Israeli Museum, May 20, 2019

On Monday, we went to the Israeli Museum with the Earnshaw's, Liffeth's, and Dr. Skinner.  He explained a lot of things as we saw the Dead Sea Scrolls, the city plan of Jerusalem, and museum pieces. 

This is the Shrine of the Book, which houses many of the Dead Sea Scrolls and fragments.  It also has replicas of the Aleppo Codex, which is the earliest known Hebrew manuscript comprising the full text of the Bible, and was used by the King James translators. In 1947 when the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in Qumran, they became the oldest known text.

Below is the top of the building called the Shrine of the Book.  It is fashioned to look like the lid of the containers that the Dead Sea Scrolls were in.

The Aleppo Codex:

 The Codex was written in Tiberias in the early tenth century, looted and transferred to Egypt at the end of the eleventh century, and deposited with the Jewish community of Aleppo in Syria at the end of the fourteenth century. The rabbis and elders of the community guarded it zealously for some six hundred years. During the riots against Jews and Jewish property in Aleppo in December 1947, the community's ancient synagogue was put to the torch and the Codex, which was kept in the synagogue's "Cave of Elijah," suffered damage, so that no more than 295 of the original 487 leaves survived.

In January 1958 the Aleppo Codex was brought to Jerusalem, where it remains until today.

The is a model (miniature) of what Jerusalem looked like during Christ's time and this is the Temple to scale in relation to surrounding buildings. Dr. Skinner pointed out where the pinnacle was where Satan tempted Christ to jump from. 

This is a picture in the museum of the chair is called "Moses Se'at" (see Matthew 23:2) It was the chair of honor in the synagogue where the authoritative teacher of the law sat. It looks extremely uncomfortable--needs a cushion at least!  Above the seat you can see a stone beam.  Dr. Skinner said this stone beam had to be chiseled to texture or shape it and the chips that came off from the chiseling were called motes.

Roses from the Garden of All Nations, near the Knesset building.