GAMLA
What is Gamla?
Let's begin from a historical fact enough next to us, the apparitions of Fatima, that with the Secret, point out an ancient element, the "arrows", and an unusual element, the "big city", "half in ruins", on the steep slant of a mountain.
«... Other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious going up a steep mountain, at the top of which there was a big Cross of rough-hewn trunks as of a cork-tree with the bark; before reaching there the Holy Father passed through a big city half in ruins and half trembling with halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow, he prayed for the souls of the corpses he met on his way; having reached the top of the mountain, on his knees at the foot of the big Cross he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him, and in the same way there died one after another the other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious, and various lay people of different ranks and positions. Beneath the two arms of the Cross there were two Angels each with a crystal aspersorium in his hand, in which they gathered up the blood of the Martyrs and with it sprinkled the souls that were making their way to God».
If we some reflect, in the whole historical time they were a very few martyrs, not only Christians, killed with arrows.
Yet, going very back in the time, in a historical work we meet the description of a city, situated on the southern slope of a mountain, whose inhabitants were killed by the Romans.
But it has been an excavation, conducted by the Jewish archaeologists of the Golan, to reveal that the martyrdom happened above all with arrows. Therefore the Secret of Fatima seems to confer particular importance to the archaeological searches and especially to that historical city.
Of what, therefore, were they martyrs, or rather witnesses, the inhabitants of the city on the mountain?
Considerations or questions? |
| history and excavations |
F. Josephus
Zealots
excavations to Gamla
observant Hebrews |
| Christian historical sources |
breads and fishes
where?
John's Gospel
Apocalypse |
| faithful Hebrews and Christians |
Zealots and Chistians
martyrs
30 years of peace |
Flavius Josephus
The historian Flavius Josephus, in Jewish War, IV,1-83, remembers a Jewish city called Gamla, situated on a mountain. Let's reread the description of Josephus.
From a tall mountain it stretches out in fact a steep spur which in the half raises in a hump that from the summit declines with equal slant both before and behind, so much to be resembled to the profile of a camel; from this she draws the name... On the sides and forehead she finishes in impracticable ravines while she is being some accessible behind, where she is as suspended to the mountain; but also here the inhabitants, digging a transversal pit, had blocked the passage.
The houses built on the steep slant were densely disposed the one above the other: it seemed that the city was suspended and always on the point to fall on herself.
She leaned out to midday and her southern summit, raising itself to immoderate height, formed the fortress of the city, under which a precipice deprived of walls fell in a deep ravine; inside the wall there was a spring and here the city finished (Jewish War, IV,5-8).
She was situated in the Gaulan (Golan) inferior and she was «the strongest in that region» (ibid., II,568). The inhabitants spoke the language of the Sires as the others to the northern part of Palestine (ibid., IV,37-38), or rather Aramaic and Greek.
The names of the leaders of Gamla remembered by Flavius Josephus are Chares and Joseph: the one Greek and the other Hebrew. To Gamla, therefore, as in Galilee, they spoke both Aramaic and Greek.
In the city the Hellenistic culture had been integrated in the Jewish one.
To the beginning of the Jewish Rebellion, Joseph himself, entrusted from Jerusalem to organize the defense of the Galilaea in view of the clashes with the Romans, had made to complete the fortifications of Gamla and other cities (ibid., II,568.574). Gamla, was dear therefore to the leaders and the priests of Jerusalem.
The city was besieged from Herod Agrippa II in 69 AD but withstood to him and to the Roman legions up to the beginnings of October (around the 13th day) 70, when the Romans conquered her and they killed four thousand inhabitants. F. Josephus reports that others five thousand died racing down for a precipice to the western extremity of the hill. Nevertheless during the siege many, not busy in the defense of the city, were run away through the ravines not guarded by the Romans or the underground passages.
Josephus talks of the event of Gamla with liking and he doesn't pity her end, as if her inhabitants themselves didn't feel it as an end but as a martyrdom.
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Zealots
It needs to remember that from that city, to the beginnings of the 1st century AD, had gone out Judah, son of Hezekiah (precisely of Gamla), the founder of the sect of the Zealots (F. Josephus, Jewish War, II,56.118; Jewish Antiquities, XVIII,4-10). Josephus clearly assert that the inhabitants of the city were "Jews."
The Zealots observed the Law of Moses in scrupulous, but very concrete way. They got organized in a political party, active in Palestine already to the beginning of the first century, and Gamla was found absorbed in this movement.
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The archaeologists of the Golan
In 1968, after the Six Days War, the Jewish archaeologists identified the ruins of Gamla to north east of the Galilee Lake, on a rocky hill that emerges on the slant of the Golan. The excavations allowed to establish that the city of Gamla rose around 150 BC; her founded one of the groups of Hebrews coming from the Babylonian exile, on the rests of a preexisting installation of the Early Bronze Age.
