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Oct. 4, 2020 - Jim Fetzer
01:06:33
The Real Deal (28 Jan 2020): Nick Kollerstrom, Ph.D., on "The Wailing Wall"- Getting History Right
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Yeah, fine, yeah.
This is Jim Fetzer, your host on The Raw Deal, where it's my great privilege to have my special friend, research colleague, admirable guy, one of my favorite people in the whole world, Nick Kollerstrom.
He's a professor of history of science.
He is an expert on Isaac Newton.
He's a leading student of the London 7-7 subway bombing, where his book Terror on the Tube is now in its third or even fourth edition.
He's made major contributions to a whole wide range of subjects including his book Breaking the Spell about the use of Zyklon B As to Kill Body Lies, which were spreading typhus and dysentery in the work camps in Germany, for which he lost his appointment at London College, University College London, which was a shocking development, I was honored to write the introduction to his book, which I recommend to one and all breaking the spell there.
Today we're going to talk about a wall And its role in a theological, metaphysical, philosophical context.
I can't wait to hear more.
Would you like to give us an intro, a sketch?
Yeah.
Can we have the first slide up, Jim?
Absolutely.
Okay, thanks.
Um, Ruff!
Now the first slide... Okay.
That's not... I haven't got the first slide up.
Can you go back to the first slide?
I'm going back to the first, right.
That's it, yeah, right, right.
Praying to the wall, right.
OK.
Now, Jim, Israel was formed in 1948, and I want to look at a bit of history from maybe up to 3,000 years ago that I'm getting interested in.
The question of how Israel got its self-identity, the boundaries which it was given in 1948 do not correspond to any historical reality.
There was no state with boundaries of that shape.
So what was happening there?
And when they, during the There was a war of 1967 when they took over, it got Jerusalem and moved in Jerusalem and they found this amazing wall and cleaned it out.
This had been a sort of Muslim-occupied area that wasn't much greatly appreciated and the The Jews did clean it all up and it is a very spectacular wall.
Okay?
And the question is, what is it?
It's part of what looks like an enormous rectangle, more than 30 acres, and a very raised bit of land, a space just north of or in the middle of Jerusalem.
This wall, as you can see from this first slide, it's got very large stones in it, and there's a question of, well it's been knocked down and rebuilt many times, and in the last, I would say this century, a very extraordinary thing has happened whereby it becomes a terrific centre of prayer.
And I want to try and explore, Jim, what is it that makes people want to pray to this wall?
This is the wall also known as the Wailing Wall, is that right?
Yeah, yeah, Wailing Wall.
You're supposed to come and, you know, just...
I don't know, confess or pray or whatever.
I mean, it does seem very odd on its face, doesn't it?
Once it stops to pause and contemplate the circumstances.
Yeah, and as you can see from this first picture, you've got all sorts of prayers written on paper and stuffed in the cracks.
So, not just prayers, but people stuffed prayers in the cracks.
Right, here you see that, yeah, little prayers are stuffed in the cracks.
And to come near the wall, you have to wear the malukah, this Jewish hat.
You can see you're American.
Is it Bolton?
No, this is John Bolton, who's subject of the impeachment hearing as to whether he might appear or not as a witness.
Yes, OK.
Next.
Right.
So we're looking at the question, not just why would you want to spare the war, but it's more or less mandatory for anyone who wants to get a President or Prime Minister of this country to go and pray to this war.
So this is a very extraordinary, I would tend to say, a spell that's been cast.
As though the wall had itself powers to make events that come about?
As though the wall had a role of a deity?
It seems metaphysically to be that kind of a... Yeah.
Yeah, what is the power of the wall to perform feats on earth?
Yeah, we had Jeremy Corbyn, the opposition leader, and he couldn't possibly become Prime Minister because he wouldn't go and praise to this war, you know.
That was the reason?
It's part of the reason.
There was a very good statement by Cynthia McKinney.
I don't know if you remember that.
I think she said all senators had to go on prior to this war.
This is a form of obeisance to Israel therefore, Dick.
This is quite a political symbol of being subservient to Israel, where the current peace plan that President Trump, shown here of course, has just unveiled in the company of Bibi Netanyahu looks like precisely one more form of obeisance to Israel.
Yeah, yeah, right.
Okay, next.
OK, so here's our current Prime Minister, and sang his prayer.
Boris Johnson, of course, who's been compared to Donald Trump in various ways.
Yeah, everyone says he's a veteran liar, and usually you can't trust what he says.
But here he is, sang a prayer, and put on the hat.
So this is a new ritual.
I don't think it's been going on for very long, has it?
Prime Minister and Presidents had to come to this place and say this prayer.
Well, not to put it too crudely, but it looks rather like kissing Israel's hat.
Oh, it does rather, yeah.
So here's Obama actually shoving something in the crack.
I was told there are a million prayers a year put into these cracks.
What becomes of them, Nick?
Well, somebody at night time has to pull them all out, you know.
Obviously they're pulled out.
I'd probably unread and burned if I had to guess, because otherwise you'd have this... You would be overwhelmed with these prayers.
I mean, you couldn't stuff another in it.
You couldn't, no, no.
Okay, next.
Right, this is the heir to the throne of England, Prince William.
And he's no doubt praying, well you don't know what they're praying to, but that the magic wall will do something for them, you know.
