military or civil conflicts, but… unrest was building, for the Empire’s borders remained vulnerable… . Natural disasters, considered portents of greater catastrophes, troubled his reign. Rome suffered a fire that destroyed nearly 350 homes; the Circus collapsed, crushing over a thousand persons; and the city suffered both famine and flood. Earthquakes devastated the islands of Cos, Lesbos and Rhodes, the cities of Smyrna and Ephesus, and towns in Bithynia. On top of these calamities, fires scorched Narbonne, Antioch, and Carthage, and a plague struck Arabia. (35-36)

Paralleling what was happening in the Roman Empire was the turmoil taking place in the New Testament church, turmoil that was preceded by problems that surfaced within the church long before Antoninus became emperor. As observed in A History of the Christian Church, the last third of the first century was a time of crisis for

the great leaders of the early years—Paul, Peter, and James—were dead… . Not surprisingly, moreover, this time of trouble and transition brought to light serious debates and differences within the Christian communities themselves. (Williston Walker et al. 33)

The early decades of the second century saw no significant improvement. The Christian movement was still beset with debate and conflict. Church-related literature generated during this period reveals that

questions were being raised on every hand… questions about the meaning and value of the church’s Scriptures… about the framework of beliefs and values within which the proclamation of Jesus and the resurrection was to be understood; about the order of the communities and the style of life which Christians were called upon to lead. Time, moreover, would make these problems not less but more acute. (Williston Walker et al. 43)

Perhaps the greatest problem of all was the fact that even though "each local church frequently exchanged ideas and admonitions with other churches, there was no organization of the church above the level of the polis [a limited area with a town or city at its heart]" (Williston Walker et al 50).

No more detail on this subject is needed in order to establish the most important message to be gained from the upside-down inscription on the base of the statue of Antoninus. That message, while it is linked in part to the downfall of the Roman Empire, which would occur in the fifth century AD (Baker 257), is primarily concerned with the Lord’s church.

What the upside-down inscription tells us is this: by the end of Antoninus’s reign the apostasy, the falling away from the teachings of the Messiah, that had begun in the first century was complete. The Church of Jesus Christ had been turned upside-down.

When we learn that the Double Gate was the one that the public used to enter the temple grounds while the priests used the Triple Gate, we can understand what the positioning of the statue’s base above the Double Gate was meant to communicate: until the time came for the church to be restored, there would be no more authorized priesthood bearers to act on behalf of the Lord. Christ’s parable of the vineyard had proved to be more than simply a short tale; it had been acted out in very deed, with not just the heir being cast out and killed but his disciples as well (see Luke 20:9-16).

An important discovery that can be related to the upside-down inscription on the base of the statue of the Roman emperor is the 2000-year-old boat that was excavated in Italy in the summer of 1982… at Herculaneum. Apparently, surmises Shelley Wachsmann, "it had been tossed over and over, like tumbleweed, by the powerful and hot volcanic winds [released by Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD] before coming to rest upside-down on the sand" (The Sea of Galilee Boat: An Extraordinary 2000 Year Old Discovery 134; italics added).

However, it is not just the boat that can be connected to the upside-down inscription, but the town itself; in fact, all the towns that were buried by Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD are connected.

How many towns or cities were there? At least 9 according to William Hoffer, whose study of the eruption of Vesuvius is titled Volcano: The Search for Vesuvius (111-12). Shifting our focus momentarily to the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, how many blocks of granite make up the floor of the first compartment above the King’s Chamber? The answer is 9.

Altogether there are 5 compartments above the King’s Chamber. The first compartment was found to be empty when it was first entered in 1765 AD, but the additional 4 compartments above it contained hieroglyphs roughly daubed in red paint and most of them were upside down (Peter Tompkins, Secrets of the Great Pyramid 35-36 and 64).

The entrance to the fifth compartment is the most narrow of all those in the pyramid, measuring 20 inches by 20 inches (J. P. Lepre, The Egyptian Pyramids 109). The number 20 has a match in 2 of the 9 cities linked with Vesuvius, for [w]ithin 20 hours… Pompeii and Herculaneum had ceased to exist (Wachsmann 129).