Different coins of Tyre are been found, with writing in Greek, that's way Gamla had also been having for long time ample commercial contacts with the Hellenistic environment, besides with the East.
The finds to Gamla are numerous and, at times, unique to reconstruct the life of the Hebrews in the The 1st century AD; particularly a lot of arrow points are been discovered, used by different troops of the Roman army.
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Observant Hebrews
The Golan archaeologists have picked up the testimonies that the greater part of the inhabitants of that city on the mountain was Jewish zealots, sincerely faithful to the Jewish law, even if they were surrounded by pagans, and this corresponds to the description that Flavius Josephus has furnished us about the country of the Zealots. Particularly:
- some ritual baths, the miqwehs, that allowed the people employed to produce the olive oil to produce it "ritually pure" and proper for the uses of the Temple in Jerusalem;
- a synagogue, recognized as such for to have nearby a ritual bath;
- an alley to south of the synagogue tightens him all of a sudden for the presence of two poles on both the sides: this transformed the public street in private and in it on Saturday was not forbidden from the law to bring weights;
- in a house, under the floor in the back of a room, an ancient burial has been found, but it is noticed that the owner had filled with material that part of the room, because who passes above a burial, according to the law, makes him impure;
- in the city They have been found only geometric decorations and no represented figure, because the second commandment prohibits to paint or to carve images; they are not even found on the lamps to oil, while in other places of the Roman empire the lamps were often decorated with human faces or animals; in reality some fragments of lamps represent Hellenistic images, but it is thought that they belong to the time when the pagan Demetrios dominated the city;
- a lot of lamps have been found, almost all in fragments, because the Jewish law prescribes that a ceramics vessel, if it has been damaged, has to be broken entirely;
- six samples of a coin bring a typically Jewish inscription, very meaningful, as we will see.
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At the end of the year 32
But let's pay attention to what it says another historical report, the Gospel of John.
It was the evening in which Jesus Christ, just before the Passover AD 32, multiplied the breads and the fishes on one of the relieves that are situated to north east of the Galilee Lake, in a grassy desert. All four the Gospels, if we attentively translate from the Greek, agree all on the place in which the fact happened:
«After these events, Jesus has gone beyond the sea of Galilee, that is of Tiberiades» (John 6,1).
«Then he taken them with itself and he withdrew apart him toward a city called Bethsaida» (Luke 9,10b).
«Come apart, in a solitary place, and rest you some.... Many however saw them depart and understood, and from all the cities they started to hasten afoot there and preceded them» (Mark 6,31-33).
Every time Jesus went toward that "desert place" people ran after him: it had already happened in a moment remembered by Luke 4,42-44.
To the return:
«He ordered then to his disciples to climb on the boat and to precede him toward the other shore, in front of Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd» (Mark 6,45).
«But Jesus, having known that "they are about to come to abduct him to do him king", he withdraw him again on the mountain, on his' own» (John 6,15).
«And after being him separate from them, he withdrew him on the mountain to pray» (Mark 6,46).
«Come meanwhile the evening, his disciples have gone down to the sea and, gotten on a boat, advanced toward the other shore in direction of Capharnaum» (John 6,16-17).
It is to notice particularly what has written John to the chapter 6, verses 14 and 15:
«Then (immediately after the miracle) the men, considering the sign that he had completed, said: "This is indeed the prophet that has to come in the world!". But Jesus, having known that «they are about to come to abduct him to do him king», withdrawn him again on the mountain, on his' own».
The «men» «were about to come to abduct» Jesus, «to make him king». Who could afford such an action of force, if people tightened him around the Teacher with so much insistence just when he approached in that zone? Only people that had a notable power and that could furnish him an armed escort; what were sufficiently autonomous from the Romans and also from the other Jewish powers.
"To abduct" Jesus meant to bring him in a set apart place, that is isolated on some mountain, to conduct then him to Jerusalem and to proclaim him king.
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Where did they live?
In which place resided they, these "men"?
It has to be noticed that, «considering the sign that he had made, they said: "This is indeed the prophet that has to come in the world!"». They had understood the meaning of the sign. But they passed to the action in the way that seemed correct to them, they didn't know yet that Jesus didn't want to be king as the others of this world. Nevertheless their intentions remained to him very dear.
Instead the day after many, from Tiberiades and from the other cities to west of the Lake that the Teacher normally frequented, went to look for Jesus and he talked them to Capharnaum: «In truth, in truth I tell you, you look for me not because you have seen some signs, but because you have eaten of that breads and you have been satisfied» (John 6,26).
Therefore the people that usually surrounded the Teacher had not recognized the signs of it and therefore she didn't think about making him king.
Only in that place, to north east of the Lake, and only that day, Jesus had approached to those that would have liked to abduct him to do him king, ready as they were to recognize its signs.
Of course they lived a little away from the place where all the people were situated with Jesus, because "they were about to come". They were not among the crowd.