And so this is a very strange situation we're in, and actually, to tell the truth, as we just passed Holocaust Day, this does remind me of Auschwitz, where it's as if Jewish spells have been woven around it, and people have a special, totally intensely, intensely Jewish perception of What the whole thing was, and it's very strange that these, I mean I'm going to argue in this, in this hour, Jim, I'm going to argue this one's got nothing whatsoever to do, I don't think it's got anything to do with Jews, as far as I can tell.
I may be wrong, but so I'm just raising this issue.
I think this is built by Romans, and it's a megalithic wall, and If you ask people, why is it sacred, they'll probably say something like, oh, Solomon's Temple might be behind it, or Solomon's Temple might be somewhere.
Can you recount the history of the wall then?
You say it was erected by the Romans?
Well, that's what you can't really do.
That's the mysterious thing.
You've got a historian, Josephus, who talks about a Jewish temple, but as far as I can tell, you haven't got any Roman historians who explain what's what.
I think Herod spent a long time building this, and it's hard to find out why.
But anyway, we'll come on to that.
Let's move on next.
Even the Pope?
Yeah, even the Pope.
Now what on earth does he think he's praying to?
And this is outrageous, idolatry, a Pope praying to a wall like this.
You have a gift for putting your finger on peculiarities, Nick.
I admire you so much for your iconoclasm.
Oh, right.
Okay, well, the theme is, the mystique here, is that Solomon's Temple is somehow behind there, right?
But you're not allowed to dig down and find out because there's a mosque behind it.
There's actually a big mosque on the ground behind this wall, which is a very holy site for Islam.
So, you're not able to dig up and disturb the mosque.
Except, unless Israelis want to do that to start World War Three.
This is very much part of the plan, so we'll see.
Okay, next.
So, at the end of the day, somebody has to clean these all out.
I mean, I think it's rather weird and creepy myself, but... They bring out a giant vacuum cleaner, Nick.
Well, there must be better things to pray to, I feel, but anyway, who am I to say?
Let's just notice these stones look pretty large.
They're weighing several tons each.
Oh, yeah.
Okay, next.
Well, gently just comment, Nick.
I mean, they say a million a year, and they all go unread!
I mean, you know, is there supposed to be a mystical power that's actually reading them?
I mean, is this supposed to be Yahweh actually reading these inscriptions?
Diverse languages, no doubt.
I'd say you probably get 26 to 100 different languages in which his prayers are written.
Yeah, yeah.
Anyway, it's a very solemn mood.
His local residents, all crowded together, sang a prayer.
When did the practice of praying to the wall begin?
Well, I think that it was a fairly solemn place for this gigantic wall, so I think people would kind of sit around before Jews took the place over, and it was a place to sit around and mull over things.
But the idea that this was somehow a place of essential Jewish worship, this was after, I think, after 1967, Jews have really moved in, took over Jerusalem.
And if prayers actually achieve anything, the mass of prayers given to this wall must be doing something, you know?
Yeah, prayer makes a difference.
The wall is very powerful.
Right, yeah.
Okay, next.
Okay, here's a view of it.
Here's the incredibly mysterious fact that the wall goes on deep below this surface.
So there's 17 layers of stone beneath the ground?
Yeah, and we'll have a look later on.
And the mysterious fact that as you go deeper down underground, the stones get larger.
So you've got some primordial, very early stones, which are much of the biggest, And so there was a basis, a ground, way below this level that we're at now.
When you say 47 stone courses, you mean 47 layers of stones.
Yeah.
Each of which is discernible.
I see some of these at the top are relatively small.
Yeah, you see that the most recent ones are kind of normal size.
You can imagine ordinary workers heaving into place.
These ones down here are rather enormous, and they get bigger still as you go lower down.
So this says Herod, Herodian period, that he built them.
Okay, let's just leave that.
Okay, next.
Right, this is a...
A diagram of what Herod might have built.
It's just around about the time of Jesus that it was being finished.
In fact, it's in a Bible, a reference to the temple being built.
Some people think that this huge square, about 36 acres, which isn't quite square, but nearly square, was where the Roman Tenth Legion hung out.
This was a place for the Roman Tenth Legion.
Other people say, no, Herod built this enormous square so that A Jewish temple could be built in the middle.
That was the wall there to the back left?
Yeah, the wall that we were just looking at is to the left on this diagram.
Is it here, Nick?
No, it's not.
No, it's where it says Western Wall.
Oh, it's part of this?
Yeah, where it says, can you see Western Wall?
Yeah, oh yeah, Western Wall, right here.
Right, that's what we were just looking at now.
Okay?
That's what we're praying to.
That's what all the prayers are to, yeah.
Now behind the back there, Antonia Fortress, some people claim that was the Roman fortress, and this huge temple here was made for the Jews, and there was a temple in the middle of it, which was destroyed.
Now certainly there was a terrific siege, The Romans besieged the Jews in Jerusalem in their temple and one million Jews were killed.
So there was an enormous war that went on, and historian Josephus tells of that war, and during that process the temple was destroyed utterly and completely.
As in the Bible, Jesus predicts that this temple will be destroyed.
Does that mean there are no remaining remnants of the temple, so that archaeologists could not establish it had ever actually existed?
Well, there are bits of rock lying around about, which they can pick up and have a look at.
But the whole problem, you see, Jews now claim they're about to build their third temple, right?
The big deal that Trump might be agreeing to is that Jews want to build a third temple, what they call the Temple Mount, This whole area is what they call the Temple Mound.
They want to build their third temple there, and they claim that this first, where you've got a picture here of a temple in the middle, was where King Solomon built his original temple in the 10th century BC.
