Jerusalem is one of the oldest cities in the world, having been continuously inhabited
for close to 6 millennia.
The old walled city that occupies an area of less than one square kilometer is sacred
in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is the most sacred place in Christianity, where Jesus
was both crucified and entombed before rising from the dead.
The site where Solomon's and Herod's temples were located is actively debated.
The only thing the researchers seem to agree upon is that it was somewhere on the temple
mount.
Locating the temple precisely is a priority for Jews, because the rock of foundation within
the temple's holy of holies is the most sacred place in Judaism.
For centuries it has been assumed that this rock is the same stone whereupon Abraham nearly
sacrificed Isaac, and from which Muhammad ascended into heaven: namely the bedrock upon
which the Dome of the Rock stands today.
You can see in this cut away how the Sufi shrine was built to worship this bedrock.
My favorite theory comes from Dr. Asher Kaufman in 1991.
He claims that the Jewish foundation stone is located just north of the Dome of the Rock
in a small section of exposed rock currently under the diminutive Dome of the Tablets.
The echo of tablets in the dome's name is actually circumstantial evidence suggesting
correlation with the tablets of the ten commandments.
These most famous tablets were stored in the Ark of the Covenant, which of course was located
within the Holy of Holies in the Solomon's Temple.
However the main reason I subscribe to this theory is that it fits the larger geometry
of the city, as proposed by John Michell and Christine Rhone in their book Twelve-Tribe
Nations.
Michell and Rhone have drawn a 5 by 12 rectangle over Jerusalem, matching the proportion of
rectangles we've studied all over the world.
The Jerusalem rectangle is anchored in the ancient Jaffa gate and opposite city wall
corner point here.
Its right edge is close to the eastern edge of the temple mount but is not perfectly parallel.
Richard Heath showed in Sacred Number that when we draw equal X's within the rectangle,
the crossing points pass directly over the rock of Calvary inside the Church of the Holy
Sepulchre where Jesus was crucified, and over the Jewish Rock of Foundation under the Dome
of the Tablets.
In other words these X's precisely mark the holiest spots in Christianity and Judaism.
Measuring the rectangle uncovers something more.
The length is equal to 1728 cubits of 1.728 feet each.
That's a double reference to the number we learned in Washington DC symbolizes a cube.
In Judaism, the Holy of Holies within Solomon's temple had very specific proportions as described
in the Torah: it was a cube measuring 20 cubits on each side.
The holiest spot in Islam is Mecca.
More specifically it is the Kaaba within Mecca which all Muslims are supposed to visit at
least once in their lives.
Kaaba means cube; indeed the object of their veneration is a giant black cube.
The word Kabbalah which means knowledge in Jewish mysticism also references a cube.
In Greek mythology, Apollo and Artemis were born on the small island of Delos.
As the story goes, the citizens of Delos consulted the oracle at Delphi to learn how to defeat
a plague sent by Apollo.
The oracle responded that they must double the volume of their cubic altar to Apollo.
This rather difficult problem involving the cube root of 2 was known as the Delian problem
in mathematics, which was later solved by the Pythagorean philosopher Archytas.
Why are so many of the most important places symbolized by cubes?
Recall that the cubit that measures Jerusalem is 1.728 English feet exactly.
1.728 is equal to (6/5)^3 . I suggest you do the math to verify this is so.
Come to think of it, the word cubit clearly comes from the word cube.
So Jerusalem is symbolized by the volume of a cube whose edge length relates macrocosm
to microcosm.
If you dimension the Jerusalem rectangle in this way, with two depictions of 6 and 5,
you'll see the X's themselves as representations of the great enigma of alchemy, namely the
relationship between 6 and 5.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the cubit that measures 1.728 English feet is actually the canonical
Egyptian cubit.
Author Ahmed Osman puts forward the controversial but never refuted theory that Moses was actually
the Egyptian pharaoh Ahkenaten.
Both were powerful monotheists who were educated in Egypt.
It's certainly a theory worth contemplating.
Many of the most significant events in Jesus' life are lined up along an axis.
First of all, Jesus spent time teaching his disciples on the Mount of Olives.
Jesus rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday through this oldest of gates in Jerusalem's city walls,
called the Golden Gate in Christian tradition.
I can't help but think of the bridge in San Francisco.
Here's Giotto's depiction of Mary's parents Joachim and Anne meeting at the Golden Gate.
In Jewish tradition, this same gate is the one through which the messiah will enter Jerusalem
at some unknown point in the future.
However, Suleiman the Magnificent sealed off the Golden Gate in 1541 literally to prevent
the Messiah's entrance, and the golden gate and temple mount remain under Islamic control
today.
As you know, this tension between Muslims and Jews has persited up to the present day.
Jesus upset the money changers' tables in Herod's temple here, if we accept the Kaufman
theory as to the location of the second temple.
The garden of Gethsemane is the place where Jesus prayed the night before his crucifixion.
This is the place where he is said to have sweat drops of blood.
As tradition has it, the crucifixion happened at Calvary and his body was placed in the
Holy Sepulchre just a few dozen feet away.
Isn't it amazing that most of the important events in Christianity took place along an
axis connecting the center of the X's in this diagram?