Reading the Bibles First Book of Kings
(or does God
really live in a street light ?)
Seattle Europe and Greece
Spring 2003
Thirty Two Years after King Solomon's Gate
Knowledge of religion began very late in life for me. But its
practice and application in life began sometime before my memory did. My parents
both lived exemplary Christian lives in every single respect, they just never
really talked about religion much. My mothers favorite expression about religion
was "Don't wear it on your sleeve". Their example in the practice of life was,
however, crystal clear. The family went to the Falmouth Episcopalian
church on Easter regularly for a few years, and some years we got there maybe
another half dozen times. It was quietly assumed that, as a member of the
family, "I believed", anything else was completely unthinkable. During my
early teenage years I went to the Methodist church in Cumberland by myself for a
few months to explore the assumption. I was even a member of the choir for a
short time. But sports soon replaced my formal education in the scriptures, and
then of course came Rock and Roll, Revolution, and the Sixties. "John" in my
mind, was a guy also named "Glen". By the time I got to college, the only thing
I really remembered about the bible was that Daniel escaped the Lions den and
that was where my name came from. Later on the Name began to really make sense
:)
I didn't volunteer to go to the Gezer archaeology dig because of
any particular religious zeal. I went to Tel Gezer because one of the prettiest
girls in my class was going (Joanne Hanson 74) and I was hoping to get to know her (yea ok
biblically probably too). She canceled at the last minute and I went anyway. (Probably better no Israeli Desert than one with me hot on her tail). So
it was that I found myself sitting in the middle of the Israeli Desert in
1971 with 150 assorted Biblical scholars, archeologist and other people devoted
to dusty subjects that all seemed to pale next to a good ole student riot
against the Vietnam war replete with tear gas, clubs, cops, and oodles of
excitement to go around. (Riots always seemed to go with Romance in those days).
As Bill Dever began his speech, I was sitting there wondering what the heck I
was doing there anyway.
It was not an inspiring speech. It was not supposed to be. If any
of those scholars had had a
clue what he was asking, then the competition for the spot would have probably
tried the values of the best of them. He made it sound like the supreme
sacrifice from the start. "We need three volunteers to dig a ditch and your not
going to learn ANY archeology but it will really help us out". No volunteers of
course, everyone was there at great expense precisely to learn archeology
(everyone except me of course). "This is going to be really hard work, we need
to dig down six meters on a five meter by five meter square, its all been dug
before, so you are just moving dirt". One graying minister volunteered. "We hope
there's something interesting at the bottom but we just really aren't sure." A
chubby middle aged Opera singer stood up and walked to the front to join the
minister. Silence. A long awkward silence. Several more requests later Bill Dever was
showing exasperation, he knew he was offering the opportunity of a lifetime. Then
giving vent to his exasperation, Bill Dever spoke those magic
words.... "COME ON PEOPLE... we really need this one"...."THIS IS ONE FOR THE
CAUSE". 
...the
words could have just come from Abbey Hoffman, Rene Davis, Tom Hayden, a Yippie
or even a Zippie. It was just too much for me. I shot my hand up, with a "Yea
I'll dig your ditch". I walked up to the front of the tables and shook hands
with my new partners. Together, we were the hands for Yigael Yadin's vision.
Together that summer we produced the first objective scientific evidence of the
Bibles relationship to actual human events.
It would be decades before I understood its personal
implications, or even considered that there were any. I would periodically say
to associates over the years that I had played a role in proving the bible.
Usually their attention would begin to wane about when I started to explain what
Solomon's gate was. They would sort of nod with a "That's cool", and a "whose
playing at the dance on Saturday ?" or something similar. I relegated it to the
same class and went on about my life with a particular and fulfilling enjoyment,
often at odds with its circumstances. I didn't really notice it at the time, but
my life took a turn that summer. A turn toward the unusual, even toward the
bizarre. A blizzard of strange coincidences over the decades became something I
tried not to talk about. Weirdness is something to hide to in modern life.