That's 3,000 years ago, okay?
That was then allegedly destroyed.
I mean, I don't believe it ever existed, but then another temple, the so-called Second Temple, was allegedly built.
Now the problem with these temples...
I've heard, Nick, that there are many Jews who wouldn't mind if there were a war and that most of this area were destroyed so they could rebuild or build this third temple.
Right.
Well, we'll come on to that.
But the problem is with the first two temples, there's no record of them existing outside the Hebrew Scriptures.
OK?
You haven't got anyone else who comes along and sees it and comments on it.
Right?
For example, the father of history, Herodotus, right?
He walks through this whole area of Palestine, Canaan, and he doesn't hear any story of there being any Temple of Solomon, amazing gold-plated temple, or any Jewish temple.
He doesn't hear about the Jews, he doesn't go to Jerusalem at all, he just doesn't hear about it.
So I would say there wasn't very much there then.
Is this on the order, then, of the stories about the homicidal gas chambers we've heard so much about?
Well, let's be careful, but I think there is an element of exaggeration here, and I want to suggest that 60 years of archaeology by Jewish archaeologists, or by all sorts of archaeologists in the Holy Land, have not found the slightest, faintest trace of any Temple of Solomon, okay?
This is, or King Solomon, or the empire of King Solomon.
There's supposed to be a united kingdom of David and Solomon, right?
10th century BC.
So this would appear to be another element of Jewish mythology.
Yeah, yeah.
David does seem to have existed.
Should we come on to the next one?
Sure.
Okay, this is another diagram.
Showing you this absolutely enormous structure.
You can see the Western or Wailing Wall and the Dome of the Rock, which is where the famous Islamic mosque is built.
And this whole area is generally called the Temple Mount.
Do the Jews want to get rid of the Dome of the Rock to replace it with a Jewish Temple?
Well, there's a peculiar, very peculiar theological argument here.
There's something sacred about that exact spot on Earth.
That exact spot!
Exact spot.
And they just have to build their third temple exactly where this most sacred Muslim temple is.
So they just have to destroy the Muslim's most precious site, absent Mecca and Medina, for the sake of a Jewish temple.
Is that what you're telling me, Nick?
I'm afraid so, yeah, as far as I make out.
And they'll also have to start daily animal sacrifices, because that's in their sacred book as well.
They've got to do animal sacrifices as well?
Got to, yeah.
It's in the book, you know.
This seems like a revision to a very primitive time, Nick.
Well, Judaism is a contract with laws.
God gives laws, and in exchange for those laws, they get the land.
That is the basic religious contract.
Oh, they adhere to the laws which allegedly were given to them by God, and He insures or guarantees their real estate, is that it?
So God is a great realtor in the sky.
Yeah, yeah.
Anyway, let's just focus on who made this.
There's a question which I put to all our listeners, which I can't easily answer.
Is this huge structure here, was it built for the Roman Tenth Legion by Herod, or possibly some people say Hadrian, and if not, Why would he have built such an enormous structure?
Would he really have done it just for the Jews?
I'm rather puzzled by this.
I don't claim to know the answer.
But they would claim it wasn't done for the Muslims or to protect the Dome of the Rock.
Well, the Muslims didn't exist for all the five centuries, okay?
Yes.
When Muhammad had his revelation, supposedly he had a heavenly tour and he took off from this Dome of the Rock spot, part of his heavenly tour, Mohammed visited this Dome of the Rock, or that particular spot.
That's why the mosque is there, okay?
Mohammed was born in 1400, Nick?
I'm trying to remember.
500 A.D.
Mohammed was 500 A.D.
5th century, yeah.
He got a heavenly tour and that involved this particular spot.
So, of course, historically we had Judaism, then Christianity, then Islam.
Yeah, yeah, right.
The three Abrahamic religions, as they are called.
Yeah, so this very sacred mosque here.
Should we come on to it?
It might be the next slide.
Next.
Yeah, here we are.
Yeah, here we are.
This absolutely beautiful, absolutely beautiful mosque here.
Glorious, beautiful mosque.
And it's got inside it, this is I mean, I would say this is the Roman Tenth Legion and this very site here is where Jesus stood when he was being tried by Pontius Pilate.
How about that?
And then the crucifixion was a little while away just outside this.
So this is a spot with a real sort of story to it.
It's got history for both Jews and Christians and Muslims then, all three.
Yeah, yeah.
That's why Jerusalem is such a sensitive area and it's so important that we maintain the agreement made in 1948 that Jerusalem be shared out equally between these three religions.
Well, Trump was just declaring that Jerusalem would be the unified capital of Israel today with Bibi Netanyahu at his side.
Well, that is the catastrophe.
That is sort of unbalanced everything if the Jews are allowed to sort of take possession of this place.
Anyway, let's just say this mosque has got a message inside it around the dome.
It says, God never had a son.
There was no son of God.
Allah is one and there's only one God and he never had a son.
You know, it always puzzled me about Christianity.
Only during my junior high and high school years was I acting with any organized religion, the Episcopal Church.
James Episcopal Church in South Pasadena, California, Nick.
Where I was sang in the choir, I was an acolyte, I was the head of the Young People's Fellowship, I gave a sermon on Youth Sunday.
I would eventually be a delegate to the 14th World Convention on Christian Education held in Tokyo.
Wow!
Yeah, in the summer of 1958 after I graduated before I entered Princeton in September.
Yeah, but that was the whole of it, you know.
