Prelude before Joseph's dream.

2,000-year-old ritual bath in Jerusalem

JERUSALEM (UPI) -- A two-thousand-year-old ritual bath was recently discovered inside Jerusalem's Western Wall tunnels the Israel Antiquities Authority said.

In a statement released Wednesday, the Authority said the ritual bath was found inside a building containing three halls dating back to the Second Temple period, not far from the Western Wall.

The edifice is built of delicately dressed ashlar stones and the architecture is similar to compounds King Herod built on the Temple Mount, and Hebron's Cave of Patriarchs, the authority said.

"It is interesting to see that in the middle of the first century they began making changes in this magnificent structure and a large ritual bath (mikveh) was installed inside its western hall where there were eleven steps descending to the immersion pool," Alexander Onn director of the excavations said.

"Immersing oneself in the mikveh and maintaining ritual purity were an inseparable part of the Jewish way of life in this period," he said.

The excavations were conducted together with the Western Wall Heritage Foundation. Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz in charge of the Western Wall said the cooperation between the authority and foundation ensures that no excavations approach the Temple Mount compound, a contact which is forbidden by Halachic law, the authority said.

The mikveh is a bath designed for ritual immersion in Judaism and is used by both men and women to achieve ritual purity.



Copyright 2009 by United Press International

This news arrived on: 09/23/2009
Below is an insight I bring to help you understand
more
fully what this story entails and its roots.

2,000-year-old ritual bath in Jerusalem

A Egyptian Mythology and Jewish comparison/
In Egyptian worship many thousands of years
prior to development of a full scale Jewish
religion embracing 12 tribes as the zodiac.
A Lake of purity was situated next to the
temple to allow priest to bath to purify self
before each sacrifice. like Yom Kippur service.
There were mikvaot and a laver in Herod's Temple.

Straight from the Bible God's mouth to Moses we
read hearsay testimony therein:

Leviticus 12 (New International Version)
Purification After Childbirth
1 The LORD said to Moses,
2 "Say to the Israelites:
'A woman who becomes pregnant
and gives birth to a son will be
ceremonially unclean for seven days,
just as she is unclean during her monthly period.
3 On the eighth day the boy is to be circumcised.
4 Then the woman must wait thirty-three days to be purified from her bleeding. She must not touch
anything sacred or go to the sanctuary until the
days of her purification are over.
5 If she gives birth to a daughter,
for two weeks the woman will be unclean,
as during her period. Then she must
wait sixty-six days to be purified from
her bleeding. for this purpose

a large ritual bath (mikveh) was
installed inside the
western lower wall of a temple.
The influence of the
Sun rising in the East demanded that.
Sort of a carryover from outlawed
now called mythological religions
of the past.