Moreover, "twenty miles due west of Pompeii at the far end of the Bay of Naples was the port of Misenum (Hoffer 99; italics added). Misenum was the home of Pliny the Elder, the commander of the Roman fleet at the time of the eruption, and living with him was his sister and her son, who came to be known as Pliny the Younger. This nephew of the fleet commander is the only eye witness to have recorded what it was like to be caught up in the greatest natural disaster in European history" (Peter Connolly, Pompeii 6).

In his account of the catastrophe, Pliny the Younger described "earth shocks… so violent it seemed the world was not only being shaken, but turned upside down" (quoted in Joseph Jay Deiss, The Town of Hercules: A Buried Treasure Trove 24; italics added; hereafter this title will be shortened to The Town of Hercules). Writing at the request of his friend, the historian Cornelius Tacitus, Pliny, who was 17 that fateful summer, gave the date of August 24 for the eruption (Pliny the Younger, The Letters of the Younger Pliny 166). The original entrance to the Great Pyramid, and in fact the whole interior passage system… is offset towards the east from the Great Pyramid’s center by 24 feet (Richard W. Noone 27).

C.A.R. Hills notes that the eruption began around the sixth or seventh hour, Roman time (about twelve noon or one in the afternoon) (The Destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum 15). And Hoffer states,

What was only a distant cloud in Misenum was a black shroud to the startled citizens of Pompeii, who fled into the streets to look up at a sky which had, in moments, cast a strange midday darkness over their city. (99)

Is it merely coincidental that 46 years earlier, as Christ was being crucified, when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour (Mark 15:33)? In Jerusalem, as in Roman Italy, the 6th hour was about noon (Lockyer, Sr., Nelson’s Illustrated Bible Dictionary 267).

And is it merely coincidental that the reign of Antoninus Pius, which lasted for 23 years (Wagner 35), is matched in Pompeii, where the fall of stone was followed by suffocating ash, which… continued to fall for two days, so it is not surprising that Pompeii was sealed under 23 feet of this debris (Peter Hicks, Pompeii and Herculaneum 10)? Furthermore, the number 23 takes us to the so-called valley temple associated with the second major pyramid at Giza where a "total of twenty-three royal statues… once stood against the sides of the [T-shaped] hall" (I. E. S. Edwards, The Pyramids of Egypt 125-26; italics added), and where a magnificent statue was "found upside down in a deep pit" (Graham Hancock, Fingerprints of the Gods 340; italics added). The hall was T-shaped in order to provide a link to Christ’s crucifixion, the T shape being associated with the shape of the cross.

The darkness that accompanied the eruption of Vesuvius was compared by Pliny to "a dense black cloud… spreading over the earth like a flood. He recounts how he and his mother tried to leave Misenum to escape being buried by the falling ash, but afraid they would be trampled underfoot… by the crowd behind, they decided to get off the road and sit down. At that point, Pliny says, the darkness fell, not the dark of a moonless or cloudy night, but as if the lamp had been put out in a closed room. He adds that they could hear the shrieks of women, the wailing of infants, and the shouting of men. To Pliny, it seemed the whole world was dying with me and I with it. But finally the darkness thinned and dispersed into smoke or cloud; then there was genuine daylight, and the sun actually shone, but yellowish as it is during an eclipse" (The Letters of the Younger Pliny 172; italics added).

Pliny the Younger’s use of yellowish can be seen as a link to the Mortuary Temple of Seti I at Qurna [on the West Bank of the Nile River, across from the temple of Karnak], where very little remains of the temple’s forecourt because of "flash floods". Dennis C. Forbes, whose article in the Summer 1999 issue of KMT: A Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt is being quoted here, goes on to say:

The main extant part of the Seti I temple is now approached by a wide block-paved walkway, along which the Germans [from the German Archaeological Institute] have built low white-glazed brick risers. On these are displayed any number of relief-decorated and yellow-painted sandstone blocks—some inexplicably upside down. . . . (41; italics added)

At Pompeii we can find a match for the brick risers on which the blocks sit, for among

the most popular entertainment centers in Pompeii were the public baths… [where] bathing involved more than a casual dip in a bathtub. It was a complicated ritual that could last several hours.