I became very philosophical, recognizing, of course, that the existence of God, nor is non-existence of God, is amenable to proof, so that the only rational position is agnosticism.
You know, that's been my stance ever since, having no reason to dispute it, having encountered and dealt with many arguments of one kind or another.
Next slide.
Thank you.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay, Jim, right.
Yeah, sorry to interrupt.
So anyway, you see it's very beautiful, this mosque, and obviously Muslims are forbidden from any pictorial representation.
So, But are Christians unenthusiastic about the Mosque for saying that God had no son?
What I was leading up to, Nick, is this.
I was always curious about the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and whether we were dealing with one God or three.
That was the reason for the story.
Right.
Uh-huh.
Anyway, we've got... Surely that has puzzled you as well, right?
Well, yeah, yeah.
But I just hope these different religions can somehow find a way of getting on together, you know?
Most unlikely, my friend, particularly if Trump is now unilaterally wanting to bequeath Jerusalem to one among the three.
I mean, your word catastrophic is probably exactly right.
Yeah.
Okay, let's have the next.
So, okay, well this shows the early image of very early Jerusalem, thousands of years ago.
So, Bye.
Where's the Temple Mount in relation to this?
It's right up the top, where it says Mount Moriah, at the far end.
You can't see much.
So this is what was called David's City.
This is the very early image.
Is this the same David of David and Goliath or no?
Yeah, it's the same David, yeah.
And this would be maybe 7th or 8th century when it started to develop.
I must confess Bible study is one of my weakest and shortest suits, Nick.
I've never been driven, though I like your exploitation from the point of view of an historian of contrasting what one reads in the Bible versus what archaeological and geological exploration may establish.
There's so many claims made there.
Yeah, well there's a lot of exaggerated history.
Shall we have that next?
Right, oh okay, well we come back to the, this is the main mosque that we just looked at earlier
and at the centre of this mosque, right, right, right, strange, this is the mosque is built over
something that's supposed to be very special.
This of course being precisely what you're talking about.
Yes, some bit of, well I was going to say concrete, very ancient stone.
It's very jagged and uneven.
And the question is, what is special about this?
Why do Jews feel that this is where their new temple has got to be, right?
Yeah, it has to do with this particular chunk of real estate.
I think so, yeah.
Okay, so they think this is, they call it Foundation Stone of the Dumb of the Rock, and it's just a jagged, irregular bit of rock, and in the Bible, it tells you this about where Solomon's Temple was constructed, that David bought a A threshing floor of some farmer.
A threshing floor is just a bit of flat land where the wheat and chaff are separated.
It has to be fairly level.
It's a bit of a threshing floor.
People say it's far too jagged to be a threshing floor, and also it's right up the top of a mountain.
It'd be much too windy.
You wouldn't want somewhere as exposed.
The chaff would all blow away.
It'll blow away, yeah.
So people feel that this is very unlikely to be, some people feel, the place where the Temple of Solomon is allegedly built.
Now, I'm taking what might be called a minimalist view that there never was any Temple of Solomon at all, and there was no Solomon.
So, there's eight chapters of the Book of... well, there's many chapters in the Old Testament describing the Temple of Solomon and the amazing, fabulous wealth of gold everywhere.
Loads of gold everywhere and loads of cedar wood and amazing luxury.
Like you're a Solomon temple skeptic.
I'm a Solomon Temple skeptic, yeah.
Notice here, you have from Wikipedia, Jewish tradition views the Holy of Holies as a spiritual junction of heaven and earth.
The Axis Moondive, right there.
Yeah, this is some sort of central position, and Jews are getting all ready to build what they call their third temple, right here.
And I'm saying categorically that nobody can build a third temple because the first temple never existed.
Right.
So your count would be off, historically.
It would be the first temple of its kind.
Yeah.
There might have been a second temple, as in the Persian period.
The Persian Empire might have instructed them, in Jerusalem, you build a temple and one god, because they had a monotheistic religion.
Maybe.
I'm not...
I can't say on that, but my impression is that you come into the time of the Roman Empire, the time of Jesus, and there is some titanic struggle there over the temple, which gets destroyed.
But of course, it's my concern about the Trinity, whether Christianity is truly monotheistic or posits three gods.
I mean, I've always been baffled by that, Nick.
Well, that was a bit later on, when Islam came along.
I said there's no Trinity.
And yet we have the Pope at the Wailing Wall, Dick.
Bye.
Well, yeah, yeah.
Okay, so these are apparently very advanced now, these preparations for the Third Temple, and they're getting ready, the nature of the sacrifices and all the details they got from the Temple of Solomon, from Samuel and Kings, books of the Old Testament, of what this exact temple has to be like.
I think it would be very frightening if they do want to go ahead with their temple and they do think they have to destroy this glorious, wonderful mosque in order to build a temple.
I thought there's plenty of room up on that enormous square built by the Romans to have The Jewish Temple and the Muslim Temple.
I thought there's room for both of them.
So I'd like to encourage discussion between Muslims and Jews, maybe Christians, about what the evidence is for whether Solomon's Temple existed, and if so, where it was.
I'm very, very troubled within this context as you lay out the historical framework, Nick, about what's taken place today in Washington, D.C., because it does seem to me it upsets the apple cart in terms of a delicate balance between the three great religions.
What Netanyahu is doing is pandering to Trump's ego by comparing Trump with Cyrus the Great.
They've got big coins issued with Trump and Cyrus the Great.