This induces to look for an inhabited center on a mountain, neither too nearby neither too much away from the place of the multiplication of the breads and the fishes.
After having known about Gamla, it has appeared me clear that that was the only settled center with the characteristics in demand. It was not possible that the "men" came from other place.
From the rocky hill on which the city rises it is had a panoramic sight of hills that degrade toward the shore of the Lake distant around 8 kilometers. The "mount", on which that evening Jesus done the miracle, was the nearest hill to the Lake, precisely in the territory dominated by Gamla. The inhabitants of the "stronger city" saw from the top that crowd of five thousand men, over the women and the children, and they were the only ones that had the possibility of "to abduct" with impunity Jesus Crust.
From the rocky spur, on which the city rises, a panoramic sight is had of hills that degrade toward the shore of the Lake, distant around 8 kilometers. The "mountain", on which that evening Jesus performed the miracle, was the hill nearest to the Lake, exactly in the territory dominated by Gamla. The inhabitants of the "stronger city" saw from the tall one that crowd of five thousand men, plus the women and the children, and they were the only that had the possibility of "abduct" with impunity Jesus Christ.
Which so important reason did it push the inhabitants of Gamla to try to abduct Jesus?
We have remembered that from Gamla the first Zealots came. It is easy therefore to suppose that many inhabitants of Gamla, before meeting Jesus Christ, were followers very active of the sect. They wanted to reconstitute the kingdom of David, as soon as the Messiah had appeared in the world, and they intended to send away the Romans with the weapons. Now the Messiah was within their reach and they didn't want to let the propitious occasion be escaped.
After such an experience there is not any possibility that the men of Gamla have been then extraneous to Jesus Christ; but they didn't abandon their Zealot convictions.
Gamla is never named in the New Testament, because there were serious motives to prevent it: above all her independence from the Romans.
She is closed in the silence but, if we put her again there to her place, we succeed in reconstructing all the movements, at times strange, annotated in the Gospels of John and Luke and in the Apocalypse, documents that are in hold relation among them; but even the letters of St. Paul find a more concrete position.
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The author of the John's Gospel
Examining the John's Gospel, it is understood that the author was an skilled scribe and he transcribed the testimonies of the apostle son of Zebedee, still boy.
But how could he know and write what that «men» intended to do?
It is simple: the scribe has hear them to reason because he lived among them, really to Gamla. He has not explained what men were they, because also who had to read understood well about whom he spoke. We would not known how to find a place more appropriate than Gamla as place of origin of the "fourth Gospel".
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The Apocalypse and Gamla
A scribe of the same place, fifteen or twenty years later wrote the Apocalypse.
Also the fact that both the Greek and the Aramaic were talked to Gamla, leave the possibility to say that the apocalypse, addressed "to the seven Churches that are in Asia", has been written here.
The enigmatic number 666, that we find in the apocalypse, in reality it is not quite mysterious, rather it helps to individualize the period in which the prophecy book was written.
To make more narrow the tie between the two works of John and Gamla, they contribute some coins, that recall the image of the "new holy city Jerusalem" contained in the Apocalypse.
To this point Gamla becomes an important ring of a chain of circumstances that make to appear more and more real everything is written in the books of the New Testament. In fact, after having discovered the role and the geographical position of this city, just the passages of the New Testament of which the meaning was not understood, or that seemed in contrast with others, become whose more animate and enrich the historical report.
The relation that is among Gamla, John's Gospel, that of Luke one and the Apocalypse, exalts the historical concreteness of the three ancient documents. There is no possibility to have a more exhaustive historical picture of the event of Jesus Christ and of the first times of the Christianity, if not that to make more and more tightened the connection among these documents.
It is very difficult to find support in other sources, unless in the works of F. Josephus written later little time.
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Zealots e Christians
The two "angels" of the secret of Fatima "picked up the blood of the Martyrs", that had been killed also with "arrows."
The "angels", symbolically represent, "men", probably two groups.
If, on one side, she has been rediscovery the city that more gives sense to this image, on other side, it is discovered that she gathered in itself the two parts for which the Cross is Tree of Life, Hebrews and Christians, and she was open to an immense crowd coming from the Gentes.
The fact that from the archaeological excavations it don't result finds referable to the presence of Christians to Gamla, it simply means that that Christians could rigorously live in the observance of the Mosaic law, as the Apocalypse confirms more than once, and they didn't need special signs to be Christian.
It is this, however, the sign that in that years, those very educated and rigorous people didn't find some contrast between Jesus Christ and the Jewish faith.
Rather «Jesus' Christ testimony», within the Jewish reality, gave enough reason for the fact that the Christian Hebrews welcomed in their Churches «men of every tribe, language, people and nation», without making to pass them for the Mosaic law. «The blood of the Lamb» could redeem them «from the great tribulation». The Hebrews rigorously followed their law and who was not Jewish he fully entered the Church without becoming Jewish and without taking away nothing from the Hebrews.
