The Tomb Of The Patriarchs

Here is a place that everyone should know, and I have a spiritual theory about it's significance. It is difficult to find something completely new to write about religion, but I have not seen this before.

In the Book of Genesis, Chapter 23, Abraham purchases a field with a cave in it. It was to be a place to bury his deceased wife, Sarah. The Hittites who owned the field offered it to him, with no charge, but Abraham insisted on paying a fair price for it. The cave is known as the Cave of Machpelah.

The site ended up being the burial site of three husband and wife pairs of the patriarchs. They are Abraham and his wife Sarah, their son Isaac and his wife Rebecca, and their son Jacob and his wife Leah.

Jacob, as we know, became the father of sons who would each found one of the twelve tribes of Israel. The Book of Genesis, Chapter 49, gives Jacob's instructions for his burial. The final chapter of the Book of Genesis, Chapter 50, describes the great funeral procession from Egypt, including the pharaoh's top officials, to bury Jacob at this traditional burial site that had been purchased by his grandfather, Abraham.

Islamic theology splits from that of Jews and Christians after Abraham, with Moslems believing that the family line went through Abraham's older son, Ishmael, rather than through Isaac. Jews and Christians claim that this is because Ishmael was the son of a slave woman, while Isaac was the son of his true wife Sarah.

The burial site is about 30 km south of the Temple Mount, in Jerusalem, which we saw in the posting "Esau And The Temple Mount". Like the Temple Mount King Herod, who reigned at the time Jesus was born, built a massive wall around this field where the patriarchs are buried.

In fact, as seen today, it very much resembles the Temple Mount, and is supposedly the most sacred Jewish site after the Temple Mount.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Mount#/media/File:South_Temple_Mount.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_of_the_Patriarchs#/media/File:Hebron_Cave_of_the_Patriarchs.jpg

After biblical times, a Byzantine church stood on the site and the bodies of the patriarchs are believed to have been discovered during the Crusades, when the site was controlled by Christians for a time. Saladin built a mosque over the site, and the two remaining minarets are from that time.

In the Fourteenth Century the Mamluks, based in Egypt, build six cenotaphs on the site, one for each of the patriarchs buried there.

But the question arises as to why Rachel and Joseph are not also buried here.

Rachel was Jacob's second, and favorite, wife, and Joseph was the oldest son of Jacob and Rachel. Joseph was the son who the Book of Genesis describes as having had prophetic dreams of leadership over his older brothers, which aroused their resentment. One day, while out tending sheep, they saw him coming and plotted to kill him and say that a wild animal had killed him. But the oldest brother decided against killing him, and they sold him to some passing merchants as a slave instead.

But it turned out that there was in a plan in the whole episode, and God was with Joseph as he was sold as a slave in Egypt. After being falsely accused of trying to seduce his master's wife, he was put in jail. But God was with him there and he first foretold the dreams of two other prisoners, former pharaoh's chief baker and chief butler, and then of pharaoh himself.

Joseph ended up being appointed as governor of Egypt and, when his brothers later came to the country to buy food due to a famine, Joseph's dreams of leadership over his brothers indeed came true, although they did not at first recognize him.

Joseph, like his father Jacob before him, gave instructions for his bones to eventually be buried in their homeland. More than four centuries later, as Moses led the Exodus of the Jews from Egypt, he brought Joseph's bones along. But Joseph, like his mother Rachel, were not buried at the site with the other patriarchs.

Rachel is buried in the northern part of Bethlehem where Jesus, although descended not from her but from her sister Leah, would one day be born. The present tomb structure is from the Ottoman era.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel%27s_Tomb#/media/File:Raakelinhauta.png

Joseph is buried further north, at Shechem. His tomb structure was built during the Nineteenth Century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph%27s_Tomb#/media/File:KeverYosef5600.JPG

Even though Moslem theology goes through Abraham's son, Ishmael, and not through Isaac and Jacob, Jacob's son Joseph is still revered.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph%27s_Tomb#/media/File:Grave_of_Joseph.jpg

In the posting, "Esau And The Temple Mount", I described my spiritual theory of the Temple Mount. Jacob, with the help of his mother Rebecca, deceived the nearly-blind Isaac into giving his blessing to the younger son Jacob, instead of his brother Esau. While the deception was allowed by God, it was still a deception and ultimately had to be made right.