Cyrus the Great, 25 centuries ago, let the Jews back into Jerusalem after they'd been exiled.
That seems to be real history, as far as I can make out.
Or let some of them back in.
Some of them have been taken out, they're not back in.
And they're comparing Trump saying, yeah, you can have Jerusalem with Cyrus the Great.
So, obviously Trump likes that.
It's his ego.
He likes being compared with Cyrus the Great.
Of whom we probably previously never had heard.
Never heard, no, right.
And there's a load of American evangelical Christians who think that some sort of Bible prophecy will be fulfilled if Jerusalem is given back to the Jews.
Palestinians are obviously not going to buy this, Nick.
Well, it seems to be a total genocide of the Palestinians, eradicating all their traditional land, and they are the real Semites, obviously.
Palestinians are Semites.
They're the most likely descendants of the The Hebrews of the Bible times.
And the Europeans who come over to Israel are obviously not seen much.
Anyway, let's not get into all that, okay?
I just would say that one astute commentator observed that the Israelis regard it as peace when their enemies give up all resistance.
Yeah, okay, next.
That's what God told them, yeah.
Right, here we have that magnificent image of what never existed, this glorious Temple of Solomon, in the 10th century BC.
And in the 10th century BC, Jerusalem was just a little village that sold olives, and there was no Judea or Israel existed in that time, in the 10th century.
Here's where Solomon supposedly was.
It was a time Canaan had been part of the Egyptian Empire for a few centuries, and that was just fading away, and so Jerusalem was quite poor, and it's an infertile area, mountains are infertile areas, no rivers nearby or anything, so there's little reason why anyone would be there, and there were other much more powerful cities around in Canaan.
So, there were relatively few people around Jerusalem at this time, and there was certainly no one capable of building a temple like this, and there was no real king.
Nobody really called a king in Jerusalem at that time.
Okay, so... It's a retrospective historical fallacy.
They're doing the revisionism to promote a form of precedence.
That gives them an historical entitlement to which they were not given the real history.
It was not a legitimate claim unless you buy this revision of history, Nick, right?
Yeah, well this is what's been done by 60 years of archaeologists.
One good thing that Jews have done all around this area, they've been hunting All the time, hunting for Solomon's temple, Solomon's stables, Solomon's gold, Solomon's empire, you know, Solomon's arches, and they haven't found a damn thing.
So, I think we're now at a stage after so many years of, let's go to the next slide, after so many stages, I'm finally admitting there's nothing there.
Okay, here's a modern historian, it's a book, Four Thousand Years of Palestine, And he just points out that after all his searching, they haven't found a damn thing, the United Kingdom of David and Solomon did not exist.
The story of David would have been a small tribal leader in Judea.
That's quite a good expression.
So the big kingdoms at this time were Egypt and then a bit later on Assyria.
But those are the big empires, and the little mini-states of Israel and Judah sort of popped up in between these large empires.
OK?
Would you like me to read this?
Well, no, I think it's alright.
I can read it.
OK, next.
Right.
This is, I think, an excellent so-called minimalist historian, Thomas Thompson.
I think he's giving a realistic picture of what has been found after many... the sources are archaeology, also the letters of kings and rulers between each other, and various tablets and records that are found inscribed.
So that's how the past history is reconstructed, and that's then compared with what the Bible says.
Okay?
Would you like to read this out, Jim?
Sure, sure, sure.
Canaan in 10th century BC.
I have argued that there is no room for an historical united monarchy or for such kings as those presented in the Bible stories as Saul, David, and Solomon.
The early period in which the traditions have set their narratives is an imaginary world of long ago.
It never existed as such.
In the real world of our chronology, only a few dozen very small scattered hamlets and villages supported farmers in all of the Judean highlands.
Altogether, they numbered hardly more than 2,000 persons.
Timber, grazing lands, and steppe were all marginal possibilities.
There could not have been a kingdom for any Saul or David to be king of simply because There were not enough people.
Not only does the state of Judah not yet exist, we have no evidence for there having been any political force anywhere in Palestine that was large enough or developed enough to have been capable of unifying the many economies and regions of this land.
At this time, Palestine was far less unified than it had been for more than a thousand years.
Jerusalem of the 10th century can hardly be spoken of historically, if it existed at all, and years of excavation have found no trace of a 10th century town.
It was still centuries from having the capacity of challenging any of the dozens of more powerful towns of Palestine.
Okay, thanks Jim, that's great.
Right, well, I think this is so important, this perspective, and so I recommend books by this chap, and the other person I recommend is Israel Finkelstein, he's a professor of archaeology in Israel.
Two people, I think, very sound perspectives, and in the next century, that's the 9th century, you do get this Israel appearing, and the first king On record is a chap called Omri, the king of Omri.
He's the first king of Israel, and the capital of Israel is then Samaria, a town called Samaria.
So if you're looking for a temple, there would have been a temple of some sort in Samaria, and another place not far from it called Megiddo, where the word Armageddon comes from, that would also have had a temple.
Those were Israel cities.
And south of Israel was the less prosperous and smaller country of Judah or Judea.
Judea lasted for longer than Israel.
Israel got wiped out in 720 BC.
It challenged Assyria.
So Israel lasts for just over a century, okay?
Right, okay, next.
Okay, yes.
Sorry, I've lost, I can't see the slides.
We're good.
Yeah, okay, next.
Right, okay.
This shows, you can see here, in the 9th century, you've got these little states, Moab, Edom, Judah, Israel, around the Dead Sea, Sea of Galilee.