 . . . In the first century B.C. Sergius Orata… invented a superior heating method called a hypocaust. The floor of the bath was raised on stacks of bricks. Hot air from the central furnace circulated under the floors between the raised bricks and in the hollow spaces between the walls to warm the rooms. (Ron and Nancy Goor, Pompeii: Exploring a Roman Ghost Town 63; italics added for stacks of bricks)

Bricks were not limited to the baths. The streets were surfaced with a mixture of brick chips and mortar… . Brick chips and mortar were also commonly used for floors. Brick was mainly used for corners of buildings and door posts, and ovens were made of brick-and-rubble masonry (Connolly 20, 28, and 58). Using a similar construction design, the builders of Herculaneum made the gutters out of brick (Deiss, The Town of Hercules 168).

All the brick is a sure sign that Enoch, the great seer who is mentioned in both the Old Testament and the New Testament and who was translated so that he could live indefinitely, was involved with Pompeii and Herculaneum. Why? Because in The Book of Enoch the Prophet, as translated by Richard Laurence, Enoch issues this warning:

Woe to you who build your houses by the labor of others, every part of which is constructed with brick, and with the stone of crime; I tell you that you shall not obtain peace. (XCVII:13; italics added)

More signs of Enoch’s presence at Pompeii and Herculaneum is coming up.

Ian Andrews offers the following details concerning Pompeii:

The city wall, made of different kinds of stone and following the contours of the ground… [lacks] the regularity so often seen in Roman town walls… . But then the walls had not been originally built by the Romans… .

Pompeii’s walls… were about twenty feet (six metres) thick. The outer faces were of cut stone and the centre was rubble and earth packed tight. The whole structure was buttressed and the inner side was almost six feet (two metres) higher than the outer face. (Pompeii 10)

On the same page as this quote Andrews gives the height of Pompeii’s outer wall as 26 feet, which means the inner wall would have a height of about 32 feet. The thickness of 20 feet connects with the 20 inches of the entrance to the fifth compartment of the Great Pyramid (it is the numbers, not whether feet or inches are involved, that are important), and the height of 26 feet connects with the height of the second compartment, which varies from two feet two inches [26 inches] to three feet eight inches (Zechariah Sitchin, The Stairway to Heaven 270). The number 32 connects with the entrance to the passage that leads to the first compartment, which is 32 inches high (Lepre 106); it connects with the Great Pyramid’s exterior course number 24, which also measures 32 inches (Peter Lemesurier, The Great Pyramid Decoded 44); and it connects with the 32-inch width of the horizontal passage to the subterranean chamber (Edwards, The Pyramids of Egypt 287).

As pointed out in Volume 1 of Books Written in Stone, the subterranean chamber is a representation of the lowest kingdom of heaven, and it was also pointed out in that work that it was Enoch who, assisted by other translated men and women, built the Great Pyramid under the direction of Christ, who at the time was a spirit personage.

Ian Andrews continues his description of Pompeii by writing, the ground sloped sharply away from the town (10). Being even more specific, Hoffer states that the lowest part of Pompeii [is] the southeast corner (106). What is the lowest part of the Great Pyramid? It is the southeast corner (Adam Rutherford, Pyramidology: Book II, 244). The direction of southeast is another link to the lowest kingdom of heaven.

Many key numbers that have been traced in the monuments of Giza, in the Temple Mount at Jerusalem, and in the Bible can be found at Pompeii. For instance, the city had 8 gates (Hoffer 100), and round loaves of bread that were found intact in an oven had been baked with 8 sections (Hicks 25; Sara C. Bisel, The Secrets of Vesuvius 36). The city had 12 towers (Andrews 10). City blocks were called insula by the Romans. In Pompeii, insula # 6 has "a drop of nearly four metres [13 feet] between the north and south sides of the insula (Connolly 48). At Jerusalem, the Herodian main street, which runs north and south in front of Barclay’s Gate, lies 13 feet lower than the gate’s original threshold" (Leen and Kathleen Ritmeyer, Secrets of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount 18).

Whereas Pompeii, lying to the southeast of Vesuvius, was buried by ash and lapilli (volcanic stones), Herculaneum, to the west of the volcano, was "deluged by a massive lahar, a mud slide of Vesuvian dirt and soil that traveled sharply downslope in an uninterrupted flow" (Hoffer 72). This deluge, according to Ancient Rome: History of a Civilization That Ruled the World, reached a depth of 53 feet at some points (Liberati and Bourbon 171). How long is the dead-end passage that runs south from the Great Pyramid’s subterranean chamber? It is 53 feet (Hancock and Bauval, The Message of the Sphinx 49). In addition, the vertical height of the pyramid’s descending passage is 53 inches (Lemesurier 371), plus the height of the fourth compartment over the King’s Chamber varies from one foot four inches to four feet five inches (Sitchin, The Stairway to Heaven, 270), and four feet five inches equal 53 inches.

