The Templer Jesus Fish

by

John Presco

Copyright 2023

Chapter: The Kingdom of the Twin Pines

There is something archaic, even mystical, about going through an old trunk with an old Nun, especially when that trunk is full of valuable, lost, history. Janke von Stuttmeister felt he was in a the basement of the Vatican, where the Pope hoards the most precious secrets of the world. In the case of Carl Janke’s Trunk, one could see there had been a religious schism and the surviving information of a great purge had been squirrelled away in the attic of the Ralston House on the grounds of Norte Dame de Namur, that had just been sold to Stanford University.

“You arrived in the nick of time. No telling what Stanford would do with this trunk! said Sister Victoria.

“You’re talking but a very prestigious university!” Janke offered, with his head cocked to the side.

“When they came around to inspect our college, I told three of them there was something fishy going on with the land in Twin Pines Park. A Deed that was filed in the Belmond City archives – is gone! One gentleman, cringed! This was the last thing Stanford needed was a controversy over land they are hungry to own!”

“Whoa! What is this?” exclaimed Janke. They had just started to go through a stratum of old photographs that recorded the history of the Piest Templers in Jerusalem.

“I have a photograph just like this. My mother said it was taken in the Oakland Hills. Look. This is my blog! “

Sister Victoria gasped as she looked at the family gathered between two trees.

“That’ not the Oakland Hills. These photos were taken at Twin Pines Grove, and were at the epicenter of Belmond.”

Were? Are they still there?”

“No! They cut them down in the middle of the night. The city put up notices saying they had to come down because they had grown too close to one another!”

“What a shame!”

“There’s more. They cut these trees down in the middle of the night. They had spotlights that woke me. I came down here and a back-hoe was digging deep holes all around where the trees stood.”

“Why did they do that?”

“I asked he foreman, and he said it was none of my business. “Go back to bed Old Woman!” Janke, I suspect your family were Evangelical Lutheran Piests – who may have gone to Israel. Prussia wanted to purchase California. They wanted to build a Templer Kingdom on this very land. Belmond was going to be the Capitol. There were going to be……Twin Kingdoms…..Twin Fish!”

Victoria saw that Mr. Stuttmeister was not listening. In his hand he had old maps that were signed by

Gottlieb Schumacher

“Oh my!” Sister Victoria made the sing of the cross. “These are illustrations of the Holy Land.

“These are archeological maps. Gottlieb was looking for something – very important?”

“Mr. Stuttmeister. I have to tell you something very dreadful. In the morning after they cut down the pine trees, and went to look at the damage. All the holes were filled in. Then, I went to look at the tombstones of Carl Janke and his wife, but, they were gone!”

What!!! They dug up my great grandparents? Where did they put them?”

“I asked, and they refused to tell me. I suspect they were looing for….gold!”

Janke picked up a journal written by Gottlieb.

“They were looking for King Solomon’s gold. Gottlieb had a theory the Jews came across the water and found the Incan Kingdom – that was covered in gold. But, there was another Eldorado, “

Sister Victoria picked up another pamphlet, and crossed herself again.

“Gottlieb suspected the people who wrote the Torah, lived amongst the Incans. There was a Jewish Colony!”

“In 1936, high ranking Nazis came to California to look for a lost gold mine – and temple!. Is it possible the descendants f these Nazis – disappeared my ancestors?”

“Look. Here are maps of Tel Megiddo better known as…..ARMAGEDDON!’

“What are they doing? Looks like they are building a cover over a deep hole!”

To be continued!

John Presco

President: Royal Rosamond Press

Hoffmann’s literary output focusses on his vision of a New Jerusalem, a community based Kingdom of God that would eventually spread over all the nations:

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

Tel Megiddo (Hebrew: תל מגידו; Arabic: مجیدو, Tell el-Mutesellim, lit. “Mound of the Governor”; Greek: Μεγιδδώ, Megiddo) is the site of the ancient city of Megiddo, the remains of which form a tell (archaeological mound), situated in northern Israel near Kibbutz Megiddo, about 30 kilometres (19 mi) south-east of Haifa. Megiddo is known for its historical, geographical, and theological importance, especially under its Greek name Armageddon. During the Bronze Age, Megiddo was an important Canaanite city-state and during the Iron Age, a royal city in the Kingdom of Israel.

Megiddo drew much of its importance from its strategic location at the northern end of the Wadi Ara defile, which acts as a pass through the Carmel Ridge, and from its position overlooking the rich Jezreel Valley from the west.