You see the Philistine, they're sea people, that's from Greece and Crete and so on.
They start to arrive, It has to do with after the Trojan War, that these people start to wipe out the Philistines.
They've actually got weapons of iron, the Philistines, which the Hebrews don't manage.
So the Philistines can't be beaten, as it were.
There's lots of stories about David fighting with the Philistines.
But of course the term has been inverted as it were to refer to someone who's intellectually
vapid, I mean a Philistine.
Yeah, yes, it has, it's derogatory now, yeah.
But anyway, they were the sea people, and somewhat after the fall of Troy, the Trojan War, they arrived on the scene there, and yeah, they had some weapons of iron.
Okay, so this is a century after David and Solomon are supposed to have existed, okay?
And you can see, just get the rough picture, Judea is down here by the Red Sea, Israel is further north by the Sea of Galilee, and they're basically west of the Jordan, the Jordan River.
Okay?
Right, next.
We were talking about the 10th, now we're to the 9th century, moving chronologically backwards toward the birth of Christ.
Yeah, okay.
Right, next.
That's just another map, just to show you these little states that we had to get on together.
Negev Desert, right?
Modern Israel took a whole load of the Negev Desert.
Yeah, in the Six Day War.
From Egypt.
Yeah. From Egypt. From Egypt, yeah. Okay, next.
There's another quote from Thompson about just what Jerusalem was.
It had been a small market town that dominated a valley throughout most of the Bronze Age.
Its relationship to Judah was marginal.
It first took the form and acquired the state of the city, capable of being understood as a state capital sometime in the middle of the 7th century.
That's when it began to get populated and look like a capital city, 7th century.
Following the fall of Nachish, Jerusalem was able to extend its financial interests into the southern highlands, and to imperially dominate most of Judah, as it took on the form of an Assyrian vassal state on the fringe of empire.
So Israel had gone by then, Israel didn't last very long, and Judea lasted longer than Israel.
So around this time, the 7th century, this is round about the time when the stories would start to be composed.
People say, look, how come we still exist?
So Israel did not even have continuous existence to anywhere near modern time until it was created as an artificial entity at the end of World War II.
Yeah, yeah.
Israel came into existence in the 9th century, so around about 850, and it was wiped out by the Assyrian Empire in 720 BC.
720 BC.
Why was the modern state named Israel?
Well, I guess it just sounds good, you know.
But the Jews are people from Judea, from Judah, right?
That's sort of what they are.
And so Judah lasted for several centuries.
Would that have been a more historically fitting name?
Well it might have been in some ways, yeah.
The Egyptian empire phased out rather, got weaker, and the Syrian empire was dominant
during this period.
Okay. And...
We're going to see now that the monarchs of Judea took their origin from somebody called David.
Shall we go to the next one?
Oh, right.
Sorry.
I put here about Solomon's Temple, right?
Did Solomon's Temple exist?
And there's a couple of statements in the Bible which make it unlikely that the Jews would actually build a temple, or make it difficult for them to build.
First of all, there must be no graven image of anything on heaven above or earth beneath.
That's part of the Ten Commandments, right?
So, Solomon's Temple supposedly had these carvings, golden cherubim all around them, placed all around all the walls, which would have violated that commandment.
So Jews are not supposed to have any engraving image.
And also, they would have memories from Egypt of wonderful stone buildings being carved and erected.
Here, the commandment is, use only natural, uncut stones.
In other words, they can pile up stones, but they mustn't cut them.
Do not shape the stones with a tool, for that would make the altar unfit for holy use.
But the Wailing Wall is obviously cut stones, Nick, so what's the violation of this commandment from God?
Well, the Jews didn't make that at all.
I don't think they're claiming to have made it.
But here the statement is that if they make any If they make any temple or monument, make an altar.
Right, so they weren't violating this injunction, only the Romans or whoever.
Yeah, it's basically just saying you can pile up some stones for a holy place, but don't cut them.
Right, okay, next.
Okay, sorry we're jumping about a bit.
Right, this is the evidence, the one bit of evidence, for the existence of David.
Something called the Tel Dan Steel, which is found right up very near the north of Israel.
And David is supposed to have been a hero in the hills of Judea, which is way down south.
So it's a long way from where David is supposed to have been.
And you can see this carving says a very early alphabet, called Aramaic, From this, the Hebrew alphabet develops, right?
And it's got three letters, DWD, which are said to be David, and the word is the House of David.
Right?
That could just have been his home, right?
Well, it could be all sorts of things, yeah.
House of David could mean a whole family, a family tree, a lineage, but it could also mean a structure, a single dwelling, a single family dwelling.
Yeah, it could mean all sorts of things.
So it seems that kings of Judea traced their origin, claimed they came from some lineage of David.
So that is the claim of the kings of Judea.
So this fellow in the 10th century, it looks like he did in some sense exist, and the lineage of the kings of Judea came from him.
OK?
Right, next.
OK, this is a good book, which I think gets to the real, the most real David would likely get to, the real life and invented hero, Joel Baden.
Here is the brilliant Israeli archaeologist Israel Finkelstein.
Yeah, here I think is the brilliant Israeli archaeologist Israel Finkelstein. Do you want
to just read out what he says?
Sure. Whether by cunning intelligence or extraordinary historical circumstance, he alone, of all
the now forgotten ruffians and freebooters who roamed the rugged country between the
Dead Sea and the Judean foothills, established a dynasty that ruled for the next 400 years.