There is more. At the Villa of Mysteries, which is a short distance outside Pompeii’s city wall, in a room that has only one entrance, there is an extraordinary pictorial complex, with its 29 life-sized figures (Liberati and Bourbon 187). How long is the horizontal passage to the subterranean chamber? Twenty-nine feet. And the subterranean chamber has only one entrance. In addition, the ascending passage has a total of 29 floor stones (Rutherford, Book III 68), and the Grand Gallery has a total height of 29 feet when the 12 inches of limestone at the top of the south wall in the King’s Antechamber are included.

In Herculaneum, unlike the other narrow streets… main street is very wide—about forty feet (Deiss, The Town of Hercules 168). In the Great Pyramid, it is 40 feet from the entrance to the scored lines in the descending passage. which relate to birth into mortality (for more on this matter see Volume 1 of Books Written in Stone); when both sides are added together, the total length of the gabled ceiling stones in the Queen’s Chamber is 40 feet; the Grand Gallery’s ceiling is comprised of 40 stones; and the vertical passage that allows access to the fifth compartment above the King’s Chamber is 40 feet. Out on the Giza plateau, according to the documentary The Mystery of the Sphinx, the width of the Sphinx’s body is 40 feet.

Peter Connolly notes that the excavation of a vineyard within Pompeii’s city walls uncovered the root holes of fifty-eight trees (46). Fifty-eight is an odd number, is it not? An odd number that is duplicated in the Great Pyramid, where in the ascending passage the so-called girdle stone which represents the priesthood office of elder in the Church of Jesus Christ measures 58 inches. In addition, the first exterior course of the pyramid is 58 inches thick.

We might also note that in Laurence’s translation of The Book of Enoch the Prophet a total of 58 shepherds fail to protect the sheep—meaning the Lord’s people—and so they are destroyed (LXXXIX:1-7).

Switching to Israel, a game board with fifty-eight holes… was found in Megiddo (Ralph Gower, The New Manners and Customs of Bible Times 302). Regarding Megiddo, Nelson’s Illustrated Bible Dictionary has this to say:

a walled city in the Carmel Mountain range where many important battles were fought in Old Testament times… .

The prophet Zechariah mentioned the great mourning which would one day take place in the plain of Megiddo. (Lockyer, Sr. 693)

Is there not a parallel between Megiddo’s mountain range and its plain to Vesuvius and the plain in which Pompeii, a walled city, sat?

Ian Andrews writes:

In 1875, archaeologists found 127 tablets belonging to a banker named L. Caecilius Jucundus. Most of the tablets were business receipts, in Latin, perscriptio, which means entry of account. (28)

Again, 127 seems like an odd number, but again it is matched inside the Great Pyramid, where the total length of the horizontal passage to the Queen’s Chamber is 127 feet (Tompkins 11).

Connolly estimates that approximately two thousand stayed in Pompeii and were entombed there (6). Pompeii, as mentioned, is southeast of Vesuvius. In the fifth chapter of the Gospel of Mark, Christ and the disciples travel to the other side of the sea [of Galilee], to the country of the Gadarenes (verse 1), where a man with an unclean spirit comes out of the tombs to meet Christ (verse 2).

And he cried out with a loud voice and said, What have I to do with You, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I implore You by God that You do not torment me.

For He said to him, Come out of the man, unclean spirit!

Then He asked him, What is your name?

And he answered, saying, My name is Legion; for we are many.

Also he begged Him earnestly that He would not send them out of the country.

Now a large herd of swine was feeding there near the mountains.

So all the demons begged him, saying, Send us to the swine, that we may enter them.

