Megiddo Mosaic

This blog deals with the Megiddo Mosaic, on display until July, 2025, at the Museum of the Bible in Washington DC. A Thanksgiving treat.

The Mosaic Floor Dream

Years ago I had a prophetic dream dealing with our work. In the dream I was at an archaeological dig. I was doing much of the work. I kept digging down through layer after layer of debris that was in the way. Finally, I found a mosaic tile floor. A massive, beautiful, mosaic floor.

In the dream, once I found that floor, I could then build atop that firm foundation. Everything else to recover the text would now come together.

Ryan, of course, heard the dream about the day it happened. We both figured it was just a parable about our work. That was years ago.

Then here about a week ago, Youtube offered him a video about a real mosaic floor found in Israel. He sent me some links.

Museum Of the Bible Ad

The link here is to a Youtube video with an advertisement for the Megiddo Mosaic exhibit at the Museum of the Bible in Washington DC. That exhibit opened in September of 2024, and runs through July of 2025.

This mosaic floor is the remaining floor of the oldest known Christian Church ever found. The building itself no longer stands. The floor was found during excavations near a prison in Megiddo, Israel, in 2004. After discovery, it was left alone until an excavation team could get to it. They did so, finally, in early 2024.

I will give a few more links below. But let me explain why this is so serious to our work.

Finding this actual mosaic floor, out of an actual archaeological dig, which is currently on display in Washington DC, seems to be a marker that our work is now, finally, beginning to build back.

But then, there are the details of the mosaic itself. I can explain the specific geometry and use of most of that floor. The archaeologists have no idea what they have found. They have no idea how it was used. They have no idea how early Christianity was very different than the Christianity of today.

Let me return to those ides below, but give readers here some other videos in order to understand what was found.

CBN News Report

CBN is like the CNN of Christianity. In any case, ignore the propaganda and watch the pictures. This is rightly being called the most significant find since the Dead Sea Scrolls. I dare say they have no idea what they are looking at.

This short piece conflates the early Christian symbol of a fish, with the 2 fish found in the mosaic. But, this report goes on to explain how that floor calls out Jesus Christ as God.

This truth claim will be absorbed into the trinity in the early 300s. Any group that knew how to draw and use that floor design would not have been using the NT we know today. More on that below.

The table that you see in this video is explained as a communion table. But considering the floor, it was more likely the stand for their copy of the "Table" item from the tent of time.

A curriculum for students being trained in this room would likely bring out a different box or jar of items which would be used for that week's lessons. Parts from those boxes would be spread across the floor. Jars would be stored in the rest of the building, maybe in a loft, maybe in side rooms. There may have been more decoration on the walls. The "table" item that I am fussing over now is the most important and would have kept students busy for many days.

Interview With Curator

This is the most approachable of the videos. Pastor Jonathan Burris interviews curator Bryan Hyland. This video explains how the date was established, around 230, given coins and other items found near the floor.

My question on this dating involves the age of the floor. Why would the floor itself not be 100+ years older?

This floor was thought to be in a prayer space. The tension this floor presents is the expense and truth claim of Joshua's divinity means this was an important place. But nobody studying the space can explain why it was so embellished. They cannot explain the specific geometric designs themselves.

To them, this is just expensive art, like what decorates cathedrals even now. At least with modern cathedrals, the art itself is telling important stories. So too is this floor, but they have no idea what those stories might be. This early form of Christianity is lost to history.

The use of the 2 fish symbol is explored here too. Likely a reference to the feeding of the 5000. But that itself is a story of multiplication of the text. Feeding of the 5000 is a parable of manuscript multiplication. This room was used to teach how that was done.

I have not had time yet to design out the model for the "Cedars of Lebanon." This is also known as the river case. Cedars line the river. That river wants to drain into a sea at one end of the model.

My working plan has been to model that sea with a big blue disk. It gets placed on the floor at one end. The model itself over 5 feet tall. That sea should be about a cubit across, matching size to a jar lid, but representing a pond or sea, the place where the Jordan drains.

Seeing this floor with those fish confirms that this hunch on the design is correct. There is also a small Eden model high above that sea, which itself is a faceted ball. The cubic faceted area around the fish is symbolic both of the whole 3d system, but of Eden which floats above the sea. Within Eden is another sea, itself circular. All of these ideas being caught in that part of the floor.

Best Color

This link is to a video that includes drone shots of the original excavation. These photos show some of the original color. When that floor was in use it would have been very colorful. This video is hinting that the floor was left out to bake in the sun sometime after 2004, before it was given full attention.

Note the fish have color and they are in a yellow circle. I suspect a blue dye has faded to yellow. Note the red tones in the geometric designs around the fish. This video also does not understand what the stone base would be used for, thinking it for communion.

Once you have watched this video, at least up until a long ad at the back, go pause it at the 0m 34s mark. It has a good colored aerial shot of the entire floor. I will reference that view below, where I go through the specific geometry found in the room.