Then A&E made a movie called "Digging for Truth". I remember
watching it for the first time and challenging the TV to talk about it, and
being delighted and shocked when it did. At the peak of middle age, I suddenly
realized that the most important thing I ever did, or would do, in life, was to
dig a ditch at the age of 19.
The title "Digging for Truth" was laden with Irony and
coincidence for me. I was in the middle of a years long battle with the FBI over
the true facts of the largest, longest, terrorism case in history, spending my
time in Libraries and my money on databases and investigators. I was still, it
seemed, "Digging for Truth" in a world that seemed full of nothing but
Government lies.
Slowly it began to dawn on me that here was a possible, if
improbable, explanation for the endless series of wild, improbable coincidences
that had puzzled me for the last thirty years. There were so many of them that I
had long ago stopped telling people about even the short list. Why me ? I kept
asking myself. If anybody had told me the stories I had, I would have written
them off as crazy or a liar in a New York minute. But I had been there, seen it
and experienced it for myself, I knew it was all real. I had jumped from Gacy's
truck, shook hands with the shooter in the days before columbine, gotten stuck
in the greyhound station in Boulder on Christmas night 1996 etc ad infinitum. I
just had no logical explanations. Christian dogma was full of such stuff, even
if I always took that stuff with a double dose of salt myself. I certainly had
never come up with any workable explanations myself...so?
I had carried a bible around with me for six years. Ever since
the year when the Unabom case started for me. I had never read it, but was
always intending to read it when the time was right in life. I decided to go
back to Israel to a dig run by an old friend, and take the bible I had been
carrying with me, and read it during the trip. What better place to read a
Gideon than on the road to Jerusalem.
I interrupted my packing for the trip to watch the movie "Dogma"
which was playing on TV. It was a hoot. The irreverence for me was a total
delight. I suspected that the movie was probably closer to reality than the dry
sanitized versions of religious events we were always getting. If there were
people who were really hooked in to other worldly things then I figured they
probably had to be a little off the beam compared to regular folk. The movie
really did start me to thinking about the issues involved in a refreshing way.
I was pondering the issue of a false Gods, the golden calf, and
other religious issues brought up by the movie, so I decided there was no time
like the present to start. I opened the bible I had been carrying for so long
and started to read it. Genesis seemed like a stretch from what I had heard, so
I did not start at the beginning. I started at the book in which I felt a
personal stake, One Kings of course. One Kings contains the Solomonic passages
proven at Gezer thirty years ago partially with the sweat of my back. I was 19
years old at the time. The temperature at the bottom of the Solomonic square hit
125 that summer in the direct Israeli sun. I think I can say primarily with the
sweat of my back...although we each went to our physical limits on that dig.
It was a dense read. I slogged my way through a page and was
exhausted by the effort. An effect that would last all the way through Kings 1,
but have not experienced on any other set of passages since.
The doorbell rang. My mail was here. Due to my involvement in
Unabom, I have for years maintained a postal drop in Denver and had my mail
forwarded to me wherever I was living. Since I would be gone for 4 months, I had
them send me my mail before I left. During the conversation with Mail Boxes etc
to arrange the drop, they had mentioned a package that they questioned, it
looked suspicious to them. I wasn't really worried, the site had been up for
four years and nothing dangerous had arrived so far, so I just told them to
forward it on to me and I would check it out.
I spotted it immediately as I opened the mail box. What was this?
Wrapped in a brown paper bag was what appeared to be a stiff, very heavy
package. As I picked it up it seemed too heavy. It really was suspicious. It was
so heavy it felt like it could easily contain a pipe. Whoa. I tried to see who
it was from. The return address was a Kevin somebody in Orlando Florida. I
didn't know anybody in Orlando Florida? I hadn't ordered anything I was aware
of*. The package started to give me a really bad feeling. What should I do ? I
did not really want to open it. My lord it really felt like it could be a bomb
or something. In four years of running Unabombers.com this was the first package
I had ever received which seemed suspicious to me. I decided to test it. I
opened the window. threw it high in the air and it landed with a thump on the
concrete 20 feet below the window. Well, it didn't go off, so what should I do
now? I decided to consult the police. There was no way I was going to open this
one. I called the bomb squad.