King Herod, who was a descendant of Esau, dismantled the Jews' Temple, the one that had been built to replace the original one after return from exile in Babylon, in order to build a grand new temple. He enlarged the Temple Mount by building a massive retaining wall around it, and then filling in the gap. Since this additional structure was built by a descendant of Esau to add to the Temple of the Jews, who were the descendants of his deceptive brother Jacob, I see it as representing the righting of the deception which gave Jacob Esau's birthright, and bringing Esau back to his rightful place.

My belief is that Jacob, possessed of the birthright as Isaac's son by the deception of his older brother Esau, had to pay for it by himself being deceived when he sought a wife. He left and went to work for his mother's brother, Laban, who had a beautiful daughter named Rachel. Jacob agreed to work for seven years for Laban as a bride price for Rachel.

But, at the end of the seven-year period, the tables were turned and it was Jacob's turn to be on the receiving end of a deception. The veiled bride that he was given turned out to be not Rachel but her not-quite-as-attractive older sister, Leah. It was explained to Jacob that it was not done that the younger sister should be married before the older. However, Jacob was allowed to have Rachel as a wife also, in return for another seven years of labor.

This price that Jacob had to pay, for the deception of his older brother, is that his primary wife would be the older sister, instead of the younger one that he chose.

In spiritual justice, this is why Jacob is buried with Leah in the Tomb of the Patriarchs and Rachel, although still very important, is buried elsewhere. In the same way that Herod, the descendant of Esau, brought him back into the birthright by construction of the Temple Mount that enlarged the sacred Mount Moriah upon which the first two temples had been built.

Herod also built the wall around the Tomb of the Patriarchs, and the two structures look similar from the outside. One wall represents Jacob buried with the older sister, as the other represents him reunited with his older brother. Jacob and Esau actually did later reconcile, to bury their father Isaac here at the Tomb of the Patriarchs.

Leah gave birth to more sons of Jacob, who were the founders of the Twelve Tribes, than Rachel did. Judah, who by birthright became the predominant tribe, so that all Israelites became known as Jews, was a son of Leah, not of Rachel or of either of their maids. Judah was actually the fourth-born, but Reuben forfeited his right to leadership by getting together with one of the maids, Bilhah, who had given birth to some of his brothers. Simeon and Levi were the next two sons, but they forfeited their leadership rights by slaughtering the town of Shechem because their sister, Jacob's only daughter Dinah, had been raped there. This left Judah, the next-in-line fourth-born, from whose tribe Jesus was born.

Rachel, who Jacob originally wanted as a wife, was reduced to being secondary to her older sister, in spiritual justice for Jacob's deception of his older brother. Rachel's two sons with Jacob were Joseph and Benjamin. She actually died while giving birth to Benjamin. When the country would later split, during the time of King Rehoboam, into Israel and Judah, Benjamin would be absorbed into the greater tribe of Judah.

Joseph had two sons in Egypt, with the wife that pharaoh gave him who was pharaoh's sister-in-law, and these became patriarchs too, forming their namesake tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh. Ephraim was the leading tribe of Israel, after it had split from Judah. But these, along with the rest of Israel, are the "Ten Lost Tribes", who were taken into exile by Assyria, and scattered around the Assyrian Empire, never to return. Some time later, Judah was also taken into exile, by Babylon, but returned to restore the country.

Jacob's deception of his older brother, to become the founder of the twelve tribes of Israel through his twelve sons, was to be reflected in his two grandsons through Joseph, which founded two of the tribes, Ephraim and Manasseh.

The reason that Joseph, one of the twelve sons, had two tribes, through these two sons, is that the tribe of Levi, the third-born son, was not to hold territory in Israel, but was to be the priesthood tribe. Religious leaders from Moses to John the Baptist would be from the tribe of Levi, but Jesus would not. Jesus was from the leading tribe, that of Judah, and John the Baptist's being the herald of Jesus represents a moving on from the old priesthood to the real Savior, who can actually save people from sin.

