ANCIENT, GIGANTIC, 9 TON SLAB OF GLASS AT BETH SHE' ARIM GALILEE

Posted by Chris Parker

“In 1 Kings 6:4 it says that when he built the first Temple of God in Jerusalem in the 10th century BCE, King Solomon built windows that were – in Hebrew – “shkufim and atumim”. This is usually translated as “narrow” but, more correctly, it means; “transparent and of one piece”. The Temple in Jerusalem was a repository of technology that was way ahead of its time. Can it be that the Bible is describing giant glass windows made of one piece? In the 1st century, King Herod the Great renovated the second Temple, making it one of the wonders of the world. Can it be that he outfitted his new temple with the greatest slabs of glass that had ever been made?”  Simcha Jacobovici in TORAH ARCHEOLOGY

Naturally occurring glass like obsidian was used by many ancient societies around the world but it is thought that the first manmade glass was created by the ancient Mesopotamians or the ancient Egyptians in the mid third miilenium B.C. The oldest uses for manmade glass is thought to have been smaller objects such as beads.

No one knows quite what to make of a 9 ton slab of ancient glass believed to have been made in one gigantic piece 1600 years ago in a cave, in a cemetery in Galilee—but since science abhors a knowledge vacuum it has clearly stated what it believes to be the particulars related to the slab.

“There are two truly astounding things about the slab. First its sheer size: remember it measures 6½ x 11 feet. That means it weighs about 9 tons—18,000 pounds. When discovered, it was the third largest piece of man-made glass in the world and it was made centuries ago. Its size is still rivaled only by the giant telescope mirrors of the 20th century. More astonishing still are the conditions under which it was made. It is estimated that about 11 tons of raw materials had to be heated to 1100°C (around 2000°F), and held at that temperature for perhaps 5 - 10 days. This could have required as much as perhaps 20 tons of wood for fuel. Imagine what it must have been like in that cave—a veritable inferno.”…Corning Museum of Glass

In 1963 a joint expedition between the Corning Museum and the University of Missouri were searching the ancient Bible lands region for remains of glass factories and someone suggested the possibility that the slab at Beth She’Arim –a known artifact-might in fact be glass. Testing proved that it was in fact a huge slab of glass that had been damaged by the bulldozers used to uncover it. It was not a clear piece of glass because as testing later proved something had gone wrong during manufacturing producing an opaque glass.

Ancient 9 ton slab of glass at Galilee
The scientists at Corning concluded that the glass makers were not making a giant artifact but instead were making glass material. They hypothesize that the giant slab would subsequently have been broken into many pieces which artisans would then melt down and form into new smaller artifacts. This is the scientific working theory. One wonders why they would simply not have made smaller slabs which would have been less technologically challenging and then broken them up into smaller pieces. 

Beth She’ arim is a historically significant Jewish town established by Herod in the first century which became to de facto capital of Israel after the destruction of the second temple in A.D. 70. A primary function of Beth She’arim was as a cemetery where the rich and famous were buried after sites at the Mount of Olives became scarce.

Simcha Jacobovici  a Canadian Israeli film director, producer, free-lance journalist, and writer who is an Emmy winner for investigative journalism has another theory concerning the glass. He does not accept the idea that burning 20 tons of wood in a cave for five to 10 days at a temperature of 2,000 degrees to create one giant slab-and then intentionally breaking it into 50 to 60 thousand pieces makes sense. In short, he speculates that the glass was to be a window in the Temple of Jerusalem.

 
“In 1 Kings 6:4 it says that when he built the first Temple of God in Jerusalem in the 10th century BCE, King Solomon built windows that were – in Hebrew – “shkufim and atumim”. This is usually translated as “narrow” but, more correctly, it means; “transparent and of one piece”. The Temple in Jerusalem was a repository of technology that was way ahead of its time. Can it be that the Bible is describing giant glass windows made of one piece? In the 1st century, King Herod the Great renovated the second Temple, making it one of the wonders of the world. Can it be that he outfitted his new temple with the greatest slabs of glass that had ever been made? Herod’s Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE. The Jews were dispersed throughout the world, bringing their glass making with them to places like Rome and Venice. In the Galilee, it seems, one window that had been contaminated with ash, was left where it was created. For those who wanted to be buried close to a relic of the Holy Temple, that glass was as close as you could get.”.. Simcha Jacobovici  

 In any case and in conclusion the giant slab of glass at Beth She “Arim reminds us and science how little it realy knows about the ancient world. No one would have believed even given that this ancient slab creation apparently went awry that ancient man would have had the technology and the technology to attempt the creation of  piece of glass so large. What happened to the slabs created before this one?

 To Read More: http://www.simchajtv.com/temple-glass-discovered/

http://www.cmog.org/article/mystery-slab-beth-shearim

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