Patterns Around The Fish

The fish themselves sit in a circle, but that circle is squared off with 8 sides. The first point is that the "pen" that we use for drawing has 8 sides. When we use ink on paper, so water, it will be a circle or dot or drop of ink. But, the specific design system has an 8 sided pen. This idea is being caught in the trim around the fish pond.

For the purposes of that fish those 8 sides are the same length. This to allow the drawing of the various boxes around the pond. In the actual drawn form of the pen, those 8 sides are not exactly the same length. If I was in the room with you, I would teach this using the design on the far right of the room. But let me get back to the area around the fish.

If you cross your eyes just right you can see that these 8 squares are actually 2 dimensional projections of different 3 dimensional cubes. There are 4 such cubes placed around the fish. Those 4 boxes represent 4 different sections in the 3d letter system. The gold, silver, copper and bronze sets. The diamond shapes in that ring being projections of sides of those boxes.

To anyone not knowing this is a 3d system, those shapes around the fish are just art. But this is a very clever and well designed mosaic showing that the users of this room were usually concerned about 3d cubes with various other things on their sides.

Multiplying those fish requires that we know many particular details of such a system.

One of those squares just beside the fish has a 5x5 grid in the mosaic. We know of this as the Qu Map, a fundamental shape. That 5x5 pattern represents the control points for the drawn form of the inspired letters. The art on the right side of the room is for going into the specifics of that.

Directly across the fish from that 5x5 grid is a square with a flower. That flower has 4 petals. If you know my 3d work you can see how I square off this flower to some degree. Then I use it for the flowers on the lamp. I will be using it for the bramble inside the Table and for the flowers on most of the other trees like the vine and fig tree.

Grid Below Fish Square, The Dog

The fish pond is sitting in a very large trimmed square, itself taking up about 1/2 of the entire room. Below that square is an area of black and white diamonds. The light colored diamonds are what matter. There are 18 such diamonds left/right and there are 7 such diamonds up/down.

Note that the upper left diamond in this part of the floor is 8 sided, but as you move across this area those 8 sided shapes drift into simple 4 sided diamonds.

The upper left diamond is the 8 sided pen. This is technically correct for this entire section, but use of this area does not require a perfect pen, and diamonds are used across this area as a simplification.

Students would be expected to be able to mentally simplify this system. Some would be able to commit the entire system to memory and not need this canvas at all. If possible to fabricate in 3d printed plastic, the Shepherd's staff will carry a miniature version of this same pattern.

This area of the floor is 18 across because there are 18 pen widths across the 6x6 grid that makes up a letter drawing square. So the outer square around the fish is being shown as representing the drawing square for the letters.

The relationship between letter drawing canvas and pen width is established using the Wa letter. It turns out to be 18 across as used in this area.

This area, below the table, is called the "Dog" and referenced in the story of the crumbs from the table. To use this area requires a bag of crumbs, say small stones, or small bits of clay, or small bits of wood. Some of those tokens are colored against the rainbow, some are natural color.

A student who has passed the course would be required to place colored tokens at the correct places on this grid in order to prove to the teacher they know how to lay out the audit pattern. That pattern is fundamental to checking inspired text.

For the record, the top row of those 7 rows, gets 3 runs of the rainbow. A lamp either stood in the room, or was drawn on a wall, and would be a cheat sheet for students to follow. Purple, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green and Blue then repeat 3 times across.

The bottom, or 7th, row gets copies of the purple tokens matched from the top row. The lamp has a second purple, which combine in the audit. These purples in the bottom row frame the letter squares and explain the missing 2nd purple from the lamp. In this section of the room's floor, there are 3 letter squares going across, each 6 wide, thus the 18 diamonds across.

In the Table design that I have 3d modeled I use 6 letter squares across in the dogs that are tucked underneath. This is a design choice based on what fits under that case. 3 wide is the minimum given how this area is used, it allows the minimum audit of some letter, with other single letters on either side.

Once those 3 letter squares are framed, then within each letter square, another set of colored tokens are placed. Ignoring purple, additional colored tokens are placed at the audit locations. Those locations are taught using the pattern on the right of the room, and for most students this would need to be learned and committed to memory. Leaves on the vine are the cheat sheet for much of this.

Once those tokens are placed, then other tokens, say uncolored stones, crumbs from the able, are fed to this dog and are used to draw letter control points using the other 5 middle rows across this area. Letters failing audit are hitting the colored audit stones, the full details beyond our scope in this blog.

Right Side Patterns In the Floor

If you are still paused at the 0:34 mark in the Best Color video, you can look across the floor at the right hand side.

On that side of the room is a floor pattern built using a set of squares inscribed with circles. The outermost part of that square is 6 circles across and 6 circles tall. There are vertical and horizontal lines drawn to match the outsides of circles in that 6x6 circle grid. The original tools for construction of that drawing would have been a compass and straight edge.

This 6x6 pattern is establishing the control points of the letter drawing canvas. All straight and curved lines in the drawn forms of the letters either start or stop at these intersections.

