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Did They Really Find the Original Temple Incense? | Adam Berkowitz | The Week in Bible Prophecy
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It's the story. When I first heard it as a writer of fiction, I was just like, I have to have my hands on this. It was, it's just such an unbelievable story. It has everything in it. The, the book is called the Ketorah. Ketorah is Hebrew for incense. A source based historical account of the Qumran incense discovery. And it was, it's, it's available for free download. The, the, the people who, who are running the project. Their father did the, did the original, the original laboratory testing. So now I'm getting ahead of myself. So let me tell the story. It started in 1967. In 1967, Vendel Jones, who was a Texas pastor, evangelical pastor, came to Israel to learn Torah from rabbis. And he came just in time for the war. And he volunteered and had some special abilities that helped him with the idf. I was told it's because he was colorblind. He was able to see through camouflage. So he looked over the border and he could see things that other people couldn't see. He also suffered hearing loss because of what he was doing. So he was an IDF spotter. And after the war, he got a very big interest in archeology and he was very interested in an area called Qumran, which is right on the Dead Sea, the Qumran. Most people believe it was the site of the Essenes. It's very isolated and remote and they're, they're not there. There's been a lot of discussion about what actually was going on there. That's where the Dead Sea scrolls were found. So he was very interested in the archeology there. He was able to get. In the meantime, he also became a Noahide. He, he, he left the mainstream Christianity, became a Noahide. And he spent a lot of time going around there. And he began in 1972 really doing independent excavations at Qumran. And he was working with Israeli archaeologists. And in 19. Was it 19? Yes. In 1988, he discovered a small ceramic jug, a pottery jug, which he believes was the Shemina Farsimon, the persimmon oil. The, it's also called Shemona mishka, the anointing oil, which remains controversial to this day. There's no reason to think that it wasn't. Okay, seems very clear, which is an amazing discovery. It's a very holy item, very connected to the temple. And he found it in Qumran and it's now in the Israel Museum. And he, he kept digging in qumran, and in 1992, He was studying the copper scroll. Which is one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and it's actually engraved in copper, and it sits in Jordan in a museum. But it has to be deciphered. It's in a very special kind of Hebrew, and there are hints in it. It's basically a treasure map. And archaeologists have been trying to decipher it. And Vendel had a special take on it. And he thought he found what they called the cave of the Column, the twin caves, which was where the incense was stored. And he was banging around there, and he think he found. He thought he found where the place was. And pretty much by accident, they stumbled on the cave and they found it. It was a hidden cave. And they started digging. And in 1992, they. After a lot of digging, they found what they called a silo, which was like a pit that they lined with stones, and it was full of an aromatic red dust that smelled strongly of cinnamon. And they did what they called a tongue test, which is they put it in their mouth and it dissolved in their mouth, which was because it was organic. And so he found this. This material he found. There's a bit of a dispute whether it was 300kg or 600kg. If you go online, most people will say 600kg. There's no proving that it was 300kg, but it seems to be that it was 300kg. Vendel was kind of fuzzy on details a lot of the time, so he said it was 600kg, but it probably wasn't. I mean, that's a lot of difference for Americans. Let me just say that's like over 1200 pounds. So that's a lot of. Right. And 300 kilograms is not quite so much. What's interesting is Professor Marvin Antleman. I'll get to him in a minute. He did the computation, and he figured out that according to the Talmud, according to Talmudic formula for making the incense, 300 kg was exactly one batch. It was exactly one batch of. Of incense. So they found this, and they also found a coin in the dirt that was from the first Jewish Revolt, which was 67 CE, which helped them to date it. And they found it. And the problem was Vendel had on and off relations with the Antiquities Authority. And also, since it was in. So it was outside of what they call Israel pop proper, and it was in. It came under the auspices of Kogat, the civil authority in Judea and Samaria, they pretty much shut him down. And they said, we're not going to test this stuff. We're not interested in it. So he said, well, if it's dirt, I'll go use it in my garden. But of course, he didn't use it in his garden. There was a bit of a problem with the. Where it went. It went from one person to the other. No person wanted to keep it for too long because it was holy and sanctified to the temple. And it ended