If you look closely, you'll notice there are a couple of dotted lines there going around the area and no single solid line marks the border between Israel and Syria. This is the area that's to the east and north of the Sea of Galilee. So when his time came, a new tribe, not connected to the original builders, had to schlep another few thousand stones into the middle of the pile to create a monument to the great man.The Golan Heights is in the north of Israel. One day a local chieftain decided that he wanted to be buried in the middle. The circles had existed already for centuries, perhaps an observatory, or a giant solar clock, or a site of worship, or maybe some combination of the three. In the middle of this giant stone dartboard is a tumulus, or ancient grave, but here’s the kicker: The grave is 1,000 years newer than the stone circles. And indeed, the modern Hebrew for Rujum el-Hiri is Gilgál Refaìm (“ghost circles” or “wheels of the giants”). What’s my point? It is easy to imagine Abraham or Joshua, arriving in the Golan, discovering these mysterious rock circles and saying “Hmmmm, must have been the work of some giants long ago.” For people in Biblical times, imagining giants roaming the earth was a bit like Von Daniken’s “extraterrestrial visitors”: It puts it all together neatly. Indeed his bedstead was an iron bedstead…Nine cubits is its length and four cubits its width.” “For only Og King of Bashan remained of the remnant of the giants. Just prior to the Flood, it is reported that “There were giants on the earth in those days”. Note that even in the Bible, no one ever actually sees a giant it just claims that once upon a time they were a dime a dozen. Deuteronomy 2:10 describes the land of Moab thusly: “The Emim had dwelt there in times past, a people as great and numerous and tall as the Anakim.”. In the book of Amos, God boasts: “Yet it was I who destroyed the Amorite before them, whose height was like the height of the cedars”. Things of this size and dimension can’t have been the work of mere mortals. In the Bible, however, the phenomena are the work of “giants” who “once roamed the earth” but no longer exist. These simple clans, who roamed the Golan before the invention of writing, never got to see their circles as they should be seen, from the sky.Įrich Von Daniken’s speculative 1968 best-seller Chariots of the Gods proposes that spots like Rujum el-Hiri are proof that the earth was once visited by “ancient extraterrestrial astronauts.” While I never put much stock in those theories, and they have been largely discredited, what fascinates me is that the Bible makes a similar kind of claim. Who had the time and the energy to invest in such a project, when they should be hunting, gathering, or storing food for the winter? Moreover, with no surveyor’s tools, no aerial view, and no math to speak of, how did they get it so right? One can see from any aerial photograph how perfect the geometry of the creation is. Wild animals, inclement weather, and competition for resources all plagued any nomadic tribe. Life in the Chalcolithic period was a constant struggle for survival. It has been estimated that the project would have required about 25,000 work hours to build. But the “what”, the “why”, and the “who” are major chin-scratchers. The arrangement contains about 45,000 individual basalt stones, each of which could have been lifted by a human being, so the “how” is not so mysterious. About 10 miles (16 kilometers) east of the Sea of Galilee in the Golan Heights, is a mysterious set of rock circles that have been there on the plains for 5,000 years: Three sets of geometrically perfect concentric stone circles, the largest of which is 150 meters in circumference, are situated around a bull’s eye pile of stones in the middle of the assembly.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |