Who was Crucified?

Interestingly, Mark, the earliest of the 4 gospels to be written down in Greek, uses the word SOMA to refer to the "living body" of "Iesous" (R. Yehoshua bar Yosef the Galilean) when he is deposed from the cross after having been affixed to the crossbeam, according to Mark for approx 6 hours (i.e. from the "third hour to the ninth hour")--but Mark tends to use Liturgical numbers (3's) ("it was the third hour and they crucified him...it was the 6th hour and it became dark....it was the 9th hour and Iesous cried out with a loud voice..." etc. which was influenced by Liturgy in the churches when the Passion Narratives were probably recited weekly or yearly at Eastern services etc.)

The normal word for "corpse" would have been PTOMA, not SOMA. And it does take about 70 hours on average to kill a person on a Roman cross, depending on how much abuse the victim has to endure being literally nailed to a post helplessly dangling (i.e. castration, or disembowelment which was a very common additional torture for the victim).

Again in Mark's early gospel we hear the story of Pontius Pilatus the prefect of Judaea complaining, "and Pilate was surprised that Iesous was dead so soon...and sent a centurion out to investigate..." so there is an outside chance that he was taken down alive and still breathing from the cross.

Interestingly, the other gospels leave that part about Pilate "marvelling that he could possibly be dead so soon" completely out (i.e. John, Matthew and Luke), and John's gospel seems to be answering the rumour that he was not dead when he said "out poured blood and water...and this is the disciple who saw these things for himself..." in other words, the tradition that he was actually dead was purportedly witnessed by someone who added his own testimony to the tale.

But a still breathing "Jeeezzzuzz" would certainly account for all those post resurrection narratives (none of which match each other, but that's another story) and at the very least would help to explain the empty tomb story which may have given rise to the myth of the Resurrection.

The star of Bethlehem

Arise, [Israel] and shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. For behold, darkness will cover the earth and deep darkness the people, but the Lord will rise upon you, and his glory will appear upon you. And nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising.
Isaiah 60:1-3

The three kings

A multitude of camels will cover you [Israel], the young camels of Midian and Ephah; all those from Sheba will come; they will bring gold and frankincense, and will bear good news of the praises of the Lord.
Isaiah 60:6
(Isaiah is speaking of the rising star of Israel, the Jewish people, not of the birth of Jesus. NT writers constructed their stories of the manger from the book of Isaiah)


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The extensive massacre of Israelite babies by the Egyptians, and Jewish babies by King Herod, should have garnered at least a footnote in secular historical documents, or other forms of recorded history, such as Egyptian hieroglyphics and cuneiform (clay) tablets. Of the thousands of inscriptions carved into Egyptian temples, buildings, and monuments in Lower and Upper Egypt, none mention the slaughter of Hebrew infant boys.
According to John 18:31, the Jews had no authority to kill their own people without Rome�s approval. Had such a slaughter taken place the millions of people in Judea could not have kept that kind of news from spreading beyond its borders and people. The cites of the Fertile Crescent were linked with roads and ports which saw extensive trade between the northern cities of Mesopotamia, Greece, and Italy, and to the south, Egypt and other cities along the African coast. Bethlehem and its regions received its share of travelers in need of food, water and shelter. It�s not possible that the steady stream of merchants from much of the civilized world escaped hearing about babies slaughtered by a king named Herod, and bringing that outrage back to their own countries. Whether or not the Egyptians killed Hebrew babies as stated in OT accounts few religious scholars can agree, but like all Christian stories, which originated from OT writings, Herod�s story is only a rehash of the killings done by Pharaoh of Hebrew babies.

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Groupies:

Of all the playing fast and loose with the facts that we find in the 4 "canonical" Greek Gospels (they are after all self-proclaimed midrashic-propaganda tracts e.g. "these things were written so that ye might believe the Iesous is the Christos, and by believing ye might have life in his name..." which is written towards the end of John's gospel --and which neatly spells it all out quite clearly), the political execution by Crucifixion of R. Yehoshua bar Yosef the Galilean by the Romans (English speaking people tend to call the man "Jeeezuzz" for some reason) allegedly for for armed sedition against Rome (Luke 22:18-30) and more specifically breach of Lex Maiestatis (the No King but Caesar law) and for other acts of open revolt-sedition against the Majesty of Rome (temple tantrums during major feasts for example) is one of the "criteria of embarasment" for the earliest Nazorean Messianic (church) community which fully expected "Iesous" to overthrow the Romans on the hill--and yes he used with real weapons and even told his disciples to sell their shirts to buy them, despite the cold front moving in (or do you think the ear of the slave of the Judeaen high priest was cut off with a butter knife left over from the last supper?)...

If those early 2nd century (or very late 1st century AD) Gospel writing Christians were going to make anything up about "Jeezzuzz" , they wouldn't have had their "lord and saviour of the world" (which was by the way, also a formal title for the reigning Roman Emperor, the Divine Tiberius, Son of the Gods) strung up naked on a gibbet in defeat, but would have opted for something a little more glorious (like all those Synoptic Transfiguration Midrash pericopes based on Mark chapter 9) like maybe a resurrection or an ascension into heaven like Elijah...hey, wait a minute !

But the titilus over the cross which all four gospels more or less agree upon (and they don't agree on much if you read them REALLY closely) viz. "Iesous the Nazir, King of the Judaeans" shows that the Roman Lex Maiestatis is being invoked as the specific crime which carried the death penatly and specifically (as a purely political offiense) was punishable by the horrors of crucifixion---may more or less be taken as historical---broadly speaking of course.

All those oblique rabinnic references to the "suffering servant of YHWH" in Psalms 22 and Isaiah 53 etc. in the crucifixion narratives are clearly much later midrashic expansions of Old Testament prophetic texts as a "spiritual" method with which the first Jewish Christians (heavilly steeped in the hebrew Scriptures and Apocrypha) used in order to to "cope" from the shock of that horrific event, which came as an unprepared surprise to the original band of followers who "all left him and fled" at the arrest, when the jig was up, so to speak.

But the "crucifxion" event itself is too horrific to have been made up by the surviving followers "de novo" (i.e. from scratch) and must be regarded in the main as historical enough, as such: it's just the specific "Greco-Zionist" pseudo Midrashic interpretation/ atonement for sin meaning tacked on to the "event" (i.e. in the gospels)) where all the Christian fantasies (i.e. back peddling) come from...the idea of a bodilly resurrection of a "righteous sufferer" included.....although one can leave the possibility that "Jeeezuzz" somehow physically/historically survived the crucifixion after having been suspended on the crossbeam for a mere 6 hours (when it takes normally 70 hours to kill a man on a cross on average, some much, much longer if you can imagine...)

quotes;

The very thing which is now called the Christian religion existed among the ancients also, nor was it wanting from the inception of the human race until the coming of Christ in the flesh, at which point the true religion which was already in existance began to be called Christian.
St. Augustine, Retractions

There are many things that are true which it is not useful for the vulgar crowd to know; and certain things which although they are false it is expedient for the people to believe otherwise.
St. Augustine, City of God

There is not one iota of history as we know it in the entire bible!
Alvin Boyd Kuhn, Our Birth Is but a Sleep

The evidence suggests that the New Testament is not a history of actual events, but a history of the evolution of Christian mythology.
Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, The Jesus Mysteries

Jesus of Nazareth and the Gospel story cannot be found in Christian writings earlier than the Gospels, the first of which [Mark] was composed early in the late first century...There is no non-Christian record of Jesus before the second century.
Earl Doherty, The Jesus Puzzle

My point, once again, is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally.
John Dominic Crossan, Who Is Jesus

:w:

Jesus of Nazareth
Jesus grew up in Nazareth (a town in Galilee) and was called a Nazarene. Nazareth has several definitions some are: offshoot, sprout, covenant, and shinning.

The meaning behind the word �Nazareth� is telling of what Jesus represents; he represents an offshoot of humanity, a �Chosen People� a Jewish nation, Israel. In Matthew 2:15, we are told that God called �his son out of Egypt,� referring to Jesus (after the death of Herod), in effect equating him to God�s chosen people, the Israelites, whom he called out of Egypt by way of Moses many centuries earlier. Matthew quoted Hosea 11:11 to augment his verse:

�When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.� And, Exodus 4:22-23 �Then you shall say to Pharaoh, �Thus says the lord; �Israel is my son, my firstborn. �So I say to you, let my son go that he may serve me.�

Why would Matthew use those verses to describe Jesus when Hosea is obviously talking about a people, the Israelites, and not Jesus? Perhaps because he is talking about Israel, as a person, a messiah, God�s first born son, and calling him Jesus, who represents a light to the world. Isaiah stated:

�Listen, O coastlands, to me, and take heed, you peoples from afar! The Lord has called me [Israel] from the womb; from the matrix of my mother he has made mention of my name. And he had made my mouth like a sharp sword; in the shadow of his hand, he has hidden me, and made me a polished shaft; in his quiver, he has hidden me. And he said to me, �You are my servant, O Israel, in whom I will be glorified.� Then I said, �I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and in vain; yet surely my just reward I with the Lord, and my work with my God. � �And now the Lord says, who formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him, so that Israel is gathered to him (For I shall be glorious in the eyes of the Lord, and my God shall be my strength), indeed he says, �It is too small a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved ones of Israel; I will also give you as a light to the Gentiles, that you should be my salvation to the ends of the earth.�� (Isaiah 49:1-6)

Israel is the �light and salvation� to the world.

Jesus of Nazareth

there is no evidence that the town of Nazareth existed in the time of Jesus. It
does not appear on any map until ca. 70 ad.

it is more likely that the biblical references are either intentional misrepresentations or bastardizations by the later roman church of the title
The Nazorite, denoting a member of the Nazorite sect as was Samson. as i recall the Nazorites were an apendant group of the Essenes.

You are correct stalkingwolf

Nazareth is a New Testament phenomenon brought to life by the authors of the books Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Acts. Nazareth lacks historical identity beyond Christian literature. However, villages and places in Nazareth�s vicinity do have extensive Old Testament history, and perhaps that is why the writers of the NT placed Jesus there (Nazareth may have been a real place of burial, as well as being an OT sore spot from where much of Judaism dirty laundry remained hidden in the past. Some of the epic stories that took place in what is now known as Nazareth include �Naboth�s vineyard.� Naboth means sprouting, prominence, and prophesies, and is tantamount to the meaning behind the word Nazareth, which shares the same definition. Naboth was put to death by Jezebel (Heb. unexalted), the jealous wife of the Samarian king Ahab, for refusing to sell his vineyard to her husband king Ahab (850 BC) (1 Kings 21:1-19). (Naboth was a righteous man, representing the Israelites, who are �killed� by the pagan beliefs and corrupt governments represented by the harlot Jezebel)
The house of Elisha the prophet, is another OT phenomena placed in the proximity of modern day Nazareth. Elisha means �God is savior,� and he was an OT messiah who performed miracles like healing the sick and raising the dead, about 900 years before the time of Jesus.

The facts and figures of Jesus' physical life are not important at all. His name, his residence, all the things he ate, wore, etc. are not important to us.

The teachings of Jesus weren't for the physical body. Why then do men seek after his clothes, or his town of residence? Why are you folks discussing such trivial and silly matters?

The mystery of Jesus are not about the body. They are about the understanding of the spirit, how it works, how to strengthen it, and the forces that oppose it. It is the part of us that must escape the body, and the forces that seek to trap it. That is what Jesus was about. He doesn't need exactly rendered names (R. Yeoshua bar Yoseph the Galilean) or silly titles. Those things are the pride of men, and do not have anything to do with the heavens Jesus preached about.

I well know the name Jesus is a mispelt, mispronounced jumble of letters. It's not important. Those who want to argue about that are silly.

(It's fuchsia, no it's purple. It's vanilla, no, its vanillin. Potato. No, Potatoe. wait, that was potato!)

Arguments of the physical attributes of Jesus are specious. They have nothing to do with the truth of the matter. Jesus was a teacher of the light, which dwells independently of the flesh. Religions teach about the body. They are not related.

Those who follow Jesus and those who follow religion are often at odds with one another. That's because the goals of the religions are not for the liberty of the individual, but for the submission of the group to artificial authorities. These are the slaughterhouses of souls for the eaters of souls. The wise followers of Jesus learned this deception, and fled from it, and for a time it was successful. But after a while, the Romans took it and corrupted it, and made it the national religion for all the vulgar, and darkness has reigned ever since.

There are no true churches in the world today. Even the Mormons, with the claim to authority, are not genuine. Only a very few INDIVIDUALS scattered here and there are the real thing. No organization on the earth today is governed by a heaven-appointed person.