This is to re-examine, after a contrast of almost two thousand years, caused by Nero that gave play the «mystery of the unlawfulness», or «of the disorder» (2 Ts 2,7).
Already in the Prologue of John, that immediately shows the problem and the solution, the discussion is noticed on law and grace and truth or between law and faith, that we find again in the Letter to the Romans and in the Letter of James.
The Apocalypse improves the Messianic doctrine of the Zealots, without need to deny some part of it; and so it exposes her in all of her shine.
After being assumed the commitment to make king Jesus Christ, the Zealots of Gamla, become Christians, without giving up nothing of their doctrine and their power, didn't think by now to send away the Romans, but, when the time of the rebellion came, they prepared them to defend their position and to redeem the holy Jerusalem. They were neither neutral neither traitors, and they minted that coin to affirm it, but it also became for them to martyrdom the doctrine that they had completed. On the other hand, even one of the twelve Apostles of Jesus Christ, one of the two Simon, were Zealot (in Jewish: "Qan'ana").
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Were they of what martyrs?
The inhabitants of Gamla were martyrs of the Jewish and together Christian membership; of the fidelity to the God of Israel and to the testimony of Jesus Christ.
Paul, perfectly knowing the work of Theophilos and of Gamla, in contact with the Christians of Rome, manifests a complete vision of the situation.
To gar musthrion hdh energeitai thV anomiaV· monon o katecwn arti ewV ek mesou genhtai.
«In fact the mystery of the disorder is already in action: only that he leaves the stage who till now holds back it».
(2 Ts 2,7)
The contrast between Hebrews and Christians, after the persecution of Nero, was born really because Theophilos leaved the stage.
For re-sew the dialogue it is had to reconstruct everything, through what it is codified in the Apocalypse.
Gamla is witness of when the Christians and the Hebrews lived in good accord in the earth of Israel.
The site where Gamla has been rediscovered, before the archaeological identification was called, in Arab, "Khirbet es-Salam" (= "Ruins of Peace") and Gamla could become a sign of reconciliation today, as the Apocalypse, in half of the 1st century AD, sought the unity between the Christians and the Hebrews.
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Thirty five years of peace
Gamla is sign of dialogue among Christians, Hebrews and Romans, that worked for about thirty five years.
In the Jewish faith and Law, "Jesus' Christ testimony" (expression present in Apocalypse and Letters of Paul) appeared and was inserted. We find her, certified, in the Gospels of John and Luke.
Theophilos could only play on the testimony of what Jesus Christ had did and had said, to build peace and collaboration among all the Hebrews and those people whom were become Christians.
In front of the Romans, then, he could make himself strong in this harmony in the faith in Jahveh and in the prayer to the Temple (Luke 24,53), to show that the Christians belonged to a "religio licita".
John's Gospel, his Letters and the Apocalypse, all written to Gamla, codify already the dialogue to that time. They resolve the existing problems between Hebrews and Christians, before Nero, pressed by the necessity to set to others the guilt of the fire in Rome, persecuted the Christians also provoking a series of negative consequences for the Hebrews. His decision had something of insane but it was legally logic, because the Christian religion appeared more and more autonomous, it didn't have its own Temple and Jesus, as God, were not recognized by the Senate.
Gospel of Luke and Acts are instead books for the dialogue between the Christians and the power in Rome to that time, power that represents every political power. That power that, with his hostile intervention, managed to Hebrews and Christians also don't understand between them.
Jesus had admonished: «Give to Caesar what is of Caesar, give to God what is of God», so that the Christians could exist in any political situation without need to upset it.
The written documents testify that God has sent Jesus Christ, he has overcome the necessity of the Temple and he has given full opportunity to the Gentes. The dialogue has as objective to free the different interlocutors from the "downfall" introduced by Nero, so that they are constituted in the "salvation" (Luke 19,10).
It is not the case to remain still under the blackmail of the persecutor of the Christians and downfall of the Jewish nation.
In our time we find it hard to appreciate Jesus Christ as real person, after it has been spoken of him for two thousand years in the most different ways and after so many critical reasoning on his figure. It seems me that, to be able to consider serenely him, simply it is necessary to remember the facts of his life, without too explanations and picking up instead historical and geographical information on the situations in which he lived, so that we see him again in the alive reality of his time.
The fact of the conversion and of the martyrdom of Gamla is not a fact of revelation, but we directly discover it when we read the documents of the Christian faith, after having recognized them as historical documents.
It is sustained by archaeological elements and it is connected to the Apocalypse, to the Gospel of John, to that of Luke, to the Letters of St. Paul and to the historical work of Flavius Josephus.
It adds to the evangelical reports concrete testimonies of the places, the times, the situations in which Jesus has achieved his office.
It is a fact set between the reality of the world and the faith in the God of the Hebrews, of the Christians and of the Moslems, as conjunction ring.
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Historical report
There is no possibility that the fact of the multiplication of the breads and the fishes is not historical, as can happen that is thought of the things told by the Gospels.