Excavations have unearthed 20 strata of ruins since the Neolithic phase, indicating a long period of settlement.^[1] The site is now protected as Megiddo National Park and is a World Heritage Site.^[2]

North American migrations[edit]

Numerous waves of Old Lutherans immigrated to the United States as well during this time period. Among them was a group from Prussia of about 1000 Old Lutherans. They were from Erfurt, Magdeburg and the surrounding area, led by J. A. A. Grabau. They emigrated to the United States in summer 1839. Grabau and his friends founded the “Synod of Lutherans immigrated from Prussia”, afterward known as the Buffalo Synod.^[10]

Thousands of other Old Lutherans settled in the Midwest and Upper Midwest of the United States during this period. In addition to Old Lutherans there were also Neo-Lutheran immigrants from the German Kingdom of Saxony, where there was no evangelical union. Lutheran pastor Martin Stephan and nearly 1100 other Saxon Lutherans left for the United States in November 1838, eventually settling in and around St. Louis, Missouri in the Saxon Lutheran immigration of 1838–39. These were the predecessors to the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod.^[7]

Gottlieb Schumacher

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gottlieb Schumacher (21 November 1857 – 26 November 1925) was an American-born civil engineer, architect and archaeologist of German descent, who was an important figure in the early archaeological exploration of Palestine.

Early life[edit]

Schumacher was born in Zanesville, Ohio, where his parents had immigrated from Tübingen, Germany. His father, Jacob Schumacher, was a member of the Temple Society, a German Protestant sect which in the 1860s established the German Colony in Haifa, Palestine. In 1869, Jacob Schumacher settled with his family in the Templer colony, where he became the chief architect and builder.

Career[edit]

Engineer, surveyor and architect[edit]

Gottlieb studied engineering in Germany, and then returned to Palestine in 1881.

He quickly became a leading figure in the construction of roads and houses. He was appointed Chief Engineer for the Province of Akko by the Ottoman government. Among his many works were the Scottish hostels in Safed and Tiberias, the Russian hostel in Nazareth, the cellars of the Rothschild winery at Rishon LeZion, and the bridge over the Kishon River.

One of his most important projects was the survey of the Golan, Hauran, and Ajlun districts, in preparation for the construction of the Damascus–Haifa railway, which branched off from the Hejaz railway at Deraa. As part of the same development he also extended the mole of the port of Haifa. In the course of this survey he produced the first accurate maps of these regions, along with detailed descriptions of the archaeological remains and the contemporary villages.

From 1886 he published articles reporting his discoveries in the Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins. These articles were reprinted in translation by the Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement. He published a series of books, also reprinted in English by the Fund.

Archaeologist[edit]

Megiddo[edit]

From 1903 to 1905 Schumacher carried out excavations at Tell el-Mutesellim, the mound containing the ruins of the ancient city of Megiddo. The first volume of his report on Megiddo, covering the stratigraphy and the architecture, was published in 1908. The second volume, a study of the small finds, was published in 1929 by Carl Watzinger and contained the material which survived destruction during World War I.

Schumacher’s approach to excavation was, like most of his contemporaries, based on the careful clearance of architectural horizons, rather than the dissection of layers of earth. However, by the standards of the day the work was carefully recorded. His report is illustrated with a wealth of photographs of the excavated areas. It also includes simple but beautifully drawn sections, both a main section across the site from north to south and smaller ones to illustrate detailed stratigraphic points.

His main excavated area at Megiddo was a trench 20–25 metres (66–82 ft) across, running north–south through the center of the mound, a method widely used in those days^[1] and influenced by Heinrich Schliemann‘s digs at Troy,^[2] but considered unfortunate by later archaeologist due to the very large amount of soil removed in a manner that offers little stratigraphic information to future researchers. The massive intervention in this relatively small tell led for instance to overlooking the potentially very important stele fragment of Pharaoh Sheshonk I, usually identified with biblical King Shishak, which was later found in the pile of dump created by Schumacher’s trench, thus out of its original stratigraphic context and rendered almost useless for dating purposes. If found in situ, the stele would have provided chronological evidence about the city from the time of Sheshonk’s campaign, related to the disputed historical existence of King Solomon (1 Kings 14:25; 2 Chronicles 12:1-12).^[3]

In the trench Schumacher identified eight strata, which he numbered from bottom to top. Most of them may be dated, by the pottery found in them, to the Middle Bronze Age II–Iron Age II periods. His work was the basis for later excavations by the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago in 1925-1939.

Schumacher uncovered a number of important buildings at Megiddo.

• Part of the Early Bronze Age palace later fully uncovered in Stratum XII of the Chicago excavations.
• An Iron Age IIA palace on the south side of the tell (called building 1723 by the Chicago excavators), from which he recovered a seal with a beautifully depicted lion and the words “Shema servant of Jeroboam”.
• Corbel vaulted tombs with no parallels in the southern Levant, in Stratum IV.

Khirbet ed-Dikke[edit]

Among his discoveries was the ancient synagogue at Khirbet Dikke.

Last decades[edit]

With the outbreak of World War I, some members of the Templer community returned to Germany. Schumacher remained there until 1924, when he returned to his home on Mount Carmel near Haifa, where he died in 1925.

Maps of Transjordan[edit]

Schumacher’s maps of Transjordan and the Golan, prepared on behalf of the German Society for the Exploration of Palestine, were the first detailed maps of the area.

References

Christoph Hoffmann

For the German politician, see Christoph Hoffmann (politician).