No one but an honest person will tell you these things. The rest are servants of the system, and will only speak its praises.

Arkaleus

Out of the frying pan and into the fire. What the early Jewish Christians failed to foresee was the horrible crown of hatred (thorns) that they inadvertently placed upon the head of their own people (those that survived the Roman bloodbath), and that of their children and their children�s children, for countless generations, even to this day, for a hoax much of the world believed. Throughout history, Christians have persecuted Jews for crucifying Jesus, despite the fact that the crucifixion of Jesus was only a symbol of what was the �crucifying� of a people, God�s people, the Jews of Judea.
The early Christian scribes did much the same as did their predecessors the Hebrew scribes, who wrote the books of the Old Testament (OT). They used metaphors for stories when describing the struggles or battles between good and evil. It began with Adam and Eve in the Garden with the snake (the snake being a metaphor for the cobra, which represented Lower Egypt, with its worldly marvels) seducing a naive Adam and Eve (Hebrews).

The name Judas is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew name Judah, and Iscariot is a condemned city in Moab (Jeremiah 48:24). Therefore, Judas Iscariot means the condemned city of Judah or as it was referred to in Jesus time, Judea.
In the book of Numbers the prophet Balaam had this to say about Jacob�s descendents and what they would do to Moab: �I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near: a star shall come forth out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel; it shall crush the forehead of Moab, and break down all the sons of Sheth (Numbers 24:17 RSV).

Moses parts the Red Sea by stretching out his hand over it, and it became dry ground, and the children of Israel passed through it (Exodus 14:21,22).

Elijah parts the Jordan and he and Elisha crossed it on dry ground (2 Kings 2:8).

Elisha struck the waters of the Jordan and he crossed over it alone (2 Kings 2:14).

Joshua (also known as Hoshea) brought the waters of the Jordan River to a stop by placing the Ark of the Covenant into the river, �and all the people of Israel crossed over on dry ground� (Joshua 3:17).

John the Baptist stood in the Jordan River at Bethabara, which means place of crossings, and baptized the people of Jerusalem and all Judea (Matthew 3:5,6). John the Baptist is symbolic of the Ark of the Covenant, he stood in the middle of the river while the children of Israel (all of Judea) crossed over the Jordan and were baptized. Which was also symbolic of the Israelites crossing over the Red Sea, and moving away from paganism (Egypt), as a first step to gaining entry into the Promised Land of Canaan.

Jesus is baptizes in the Jordan by John, and when Jesus came up out of the water the heavens opened to him [parted, like the Jordan and the Red Sea] and the spirit of God came over Jesus (Matthew 3:14-16). After Jesus was baptized, (crossed the Jordan) he was led by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted for forty days and forty nights; the Israelites after crossing the Red Sea, were tempted in the wilderness for forty years until the whole generation that came out of Egypt completely died off, leaving their children (resurrected Israelites) to cross the Jordan River (baptized), before they could enter into the Promised Land (paradise).

Jesus forsaken
Or was it
King David?

NT Jesus� �And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, �My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?� (Mark 15:34)

OT David� �A cry from King David, �My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, and from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry in the daytime, but you do not hear; and in the night season, and am not silent. But you are holy, enthroned in the praises of Israel. Our fathers trusted in you; they trusted, and you delivered them. (Psalm 22:1-4)

Bread from God
�Then the Lord said to Moses, �Behold, I will rain bread [manna] from heaven for you. And the people shall go out and gather a certain quota every day, that I may test them, whether they will walk in my law or not.� (Exodus 16:1-4)
The Israelites are not happy with this strange new bread from heaven (rules and regulations, imposed on them by Moses), and they rebelled:
�And the people spoke against God and against Moses: �Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and our soul loathes this worthless bread [manna].� (Numbers 21:5)