I have looked for a place, that I then have understood to be Gamla, because the Gospel of John brought to an settled center on a mountain.
Now, who has read the Gospel of John have surely noticed that in the first chapters the evangelist introduces some testimonies to Jesus, but the people which he addresses don't believe in his words (3,11.32). Then he inform them on episodes happened above all in Jerusalem, but also in Samaria and in Galilee, and this means that he wrote for a community that lived out of the capital and out of the other places crossed by the Teacher.
The evangelist John insists in to say that the Jews didn't believe in Jesus and therefore it is clear that he didn't write his testimonies for the Jews. It can seem even that he addresses to the Gentiles, that is to those not Hebrews, a lot of time after the facts, when the contrast had been already born among Hebrews and Christians, and that he forgot its Jewish roots, because he uses a different language than the other Gospels, authoritative and firm.
But how is this possible, if he remembers that «salvation comes from the Jews» (John 4,22)? He was faithful to the Temple, that was in the Judea. It adhered to the Law, to the Writings and to the Prophecies. He would never have been able to be indifferent toward what was represented by the Temple, only it is had to observe that he had a his particular culture, concrete, without complicated scholastic constructions.
But it is everything simplest if we imagine him absorbed in the Jewish reality, in the first halves of the 1st century AD, to grips with the objections lifted by the Jewish brothers, to which he answers in convincing way with the facts and with the symbols drawn by the same words of Jesus. The Hebrews in fact welcomed the initiative of John and Gamla.
We know that he was coming from Galilee, almost certainly coming from Bethsaida as Piter, Andrew and Philip; it was normal that he feel more at his' ease among the Galileans that among the Jews. But he wrote in Palestine not in another nation, because he is very precise in to tell the moves of Jesus from a region to the other, really while he moved, without knowing where he would have gone subsequently. And when he speaks about Jews, it intends really the inhabitants of Judea, not the Hebrews generally. In fact he speak different turns about the Jews, but also about the Samaritans (John 4,9.39-40; 8,48) and the Galileans (John 4,45).
The relations among John and those people who have to read its testimonies are vivacious and concrete, but they seem complicated.
They can simply be explained admitting that he wrote while the facts happened and that was friend of a community that didn't live in the Judea, neither in someone of the places crossed from Jesus, as the Peraea, the Samaria, the Galilee. To communicate with his friends he wrote, because, logically, they didn't see the facts. Nevertheless, if friends were him, they could not live a lot away from his native city because, also being very young, he had been able to know them. They lived therefore out of the Galilee, but not very distant.
However, above all to the beginning, John wrote furnishing the meaning in Greek of the Jewish words, because he wanted to make reach the testimonies also to people that didn't know the Palestine neither the language used in it.
We have then to think that the friends, to which he directly turned, had ties with some communities of Greek language.
To try to understand whom John addresses, we first try to compare his Gospel with that of Luke.
After having revised its translation from the Greek, they have emerged from the text certifications that can be considered valid for every time. From this it depends the value "secular" of everything the two books tell. However the believers are founded even on ideas, imaginations or feelings, but on historical facts to be rediscovered.
Even if the Gospels are books "of faith", what they contain must be considered as what it is really, not as a message out of the reality. These books have certainly been written in some place and by someone. If they also were the result of a collective tradition - but they are not it - who has collected her would also have left in it his own cultural and geographical traces.
It cannot be supposed that who speaks about things of faith, if he tells true facts, twists the reality and is historically not reliable.
The problem to accept the historical facts is the same problem to accept the testimony of Jesus Christ, but the facts are facts and we cannot admit that some are real and whose can bring something new and superior to the reason are not it.
It is not more possible to remain in the doubt on the historical reliability of the Gospels, because also I have been able to ascertain that the problem can be resolved using only some mean of what we have available.
Therefore, the John's Gospel is historical because:
- he introduces various certifications of at least two persons:
John 3,11.33;
11]In truth, in truth I tell you that we speak about that we know and we testify that we have seen; but you don't welcome our testimony.
[33]Who have welcomed his testimony, certifies with seal that (he) it is the true God.
19,35;
[35]And who has seen he has given testimony of it - and its testimony is true and that one knows that he says the truth - because you also think.
20,30-31
[30]In reality Jesus has achieved in front of his disciples many other signs, that have not been written in this roll.
[31]These have been written so that you believed that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and, now that you believe, so that you have life in his name.
21,24);
[24]This one is the disciple that makes testimony of these things and he has written them; and we know that his testimony is true.
- it can be combined in chronological order with the Gospel of Luke, that is completely different (what in the centuries the experts of the Bible have not considered), so that today after twenty centuries it is possible to reconstruct a very more detailed report of the Jesus Christ's life; unexpectedly the two Gospels of which the historicity was less clear can be combined in chronological order and they furnish a very precise story rich of news, that can be deepened without end. We discover then that both Luke and John follows the order in which the facts are happened, this way that they return us a report how much clear of the events that concern Jesus. This attests that the two reports are faithful and historical.
