THE KNIGHTS TEMPLAR
by Erich Habich-Traut, Thursday, January 12., 2017
https://ehabich.info/singularity/templar/templar.htm


A short story about knights, freemasons, Jews,
the world bank and Solomons Temple, with an unexpected twist, that about covers it.

CONTENTS: 1. INTRODUCTION 2. TRAVELLER ADVICE 3. HEADQUARTERS IN JERUSALEM 4. KNIGHTS TEMPLAR AND FREEMASONS 5. FREEMASONS AND JEWISH LENDING 6. MODERN BANKING 7. EVIDENCE OF SOLOMONS TEMPLE 8. TRUE OR FALSE? 9. Now the only thing missing...

1. INTRODUCTION
Soon, again, will be Friday, the Thirteenth.
This is a historic date that has become synonymous with bad luck.

On Friday, October 13th, 1307, members of the the Knights Templar were massacred in their thousands.
Who ordered their arrests, torture and executions?

This is a point of debate, but it is most likely that it was by order of King Phillip IV of France, who owed them large amounts of money.

Until that date, the Knights Templar had been in charge of protecting pilgrims to the Holy Land.
They also built up a network of banking institutions.

The Knights Templar was founded by 8 knights in around 1120 AD, after the first Crusade.
They pledged oaths of poverty.

Soon the order became a military order and was endorsed by the Council of Troyes to guard the roads to Jerusalem.

2. TRAVELLER ADVICE
Don't try the 'Andouillette de Troyes sausages' when visiting Troyes. They are an acquired taste. They are awful and can lead to uncontrollable gagging. Believe me, I tried them...

3. HEADQUARTERS IN JERUSALEM
The Templars established their first headquarters on the Temple Mount.

The Dome of the Rock was believed to have been the site of the Temple of Solomon and was made into a church, called the Temple of the Lord.

On a visit to Jerusalem in 2010 I photographed the location.

Lodgings for the knights and stables were set up in the vicinity, in the Al Aqsa mosque, also on the Temple Mount.




The Knights Templar made extensive excavations during their occupation of the sites.

In the 1860's the British Army undertook a survey of the Temple Mount, were they found evidence of the Knights Templar excavating the area.

Shown on the left is a vertical tunnel that was dug by the Templars during their time in Jerusalem.

No archaeological excavations have been allowed on the Temple Mount during modern times.

Therefore, there is almost no archaeological evidence for the existence of Solomon's Temple
(I will explain this at the end of this article).

The precise location of the first Jewish temple on the Temple Mount is therefore open to conjecture,
but it is believed to have been near or on the Dome of the Rock.

Adjacent to the Dome of the Rock is seen a smaller structure, called the Dome of the Chain.

It was boarded up when we visited in 2010 by Muslim authorities that did 'renovations'.

The Knights Templar built a replica of the Dome of the Chain in London,
called the Temple Church. It was their English headquarters and treasury from 1185 onwards.

4. KNIGHTS TEMPLAR AND FREEMASONS
After the catastrophy of Friday the 13th, October 1307, the Knights Templar were soon disbanded.

Contributing to their downfall were forced confessions by the inquisitors, that told of heresy and secret initiation rites.

One of the charges brought by the church against the Templars involved an initiation ceremony were a rope had to be worn by new members around their neck.

Some of the Knights Templars escaped their persecution.

According to one theory,
the Knights were warned of their impending arrest and managed to sail with 18 ships from La Rochelle in France with large treasures on board.

Were those ships went is uncertain,
some believe they went to Oak Island in Nova Scotia, others believe they went to Scotland.

In 1440 the foundation for Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland was laid.

It has been claimed that it's layout bears a resemblance to the foundations of Solomons Temple.
According to some scholars, the layout of this temple was unknown until 400 years after the construction of Rosslyn Chapel.

A stone carving inside Rosslyn Chapel depicts a man wearing a loose rope around his neck,
whilst swearing an oath.

Dr. Robert Lomas, of the University of Bradford, a freemason himself,
argues therefore that the origins of
modern freemasonry can be traced to Rosslyn
and believes in a direct link to the Knights Templar.

Taking into account all available information,
I would say that the Templar excavations uncovered evidence of Solomon's temple.

5. FREEMASONS AND JEWISH LENDING

One of the causes of the downfall of the Knights Templar resulted from their banking services.

Although they pledged to an oath of poverty,
they amassed fortunes greater than the world had ever seen, until then.

Christians were forbidden to charge interest for their loans,
anything else was seen as usury,
a crime against the christian beliefs of the time.

To this date, Muslims are not allowed to charge interest for their loans, even in the banking system.

After the downfall of the Knights Templar,
there was only one group of people left willing and able to lend large sums of money to strangers.

Jewish moneylenders flourished in the consecutive centuries, because,
even thought the Torah forbids charging interest to fellow Jews, non-Jews are exempt from this rule.

Venice was the first city that welcomed Jews inside its city walls.

The rulers of Venice set up a ghetto, inside which Jews could conduct their business.

The origin of the word ghetto was not negative,
it was simply the Italian description of the neighborhood,
that used to be home to foundries, blacksmiths and metal workers.

This money lending and interest charging, which was only allowed by Jews, led to ressentiments and antisemitism.

The portrayal of Judas selling Jesus for pieces of silver and the idea that Jewish bankers on Wall street control the world economy led to the Holocaust.

