The Alchemy Key.pdf - Veritas File System

sword that I will send among them … Jerusalem, and the cities of Judah,
… Pharaoh king of Egypt, and his servants, and his princes, and all his
people … all the kings of the land of Uz, … the Philistines, … Edom …
Moab … Ammon, … Tyre … Zidon, and the kings of the isles which are
beyond the sea … Arabia, … Zimri … Elam … Medes …the north, far and
near and the king of Sheshach shall drink after them. 56
We begin to suspect that the exact physical location, relevant time
and culture of the Temple are very uncertain because they are veiled
stories of Israelite political ambition for the Egypt’s Delta and the land of
Canaan. The synthesized archetypal history has drawn on many legends
over more than a millennium to create the famous Temple in the
Israelite’s city of last resort, Jerusalem, which became their icon of
nationhood.
The Babylonian conquest mercilessly destroyed the records of the
Judeans. Religious and political leaders were killed en-masse. The
remaining population, primarily women and children, marched to
Babylonia in slavery. This resulted in the loss of both oral and written
tradition. Only fragmented legends remained. The returning Jews at the
time of Cyrus assembled what they could into consistent stories of their
history. Rather than single events, these became medleys. Individuals
became archetypes. God’s arbitrary treatment of his chosen people led to
many explanations and conspiracy theories. Stories became didactic
rather than fact. They developed a revolutionary flavor. The only thing
constant about Jewish history was its frequency of redefinition.
Many Pharaohs troubled the Israelites during the one thousand
five hundred years from Sesôstris I to the writing of Chronicles and
Jeremiah in 450BCE. The historians of Chronicles and Jeremiah may
well have been unaware of the relevant Egyptian Pharaoh at the time of
the Exodus.
We only need to contrast the despairing paucity of their
information resources with our own acute lack of knowledge of events
over the last one thousand five hundred years. We are hazy about much
of the Dark Ages. We know almost nothing of the early Papacy. We
have not even solved the controversy of whether the greatest writer in the
canon of English Literature, William Shakespeare, was a real person or a
team of lawyers, poets and publishers.
A recently discovered Phoenician text on limestone at Tel Mikne,
the ancient Philistine city of Ekron, suggests how the histories of the First
Temple were developed. 57 The text commemorates that Achish
32