Sarah's Grave
In 1981, Dr. Seev Jevin, Director of the Israel Antiquities Authority, forced
himself through a narrow opening in the underground grave chamber of the
Machpela cave, where Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were believed to be buried.
He did this under strict observation by the Islamic Waqf. Behind bolted doors
in Yitzhak Hall, the secret entrance in the southeast wall was opened. Jews
had long suspected that the entrance to the real burial chamber must be
here, and because of that they placed their prayer slips of paper in wall
cracks on the exterior of the building at this same location.
The discovery that Dr. Jevin made in 1981 was concealed for political
reasons. However, now that Hebron has been handed back to the Muslims,
he has recounted to Nachrichten aus Israel (News from Israel) how he
forced himself through a narrow entrance, went down 16 steps and crawled
along a 20-meters long, 60-cm high and 100-cm wide tunnel in order to
finally reach a 3.5 x 3.5 meter room. The chamber, tunnel and steps were all
made of the same worked stones as the building exterior. They were a
homogenous group of building materials belonging to Herodian-era
construction, identical to those used in the Jerusalem temple.
Dr. Jevin determined that plaster covering the black walls in the grave
chamber dated from a later time and was designed to hide the original
Herodian stones. "This is a customary tactic of the Muslims by which they
attempt to cover up the original," said Dr. Jevin.
Behind broken-off plaster, he discovered Latin script, dating to Crusader
times, containing the names Jacob and Abraham. It was obvious Christians
regarded this location as a holy place. Could this room be the true burial
chamber?
Earlier Moshe Dayan, both Israel's Defense Minister and an amateur
archaeologist, had been curious about this site. Following the Six Day War,
he and 12-year-old Michal lowered themselves with a rope through the 30
cm, narrow opening into this chamber, which was 20 cm from the blocked
floor opening in Yitzhak Hall. They measured this chamber but found no
bones. Now, Dr. Jevin was standing in this same underground chamber. He
was prepared to break off his search when he stumbled on a floor plate.
Suspecting a hollow space underneath, he lifted the plate, found a hole and
slid through the narrow opening. Now Dr. Jevin found himself in a 3.5 x 4
meter room from which a passage to a second smaller oval room led. He
recalled the Talmud (Baba Bathra 58,770), which indicated two caves and
recalled that the name "Machpela" itself means "double cave."
So Dr. Seev Jevin became the first Jew to discover the true burial chamber
of his ancestors Abraham, Isaac and Jacob-- three floors below the north
grave chamber. In a nearby chamber in the cave, their wives Sarah,
Rebecca and Leah would be resting.
With uncanny silence surrounding him, Dr. Jevin looked around full of awe
and found clay shards dating from Israelite times, perhaps from Abraham's
era-- artifacts almost 4,000 years old. He found pieces of a lamp and also an
intact wine jug. Could this be the jug in which monks washed the bones of
the forefathers in 1119 AD, as old texts explain?
The archaeological find proves that Machpela is a Jewish burial place and
that hundreds of years prior to Mohammed it had been a holy place for the
Jews. Now Palestinians maintain that "Jews are foreigners in Hebron." Also,
when the Muslims succeeded in removing almost all Jewish traces from the
halls above, only the actual grave chamber itself remained Jewish. The still
walled-in passage in the tunnel pointed towards an underground labyrinth,
perhaps a Herodian necropolis.
Muslims falsified Jewish holy places, converting them into "lifelong" Muslim
holy places. From the Jewish temple mount in Jerusalem they made their
third holy place al-Aqsa and are now converting Solomon's stables into a
mosque. At the same time they are protesting Israel's Judaizing of
Jerusalem.
What is important is that Abraham obtained the burial place by paying the
full price, which signified under law that he and his progeny had in so doing
bought legal rights to this land. The Armana letter said this 1,400 years
before Christ and it is still local legal custom today. Abraham rejected all
offers of Ephron to bury his dead in Hittite graves, because that would not
have given him perpetual rights. Abraham stood on the fact that the
contract mentioned that he had obtained the cave and the trees which
surrounded it and that according to both the law of that time and today he
had rights to harvest from that ground.