Before his death, Jacob blessed Ephraim before Manasseh. Joseph, their father, tried to correct Jacob, as Manasseh was the older of the sons. But Jacob insisted that Ephraim would predominate, and his tribe indeed became the leading tribe of Israel, the northern kingdom, after the split from Judah during the time of King Rehoboam. Joseph's being wrong in that his oldest son should be the predominant one is spiritual justice, in the same way as the order of the two wives of his father Jacob, for Joseph's earlier prophetic dreams of predominance over his older brothers, which came true.

Upon marrying Leah and Rachel, it was Leah who initially did all of the childbearing, so that the oldest sons were hers, even though it was clear that the attractive Rachel was Jacob's favorite wife. It had to be this way so that it would be Leah's descendants who would lead, rather than Rachel's, because she, the older sister, had to be the primary wife in payment for Jacob's getting the blessing to found Israel by deceiving his older brother. That is why Jacob had to be buried with Leah, in the Tomb of the Patriarchs, and Rachel and her son Joseph had to be buried elsewhere.

The following scenes begin on the roof of the Tomb of the Patriarchs, in the West Bank city of Hebron.

There are multiple scenes following. To see the scenes, after the first one, you must first click the up arrow, ^, before you can move on to the next scene by clicking the right or forward arrow, >. After clicking the up arrow, you can then hide the previews of successive scenes, if you wish.

https://www.google.com/maps/@31.5246291,35.1106458,3a,75y,73.39h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1s-dRS_BlhQKHY%2FWHJwDqFs4SI%2FAAAAAAAAAz0%2FTAF5x9Ke3FsOb1zyMD-kRnLYoHwXaaomwCLIB!2e4!3e11!6s%2F%2Flh4.googleusercontent.com%2F-dRS_BlhQKHY%2FWHJwDqFs4SI%2FAAAAAAAAAz0%2FTAF5x9Ke3FsOb1zyMD-kRnLYoHwXaaomwCLIB%2Fw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya59.12124-ro-0-fo100%2F!7i10240!8i5120

When The Moors Ruled Spain

Iberia, the peninsula where Spain and Portugal are located, does not have an early history of being a very important place. St. Paul, in the Acts of the Apostles, expressed a wish to spread the Gospel in Spain, but apparently never got around to it. It was ruled by the Visigoths, one of the Gothic tribes that originated in Germany, after the end of the Roman Empire.

In the year 711, Moors from north Africa crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and conquered most of the Iberian Peninsula. Moors was a general term for the Moslems of north Africa. After the Umayyads, the first major caliphate of Islam, was conquered and replaced by the Abbasids, who built Baghdad as a capital to replace the Umayyad Damascus, Spain and Portugal remained under the control of the Umayyads.

The Moors founded the city of Cordoba, which eventually became the largest city in Europe and was a great rival to Baghdad. The Moslems were prevented from continuing their conquest northward, into France, but would rule in Spain for over 700 years.

(Note-It was this saving of France from Moslem conquest, from the Moslems that were ruling in Spain, by Charles Martel, that I was referring to in the posting "America And The Modern World Explained By Way Of Paris". There we saw his tomb in Basilica St. Denis, and that he began what is known as the Carolingian Dynasty, which included the first emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in Charlemagne, and whose name lives on in America's states of North and South Carolina).

Berbers, who are Moslems but not ethnically Arab, known as the Almoravids, took control afterward. They were followed by another Berber dynasty, known as the Almohads. The Iberian Peninsula was referred to by the Moslems as Al Andalus, and is the reason that the southernmost part of Spain is today known as Andalusia.

The Renaissance, meaning "rebirth", began with the manuscripts containing forgotten knowledge that were brought to northern Italy by scholars leaving Constantinople at the time of the Ottoman conquest of that city. Other vital knowledge, which later awoke Europe from it's "Dark Ages", was preserved in the "House of Wisdom" in Baghdad. But I consider this long Islamic occupation of Spain and Portugal as a "third channel" by which the knowledge to bring about the modern era in Europe was brought in.

