The Sovev: Where ministering priest would sprinkle blood of offering onto the coals
Regards From Joshua, by Moshe Feiglin (Israel National News)
Excerpts;
An authentic, 3,300-year-old regards from Joshua.
For Israel’s scientific community, the Bible is not a historical source. Most Israeli professors prefer to think of it as a collection of national fables. According to Israel’s academia, the exodus from Egypt never happened and the Jews are nothing more than descendants of the Canaanites. Just like other nations, they also created national legends. That is also what Professor Adam Zertal thought. At least until he made a momentous discovery [the altar that Joshua built, by Divine command, on the day the Jewish People entered the Land of Israel] on Mount Eval in the Shomron.
The Dig
Countless pottery shards peek out from between the rocks. They are from the Settlement Era. In other words, they are approximately 3,300 years old. Somebody intentionally buried something very big here. What is it?Slowly but surely, the rocks are removed. Seals from the time of Ramses II — the famous Pharaoh from the exodus from Egypt — are revealed. Golden earrings from the same era are unearthed. How did these 3,300-year-old Egyptian items fly across the Nile and land specifically here, at the peak of Mount Eval? Zertal and his team continue to dig. They carefully remove the floor of the structure and another surprise awaits them. A huge store of ashes and ancient animal bones fills the entire inner cavity. The ancient bones are sent for zoological analysis and the results are unequivocal: They are not the bones of dogs, donkeys, chickens or other animals that may just have happened by. All the bones belong to year-old sheep and rams. In other words, these are the bones of animals that the Torah instructs the Jewish People to use as sacrifices.
The picture quickly clears. From every possible angle — archaeological, topographical, zoological and architectural — the altar fits the descriptions of the altar in Deuteronomy and the book of Joshua. Nobody from the scientific community seriously attempts to differ with the clear-cut findings. There is no doubt; this is the place described in Deuteronomy and Joshua. This is the site of the famous blessing and curse ceremony, in which a group of Hebrew wanderers became a nation.
“And when you cross over the Jordan, you shall erect these stones that I command you today, on Mount Eval. Listen and hear, Israel, today you have become a nation of G-d, your G-d.” (Deuteronomy 27) Sadly, Joshua’s altar is abandoned.
“A conspiracy of silence shrouds this place.”