In the Bible, Machpela is mentioned three times; this is the cave which has
guarded its secret for 4,000 years as the burial place of the Jewish
forefathers. Dr. Jevin was the first to bring its secret to light. He recounted
to NAI that Hebron has once again become a political challenge.
Before King David conquered Jerusalem, he reigned for seven years from
Hebron. Around the end of 1 BC, Herod had artisans, who were adorning the
second temple, construct a 60-meter long and 32-meter wide holy building,
which has been regarded as a holy place to the present day. Whoever sees
the construction over the Machpela cave site can imagine how the earlier
exterior walls of Jerusalem appeared. Hebron and Jerusalem belong
together.
The Byzantine Christians overlaid part of the Jewish construction and made a
basilica out of it. The grave sites of the forefathers became from this time
forward a holy place for Jews and Christians. An eyewitness from the sixth
century, Antonius the Martyr, said, "Jews and Christians entered the four
walls through separate entrances." After the Holy Land was conquered by
the Muslims, the Jewish/Christian prayer site was converted to a Muslim
one.
In the 12th century, the Crusaders made a church out of the site, and 150
years later the Mame-lukes made it a mosque once again and added two
minarets, wall decorations, and a marble facade. For 700 years, from 1267
to 1967, the Muslims forbade Jews and Christians access to the Machpela
cave. During this time, Jews could only approach the steps on the east side
and only to the seventh step, where they would stick their prayer papers in
wall crevices, behind which ran eight grave chambers-- a newly discovered
fact which they didn't know. So it was drafts of wind that carried their letters
of petition directly to Abraham's bosom.
Around the turn of the century, archaeologists Aly Bey, L.H. Vincent, J.H.
Mackay and Pierotti made more contemporaneous measurements of the site,
but only Dr. Jevin got into the actual (and unknown) burial chambers,
because the Waqf commissioned him to examine the already-known
chamber to determine whether or not foreigners had caused damage.
Thereby he had discovered the grave of his ancestors and proved that this
spot was primarily a holy site of the Jews-- which was kept secret due to
political considerations.
Cont.
/
In 1981, Dr. Seev Jevin, Director of the Israel Antiquities Authority, forced
himself through a narrow opening in the underground grave chamber of the
Machpela cave, where Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were believed to be buried.
He did this under strict observation by the Islamic Waqf. Behind bolted doors
in Yitzhak Hall, the secret entrance in the southeast wall was opened. Jews
had long suspected that the entrance to the real burial chamber must be
here, and because of that they placed their prayer slips of paper in wall
cracks on the exterior of the building at this same location.
The discovery that Dr. Jevin made in 1981 was concealed for political
reasons. However, now that Hebron has been handed back to the Muslims,
he has recounted to Nachrichten aus Israel (News from Israel) how he
forced himself through a narrow entrance, went down 16 steps and crawled
along a 20-meters long, 60-cm high and 100-cm wide tunnel in order to
finally reach a 3.5 x 3.5 meter room. The chamber, tunnel and steps were all
made of the same worked stones as the building exterior. They were a
homogenous group of building materials belonging to Herodian-era
construction, identical to those used in the Jerusalem temple.
Dr. Jevin determined that plaster covering the black walls in the grave
chamber dated from a later time and was designed to hide the original
Herodian stones. "This is a customary tactic of the Muslims by which they
attempt to cover up the original," said Dr. Jevin.
Behind broken-off plaster, he discovered Latin script, dating to Crusader
times, containing the names Jacob and Abraham. It was obvious Christians
regarded this location as a holy place. Could this room be the true burial
chamber?
Earlier Moshe Dayan, both Israel's Defense Minister and an amateur
archaeologist, had been curious about this site. Following the Six Day War,
he and 12-year-old Michal lowered themselves with a rope through the 30
cm, narrow opening into this chamber, which was 20 cm from the blocked
floor opening in Yitzhak Hall. They measured this chamber but found no
bones. Now, Dr. Jevin was standing in this same underground chamber. He
was prepared to break off his search when he stumbled on a floor plate.
