For Israel's scientific community, the Bible is not a historical source. Most Israeli professors prefer to think of it as a collection of national fables. According to Israel's academia, the exodus from Egypt never happened and the Jews are nothing more than descendants of the Canaanites. Just like other nations, they also created national legends. That is also what Professor Adam Zartal thought. At least until he made a momentous discovery on Mount Eval in the Shomron.

 

Zartal unearthed nothing special as he laboriously climbed the mountain on the crutches that have served as his walking aids ever since he was injured in fighting at the Suez Canal. He reached the top of the mountain exhausted and sweating, with nothing in particular to show for his efforts. He began to descend at the opposite end of the mountain when a huge pile of rocks caught his trained eye. These rocks were going to change his life.

 

"I wasn't looking for Joshua's altar on Mount Eval," explained Professor Zartal in a lecture last week at Karnei Shomron. "I simply didn't believe that it existed."  Zartal was in Karnei Shomron to lecture at the memorial service for murdered Shomron Security Chief, Gilad Zar, may G-d avenge his blood. Gilad had done much to help Zartal during his archeological work in the Shomron. "I am an acceptable witness," Zartal joked. "I am completely secular and I came to Mount Eval with no preconceptions.

 

 

Countless pottery shards peek out from between the rocks. They are from the Settlement Era: In other words, they are approximately 3300 years old. Somebody intentionally buried something very big here. What is it? Slowly but surely, the rocks are removed. Seals from the time of Ramses II --  the famous Pharaoh from the exodus from Egypt are revealed. Golden earrings from the same era are unearthed. How did these 3300 year old Egyptian items fly across the Nile and land specifically here, at the peak of Mount Eval? Zartal and his team continue to dig. They carefully remove the floor of the structure and another surprise awaits them. A huge store of ashes and ancient animal bones fills the entire inner cavity. The ancient bones are sent for zoological analysis and the results are unequivocal: They are not the bones of dogs, donkeys, chickens or other animals that may just have happened by. All the bones belong to year-old sheep and rams. In other words, these are the bones of animals that the Torah instructs the Jewish People to use as sacrifices.

 

The picture quickly clears. From every possible angle -- archeological, topographical, zoological and architectural -- the altar fits the descriptions of the altar in Deuteronomy and the book of Joshua. Nobody from the scientific community seriously attempts to differ with the clear cut findings. There is no doubt; this is the place to which our ancestors came when they entered the Land of Israel. This is the altar described in Deuteronomy and Joshua. This is the site of the famous blessing and curse ceremony, in which a group of Hebrew wanderers became a nation.

 

"And when you cross over the Jordan, you shall erect these stones that I command you today, on Mount Eval. Listen and hear, Israel, today you have become a nation of G-d, your G-d." (Deuteronomy 27)

 

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I took my children to see the ancient boat at the Kinneret. Hats off to the people who coordinated the project; they built an entire museum around this not necessarily Jewish archeological find. A half hour from my home, though, Professor Zartal has discovered the place at which we became a nation. It is the place that we can go to get an authentic, 3300 year old regards from Joshua and our ancestors. Forty years prior to that, the people who built this altar had received the Torah at Sinai.

 

Sadly, Joshua's altar is abandoned. "A conspiracy of silence shrouds this place," Professor Zartal ends his lecture and carefully wobbles out to the taxi that will drive him home.