- the Gospel of Luke has an official presentation and a historical style;
- also Luke mentions a «desert place», where an «other city» is situated, and, although the Gospel of Luke and that of John are just very different, it is notorious that they has many elements of contact;
- both the Gospels remember dates that, inserted in a time line, are in full accord with those brought by F. Josephus and by the other reliable sources, rather they are the key to put in accord dates that seemed discordant;
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Where was the Apocalypse written?
The apocalypse denotes a clear independence from the different sorts of power present in Israel.
The community in which the Apocalypse has been written was in full disagreement with the capital Jerusalem. It is not possible that he resided where he was uneasy. Besides, while Jerusalem had to fall (Ap 17,9; 18,24), the author had strong safety of his and thought about the redemption of the holy Jerusalem, that is he resided elsewhere, in a place held surer than the capital, he belonged to a "community" that had the power to assume this role. Also being situated out of the center of the religious and political power, it was equally very authoritative toward the «seven Churches that are in Asia» and toward the whole Church. He had therefore center in an important place, different from Jerusalem.
Not in Asia minor, because John communicates in writing with the Churches of Asia minor among which Ephesus.
Not to Pathmos. John is not the material author of the prophecy of the Apocalypse. Who has written was a skilled scribe. However the inspiration had come to John in the Pathmos island, probably meeting Luke that in that period followed Paul in the its second apostolic tour. Luke didn't feel himself to be able to write for the Hebrews and invited John to find a proper person. But when the author wrote, close to John, he was not in exile, because both were free to stir (Ap 2,5) and they had available abundance of adjourned information.
Other places are not even mentioned.
The author of the apocalypse was autonomous from the customs of the scribes of Israel, but sincerely inserted in the Jewish faith. This asks for an autonomous setting, therefore geographically separate from the common Hebrew background, and well organized with own researchers and own culture. It asks for an enough power, made surer by an elevated and isolated geographical position, that allowed not to owe him to defend from many and not to have to account to many. A community of this type often results more open to international contacts and she knows how to see better aspects of the national reality that others don't gather, in our case the holy character of Jerusalem.
Only the city of Gamla, castled in a "desert", is the ideal background for the Apocalypse. She dealt her own oil, produced in "ritually pure" way, and she could be in contact for this with cities of Asia minor. For the same motive, it is verified that it was in close contact with the Temple in Jerusalem.
Apocalypse, Letters and Gospel of John are explained from the point of view of Gamla.
Gamla and the Apocalypse are in hold relation among them:
- the aversion of the Apocalypse for Rome (ex-Zealots) and for Jerusalem (distance and independence from capital Jerusalem), yet, without the favor of these powers, Gamla very authoritative (toward the 7 Churches),
- the mihveks - white dress,
- the coin and the redemption,
- possibility to also have safety after the destruction in Jerusalem (and therefore after the invasion of the region): then situation in elevated place, out of the region, strengthened.
— Ap 19,20; 20,14-15; 21,8 - The «lake ignited in fire» is an incredible image, but that could easily be born observing from Gamla the red hot sunsets on the Galilee Lake.
— Ap 8,8 - «The second angel played: as a great mountain (the inhabitants of a mountain) ardent of fire(of the Spirit Saint) was thrown in the sea (among the people of the Mediterranean sea), and a third part of the sea became blood(it welcomed the testimony and it became witness)». This suits well for the mission that they had to develop the inhabitants of Gamla, converted to Christ after having tried «to abduct him to do him king» (John 6,14; Matt 28,16-20), and sent by him to teach and to baptize (Matthew 28,16-20).
The calyx of the Apocalypse concerns both the wine of the prostitution in Babylon -Jerusalem, and the wine of the ire of God. The cup of libation, concerns instead the cult to God and the fury of the ire of God. This has to be the explanation of the mysterious calyx engraved on the coins of Jerusalem and Gamla in the years of the Jewish Rebellion. The rebels generally intended it as the time when God would have freed them. But the Christians of Gamla and many others in Israel knew that Jerusalem would have been destroyed, therefore for these the calyx was sign of wait that God redeemed the holy Jerusalem, or rather that he made her to rise from the corruption. To Gamla they corrected the meaning of the "calyx" but they assumed it as symbol of the Jewish unity toward the power of Rome, also without the rebellion and the weapons.
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The number 666: the "beast"
From the point of view of whom has written the Apocalypse, a figure is particularly adverse: the "beast". It is the famous number 666.
The number refers to a reality well known by who wrote (in a place) and by who read (in different places of Asia minor and Palestine), because it was an international reality.
It is not a surreal being, because "who has intelligence" can calculate its name, using the number that is "a number of man" (in Greek, as in Jewish, to write the numbers they are used the letters of the alphabet). But it doesn't be only one man, in fact the "beast" has "seven kings and seven mounts". It is easy to understand that it is the Rome power and that the point of view is that of the Zealots.