Right.
Okay, so he had a tough, he had a gang, A sort of gang who would sort of raid and he was good at, especially good at taking other people's wives and bumping them off.
That's several times in the Bible.
Like Beer, was it?
Bathsheba?
What's her name?
Bathsheba?
Fancying other people's wives and then arranging for the husband to be disposed of.
And then he's, I think he's a modern gay icon.
He says that Oh, David's a modern gay icon in the gay community?
Yeah, well he says that his love for Jonathan was greater than that for any woman.
Oh, so another male?
Another male, yeah.
And that may take to imply sexual?
Well, you can't tell of course, but it just says that.
As a fighter, he sometimes fought with the Philistines, most of the time he fought against the Philistines, but sometimes he changes over and fights with the Philistines because they're fighting against Saul, I think, Saul in Israel.
But he was a great warrior.
Yes, yeah, a great warrior and a philosophy of sort of killing people as a solution to life's problems.
A great warrior who is a gay icon.
Something like that, something like that.
And yet he also took other men's wives and disposed of them.
Yeah, yeah.
So he appears to be bisexual by this account.
Well, something like that, something like that, yeah.
Anyway, I recommend this book if you want a picture of how he, if he did get control of Jerusalem.
The story is that he somehow Got into Jerusalem and took it over, isn't it?
Maybe a personal hero of Henry Weinstein?
Something like that, yes.
Okay, next.
Right, now we come to the real ultimate mystery... Harvey Weinstein, forgive me, yeah.
Okay, this is the real... Sorry, I'm jumping around a bit.
We come round to the real mystery of the Wailing Wall at Jerusalem.
If you get permission, if you go to Jerusalem, try to get permission to go down to the basement and take a tour about 12 meters below that ground level where everyone's praying.
And this is the actual basement of the Wailing Wall, okay?
So this is one of the larger, the huge stones?
Yeah, this is a truly gigantic stone.
You can see 11 feet by 41 feet.
So it weighs something, five or six hundred tons.
How could they even move it around, Dirk?
Well, that's a mystery.
How could anyone move it around?
And who originally made this wall?
So I think this is much older than Roman.
I think this is some megalithic construct.
And I'd like people to try and evaluate how old this wall is.
I don't think the Romans could do stuff like this.
Okay, the next.
Right, so I'm venturing, people make a comparison with Baalbek in Lebanon,
which has similar enormous stones.
These ones are larger, even larger than the ones you see in Jerusalem, about 800 tons.
These stones we're talking about?
Yeah, these stones.
And this is from a structure in Lebanon?
In Lebanon called Baalbek, yeah.
You can see huge pillars remaining there.
Again, we've got a mystery of where these stones come from and who made them.
I would say there's some sort of megalithic source here, older than the Romans.
I think it's very wrong that Jews are somehow Taking this over as if it somehow belongs to them.
Okay, next.
Right, this is just another picture of Baalbek.
Someone could make these giant stones.
Wow!
Wow!
They're huge!
Yeah, it's quite enormous.
Okay, next.
Right, this is another picture of that stone we looked at earlier.
It says it's 570 tons.
This is the Weyland Wall again.
Yeah, Weyland Wall.
So, in a way... What do you think of all those little holes?
Could that have been to put... Well, wooden slats, some sort of wooden design.
Yeah, in order to carry it?
Well, no, it would have been some structure there, arches or we don't know.
The trouble is, this wall has been broken down and rebuilt so much that maybe nobody can properly reconstruct it.
Anyway, bits of wood would have fitted in there.
Okay, next.
Right, this is just another part of the wall.
Yeah, I must say, I'd love to be able to visit this.
I don't think I'll be allowed to, though.
No, no, you'd be rebuttant as a Holocaust denier.
Oh, shucks!
As would I!
Yes, well, there's so much past history here, and I think there is an effort going on to resolve the past history.
And I think we need to try and do this without Jews feeling that they've got a right to build their temple in the exact precise spot where the Muslims have got theirs.
Or dictate history based on mythology and theology.
Yeah, they've got a fictional history which Christians have accepted for 2,000 years.
About this old Temple of Solomon.
This is partly the Christian Zionist tradition too, right?
To buy into all of this, regardless of the science and archaeological findings.
Well yeah, but it's general throughout Christendom that this Old Testament is inspired, and so you've got to believe it.
And especially Freemasons.
I think Freemasons are really into the whole mystique of this Temple of Solomon.
So I think we need a realistic historical perspective to sweep away these old myths.
And the role of the Freemasons in history is an untold chapter of enormous proportions.
Yeah, it lasts a couple of centuries, since about 1800.
Including today, Nick, my impressions are that Masonic influence is vast.
Is it?
Yeah, yeah.
Well, it's kind of hidden and hard for any politician to control because it's so hidden, but they believe in all this whole lot of Jewish mystique about Solomon's Temple, as if it's somehow holy or sacred, and I think it's bad for humanity to believe in something In a way that didn't exist.
I mean Solomon's Temple is in a way a mocked up image of the glory that was Egypt.
So the Hebrews had some memory of ancient Egypt.
There really were glorious temples with loads of gold everywhere, but they're in Egypt, not in Jerusalem.
So is it as a way of appropriating a part of the great history of Egypt to make it as though it were a part of the history of Judaism?
Absolutely, yeah, you got it.
Fascinating!
Egypt really did have tons of gold coming up from the south, from the Nile.
Loads and loads of gold.
And that is transformed into the story of Solomon.
