Page Content (OCR)
150 In the biblical view, then, God himself assured that Jerusa- lem would come into Israelite hands. No sooner was kingship established under David than he was commanded by God to clear the platform atop Mount Moriah and sanctify it for Yahweh’s Temple. And ever since Solomon built that Temple there, Jerusalem/Mount Moriah/ the Temple Mount have remained uniquely sacred. There is, indeed, no other explanation why Jerusalem—a city not at major crossroads, far from waterways, with no natural re- sources—has been coveted and sacred since antiquity, deemed to be a singular city, a “Navel of the Earth.” The comprehensive list of captured cities given in Joshua Chapter 12 names Jerusalem as the third city, following Jeri- cho and Ai, as firmly in Israelite hands. The story was differ- ent, however, in regard to the northern space-related site. The Cedar Mountains of Lebanon run in two ranges, the Lebanon on the west and the anti-Lebanon on the east, sepa- rated by the Bekka—the “Cleft,” a canyon-like valley that has been known since Canaanite times as the “Lord’s Cleft” or Ba’al-Bekka—hence Ba’albek, the current name of the site of the Landing Place (on the edge of the eastern range, facing the valley). The kings of the “Mount of the North” are listed in the Book of Joshua as having been defeated; a place called Ba’al Gad “in the valley of Lebanon” is listed as cap- tured; but whether Ba’al-Gad “in the valley of Lebanon” is just another name for Ba’al-Bekka is uncertain. We are told (Judges 1: 33) that the Tribe of Naphtali “did not disinherit the dwellers of Beth-Shemesh” (“Abode of Shamash,” the Sun god), and that could be a reference to the site, for the later Greeks called the place Heliopolis, “City of the Sun.” (Though later the territories under Kings David and Solo- mon extended to include Beth-Shemesh, it was only tempo- rarily so.) The primary failure to establish Israelite hegemony over the northern space-related site made it “available” to others. A century and a half after the Exodus the Egyptians at- tempted to take possession of that “available” Landing Place, but were met by an opposing Hittite army. The epic battle is described in words and illustrations (Fig. 66) on the THE END OF DAYS