Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
This is starting to sound like Ernest L. Martin's book.
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
The fixation with 'purification' seems to be a later addition to Judaism...probably after the Babylonian exile. Thus the idea that the "first temple" (Solomon's) had to have elaborate ritual baths is an anachronism. In fact, there probably never was a Solomon's temple...at least in the biblical sense....and we have exactly zero artifacts from that time period relating to it. Cyrus did permit Zerubabbel to build a temple after the exile and the priests seem to have latched on to that like bulldogs going after a steak.
In any case, the Gihon spring seems to have been the only relatively steady water supply for the area so it makes sense that the earliest settlements would have been built near it.
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.