Jesus brings Lazarus back from the dead
Lazarus (whom God helps) of Bethany (house of figs) is sick and his two sisters Martha and Mary call on Jesus, their friend, to make him well again. However, Jesus hesitates and remains in the place were he resided for two more days. By the time Jesus arrives, Lazarus has been dead four days. Martha confronts Jesus telling him that had he been there Lazarus, her brother, would still be alive. Jesus told Martha that Lazarus would rise and live again; Martha was skeptical and departed. Then Jesus went to the tomb where he met up with her sister Mary. When Mary saw Jesus she fell down at his feet and like her sister told Jesus that, had he been there sooner her brother Lazarus would still be alive. Jesus seeing her and the others weeping also wept for Lazarus, then he told them to take away the stone that sealed the entrance to the tomb. At which point Martha cautioned Jesus that since four days had passed that there may be a stench from the corpse. Jesus lifted his eyes and thanked the Lord for the miracle that was about to take place and then shouted, �Lazarus come forth!� Lazarus came out of the grave still wrapped in burial garments, and Jesus told the people to remove them from Lazarus and set him free (John 11:6-44)
Lazarus is the kingdom of Solomon that has become deathly ill due to an epidemic of pagan deities; Mary and Martha are the divided kingdoms that emerge from the wreckage of that failed kingdom; both blaming the God of their fathers for not doing more to keep the kingdom alive. After the demise of the divided kingdom, prophets emerge and foretell that the kingdom will once again come back to life. One such prophet was Ezekiel, whose job it was to bring back to life the dead kingdom, and God said to him:
�Prophesy to these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! �Thus says the Lord God to these bones: �Surely I will cause breath to enter into you, and you shall live. ��I will put sinews on you and bring flesh upon you, cover you with skin and put breath in you; and you shall live. Then you shall know that I am the Lord.� (Ezekiel 37:4-6)
After the Jews returned to Jerusalem from Babylonian captivity in 537 BC, they began rebuilding their nation and the temple, placing skin back on the dry bones.

MULTIPLYING OF THE LOAVES

Elisha multiplies loaves of bread
OT��Then a man came from Baal Shalisha [Heb. Lord of the tree], and brought the man of God [Elisha] bread of the first fruits, twenty loaves of barley bread, and newly ripened grain in his knapsack. And he said, �Give it to the people that they may eat.� But his servant said, �What? Shall I set this before one hundred men?� He said again, �Give it to the people that they may eat: for thus says the Lord: �They shall eat and have some left over.� So, he set it before them; and they ate and had some left over, according to the word of the Lord. (2 Kings 4:42-44)

Jesus multiplies loaves of bread
NT��Jesus went over the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias (Lat. Good vision). Then a great multitude followed him, because they saw his signs, which he performed on those who were diseased. And Jesus went up on the mountain, and there he sat with his disciples now, the Passover, a feast of the Jews, was near. Then Jesus lifted up his eyes, and seeing a great multitude coming toward him, he said to Philip, �Where shall we buy bread, that these may eat?� Philip answered him, �Two hundred denarii worth of bread is not sufficient for them, that every one of them may have a little.� One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter�s brother, said to him, �There is a lad here who has five barley loaves and two small fish, but what are they among so many?� Then Jesus said, �Make the people sit down.� Now there was much grass in the place. So the men sat down, in number about five thousand. And Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to the disciples, and the disciples to those sitting down; and likewise of the fish, as much as they wanted. So, when they were filled, he said to his disciples, �Gather up the fragments that remain, so that nothing is lost.� Therefore they gathered up twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves.� (John 6:1-13)

The five loaves represent the five books of Moses (Torah), the twelve baskets and twelve disciples are the twelve tribes of Israel that carry within them the message of the Jewish scrolls (scripture can be multiplied indefinitely). The multitudes are the people of Canaan (Jews and Gentiles); the disciples don�t believe that the five books are enough to feed the appetite of the Jews and the pagan world. They, as the twelve tribes of Israel, whom they represent, have their doubts (lack of faith). New Testament writers consolidate the God of Abraham, the prophets, the Jewish patriarchs, and the writings into one word, and call him Jesus. Jesus (Jewish heritage) assures them that the five loaves (five books) and two fish are bountiful and will serve however many wish to feed from that reservoir of Jewish wisdom. The two fish represent the other two major groupings of Jewish books, which are �The Prophets (Nevi�im) and the Writings (Kethuvim). The two fish also represents the two divisions of mankind, the Jewish world and the Gentile world.
The writers of the book of John got their story idea from Elisha�s miracle of the loaves found in the book of 2 Kings. Likewise, the writers of 2 Kings were inspired by the book of Exodus, where God showered manna (bread) from heaven down on the Israelites (a metaphor for the commandments Moses brought down from the mountain).