up with his daughter. His daughter converted to Judaism. She lived in. In. In Samaria and a small town called Maale Livona, which is interesting because Livona is one of the components, one of the elements of the. Of the temple spice. And it was stored in cardboard boxes, in plastic bags in the bomb shelter. And it was there for 34 years. And just before the war, she. She was an older woman. She. She was hiking out in the hills near her. Near her town. She fell and broke her hip and she was in a wheelchair. And when the war broke out, the town had to prepare all. Which war are we talking about? This. This war. The current one. We're going back not so long ago, three years ago, four years ago. Four years ago, she. They had to prepare the bomb shelters for. To be used as bomb shelters. So without her involvement, a. A crew was sent to the. To the bomb shelter and the boxes were thrown away. 300 kg of temple incense was thrown away. I should add. And I forgot to say that in 1992 when he found it, Vendell Jones was very connected to Professor Marvin Anelman as a rabbi. And he's also. He was a brilliant, brilliant scientist. He like hundreds of patents and he. He wrote several encyclopedias that are still being used by chemists. And he analyzed it and he. He came to his conclusion. And there was also a palinologist which is like organic and identifying plants, named Terry Hutter. Love. I loved him. He was just. There's some people I just. I feel great after I interview them. He's not Jewish. And he. For amazing story that I tell in the book about how he contacted Vendel Jones really out of the blue. And Vendel was like, we've been praying for you. And he tested it. And in the book there's an appendix where we show his report which shows the pictures and the names of the varieties of plants that were in this material that Vendel Jones found. And it precisely matched the incense that as it's listed, there are four organic elements listed in the Torah. And there are a total of 11 organic elements enlisted in the Talmud. And there are an additional three inorganic, well, not herbal or ingredients like cypress wine. Burrit and what they call. Which means something that raises up smoke. And these were the inorganic elements. And by the way, he found both the organic elements stored in the silo and he found the inorganic elements stored off to the side. And he presented them both in containers to Ravavad Yosef. And he said, can I burn it? And Rav Yosef gave his opinion, his biblical opinion, his historic opinion, because according to the Torah, if you burn it for personal reasons, you die. Yeah, you're in trouble. It was a serious question. That's another thing I want to emphasize in this book. There's a lot of information given. And when you deal the concept of kodesh, the concept of holiness, has not been in the world for a very long time. And the return of the temple, which is happening, we've got to take in mind. We've got to keep in mind that holy items, they're not ours. In Hebrew, in Torah language, holy heckdesh means it has been acquired by God, meaning I give an offering. It's now not mine. And it's forbidden to make use of anything that's been sanctified because it doesn't belong to me. It's stealing from God. So anyone who. Who decides that, oh, I want to make the temple incense. That's not a good idea. I actually, I held some of the temple incense that I had found. I went to the bomb shelter, and underneath this air conditioning unit, this air unit was a pile of red dust that obviously didn't belong there. And we saved it. And it turns out it's almost probably temple incense. And we needed. That had spilled, and we need to get it. And there's a big. You know, I have two liters of it, and I'm like, oh, just a little bit for my oil. I'm like, what are you stupid? Don't fall to temptation. It's too tempting. Oh, my God. God. And it's a huge temptation. Like, it's holy. I want to be holy. No, that's not how you get to be holy. You get holy by serving God. Yeah. Not by taking his place. Yeah. And there's this big inclination. Oh, I want. No, it's like seeing this beautiful piece of meat in the temple that you're offering up to God and saying, you know, I'm hungry. No, it's not yours. So the last chapter of the story, Vendel Jones's daughter, Sarah Richardson, who had converted to Judaism and was over, was watching guarding the temple incense for over 30 years. And she was also very involved with the with Vendel Jones's work. Last summer, she was murdered, man. And she was murdered by her own son. So I don't want to say that bad things happen to people who deal with this, but I think you should think twice if you want to treat holy things lightly. It's not yours to mess with. And she was very careful with it. God bless her. She was very careful, very respectful of it. You have to be careful. So that's how it ended. But the reason why they made this book, and they made it available as a free download, is the children of Rabbi Anselman wanted to continue their father's work. And they want to. He said. He did a CNN interview where he said he was certain he used that word, certain. It was temple incense.