Posted on 06/24/2019 9:24:27 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
A watchtower dating from the time of the Kingdom of Judah (8th century BCE - during the reign of King Hezekiah) was recently uncovered by archaeological excavations carried out by IDF soldiers, together with the Israel Antiquities Authority...
The tower, whose dimensions in antiquity are estimated to have been 15 x 10.5 ft, was erected on a high elevation site, and served as an observation point on the Hebron Mountains...
It was built using very large stones, weighing some 8 tons each. Its height today reaches around 6 ft. According to Sa'ar Ganor and Valdik Lifshitz, excavation directors on behalf of the IAA, "the strategic location of the tower served as a lookout point over the Philistine enemy, one of whose cities was Ashkelon. In the days of the First Temple, the Kingdom of Judah built a range of towers and fortresses as points of communication, warning and signaling, to transmit messages and field intelligence. This tower is one of the observation points connecting the large cities in the area, located in the Beit Mirsim (Mirsham), Tel Eton and Tel Lachish sites. In ancient times, to transmit messages, beacons of smoke were lit during the day and beacons of fire at night. It is likely that the watchtower now uncovered was one of the towers that bore some of the beacons."
Activity in the ancient tower ceased on the eve of the expedition of Sennacherib, King of Assyria, in Judah in 701 BCE. Archaeological excavations have revealed that the entrance to the tower was blocked, and the force stationed there apparently converged on one of the nearby fortified towns. From biblical testimonies and archaeological findings in the area, we know that Sennacherib's attack virtually destroyed Judah, including 46 cities and 2,000 villages and farms.
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishpress.com ...
Yeah, that was my first thought. Those guys are everywhere!
They were recruiting on the Boardwalk in OCMD this weekend. Quiet, unobtrusive, as they should be. Did not see much interest being shown for what they were offering. Their propaganda used to be plain old B&W boring stuff. Now, full color on slick paper. Still, most people are onto them. Few takers.
Kind David? Solomon? Choose from any number of kings. Maybe the stones were hewn nearby.
“701 BCE”:
BCE/CE = Political Correctness = Cultural Marxism. (Think: Christmas Break = Holiday Break.)
The timeline was devised by Dionysius Exiguus to calculate the birth of Christ, so as then to calculate Easter in future years. (He was limited to Roman Numerals, sans the Zero, hence the errors.)
The atheist leftists did not devise a new timeline; they did not revise the existing timeline.
Instead, they stole it and renamed it so as to excise its raison d’etre: the life of Jesus Christ.
The Marxist academics did what such parasites always do: usurp and subvert, not create.
That's just some hearsay from either the joker or the thief.
Horns, horns, horns, in dark Mindolluin's sides they dimly echoed. Great horns of the north wildly blowing. Rohan had come at last.
Too bad that's just fiction, because I always get chills even thinking about it. The whole Battle of Gondor, particularly that one, and Gandalf's stand at the ruined gates, and of course the slaying of the Lord of the Nazgul.
The movies complemented the books very well. My favorite fantasy books. I’ve read them a number of times.
I read them at least six, perhaps eight times when I was in my teens, and really enjoyed them, as did so many others. I dropped fiction about 1985, reading one sci-fi novel (thanks to a tip from a FReeper) in a decades-long interval. When the Fellowship movie was imminent, I dug out and re-read the trilogy, skipping certain parts that I'd sometimes skipped in the past, and that I figured wouldn't make it into the movie (the whole Old Forest / Tom Bombadil / Barrow Wight sequence, for instance). I found there were parts that I remembered that hadn't seemed to make an impact on my younger self took me by surprise by being quite moving.
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