Gottlob Christoph Jonathan Hoffmann (December 2, 1815 – December 8, 1885) was born in Leonberg in the Kingdom of Württemberg, Germany. His parents were Beate Baumann (1774-1852) and Gottlieb Wilhelm Hoffmann (1771-1846), who was chairman of the Unitas Fratrum congregation in Korntal. Gottlieb’s theological thinking was inspired by reading the works of Johann Albrecht Bengel, whose studies had led him to the conclusion that Christ would return in 1836.^[1]

Christoph Hoffmann had a Pietist-Christian background and enjoyed a Christian education with the Brethren congregation in Korntal.^[2] As a young man he studied theology in Tübingen. An opponent of the much better known liberal theologian David Friedrich Strauss, Hoffmann was elected to the First National German Parliament, which met in Frankfurt am Main in 1848.

The failure of his efforts to create a better Christian State through politics caused him to return to the roots of Christianity as expressed by Jesus. He became convinced that Jesus had called for a radical change of attitude in people. The better state of being after such a change of attitude he saw as the Kingdom of God which was to be established. To this end he applied for the position of a missionary inspector with the Protestant St. Chrischona Pilgrim Mission of Basel in 1853, but left the position after two years.^[3]

Hoffmann dedicated his life to collecting people striving for such a “kingdom” and setting up communities in which their striving would express itself in daily life. Initially (1854) known as the Friends of Jerusalem, the group in June 1861 formed itself into an independent Christian religious organisation known as Deutscher Tempel, its members identified themselves as Templers. In 1868 the Templers started to create settlements in Palestine.

The Templers could buy in Jaffa some houses and land from failed colonists around George Adams, returning to the USA in 1869. On 5 March 1869 also Peter Martin Metzler, a missionary of St. Chrischona and personal acquaintance of Hoffmann from his times at the Pilgrims’ Mission, sold his Jaffa-based mission station, including an infirmary and most of his real estate and other enterprises to the new colonists, before he left Jaffa.

While the Lutheran Evangelical State Church in Württemberg condemned and fought the Templers as apostates, the Prussian position was somewhat milder. Their settlement in the Holy Land found a warm support through Wilhelm Hoffmann (*1806-1873*), who was no apostate from the official church, like his younger brother Christoph.^[4] Wilhelm Hoffmann served as one of the royal Prussian court preachers at the Supreme Parish and Collegiate Church in Berlin and was a co-founder and first president of Jerusalem’s Association (German: Jerusalemsverein), a charitable organisation founded on 2 December 1852 to support Samuel Gobat‘s effort as bishop of the Anglo-Prussian Bishopric of Jerusalem.^[5] Between 1866 and 1869 Wilhelm Hoffmann dispatched his son Carl Hoffmann (1836-1903) as pastor of the German Protestant congregation of Jerusalem.

Hoffmann fell out with the Temple Society‘s co-leader Georg David Hardegg (*1812-1879*), so that in June 1874 the Temple denomination underwent a schism with Hardegg and about a third of the Templers seceding from the Temple Society and later mostly returning to an official German Protestant church body.^[6] Hoffmann died in the Templer settlement Rephaim near Jerusalem on 8 December 1885.

Hoffmann’s literary output focusses on his vision of a New Jerusalem, a community based Kingdom of God that would eventually spread over all the nations:

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

The liturgical agenda was subsequently modified to appease many of the objections of the dissenting Lutherans, and in 1830 Frederick William ordered all Protestant congregations in Prussia to celebrate the Lord’s Supper using the new agenda.

Rather than having the unifying effect that Frederick William desired, the decree created a great deal of dissent among Lutheran congregations.[4]

In a compromise with dissenters, who had now earned the name “Old Lutherans”, in 1834 Frederick William issued a decree which stated that Union would only be in the areas of governance and liturgy, but the respective congregations could retain their confessional identities. In addition to this, dissenters were forbidden from organizing sectarian groups.[3]

Upon Frederick William’s death in 1840, persecution of the Old Lutherans eased substantially. However, Old Lutherans continued to find themselves marginalized, especially the clergy who did not have many of the same rights and support accorded to clergy of the Union church.

Old Lutherans formed several synods (e.g. in 1841 the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Prussia, seated in Breslau, officially recognised on 23 July 1845), which through various mergers eventually resulted in the present-day Independent Evangelical-Lutheran Church (SELK).[6]

Australian and New Zealand migration[edit]

Main article: History of the Lutheran Church of Australia

See also: German Australians and German settlement in Australia

The first Lutherans to come to Australia in any significant number were immigrants from Prussia, who arrived in South Australia in 1838 with Pastor August Kavel. These immigrants created three settlements at Klemzig, Hahndorf, and Glen Osmond. In 1841, a second wave of Prussian immigrants arrived, led by Pastor Gotthard Fritzsche. His group settled in Lobethal and Bethanien.[7]

The Lutherans in South Australia established the Killalpaninna Mission (Bethesda) Station at Cooper’s Creek. Johann Flierl, the pioneer missionary of German New Guinea, served there for seven years (1878–1885).[8] When he left for Kaiser-Wilhelmsland in 1885, his cousin, also named Johann Flierl, replaced him at the mission.[9]

There have been five waves of migration into the Lutheran Church in New Zealand:[citation needed]