I didn't want to start a fuss and disturb my neighbors so I asked
if they could QUIETLY send one guy out, without the sirens and the whole circus.
They said no. We follow procedures when responding to a suspicious package call.
"Well then could I just bring it down and have you look at it". They
emphatically advised against that. "Well wait a minute, let me try to confirm
the return address first", I said. I went out to look at it and tried to look up
the "Kevin Pagan" guy in Orlando and got nothing. I called back. "Well I guess
you had better send them". I told them why I was worried. You see, "I run this
web site named Unabombers.com". That got her attention. She asked me to describe
the package. "Well wait a minute, it's out back let me go look at it". She
advised me not to go near it. "Lady I just threw it out a window and it didn't
go off so its not going to go off just looking at it", I said. Then I had to
explain my test. It didn't seem to make much sense to her, it still does to me
:). I carried my cell phone out back and began to measure the package and give
her the details. When I got to the address I read off the "Pagan" name and then
got to the written "666" in the zip code. "Maam? Maybe you better send somebody
who really knows what they are doing" :). No rush I said, it's just sitting out
back by itself. 
It took them forever to get to my location. After a while I
chuckled, realizing they were probably pouring over my web site trying to make
heads or tails of it. During the wait I realized that "Pagan" and "666" clearly
implied religion, not Unabom. I had put up a page on my site about Solomon's
Gate with my picture... I changed my mind as to its possible motivation. When a
bomb squad officer named John Lewitt (john.lewitt@seattle.gov) arrived, I tried to explain my new theory.
He was "into" the bible he said, so I invited him in and showed him the Gezer
page. "Then your going to love this", I said.
At this point I had little doubt. I knew
this one was a bomb, everything seemed to point to it. When Sergeant Ken Crow
informed me it was a book I was stunned and a little embarrassed at all the
fuss. They were very nice about it, I must say, and told me I had
done the right thing. This had all the warning signs they said. I was
right to call them. I still felt like an idiot :). I still wanted them to open
it and they did. Then I got a look a the title. "The Macintosh Bible".
I had spent 20 years of my life reading yards and yards of
technical gobbley gook about Macintosh computers, and never even an hour reading
the central religious work of our time. Then in the midst of personal
reflections about false gods, as I begin to read the Bible for the first time in
my life, its a "Macintosh Bible" that gets me to call the bomb squad for the
first time ever.
In my mind, as I reflected on it, this one rapidly rose up the
ranks of the long list of strange coincidences of my life. I continued my
packing. I started to walk to the store later that evening to get some supplies.
As I walked, a street light went out exactly as I walked underneath it.
Not an uncommon event in Seattle. As I continued, the exact same thing happened
at the exact same spot on the next light. I noticed. I kept walking. When the
third went out directly above me I was impressed. I kept walking. I got to the
fourth light and pointed my finger up at it at the right spot, expecting it to
go out....and nothing. Oh well. I continued to walk. It would be a few more
months before I got to the passages that say "Tho shalt not test God". I turned
the corner and in the next block, it happened again, then again on the very next
street light, then nothing. I got my supplies and as I returned to my apartment
several of the lights (not all) went back on, again right as I walked precisely
underneath.
I guess it could have happened to anybody. It
was just a strange day for it to happen to me.
I hopped on a plane to London, wondering what
the trip would be like. London was fun, Stonehenge amazing, Paris interesting.
On the road from Paris to Marseille I started thinking about seeing the
Solomonic gate at Hazor, and why it had proved so difficult to get any evidence
at all of King David, while there was so much evidence of Solomon now in the
archeological record. The early Kings passages I was reading talked a great deal
about King David. The drive started getting a little long. I decided that
"budget be damned" I was going to pull off at the very next town and cut the
rug. It was time to find a bar with a band and cut loose a little. The next town
turned out to be Avallon France. When I saw the square I realized, I had stopped
there 30 years earlier on my way to dig up the Gezer Gate. It had one open bar
near the town square.