But the Jews were not the first to lend money on an industrial scale.
It was the Knights Templar.

6. MODERN BANKING

Today, anyone can lend money.

Usury is in Christian belief the crime of charging poor people interest for money that they don't have, in the process making them poorer than before. Not only individuals are indebted to interest repayments.

Whole states teeter on the verge of bancruptcy as they struggle to keep up on interest payments, that they can never repay.

As a condition for further loans, at interest, the privatization of industries and public service sectors is demanded, taking away autonomy from states.

It is the symbol of the city of London, home to the greatest banking institutions in Europe, which is the dragon.

In the bible there is a brief passage, referring to a chain:

"Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven with the key to the Abyss, holding in his hand a great chain. He seized the dragon, the ancient serpent who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. And he threw him into the Abyss, shut it, and sealed it over him, so that he could not deceive the nations until the thousand years were complete. ..."

A thousand years?

Knights Templar, Freemasons or Jews are not to blame for the desolate state of current affairs.
Excessive greed and envy is another matter.

7. EVIDENCE OF SOLOMONS TEMPLE

A rather unlikely story.

I mentioned earlier that there is almost no evidence that Solomons Temple ever existed.

What is the evidence?

André Lemaire was the first to report an ivory pomegranate after observing (and most likely purchasing it) in an antiquities shop in the Old City of Jerusalem in July 1979.

It bears the inscription: "Holy to the Priest of the House of God".

At the time of its discovery, it was thought to have adorned the High Priest's sceptre within the Holy of Holies proving the existence of Solomon's Temple.

It apparently came from an excavation of a cave system by Ron Wyatt,
who found it in January 1979 in what has become known as the Garden Tomb in Jerusalem.

After the first scientific publication an English version of the article was published in Biblical Archaeology Review in 1984, instantly attracting worldwide attention.

Meanwhile, the pomegranate had been smuggled out of Israel and had been placed on exhibit in the Grand Palais in Paris.

In 1989, the pomegranate was purchased by the Israel Museum in Jerusalem from an anonymous collector for the sum of $550,000.

It was considered the most important item of biblical antiquities in the Israel Museum’s collection.

The pomegranate (43 mm. in height; 21 mm. in diameter) is carved of hippopotamus canine, with a single hole (6.5 mm. in diameter; 15 mm. deep) cut into its base, presumably for mounting on a rod or shaft.

Scholars have debated at length whether the letters as reconstructed from the ivory pomegranate inscription are authentic.

Do they actually go into the old break, or do they stop just short of the break—the latter of which suggests that the inscription is a modern forgery?

Prof. Yitzhak Roman is head of the Laboratory Department of Applied Physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

He wrote that the inscription show no signs of being a forgery.

The two main points were that, first, the existing letters are in fact truncated by an ancient crack, and second, that the patina inside the letters was not glued in place but natural.

In a meeting at the Israel Museum in June 2015, paleographers André Lemaire, Ada Yardeni studied the inscription together, focusing particularly on the letter taw.

It was agreed that this crucial letter did in fact go into the old break and is thus ancient.

No one has ever said clearly where the pomegranate was found.

We know it was found in a tunnel system during the Ark of the Covenant dig by Ron Wyatt.

Ron Wyatt said that he left two parts of the pomegranate in the cave with the Ark of the Covenant.

The shaft or rod of the pomegranate was left in the cave as evidence of where it came from, and also one of the leaves, to show folks later that the temple furnishings are associated with the ivory pomegranate.

This is either true or false.

8. TRUE OR FALSE?
When first reports of the discovery of the pomegranate and the Ark became public, there were demonstrations by religious believers, near or on the Temple mount, during the course of which over twenty people were killed.

The Israel Antiquities Authority have sealed up the entrance to the cave system, after a group of archaelogists died in the tunnel system on their way to examine the supposed hiding place of the Ark of the Covenant, by unknown causes.

It is thought that a find of this magnitude could lead to political and religious upheaval in the region.

2 Maccabees 2, New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition:
Jeremiah Hides the Tent, Ark, and Altar
Jeremiah came and found a cave-dwelling, and he brought there the tent and the ark and the altar of incense; then he sealed up the entrance.

9. Now the only thing missing...

...is that somebody opens the Garden Tomb cave and finds a Knights Templar (skeleton or otherwise),
guarding the Ark of the Covenant in Jerusalem.

References:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Knights_Templar

http://www.templemount.org/theories.html

http://biblehub.com/revelation/20-2.htm

http://www.robertlomas.com/Freemason/Origins.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usury

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/287951425_A_re-examination_of_the_inscribed_pomegranate_from_the_Israel_Museum

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivory_pomegranate

http://www.6000years.org/frame.php?page=ark_of_the_covenant

https://web.archive.org/web/20100115025132/http://www.bib-arch.org/news/news-ivory-pomegranate.asp

contradicting: http://members.bib-arch.org/publication.asp?PubID=BSBA&Volume=42&Issue=3&ArticleID=9

http://www.basarchive.org/sample/bswbBrowse.asp?PubID=BSBA&Volume=33&Issue=5&ArticleID=16

http://members.bib-arch.org/publication.asp?PubID=BSBA&Volume=42&Issue=2&ArticleID=6

http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-artifacts/inscriptions/analysis-of-microscope-photographs-the-ivory-pomegranate-inscription%E2%80%94preserved-and-missing/

http://aph.huji.ac.il/people/roman/index.htm