Suspecting a hollow space underneath, he lifted the plate, found a hole and
slid through the narrow opening. Now Dr. Jevin found himself in a 3.5 x 4
meter room from which a passage to a second smaller oval room led. He
recalled the Talmud (Baba Bathra 58,770), which indicated two caves and
recalled that the name "Machpela" itself means "double cave."
So Dr. Seev Jevin became the first Jew to discover the true burial chamber
of his ancestors Abraham, Isaac and Jacob-- three floors below the north
grave chamber. In a nearby chamber in the cave, their wives Sarah,
Rebecca and Leah would be resting.
With uncanny silence surrounding him, Dr. Jevin looked around full of awe
and found clay shards dating from Israelite times, perhaps from Abraham's
era-- artifacts almost 4,000 years old. He found pieces of a lamp and also an
intact wine jug. Could this be the jug in which monks washed the bones of
the forefathers in 1119 AD, as old texts explain?
The archaeological find proves that Machpela is a Jewish burial place and
that hundreds of years prior to Mohammed it had been a holy place for the
Jews. Now Palestinians maintain that "Jews are foreigners in Hebron." Also,
when the Muslims succeeded in removing almost all Jewish traces from the
halls above, only the actual grave chamber itself remained Jewish. The still
walled-in passage in the tunnel pointed towards an underground labyrinth,
perhaps a Herodian necropolis.
Muslims falsified Jewish holy places, converting them into "lifelong" Muslim
holy places. From the Jewish temple mount in Jerusalem they made their
third holy place al-Aqsa and are now converting Solomon's stables into a
mosque. At the same time they are protesting Israel's Judaizing of
Jerusalem.
What is important is that Abraham obtained the burial place by paying the
full price, which signified under law that he and his progeny had in so doing
bought legal rights to this land. The Armana letter said this 1,400 years
before Christ and it is still local legal custom today. Abraham rejected all
offers of Ephron to bury his dead in Hittite graves, because that would not
have given him perpetual rights. Abraham stood on the fact that the
contract mentioned that he had obtained the cave and the trees which
surrounded it and that according to both the law of that time and today he
had rights to harvest from that ground.
In the Bible, Machpela is mentioned three times; this is the cave which has
guarded its secret for 4,000 years as the burial place of the Jewish
forefathers. Dr. Jevin was the first to bring its secret to light. He recounted
to NAI that Hebron has once again become a political challenge.
Before King David conquered Jerusalem, he reigned for seven years from
Hebron. Around the end of 1 BC, Herod had artisans, who were adorning the
second temple, construct a 60-meter long and 32-meter wide holy building,
which has been regarded as a holy place to the present day. Whoever sees
the construction over the Machpela cave site can imagine how the earlier
exterior walls of Jerusalem appeared. Hebron and Jerusalem belong
together.
The Byzantine Christians overlaid part of the Jewish construction and made a
basilica out of it. The grave sites of the forefathers became from this time
forward a holy place for Jews and Christians. An eyewitness from the sixth
century, Antonius the Martyr, said, "Jews and Christians entered the four
walls through separate entrances." After the Holy Land was conquered by
the Muslims, the Jewish/Christian prayer site was converted to a Muslim
one.
In the 12th century, the Crusaders made a church out of the site, and 150
years later the Mame-lukes made it a mosque once again and added two
minarets, wall decorations, and a marble facade. For 700 years, from 1267
to 1967, the Muslims forbade Jews and Christians access to the Machpela
cave. During this time, Jews could only approach the steps on the east side
and only to the seventh step, where they would stick their prayer papers in
wall crevices, behind which ran eight grave chambers-- a newly discovered
fact which they didn't know. So it was drafts of wind that carried their letters
of petition directly to Abraham's bosom.
Around the turn of the century, archaeologists Aly Bey, L.H. Vincent, J.H.
Mackay and Pierotti made more contemporaneous measurements of the site,
but only Dr. Jevin got into the actual (and unknown) burial chambers,
because the Waqf commissioned him to examine the already-known
chamber to determine whether or not foreigners had caused damage.
Thereby he had discovered the grave of his ancestors and proved that this
spot was primarily a holy site of the Jews-- which was kept secret due to
political considerations.
Cont.
/