A local band was playing that night. A really really really
excellent blues band. After a few drinks and a few songs I was really enjoying
myself. Then I saw the posters plastered all over the walls with the large words
"King David!!! The lead singer's, name was "David Curci and the "King" was for
BB King. To get an impression of what a great exotic evening it was in this tiny
Medieval French village.. listen to his band play Stormy Monday (MP3 Format) and
imagine hearing the Lyrics "Lordy have mercy on me" in the midst of amused
astonishment at the very moment of spotting the big "King David" words in the 150
or so posters plastered all over the bar. Pretty funny. (King David Band)
Needless to say I kept reading, waiting and wondering what if
anything was going to happen next.
I stopped in Avignon for a few days, toured the Papal palaces
there. By this time I was up to 1 Kings 13. I stopped at:
When King Jeroboam heard what the man of god had cried out
against the alter at Bethel, he stretch out his hand from the altar and said
"Seize him". But the hand he stretched out toward the man shriveled up so that
he could not pull it back" (Paralyzed in some versions).
later in the same passages: "So the man of God interceded with
the Lord, and the King's hand was restored and became as it was before".
I headed across southern France toward the Italian border. It was
a long drive again and late at night I was looking for anyplace to pull off the
road for some sleep. I found a dirt road with an alcove and drove in a half a
mile, turned around in some guys driveway, and parked in an alcove back near the
road to get some shuteye. I turned the van off and went to climb over the seats
to get in the back. Both legs went numb with ferocious painful cramps. Must have
been the long drive. I went to open the door to get out and could not move my
legs. After three attempts to move, I stopped to catch my breath. I was quite
alarmed. Could I be having a stroke?
At that point a small car from the driveway came racing down the
dirt road, slowing and reving his engine to the max as he passed. He roared out
onto the road, drove several hundred feet down the road and returned gunning the
engine all the time. He roared back past me to his house, spun the car around
throwing dirt and repeated a second pass blowing his horn. As he came around for
a third I split. My legs were suddenly completely normal. The car followed me
for miles racing up to my rear bumper and pulling off. I was seriously concerned
the maniac might have a gun. He eventually turned around and I pulled off
another 50 miles down the road, and hopped in back...without difficulty.
Needless to say I kept reading, waiting and wondering what if
anything was going to happen next.
I drove through Italy on the Old Roman roads winding endlessly
through the mountains, one hairpin turn after another, until finally I came to a
wide spot in the road. A valley stretching down to the coastal plain. I turned
right and headed for the seashore of the "Italian Riviera" stopping at a
campground.
Early in the evening I resumed reading Kings over a glass of wine
at the Campground restaurant. The passages seemed so dense, ladened with
meanings that took time to think over. And now I was stuck on one in particular.
1 Kings 20:35.
"Then one of the members of the prophetic guild said to
another at the Lords request, "strike me now". But when the man refused to
strike him, he said to him, "Because you did not listen to the command of the
Lord, when you leave me a Lion will kill you". When he left him, the Lion met
him and killed him"
Now wait a minute I said to myself. Could I do this? Not really
it seemed. It started a dozen questions in my head. The one had not said
to the other "This is the word of the Lord" or nothing like that. Maybe the guy
had no idea. Should I accommodate every Masochistic Son of a Bitch that walked?
What if I lived in New York next to an S and M bar ? My knuckles would wear out.
Is this really the Lords way? Did the man deserve it cause he did other things,
or did the Lord just not really like this guy that much. What if he asked me to
do the same? Wasn't this the exact phraseology of your common everyday lunatic?
"I shot the president cause I heard voices in my head and I trusted in the
Lord"?. So if I ever went crazy I should just "go with it"? Come on, get real. I
don't strike people and I don't expect to get struck. But still, if this came to
me as a test what would I do? Was I going to be damned for being in my eyes good
and correct in my dealings with my fellow man? Eaten by a Lion no less? I
finally decided that for some reason the Lord seemed to like me so he probably
would not ask such a thing of me. So far, anyway, life had been nothing short of
a blast. So somebody up there had to like me. Then there was all the near
escapes of my life. I had made a lark out of courting danger and skipping
through it, often stupidly, often humorously, most of the time in a near perfect
imitation of an Inspector Clouseau movie. If the Lord didn't like me, at least
he must find me kind of humorous and worth having around for a good laugh once
in while I thought. After all did I or did I not have a role and a place in
deciding my own life. Was I a separate entity or not?