And at once Jesus gave them permission. Then the unclean spirits went out and entered the swine… and the herd ran violently down the steep place into the sea, and drowned in the sea. (Verses 7-13)

How large was the herd of pigs that drowned? It numbered "about two thousand (verse 13; italics added). And where was the country of the Gadarenes"? Shelley Wachsmann supplies the answer:

The herd of pigs is in itself a clue to the location where the event took place. Grazing pigs could have been found only on the southeastern side of the Sea of Galilee, where the lake was flanked by the pagan cities of Hippos (Sussita) and Gadara… . The rest of the lake was dotted by settlements inhabited primarily by Jews, who considered the pig unclean. (118; italics added)

On an additional note, Pompeii, in 79 AD, had a port on the Bay of Naples (Hills 12), and Pompeii was on the east side of the Bay of Naples, as was Gadara on the east side of the Sea of Galilee. Moreover, at Herculaneum, archaeologists discovered tokens carved like a sow with Roman numerals on the underside. Was this a guessing game? Deiss asks. Or a raffle? Archaeologists don’t know. Numerals thus far found go up to 11 (The Town of Hercules 177). What is the significance of the number 11?

If ten is the number which marks the perfection of Divine order, then eleven is an addition to it, subversive of and undoing that order. If twelve is the number which marks the perfection of Divine government, then eleven falls short of it. So that whether we regard it as being 10 + 1, or 12 - 1, it is the number which marks disorder, disorganization, imperfection, and disintegration. (E. W. Bullinger, Number in Scripture 251; italics by Bullinger)

The appropriateness of Bullinger’s remarks as applied to Pompeii and Herculaneum, if not readily apparent, soon will be. In the meantime, it is hoped that the reader picked up on the fact that the numerals on the sow-shaped tokens were on the underside.

To return to the number of 2000 killed in Pompeii, in the vineyard where the 58 root holes were found, there were also around 2,000 vines (Connolly 46). To go along with this unusual coincidence, 2000 dead was apparently one-tenth of the population (Shelley Tanaka, The Buried City of Pompeii 43). In The Book of Enoch the Prophet there are two versions of Chapter XLVIII; in the first version Enoch says the wicked are destroyed, then he adds, nor shall a tenth part of them be found (verse 9). For hundreds of years the tenth part of Pompeii’s population was not found.

Enoch’s number is 7. Why? Because in the book of Genesis he is the 7th patriarch from Adam. Among all the numbers associated with Pompeii and Herculaneum, is Enoch represented by the number 7? Yes, he is. Pompeii had two theaters. In the larger of the two, the middle seating section was divided into seven sections (Connolly 68). Similarly, the theater at Herculaneum had 7 exits (Deiss, The Town of Hercules 165).

C.A.R. Hills includes this interesting detail in his record of events that preceded the eruption of Vesuvius:

seventeen years before, in February, AD 62, there had been an ominous warning of coming events: Pompeii and Herculaneum had been devastated by an earthquake. Earthquakes were frequent enough in the Bay of Naples region, but the destruction caused by this one had been particularly terrible: most public buildings in the two towns had collapsed, many people had been killed or had fled, and a flock of six hundred sheep had been entirely engulfed in a chasm that suddenly opened in the earth. (3; italics added)

The number 17 ties in with the Great Pyramid’s subterranean chamber, where at one point at the east end it is about 17 feet high (Rutherford, Book III, 1084). Moreover, between the end of the Ascending Passage and the continuation of the sloping floor of the Grand Gallery there is a gap that would have needed a slab 17 feet long in order to bridge it (Ian Lawton and Chris Ogilvie-Herald, Giza: The Truth 533). As for the number 600, the subterranean chamber is 600 feet beneath the apex of the pyramid (Hancock 317).

Hills’ mention of 600 sheep having been entirely engulfed in a chasm that suddenly opened in the earth brings to mind this warning from Moses:

But if the Lord creates a new thing, and the earth opens its mouth and swallows them up [that is, the people involved with the new thing] with all that belongs to them, and they go down alive into the pit, then you will understand that these men have rejected the Lord. (Numbers 16:30)

In the case of Pompeii and Herculaneum, the new thing that most of the people had rejected was the teachings of the Lord’s missionaries who were sent to them prior to 62 AD when the earthquake occurred. However, just as the planking chosen for the boat [of Herculaneum] was excellent (Dick Steffy quoted in Wachsmann 135), so too were certain people excellent in this part of Italy known as Campania, and so the missionary effort continued after the earthquake up until Vesuvius destroyed the 9 towns and the surrounding countryside with a mechanism as awesome as a nuclear bomb (Hoffer 71).