On the Roman power she sits another figure, that of the "woman prostitute", that is realized to be Jerusalem as capital of the earth of Israel (Ap 18,24 and Lk 13,34: «in it blood of prophets was found»).
The Apocalypse speaks about the Rome power as of an element of corruption for Jerusalem, at that point to transform her in "Babylon". So that this «contaminates all the earth (of Israel)» (Ap 13,18; 17,1-5). Also such a concept is typical of the sect of the Zealots, whose ideas persisted to Gamla, even though attenuated, still after the adhesion to Christ.
Within the "beast" there is besides the "beast that was and that is not", or rather that is dead from not too long; "it is the eighth (king) and one of the seven, the fifth one ("the first five are fallen"), and it comes for the downfall" (Ap 17,10-11). How does it be explained all of this?
A very upsetting fact had happened in AD 42 (F. Josephus, Jewish War, II,184-203): the Rome emperor Caligula (Gaius Caesar) had sent his legate Petronius with the army to put his own statues in the Temple in Jerusalem. Intent how much sacrilegious, to which opposed him "the Jews with his wives and his children", ready to die to prevent such a abomination.
Let's therefore suppose that the "beast that was and that is not" is Gaius Caesar and here the account is right: the kingdom of Caligula is the fifth one departing from the first triumvirates (first triumvirates, second t., Octavianus, Tiberius, Caligula), but he is also the eighth person that has reigned to Rome and on Palestine, beginning from Gneus Pompeus (Pompeus, Caesar, Crassus, Octavianus, Anthony, Lepidus, Tiberius, Caligula). The number of Gaius Caesar would be 616 (= GaioV + Kaisar), but the author of the Apocalypse plays on the names and gets the number 666 (= GnaioV + Kaisar) uniting the name of the first Roman that dominated in Palestine, Gneus (Pompeus), to that of the emperors, Caesar.
The Apocalypse, has been written therefore between 44 and 57 AD, or rather after the death of Gaius Caesar and during the "sixth kingdom", that of Claudius. The upsetting fact, resolved him just with the murder of Gaius Caesar, had happened from little time. Nothing prevents that the Apocalypse of John has been written to Gamla, that in that years was normally still inhabited and rather in the full its vigor.
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The Gamla coin
Gamla, to the beginning of the Jewish Rebellion, «for her strong position was filled with refugees» (Jewish War, IV,10). She could not abdicate the defense of so much people, she could not abandon the cause of the new holy Jerusalem, for which somebody in the city, with rudimentary means, minted a coin, that became sign and motivation of their martyrdom.
Among the coins found to Gamla they are particularly important the six pieces that bring the inscription: «For the redemption in the holy Jerusalem». This coin was minted to the time of the Jewish revolt between 69 and 70.
Particularity is not in the coins, because also in Jerusalem they were minted in that period a lot of it, but in the fact that those of Jerusalem, in 69 and 70, brought the inscription «For the holy Jerusalem» and only after the taking of Gamla they were coined with the addition «... redemption of the...».
Therefore Gamla had an own way of seeing the situation and didn't want to free the capital Jerusalem with the weapons anymore, but she wanted to redeem the holy part of Jerusalem, that maintained her more believer to God with the help of the «Jesus' Christ testimony». And she attended that God allowed the redemption through the facts that had to happen.
In the Apocalypse the same aspiration is found to the «redemption», hidden under the symbol of the «white dress» of which is dressed «the bride, the woman of the Lamb», «the new holy city Jerusalem».
To attend «the redemption of Jerusalem the holy» or «the new holy city Jerusalem» had the same meaning, because Jerusalem would have been "new" for her "redemption."
Gamla had the power to gather whose hoped for the redemption of the holy Jerusalem and, after her fall, also in Jerusalem her program was welcomed by many.
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The new holy city Jerusalem
In the Apocalypse, the protagonist, John, says: «And I saw to go down from the sky the new holy city Jerusalem, prepared by God as a bride adorned for her bridegroom... (Ap 21,2). The first one of seven angels came... and he transported me in spirit on a great and tall mountain and showed me the holy city Jerusalem (21,9-10)... The city is to form of square, its length is how much the width. And (the angel) measured the city with the reed for eleven thousand stadiums: the length, the width and the height are equal» (21,16).
A city that is tall as is long and wide can be imagined only as in the figure : in fact she resembles to "a bride adorned for her bridegroom". The bride, as he has well represented Mary to her wedding Franco Zeffirelli in the film Gesù di Nazaret, was prepared for the ceremony on a square sedan. Her head was covered with a veil. The height of the bride was about as the length and the width of the sedan.