The city of Cordoba not only became the largest city in Europe, but also had one of the greatest universities in the world, which attracted students from all over Europe. Al Andalus became a center of Jews in Europe, in the same way that Alexandria in Egypt had been centuries before. Moslems, Christians and, Jews lived together mostly in harmony. Averroes was maybe the best-known intellectual in Al Andalus at this time.

We can see what a great and lasting influence this Moslem occupation had on Spain and Portugal in a couple of examples of Spanish literature. In "The Romance of Abenamar", the Moors and their struggle to remain in control of the country are portrayed in a favorable way. In the great novel "Don Quixote", the author describes the story as being translated from Arabic by a Moorish author, thus giving the story an air of authority.

Over hundreds of years, Catholics gradually regained control of the peninsula from the Moslems. First Toledo, south of Madrid, was taken, then Cordoba, and finally Granada. This is referred to as the Reconquista.

Portugal, the western edge of the Iberian Peninsula, was completely liberated about 250 years before Spain was. The regions of Spain were formerly independent kingdoms. They became united because the first king and queen of independent Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella, were from different former kingdoms. Ferdinand was from Aragon and Isabella from Castile. (The Spanish language is sometimes referred to as Castillian Spanish).

One of the daughters of Ferdinand and Isabella was Catherine of Aragon. She became the bride of Henry VIII (The Eighth) of England. It was the pope's refusal to let him marry Anne Boleyn instead that led to Henry's break with the Catholic Church, to join the side of the Reformation. The unity of the former kingdoms that make up what is now Spain has never been quite complete and Catalonia, the region around Barcelona, has a lot of people with an interest in going back to being a separate country.

The reason I think of the rule of Iberia by the Moors is so important to world history is that it gave Spain and Portugal a great boost as nations. The two newly independent countries reflected the colonization and introduction of the Islamic religion by the Moors to their own passion for colonizing other lands and spreading Catholicism.

The first stage of what is known as the Age of Discovery was centered on Spain and Portugal. Colonization by imperial powers from northern Europe, Britain, France and, the Netherlands, would come considerably later. The Age of Discovery began with the voyages of Christopher Columbus, sailing for Spain, and the first voyage was in 1492, the same year that Spain had become completely liberated from Moslem rule.

The century before Columbus lived perhaps the best-known traveler ever. Ibn Battuta was a Berber who visited much of the known world, not by ship but mostly by land. It was his people who were still ruling Granada, in southern Spain, at this time. The Berbers had a history of being semi-nomadic, and maybe this history is what prompted Ibn Battuta to wander so much of the world.

I have concluded that the world-changing voyages of Columbus were actually inspired by writings about the extensive travels of Ibn Battuta. Columbus mirrored Ibn Battuta's travels eastward by land, by travelling westward by sea. Columbus himself would have been more influenced by Marco Polo, but the acceptance by Ferdinand and Isabella of Columbus' proposal to reach the Indies by sailing westward was very much due to the influence of writings about the travels of Ibn Battuta, known as the "Prince of Travelers", the century before.

The insistence of Columbus that he could reach the east, by sailing west, and that it would be profitable, had earlier been declined by Portugal and England. Portugal had already been completely liberated from Moorish control by the time Ibn Battuta was on his travels.

After the Iberian Peninsula was free of Moslem control, and completely in the hands of Catholics, Jews had to either convert to Catholicism or leave. The Moorish rule of Spain had tremendous and long-lasting effects on the world because the Jews and Moslems, who had earlier lived mostly in harmony with the Catholics, were the beginning of the Inquisition. It was Ferdinand and Isabella, the first monarchs of completely independent Spain, who initiated the Inquisition.

The Inquisition was based on suspicions that the forced conversions to Catholicism of Jews and Moslems who remained in Spain were less-than-genuine. This was one of the things that upset northern Europeans about the direction that the church was going and, not long after the Inquisition began, the Reformation also began.

The Catholic Church responded to the Reformation, the breaking away of the Protestants from the church, with it's own Counter-Reformation. Although the Catholic Church was led from the Vatican, the Counter-Reformation was more centered on Spain. It was a Spaniard, Ignatius Loyola, who became the best-known figure from the Catholic side of the Reformation. He founded the Jesuits which were a teaching, rather than a monastic, order, from which the present Pope Francis comes.