There is undeniable evidence of the Lord’s emissaries of the first century AD having been at Herculaneum. Like other Roman towns, Herculaneum had a palaestra, that is, a playing field which is frequently referred to as a gymnasium, but this gymnasium was an open area and larger than the whole of a modern city block (Deiss, The Town of Hercules 138).

In the center of the field was a swimming pool in the form of a Greek cross, some160 feet in length with an intersecting arm of 100 feet. At the ends were fountain jets. In the center, coiled on the limbs of a tree, was a giant bronze serpent, from whose five crowned heads water spayed into the pool. (Deiss, Herculaneum: Italy’s Buried Treasure 152; italics added; hereafter this title will be shortened to Herculaneum)

The 160 feet of the pool tie in with the so-called mortuary temple of Khafre at Giza, for it is 160 feet wide (Edwards, The Pyramids of Egypt 130), but, as established in Volume 2 of Books Written in Stone, the remains are only part of a temple and actually represent a baptistry. The 100 feet of the pool tie in with the 100-foot section of the Great Pyramid’s well shaft (this is the second section of the shaft counting up from the bottom; see Lepre 116). This shaft represents either ascending toward God or plunging down and away from his presence. The number 100 also connects with the 100-inch diagonal of the pit in the subterranean chamber, and with the pit itself, since it is 100 feet below ground level (Rutherford, Book III, 1084 and 1089). There are also 100 stones in the walls of the King’s Chamber (Lemesurier 123).

The bronze serpent, which is about twice the height of a man (Deiss, The Town of Hercules 142), should make us think of the bronze serpent described in the Book of Numbers: So Moses made a bronze serpent, and put it on a pole; and so it was, if a serpent had bitten anyone, when he looked at the bronze serpent, he lived (21:9). Being on a pole, Moses’ serpent would have been about twice the height of a man. As for the 5 heads, what does the number 5 symbolize? E. W. Bullinger says 5 is the number of GRACE and it pertains to a People called out from mankind, redeemed and saved, to walk with God from earth to heaven (135). Bullinger notes that the tabernacle Moses built in the wilderness after the exodus from Egypt "had five for its all-pervading number" (140; italics by Bullinger).

Now, the serpent’s being coiled around a bronze tree is not only to remind us of Moses’ serpent but also of an incident recorded in the Gospel of Luke. As Jesus was making his way to Golgotha for his crucifixion, a

large number of people followed him, including women who mourned and wailed for him. Jesus turned and said to them, Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children… . For if men do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry? (NIV, Luke 23:27-28 and 31)

Jesus was referring to himself as the tree that was green, meaning he was spiritually alive. What would happen to the trees that were dry, that is, people who were spiritually dead, was graphically and dramatically demonstrated at Herculaneum and Pompeii in 79 AD.

Pliny the Younger, describing the cloud that rose from Vesuvius, drew a comparison to a tree:

its general appearance can best be expressed as being like an umbrella pine, for it rose to a great height on a sort of trunk and then split off into branches. (The Letters of the Younger Pliny 166)

The Sea of Galilee boat, which is discussed in some detail in Volume 1 of Building Bridges of Time, Places and People, contained a plank made of Aleppo pine, which was located on the left side of the stern (Wachsmann 253), and Aleppo pines grow in the kind of country where the stone pine [another name for the umbrella pine] grows (Dian Taylor, editor, Hugh Johnson’s Encyclopedia of Trees 77).

In another connection with the comparison of the volcano’s eruption to a tree, the bow of the Sea of Galilee boat came to rest on a loose tree trunk (Wachsmann 368). And some of the frames still had bark on them (Wachsmann 142).

The stern and the left side of the boat represent being distanced from God, or in other words, a failure to keep the commandments; the tree trunk and the frames with bark on them represent Christ and the most faithful of the saints.

In The Testament of Benjamin, one of the brief books included in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, which are incorrectly calculated to have been written between 137 and 107 BC (Rutherford H. Platt, Jr., editor, The Lost Books of the Bible and The Forgotten Books of Eden 220), when the original writings date back to more than 1600 years before Christ was born, Benjamin, the youngest of Jacob’s 12 sons, prophesies that

the Most High shall send forth His salvation in the visitation of an only begotten prophet.