Originally posted by Amadeus
Interestingly, Mark, the earliest of the 4 gospels to be written down in Greek, uses the word SOMA to refer to the "living body" of "Iesous" (R. Yehoshua bar Yosef the Galilean) when he is deposed from the cross after having been affixed to the crossbeam, according to Mark for approx 6 hours (i.e. from the "third hour to the ninth hour")--but Mark tends to use Liturgical numbers (3's) ("it was the third hour and they crucified him...it was the 6th hour and it became dark....it was the 9th hour and Iesous cried out with a loud voice..." etc. which was influenced by Liturgy in the churches when the Passion Narratives were probably recited weekly or yearly at Eastern services etc.)

The normal word for "corpse" would have been PTOMA, not SOMA. And it does take about 70 hours on average to kill a person on a Roman cross, depending on how much abuse the victim has to endure being literally nailed to a post helplessly dangling (i.e. castration, or disembowelment which was a very common additional torture for the victim).

Again in Mark's early gospel we hear the story of Pontius Pilatus the prefect of Judaea complaining, "and Pilate was surprised that Iesous was dead so soon...and sent a centurion out to investigate..." so there is an outside chance that he was taken down alive and still breathing from the cross.

Interestingly, the other gospels leave that part about Pilate "marvelling that he could possibly be dead so soon" completely out (i.e. John, Matthew and Luke), and John's gospel seems to be answering the rumour that he was not dead when he said "out poured blood and water...and this is the disciple who saw these things for himself..." in other words, the tradition that he was actually dead was purportedly witnessed by someone who added his own testimony to the tale.

But a still breathing "Jeeezzzuzz" would certainly account for all those post resurrection narratives (none of which match each other, but that's another story) and at the very least would help to explain the empty tomb story which may have given rise to the myth of the Resurrection.

I am a Greek from Thessaloniki and I'd just like to point out that use of the word SOMA does not necessarily indicate a body is alive. SOMA can be used in a variety of contexts.

Divided his garments and cast lots for his clothing
NT Jesus� �Then they crucified him, and divided his garments, casting lots, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet: �They divided my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.� (Matthew 27:35)

OT David� �My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue clings to my jaw; you have brought me to the dust of death. For dogs have surrounded me; the congregation of the wicked has enclosed me. They pierced my hands and my feet; I can count all my bones. They look and stare at me. They divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.� (Psalm 22:15-18)

A divided kingdom
NT��And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up his spirit. Then, behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth quaked, and the rocks were split�� (Matthew 27:50, 51)

Zechariah writes in his book
OT��Then the Lord will go forth and fight against those nations, as he fights in the day of battle. And in that day, his feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, which faces Jerusalem on the east. And the Mount of Olives shall be split in two, from east to west, Making a very large valley; half of the mountain shall move toward the north and half of it toward the south.� (Zechariah 14:3, 4)

The Mount of Olives represents the kingdom of Solomon, which splits into two separate nations, Israel to the north and Judah to the south, at the moment of Solomon�s death. Mount of Olives or �Olivet� means to be anointed by the oil of the Holy Spirit, to be exalted. The breakup of the kingdom represents the breaking of the covenant between Israel and God.

Early in Jewish history a fragmented nomadic people united and settled into the land of Canaan and made it their land. Eventually they emerged as a nation under the successive leadership of three kings (Saul [myrrh] the first anointed king (1 Samuel 10:1), David [frankincense] offered his prayers as incense to the Lord (Psalm 141:2), and Solomon [gold], his kingdom was awash in gold (2 Chronicles 9:13). On the death of the third monarch (Solomon), the kingdom divided. Of the twelve tribes, ten united under the banner of Israel, in the north, and two tribes went south to become the nation of Judah. As I stated in a previous page, Matthew alludes to the break-up of Solomon�s kingdom when he speaks of Jesus� death on the cross:

�At the moment Jesus died on the cross �the curtain in the temple tore in half [divided] and the rocks split,� Matt. 27:51.

Metaphorically, rocks represent the twelve Jewish tribes, and the tearing of the curtain the dividing of the Jewish kingdom. The ten tribes that united under the name of Israel, the southern kingdom, are Reuben, Simeon, Zebulun, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher Issachar, Manasseh, and Ephraim. Judah and Benjamin converged to become the northern kingdom of Judah, and are the two tribes from where the genealogical continuum of the Jewish people reside.