Since it seemed I would not have much say in the matter anyway, I
put the Bible back in the van and went into the bar for some more wine. It had
been a wonderful friendly place so far and I had seemed to be immediately
accepted by the folks there. Dancing it up with the elder daughter had seemed to
get me some good points. I was struck and surprised by the warmth and the fun of
the of the people there and the Mother/Owner with her shock of read hair was
taking good care of me. I had driven all the way from the French Riviera on the
secondary Roads only, it had been exhausting. This was the first wide spot in
the endless mountains of the road and I simply turned right toward the ocean.
Then the next day I had discovered it was Albenga, the site of where the
Albengsie Crusade had started. It had some great museums to visit
Later that night after I took a swim on the Italian Riviera, and
showered. I was sitting with some people from the campground on the rocks near
the opening to the sea and I looked over at the seat where I had sat reading and
considering the troubling passage. Right there above my head, where I had sat
was the 20 foot metal banner spread across the entrance ..Proudly displaying
"Camping Lionetta". The lady with the red hair... her name was Mama Lionetta :)
I guess better a Lionetta than a Lion :).
If a reader finds this who can take a picture of the Lionetta
Campground entrance banner (and Mama Lionetta!) and email it to the webmaster@KingSolomonsGate.com it would be
greatly appreciated and promptly posted.
Needless to say I kept reading, waiting and wondering what if
anything was going to happen next.
At last I arrived in Pisa. During my first trip to Europe on my
way to the Solomonic Gate 30 years earlier, I had split from the rest of our
college group in Paris and hitchhiked from Paris to Rome to "experience the real
culture". In Pisa on that trip, I gave up the effort and took a night train to
Rome barely making the flight to Israel much to Chaplin Don Hobson's
dismay. (more like a total freakout). That night while waiting for the train I
had explored Pisa, stumbled upon the tower, then took the night train into Rome.
It has been a special place for me since. That morning I read the final chapter
of Kings about Jehoshaphat including the phrase:
"In everything he walked in the ways of his father Asa and did
not stray from them: he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord...." "He rid
the land of the" (abomination of) "the rest of the male prostitutes."
That evening, I re-explored Pisa, wandering among its amazing buildings with Giant Doors and oversized windows. Suddenly and in a very shocking manner, I was crudely propositioned
by a transsexual male prostitute with breasts no less. Later that evening, as I
walked across the plaza in front of the tower of Pisa I shook my head thinking
of the incident and said aloud to myself "...what an Abomination
!!!". Right at that moment, late at night, in the middle of the square in front
of the leaning tower, a seagull swooped down at me and began to fly circles
above my head. 15 feet above my head the gull circled 20 times and more
screeching all the time. For some reason at that point I said aloud "Yea and you
want them out of your church too don't you". (I had been thinking of the
Pedophile Priest issue whilst headed toward Rome.) The gull flew off over a
nearby building out of sight. It took a slow loop around the outside Rim of the
plaza, and then returned for yet another twenty screeching circles. By the
time it flew off I was dizzy from turning around, and laughing like a maniac at
the sight. Some local tower maintenance workers saw the spectacle, I have no
idea what they thought. I walked off bewildered and amazed and spent the next
day thinking about nothing but what had happened.
The experience left me with a number of questions. What was the
meaning of the second set of circles. Was it a response to what I said? Second
time in Pisa? Things had gotten pretty weird but could I really call it divine?
I was never "spoken too" (and can still say that:) ), maybe it was just a crazy
gull and another weird coincidence. A nest in the middle of the squares
lawn...unlikely. But what did it mean, or did it mean anything at all ? A
response to what I said. Was the second pass and pause of the circling a
rejection of what I said, a rejection of me?. What was going on here anyway.
