According to legend, a Jewish farmer in the late 1920’s, discovered a cave while ploughing his field in Israel. He was startled, but managed to identify the golden items as the holy vessels that were used in the First Temple of Solomon.
He drew a makeshift map and travelled to New York with the information on his findings. There he tracked down Rabbi Yaakov Yosef Herman (see Ruchoma Shain’s inspirational book All for the Boss) and asked him what to do with his secret. The rabbi cross-examined the farmer in order to verify the story, and then sent his son (from the Mir Talmudic Yeshiva in Poland) to a Jewish sage living in Radin with a confidential letter and map, asking what to do next. The sage confirmed the identity of the holy items, adding that the time had not yet arrived to reveal these Temple items, and instructed all parties to forget the matter for many years, when the Israeli farmer dies.
The story continues. Years later, studying in Lakewood, New Jersey, Herman’s son recalled the episode in Poland, including the map, and passed everything on to a prestigious family member. One thing led to another, and Israelis were found who know the approximate location of the cave lies…
When the First Temple was destroyed in 586 BCE, King Nebuchadnezzar stole many Temple treasures and brought them back to Babylonia.
However, legend says that before the Babylonian monarch could get his hands on them, some items were secreted away and buried outside of Jerusalem for a specific purpose – to be found more than 2,000 years later, in preparation for the coming of the messianic Third Temple in Jerusalem.
Discovering the sacred Temple artefacts in the above-mentioned cave would of course be sensational. Revealing the truth is simpler than cracking the DaVinci Code cryptology, and these ancient treasures are arguably even more valuable than what lies behind the code.
These findings will not only be electrifying in an archaeological and historical context, but will have huge political ramifications too. In the Israel-Palestinian conflict, competing historical narratives play a key part in each party’s ideological stance. At Camp David in 2000, then Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat stated: “They found not a single stone proving that the Temple of Solomon was there, because historically the Temple was not in Palestine (at all). They found only remnants of a shrine of the Roman Herod.”
Dr. Gabriel Barkay, a noted professor at Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv (who appears in Harry Moskoff’s recent book The A.R.K. Report) says that finding these Temple treasures will put to rest once and for all “Temple Denial Syndrome”.
Further reading:
Jerusalem Post Article 1
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Were-the-Temples-built-on-the-summit-of-Mount-Moriah-385804
Jerusalem Post Article 2
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Al-Buraq-The-new-Palestinian-Western-Wall-453550
Jerusalem Post Article 3
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Discovering-the-holy-vessels-the-real-DaVinci-Code-417878