It was largely the Counter-Reformation, rather than the original Catholic Church, that shaped the church that we see today. Spain became the strongest country in the world, and Portugal gained a vast empire for such a small country.

I do not believe that it would have happened at all like this but for the long occupation by, and great influence of, the Moors. They deserve great credit for making what had been a remote corner of Europe, controlled by a foreign power for over 700 years, into a world leader as soon as that occupying power had been removed.

Southern Spain, of course, has the most Moorish influence because it is closest to north Africa and was ruled for the longest. This is the region known as Andalusia, named for Al Andalus.

The first major stronghold to be recaptured by Catholics was Toledo, to the south of Madrid. The following scenes begin inside the cathedral that the Catholics built on the site of the mosque that the Moors had built in the city. Do you remember how, in our visit to Mexico City, the Spanish replaced the main Aztec temple with what is now the main cathedral in the central square of the city (Zocalo) in exactly the same way?

We can see the lasting influence of the Moors by how a fortress is referred to as "alcazar", which is an Arabic word.

There are multiple scenes following. To see the scenes, after the first one, you must first click the up arrow, ^, before you can move on to the next scene by clicking the right or forward arrow, >. After clicking the up arrow, you can then hide the previews of successive scenes, if you wish.

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.8570892,-4.0244437,3a,75y,295.43h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1s-FReTzKijrVM%2FWAE0ouE45BI%2FAAAAAAABJxs%2Fq0XFYThTtXsgRZCQJulNcevuERKrsNAvACLIB!2e4!3e11!6s%2F%2Flh3.googleusercontent.com%2F-FReTzKijrVM%2FWAE0ouE45BI%2FAAAAAAABJxs%2Fq0XFYThTtXsgRZCQJulNcevuERKrsNAvACLIB%2Fw203-h100-k-no-pi0-ya222.7715-ro-0-fo100%2F!7i9728!8i4076

The next major stronghold of the Moors to be reconquered by the Catholics was Cordoba. This had a great Islamic university, which attracted students from all over Europe, and became the largest city in Europe. The best-known example of Moorish architecture in the world is the Cathedral-Mosque, or Mezquita, in Cordoba. This was first a church, which was replaced by a great mosque in 742 when the Moors ruled, which was converted into a cathedral upon reconquest by the Catholics. The following scenes begin inside there. The striped double arches are usually the first thing we associate with this landmark.

One thing that you may notice is that, in some places such as the first of the following scenes, if you put the mouse pointer on the floor up ahead, you will see an arrow there. If you click on the arrow, your perspective will then move to that point. You can literally "walk" all around the building, taking in a 360 degree view from each point, before moving to the next point of perspective.

https://www.google.com/maps/@37.8789081,-4.7793576,3a,75y,60.69h,90t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1simGyaQxkJ43rkWBVA1Y4HA!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo3.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DimGyaQxkJ43rkWBVA1Y4HA%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D54.578194%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656

After the reconquest of Cordoba, the remaining stronghold in Spain was Granada, far in the south. It was eventually allowed to remain by paying tribute, but was finally reconquered in 1492. The following scenes begin in the Alhambra, the Fourteenth-Century Moorish palace in Granada. This was built by the Nasirids, who were the last dynasty. The last leader of Granada was known as Boabdil.

https://www.google.com/maps/@37.1767866,-3.5888175,3a,75y,35.36h,90t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1soe6qYYsnUlxMwxhCutEiDA!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo1.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3Doe6qYYsnUlxMwxhCutEiDA%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D29.48365%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656

One city that really shows the character of Andalusia is Seville. We saw in the posting, "The House Of Holy Wisdom, Where The Modern World Began" that the Hagia Sophia was the largest building in the world for a thousand years. The building that finally supplanted it is the largest cathedral in the world, that of Seville, which was completed shortly after the country was completely liberated from Moslem rule. The following scenes of Seville begin inside it's cathedral, where the tomb of Christopher Columbus is located.

https://www.google.com/maps/@37.3858175,-5.9931812,3a,75y,333.33h,90t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sQ1KaBVMHIs_OKFFYtPW0Jg!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo2.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DQ1KaBVMHIs_OKFFYtPW0Jg%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D338.2418%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656