♪ (music) ♪
(Sergio)
And today, we're visiting the Timna Park.
It is one of the largest attractions in the south.
(Sergio) What a beautiful valley!
Have you ever seen anything like this before?
It is full of amazing history
from the time of King Solomon to the Egyptian pharaohs.
♪ (music) ♪
(Sergio) Today, we will see incredible formations.
- (Sergio) This is really cool! - (Rhoda) Yes.
(Sergio) So unique!
Visit the ancient copper mines.
(Sergio) They're mining shafts, see it's covered with sand.
Climb Solomon's Pillars.
(Rhona) What did it say?
(Sergio)
we're going to visit a life-size replica of the tabernacle,
a tent that God instructed Moses to build in order to have a transportable sanctuary
during the exodus from Egypt to the promised land of Israel.
All this and much more in today's episode of Sergio and Rhoda in Israel.
♪ (upbeat music) ♪
- Are you excited? - Yes.
♪ [music] ♪
(Sergio)
It is easily accessible from the main road.
(Rhoda) Oh Look! Look at the colors of these mountains
and how massive they are.
(Sergio)
so it's recommended to have a car to explore it.
Our first stop is to check out a very uncommon stone formation
called the Mushroom.
The mushroom is an unusual formation.
It is made of the red sandstone, a very soft rock.
And so, over centuries, the wind, humidity, and water erosion
formed this mushroom-shaped formation.
- Wow this is really cool! - Yeah.
It's so unique!
What a beautiful valley!
Have you ever seen anything like this before?
No. It's beautiful.
(Sergio)
but now that we're here, the first impression is: "Wow!"
(car horn sounds)
(Sergio)
archaeologists found ancient copper ore mining sites.
This site serves as one of the most important archaeological windows
into the history of copper mining and production.
♪ (music) ♪
So these are vertical mining shafts.
Right now, it's covered with sand, but it goes deeper in there.
They're chisel marks.
They would use chisels, copper chisels to get copper out of here.
This is one of the oldest copper mines in the world.
When copper gets in contact with air, it starts oxidizing and it goes green.
So it's so easy to spot copper here.
Look! You see this rock here, it's all green on the sides.
And if you walk, you see green patches,
and that's why you know you can start mining for copper.
That's what we see-- those vertical shafts of copper mines.
So cool!
These are the ancient copper mines, let's go take a look.
(steps on metal stairs)
(Rhoda and Sergio) Oh!
- (Rhoda) Babe, - (Sergio) Yeah?
(Rhoda) These are ladders.
- (Sergio) No way! - (Rhod) Look!
(Sergio) Wow!
This looks like there would be steps, and you can just crawl up.
(Rhoda) Oh, you cannot crawl up. I'm sorry
Babe, you cannot.
I definitely can.
(Rhoda) You can, but you won't.
So this park has been through much controversy over its name,
and its dating.
When Nelson Glueck first excavated this place in the 1930s,
he claimed that the date of this site goes back to the King Solomon,
and that brought a lot of attention to this location.
(Sergio)
additional excavation projects took place,
and they dated the site to 300 years before King Solomon was even born.
They said this place does not belong to King Solomon.
It goes way back, way earlier.
But just recently in 2008, renewed archeological excavations
found something really cool.
They performed high precision radiocarbon dating on organic samples of the site,
and it showed that the site does date back to the time of King Solomon.
♪ (music) ♪
So we go from the 30s, "Hey, this is the King Solomon site,"
to the 60s, "No, it's not,"
To... today, "Yes, King Solomon was here."
♪ (music) ♪
(Sergio)
can be seen in plain sight.
So up there on that mountain are the drawings
from 12th to 14th century BC.
(Rhoda) They're fighting... animals.
Oh, this is a bow and spear.
Or bow and arrow. Sorry.
(Rhoda)
but the real ones are here on the walls
in its original form from its original time.
It's really unbelievable!
(Sergio) These are the hunting ibexes.
They depict hunting ibexes and ostriches with lasso and boomerang.
The hunters are native of the Negev mountains,
and they worked here, in Timna, in the copper mines back at that time.
Incredible!
(Sergio)
left a 3000-year-old trace.
And it just reminds me that what I do today and what I say today
can leave an eternal impact for the good or for the bad.
♪ (music) ♪
(Sergio)
It's called the Solomon Pillars.
Wow! There they are!
(Sergio) Wow!
(Sergio)
and they were formed throughout centuries by water corrosion.
(Rhoda) Wow! They're so massive!
Look at them, they're incredible!
Wow!
(Sergio)
who performed the initial excavations in the 1930s in this area.
I can't hold it much longer!
So it's a pretty recent name.
He just saved the whole pillar from falling.
Thank you for your service! (laughing)
Climbing lesson number two:
Don't go running up the cliff, it will exhaust you.
♪ (music) ♪
(Rhoda)
I've decided to check out this ancient Egyptian temple
at the bottom of the cliff.