Egypt had a great culture, in other words, with many extraordinary achievements that was very striking contrast with the meagre attainments of the Jews.
Egypt developed horses and chariots a great deal.
They bred very fine horses and later on the Jews were good at emulating that.
You see, in the 9th and 8th centuries, in Megiddo for example, they did build up horse stables.
They imported horses from Egypt and sold them on to Syria and so forth and that was a thriving business.
But the idea that Solomon had some sort of big horse stable, that's just mocked up and it's taken from As it were, Egypt.
It's not real in terms of anything that was in Judea.
And also the idea of loads of wives.
Solomon had loads of wives, you know, in the storybook.
Well, the Egyptian pharaohs did have quite a few wives, you know.
So the whole thing is just transferred over from Egypt.
Including past pharaohs.
Including?
Harems, or was that a Turkish thing?
Harems, yeah, vast harems.
In Egypt for the pharaohs.
Yeah, you see, Egypt really did have an empire from the Nile to the Euphrates, and the Bible then pretended that David and Solomon had an empire from the Nile to the Euphrates.
Fascinating, Nick.
Fascinating.
You know all this Greater Israel stuff you get nowadays?
Of course.
From the Nile to the Euphrates, right?
That is based on this fantasy that the Empire of David and Solomon once had an empire from the Nile to the Euphrates and that absolutely never existed, right?
Very, very deep and searching as a critique of this Israeli imperialism, we might call it.
Israeli imperialism, yeah, yeah, you got it Jim, yeah.
So it's important for us to deconstruct this, that what did and didn't exist, you know.
And it's driving current events.
Driving current events, yeah, yeah.
That there was a glorious empire of Egypt, the Golden Age of Egypt had this amazing empire and It was based on exchanging gifts and goodwill and stuff, and having loads of gold to spread about.
Not murdering and shooting Palestinians for sport?
No, no.
The idea that David, this sort of free-booting gangster type, the idea that he could go up to the Euphrates and take an empire, I think it's very damaging for people to believe historical fiction of this kind.
Nothing of the kind existed.
I think that's of enormous importance, Nick.
Yeah, so if we think of that diagram we had in the 9th century, that is when it begins to exist, Israel and Judea as little mini-states, and then around the 7th century, when only Judea still exists, you start to mock up a glorious past, right?
Yeah.
And if I may give a historical analogy, in this country there's a terrific mystique of Arthur, right?
King Arthur.
And he's completely absent from history books as a King of England.
He really wasn't a King of England.
But the Welsh did have a King Arthur in the 5th century.
So he's really in the Welsh history books, OK?
He's in the Welsh history, but not the UK history.
Not the UK, no, no.
So, in the 12th century, in Glastonbury, the monks decided the king wanted a glorious past, right?
So they made up all these stories about Arthur to give this newly established monarchy, which had come over from France, the Normans, to give them this glorious past.
So it's a mocked-up story, that.
It's important to realise that that is a glorious past that is mocked up.
And I think that the Hebrews did something rather similar.
Hebrews come from Hebrew, which were sort of ruffians, bandits and untrustworthy people, part-time farmers who were liable to fight on any side of a war and you couldn't trust them.
And this gives them They've got the story of a glorious past from mocking up this history, Jim.
Fascinating, absolutely fascinating.
Right, okay, now we've got this nightmare prospect that they're going to mock up this third temple, so-called third temple, And what will it be like?
Well, who knows?
On the Temple Mount.
On the Temple Mount, yeah.
So you have to destroy one of the most precious treasures of all Islam.
Yeah, one of the most precious treasures of all Islam.
They're going to want to destroy that.
For the benefit of a mythical Jewish history.
For the benefit of a mythical Jewish history, yeah.
Yeah, that's right.
Okay, next.
Right.
So this will be very destabilising if they do put this temple up.
And I don't know if you've heard anything about it, Jim, but Donald Trump, anything pending to Donald Trump's ego, you know, I think... This was on display today in Washington DC.
Was it?
Oh, right.
I suggest it was.
You had Bibi Netanyahu praising Trump, Trump talking about Jerusalem being the unified capital of Israel, and a host of other issues that are going to be intolerable to Palestinians and indeed to the broader Islamic community.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I think this is a very bad moment for the human race if they If they get this idea of Jerusalem being their capital.
Historically, what I've shown is, historically, I don't think Jerusalem ever was the capital of Israel.
It was the capital of Judah from about the 7th century onwards.
It was the capital of Judah for two or three centuries.
And then that was then wiped out by the Assyrian Empire.
But it was never the capital of Israel.
Nick, I think you've brought us full circle down to the events of today in Washington, and it's very, very troubling.
When these circumstances, everything is put into the proper historical framework, you can see the grotesque injustice of what's being proposed here today by the President of the USA.
Yeah.
Okay, Jim.
Well, I hope with us.
Dick, that was masterful to carry us through the history and showing us when you juxtapose scientific research, archaeological excavations, and real historical understanding against the mythology of the moment and the aspirations to build the third temple Absolute proper understanding of history.
We have the elements for catastrophe, as you well put it.
And I'm sorry to say they are on the move today, Nick.
On the move today.
Right.
Okay, well, I hope that was helpful, Jim.
This is Jim Fetzer thanking my guest Nick Kollerstrom, whom I admire beyond words.
He's younger than I, but he's my personal hero, one of the most remarkable men of our time.
I can't thank him enough for being here, and all of you for watching.
Okay, Jim.
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