And He shall enter into the… temple, and there shall the Lord be treated with outrage, and He shall be lifted up upon a tree.

And the veil of the temple shall be rent, and the Spirit of God shall pass on to the Gentiles as fire poured forth. (II:6-8)

Benjamin, it seems, saw in a vision not only Christ’s crucifixion but also the missionary effort going out to the Roman Empire. The wording of verse 8 in regard to fire poured forth suggests the Spirit of God operating in such a way that the truth would be realized by the heart burning within (see, for example, Luke 24:30-31), but the wording further suggests a cleansing fire. Both occurred at Pompeii and Herculaneum.

There is another cross at Herculaneum, or at least the impression of one. Like the cross-shaped pool which is in the center of the palaestra, this cross-shaped impression is in the center of… a white plaster panel, which is also centered on one of the walls of a small upstairs room in what is called the House of the Bicentenary, so named because it was found exactly 200 years after the beginning of organized exploration of Herculaneum (Deiss, The Town of Hercules 77 and 79; a photo of the cross is on page 80). The cross itself appears to have been hurriedly ripped from the wall (Deiss 59).

Hoffer believes the impression that was left

confirms an early Biblical comment on the Apostle Paul’s days in Campania. When brought to trial before Porcius Festus, governor of Judea, Paul had exercised his right as a Roman citizen to appeal directly to the emperor. In A.D. 61 a corn ship named the Castor and Pollux landed at Pozzuoli [Puteoli in the Bible], west of Naples, bearing the pious prisoner in chains.

According to the record of Acts 28:14, Paul found brethren, and was desired to tarry with them seven days. That Biblical record, and the image of the cross once hidden in the House of the Bicentenary, are evidence that at least some Christians were among the victims of the eruption of A.D. 79. (74)

When it was excavated, the room with the impression of a cross also contained a terra-cotta jug in one corner, a plate, a bowl, a pot with a handle, and a lamp (Deiss, The Town of Hercules 79).

The plate would have been used for breaking bread, for members of the New Testament church broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts (NIV, Acts 2:46). The jug would have contained wine, wine to be poured into the bowl, for Romans drank wine from bowls (Deiss, The Town of Hercules 169). Partaking of the bread and wine was, of course, in remembrance of the sacrifice of Christ’s body and the shedding of his blood in behalf of those who would believe in him.

The lamp suggests that this sacred activity was held at night. There was a definite need to be careful since members of the church had been persecuted throughout the Roman Empire from the beginning of the missionary effort.

This leaves the pot with a handle. What was it for? It was to serve as a reminder of a passage from Zechariah in the Old Testament:

The pots in the Lord’s house shall be like the bowls before the altar.

Yes, every pot in Jerusalem and Judah shall be holiness to the Lord of hosts. Everyone who sacrifices shall come and take them and cook in them. In that day there shall no longer be a Canaanite in the house of the Lord of hosts. (14:20-21)

The reference to the altar is echoed by Andrews’ observation that a wooden table below the impression of the cross—which is not a Greek cross but a Latin cross instead—has been thought by some to be the remains of a Christian altar (43). Deiss calls the table a cabinet and reveals that it had a platform in front, as if for praying on the knees (The Town of Hercules 79).

The evidence that this room was used for Christian services would seem to be undeniable, and yet both authors state that some scholars are not convinced; they don’t believe the cross was used as a symbol of the crucifixion as early as 79 AD (Andrews 43; Deiss 79). Those doubtful scholars would also disbelieve the evidence that Greek crosses were marked on the timbers of the dismantled boat discovered on the south side of the Great Pyramid in 1954 (Nicholas Reeves, Ancient Egypt: The Great Discoveries 203). As explained in Volume 2 of Books Written in Stone, this boat was built at the time Jacob died in 1725 B.C. and it was used to carry his body down the Nile River at the beginning of the journey to take the great patriarch to Canaan for burial. The crosses on the boat symbolized Christ’s future sacrifice on the cross, as did all the other crosses that can be seen in ancient Egyptian writings on papyrus, as well as on the walls of tombs, temples, and pyramids.

For example, page 43 of Aidan Dodson’s The Hieroglyphs of Ancient Egypt features some of the hieroglyphs from the text found in the pyramid of Teti at Saqqara (to quote from the caption on page 42). In the lower right-hand column of Dodson’s illustration a Greek