According to excavations, this used to be a shrine of Hathor,
an Egyptian goddess of mining.
And then, in later period, it became a shrine for the Midianites.
(Sergio)
a large number of beautifully decorated pottery and metal jewelry.
These were most likely gifts brought by the Midianites for the shrine.
However, one of the most significant finds was a copper snake with gilded head.
It is strikingly similar to the copper serpent
described in the Book of Numbers.
The evidence for Midianite culture found here, in this site,
is of extraordinary importance.
You see, in Exodus 18, the Bible says that Moses went with Jethro
a high priest of Midian.
That means that there had been a Midian presence here,
and his site not only proves that, but also paints a better picture
of the Midian culture and their activity in this region.
(Rhonda) There you are.
How it was up there?
So?
It is like you run up and there's so much excitement,
and it is so much fun, and you're running, and you're full of energy,
like, "This is easy!"
Then you get to the top, then your lungs get caught up
and they get like, "Oh, what did you think?
What were you thinking running up there? You're not trained for this." Oh.
(Rhonda is chuckling)
(Sergio)
we are heading to a very unique attraction.
♪ (music) ♪
(Sergio)
that because of millions of Israelites going through the desert,
that the tabernacle would have been very, very large,
it would have been giant, so the priests would be able
to perform their Levitical duties.
(Sergio)
given by God himself to Moses, as it is written in the book of Exodus.
The size in the Bible is given in ancient biblical cubit measurement,
and most scholars agree that it should be around 75 feet wide
and 150 feet long.
And now, that we're here, and I'm seeing the life-size Tabernacle,
I can't believe my eyes-- the tabernacle is not as giant as I always pictured it.
It's actually more of a size of an Olympic pool.
I thought it will be bigger because the people were allowed,
but one of the workers reminded me how much they had to carry,
so that make sense.
If you think about it, it makes perfect sense.
Of course, they needed to take it down, carry it in the desert,
and then put it back up.
It just wouldn't make sense to build something
the size of a Herod's second temple,
and then keep on taking it down and putting it back up, while in a desert.
(Rhoda)
and I'm so glad that I can see it now.
So the next time I read the text in the Exodus account,
I properly able to imagine how it looked like.
So the visual always gives that benefit, and I'm so glad I was able to see this.
It's awesome!
(Sergio)
it does help me understand of the physical specifications
that God instructed the Israelites to build.
But it doesn't explain why.
(Sergio)
Why was it blue, purple, and scarlet?
Why did God instruct to have bread on the table at all times?
Why were there two cherubim on the ark?
God gave so many meticulous details,
and they all have a very important purpose and great symbolism.
In Exodus, chapter 40, God instructed Moses the exact order
in which this tabernacle should be set up every time
they take it down and move it to a new place.
And the order was pretty simple:
after the Ark of the Covenant and the veil was in place,
they were to put the Table of Showbread, then the Menorah,
then the Screen Door to the tent.
And here's what's striking--
In the book of John, Jesus proclaimed himself
in the exact same order that matches these elements.
I AM the Bread of Life.
I AM the Light of the world.
I AM the Door.
It's an incredible match, but it doesn't stop here.
There are seven "I AM" proclamations
and they all follow the exact same pattern as the tabernacle setup.
And the thing is Jesus did not say these things in one sentence.
Between each "I am," there were days months,
and when John wrote them down, it's also not in the same verse,
it's spread out through chapters.
And so this order was there, but far as we know,
nobody's ever found it before.
This is very recent.
This was found just a couple of years ago.
So this means this pattern couldn't have been contrived.
And it means that it could have not been there by chance.
♪ (music) ♪
If you're interested to know more
about the tabernacle, its significance and the symbolism,
you should watch this study by Charlie Garrett.
The link is in the description of this video below.
(Rhoda)
where you can fill out a bottle of colorful sand
and take it back home with you.
Okay, I think I got it. Here we go.
So when you come to Timna Park, you get a little bottle,
so you could do your own sand art and get colorful sands to layer.
It's so cool. That's what we're going to do now.
♪ (music) ♪
- (Rhoda) What do you wanna do with them? - (Sergio) I don't know.
- (Rhonda) I don't know I got artistic... - (Sergio) Ooh, now, yellow.
- (Rhoda) Now, yellow? - (Sergio) Yeah.
(Rhoda) I think you have to hold them at like an angle.
I don't especially love crafts, maybe some things,
but this thing with the sand, it's pretty cool, I liked doing that.
That's enough crafts for today. There you go, not bad!
Looks like a Jamaican flag.
That's awesome!
It's your turn.
(cricket chirping)
If you enjoyed this episode and you like this type of nature,
check out our other videos about this region in this area.
Also, the Dead Sea, Eilat, and many, many more.
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- Alright, let's... - ...head out.
- Let's head out. - Let's head out.
- Not by walk, we should go by car. - Right.