But how the buildings can be imagined on a slope so inclined? Here what he says of Gamla Flavius Josephus: «The houses built on the steep slope were densely prepared the one above the other: it seemed that the city was suspended and always on the point to fall from the top on herself» (Jewish War, IV,7). This is also a test that Gamla is really identifiable with the ruins rediscovered from the archaeologists of the Golan, perfectly in conformity with to the description of Josephus.
But «Gamla leaned out to midday» (ibid. IV,8), while the new Jerusalem is built on the whole mountain; how does she catch sun the northern part? «The city doesn't need the sun, neither of the moon, to illuminate her, in fact the glory of God has given her light and its oil lamp it is the Lamb» (Ap 21,23). Therefore the description in the new Jerusalem require images that could come only from Gamla.
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Hebrews, Christians, Gentiles
To Gamla there were, therefore, many Christians (probably the "more than five hundred brothers" of 1 Kor 15,5-8), but the Gospel of John and above all the Apocalypse show a their tenacious attachment to the Jewish Law, because the words of Jesus were not in antithesis with the Judaism.
That Christians were full of the life brought from Jesus and able to collaborate to the redemption of the Gentiles for the God of the Hebrews.
Become Christians, declared themselves faithful Hebrews in all, also exploiting their political authority; and they were it. The archaeological excavations confirm it.
Their sincere Jewish faith and sincere Christian faith were united in this way:
«And they sing a new song: "You are worthy to take the volume and to open its seals, because you have been immolated and you have redeemed for God (the Hebrews' God) with your blood (men) of every tribe, language, people and nation (what were not from our religion) and you have constituted them, for our (of the Hebrews, precisely) God, kingdom and priests and they will reign above the earth (of Israel)"».
(Ap 5,9-10)
This means that the Lamb has redeemed many from the Gentes ("from the great tribulation", that is from out the Jewish people) and he has made them sharing of the inheritance of the Jewish people.
«And I saw as a sea of glass mixed to fire and the winners (or rather those that have become convincing witnesses) (what are coming) from the beast and from her image and from the number of her name, upright on the sea of glass with harps of God.
And they sing the hymn of Moses, God's servant, and the hymn of the Lamb saying: "Great and admirable are your works or Lord Almighty God: just and veracious your roads o King of the Gentes! Who won't fear, o Lord, and won't glorify your name? Since (you) only have the entitlement of it, because all the people will come and they will prostrate him in front of you, because the decrees of your justice are manifested"».
Ap 15,3-4
The Christians coming from the Nations have entered the inheritance through Jesus Christ, presented by the five works of John as "Witness" valid for the Jewish Law, they have been made equal to the Hebrews not by birth, but by redemption, by acquisition by the Witness of God.
«I know your tribulation and your poverty, but you are rich, and the calumny from whose proclaim themselves Jews and they are not it, but synagogue of satan» (this is a sign that the Apocalypse has been written for the observant Jews and faithful to God, over that to Jesus).
Ap 2,9
«And the dragon raged him against the woman and went to make war against the rest of her descent, against whose observe the commandments of God and possess the testimony of Jesus».
Ap 12,17
«Here it is the perseverance of the saints, that guard the commandments of God and the faith in Jesus» (that is the perseverance of the Hebrews in to sustain and to live the unity between Judaism and Christianity).
Ap 14,12
«The temple was filled with smoke by the glory of God and by its power, and nobody could enter the temple until the seven scourges of the seven angels didn't have term» (there was still the Temple and God is the God that has set its glory in the Temple in Jerusalem, that is clearly the Hebrews' God).
Ap 15,8
The Apocalypse (together with the Gospel of John and his three Letters) explains the meaning of this redemption and the symbol of the "white dress" used by some Jewish groups.
«You have redeemed for God with your blood (men) from every tribe, language, people and nation».
Ap 5,9
International crowd, redeemed, appears in white dresses: «A lot of crowd, that nobody could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, that were standing in front of the throne and in front of the Lamb, wound in white dresses».
Ap 7,9
Also this crowd, coming from the Gentes, could have white dresses as the «saints» Hebrews, because «they have washed their dresses and they have made them white in the blood of the Lamb».
Ap 7,14
The Apocalypse preannounce therefore:
A - 144.000 (symbolic number) redeemed ones coming from the "earth" of Israel:
Both the Hebrews and the Christians have in common the relation with the cross and Peter, on the Pentecost day, announced this as opportunity of conversion for whoever accepted the plan that God had established in the cross of Jesus:
«After, according to the pre-arranged plan and the prescience of God, he was delivered to you, you have nailed him on the cross for hand of cruel and you have killed him».
«And Peter said: "Repent you and every of you makes him to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of your sins; later you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
For you in fact it is the promise and for your children and for all whose are distant, how much he will call the Lord our God"».
At 2,23.38-39
B - an immense crowd of redeemed ones, white dressed, coming from the "great tribulation".
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To see a photography of Gamla: http://www.gamla.org.il/english/who.htm
Giovanni Conforti
Renewed on the 1st of February 2008
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