The next day I drove to Rome and began a week of exploring its
wonders. My first stop was the Vatican. I parked the van across from the
Vatican, and went to get some lira. At the Bank door I was stumped. Some kind of
crazy circular door with buttons left me dumbfounded and I could not get in. As
I stood there in puzzlement, a priest walked up and said in American "let me
help you". He pushed something and we were in. I stood in line for a time,
then the teller said something in Italian, then in English, "your number
?" What number ? He pointed to a machine that dispensed numbers. I was
again dumbfounded when the same effeminate priest walked over to assist. He
punched the button and pulled the number out. His face sort of fell, I thought,
as he handed me the number. The number was 86. 86 means you are 86'd out
of the bar to me. It startled me. What was this? Did it mean the Priest was 86'd
(as in thrown out of a bar), or was I 86'd. It was my number after all. It
left me more puzzled than ever.
Rome is a noisy city. Too noisy for me to sleep in a "RV". So I
drove back up to the fields of Tuscany to find a camping spot. Tuscany is
beautiful, pastoral, and very very pleasant. The next morning I awoke to the
sounds and views of a Tuscan pastoral valley. I opened the door of the van and
decided to spend the morning continuing my Biblical reading because it was
just such a nice spot I didn't really want to leave. Just as I started to
read a strange large fly appeared in the doorway with a long black body of an
inch and a half, and another half inch stinger off its tail. It hovered
right at the very center of the doorway as I watched it. Initially I was worried
about getting nailed by the nasty stinger but it just kept hovering there right
in the center of the doorway facing inward at me. About five minutes into the
event I began to realize that this was another strange one. It would
occasionally swoop off to chase a fly out of the doorway, and then immediately
return to its sentinel spot. I started to studiously ignore it and continue
reading, occasionally glancing up at it. The stinger was always pointed out the
doorway. It seemed after a quarter an hour that it was somehow watching me. Then
after an amazing, ...astounding half an hour of this, it just few off.
I described the event to a Roman some days later over a bottle of
wine. He assured me that "Yes, Yes, they have those kind of flies in Italy and
they do that." Well...maybe...you couldn't prove it by me. To me it seemed and I
must admit, I still think it was, an answer to my question. I was not 86'd, the non communication communication it appeared would continue. It
was just too strange.
After Rome came Pompeii, and the schedule for the dig's start was
getting close. I was driving and seeing what I could fit in, rather than
reading. I crossed over the south of Italy, grabbed a ferry from Brindisi to
Greece, and then stopped in a small costal resort town of Paralia Greece just
out side of Thessaloniki.. Time was now critically short. Should I grab a flight
from Athens or Istanbul, or did I have what it took to drive all the way around
through Syria, or was I taking this Daniel thing a little to far? The Lions Den
is one thing, yet another for an American drive a van with "Solomonic Express"
painted on the side straight through Syria. I spent three days there, and in the
end, I walked into a beautiful local church dedicated to some Saint whose name
was lost in Greek to me to contemplate and make up my mind. I had gotten to know
some of the locals, and had proudly told them of what I did at Gezer and
it created a bit of a stir in the small and very Religious town. For the first
time in my life, the Gate made me a sort of mini celebrity, even if it was only
among a few locals in a tiny Greek town. It is to that which I ascribe what
happened next. As I rose to leave the church, this tiny little wizened little
old lady walked up to me with eyes as big as a pizza and said "You Papaaa", "You
Papaaa", "I see", "I see", making the motion of a crest around her head.
Interesting event given the circumstances of the trip... Sweet little old lady,
but very mistaken I suspect.
The next leg of the Trip gets its own page
Upcoming: "Flowers and Onions... a nearly pornographic
prophetic dream"
* I had actually ordered a piece of software three months
earlier. I did not realize that the offer included a free Macintosh Bible. Three
months later, even the main order had entirely slipped my mind. Why it took so
long to get to me, or why the guy packaged it like he did I have not a clue. You
would have to ask whomever it was that sent it to me...and sent it to me three
months late.
**See Pictures Hazor01
02
03 taken about five blocks from the
little old ladys church. Photos looking away from the beech
This is just one of the Paranormal Events surrounding
King Solomon's Gate
The first Archaeological Proof of the history of the Torah, Bible, and Quran