Note now this part of the floor is drawn very carefully. This square is 1 "unit" across. In my 3d work I am using a Roman Cubit, so 18 inches. It would be very interesting to learn if this floor was built with that unit.

If not using a Roman Cubit, it might be another form of cubit, say an Egyptian cubit. There was also a variety of other Greek Cubits which are also possible. That square might also be drawn using 2 Roman Cubits across, say 36 inches.

Within the storage for this room would have been a series of letter models built to match that grid. The larger exhibits, like the silo, well, sower and reaper, would have been available at that scale as well, and have been placed on that square so students could understand the whole system.

Those same control points used for drawing letters are also assigned letters themselves. This is the basis for the letters on the Qu Map. This is the back side of the lid as I have modeled in the Table item.

The second set of circles on this part of the floor are set to encircle those Qu Map control points. It looks complicated, but once you see the pattern it is remarkably elegant. Those interior circles around the letters are the regions of the Qu map. This drawing shows why corner letters, like Alaska, Hawaii, Florida and Maine, often drift way from the center of the map.

I model this geometry on the lid of the Table case. To reduce visual complexity I put the 6x6 grid in silver on the inside of the lid. I put the 5x5 version of this geometry on the outside or top of the lid. The lid can be flipped over depending on the needs of the lesson.

After seeing this floor I realized I see that lid using x-ray vision. Students are unlikely to grasp the interrelation between the 6x6 and the 5x5 like can be done on that floor. I will add another piece of wall art to my own 3d model collection that brings both the 6x6 and 5x5 systems together in 1 piece of art just like here on the floor so those relationships can be clearly seen.

Split Stone In Middle

The middle of the room has a stone stand for a table. Presumably different wood boxes were brought out of storage and placed there depending on the lesson for the day. The "Table" item is the only square box. It has much meaning within the details of the shape. It is filled with heavy detailed meaning.

The rest of the items in storage were probably kept in clay pots. Pots, or even woven baskets, are from Moses' day and their various exteriors are used for showing off the ciphers.

The remaining mosaics on the floor north and south from that stand are also related to the ciphers. So this center area picks off cipher details.

Now, look at that stone base again. It is divided into 2 parts, left and right. This is symbolic of Horeb, where Moses struck the rock and water gushed out. It is also like the 2 commandments stones.

This is the centerpiece of this room. Going into this room is like going to Horeb. Later Ebal and Gerizim filled the need for a split mountain. This is a place to learn to drink.

That whole Horeb episode informs another item that is related to the fig tree. The gold series of 3d items are used on that tree, but they need a solid base to demonstrate the reference pattern for those items. They get laid out on something like a model of a mountain. There is both a left and right side to that solid base, both rectangular, like those 2 stones in the middle.

But, more interesting, the remaining mosaics, above and below, in that same video frame, look to be the correct size to represent the left and right sides of the "Horeb" tabernacle item. They look to be built at the same scale as the pattern on the right.

In that room those upper and lower mosaics have a pattern of squares twisted 45 degrees to the edges of the rectangle. This is exactly how I modeled it when I worked this out about 2 years ago. I had issues with letter density, and could pack that exhibit in different ways. Those mosaics on the floor look to be the packed form. I use a relaxed form in the Eden map.

Students in that room would probably have had wood blocks, maybe clay, maybe small woven baskets, which would be stacked on those floor patterns in order to learn about how those 3d objects interact with each other. They do so at 45 degree angles to their respective halves of Horeb, just like those mosaics.

Once students understand the "Horeb" view, then they can move on and understand how those same items decorate the fig tree, which itself can vary from Horeb according to various cipher rules. Ciphering the text, and multiplying it, is how the flocks are watered.

Women's Names

Besides the name of the Centurion who funded the work, there are several names of women on the floor as well.

Those names may be people involved in building it, or funding it, or the first crew of teachers. They may have fabricated the items used in the room, either as potters or weavers.

But a more interesting possibility is that these are names from within the additional volumes. If that turns out to be so, then they used those names on the floor to prove they had the inspired text, and had ciphered it. This would thus be a memorial to the work they did and a reference to something inside those volumes that could some day be looked up.

This hunch awaits more manuscript recovery work to prove.

Closing Thoughts

I believe this building is from the days before the editors had seriously messed up the text. Mid first century is where I would place it in time. The coins or other artifacts dating it around 230 are likely dating when it was abandoned, not when it was built.

Everyone studying this floor thinks the centurion donated the resources to build the floor. The actual donation likely included all the other items that would have been used to teach the alphabet systems to students gathered there. Joshua would have done exactly the same at his house in Capernaum.

This room does not appear to be 8 sided. In this sense it differs from Capernaum. An 8 sided room facilitates display of the crown, or flying scroll. This could have been on the walls, or hanging from the ceiling, or it may have been in an upper room with the distinctive 8 sides.

The passages in Revelation 16 that deal with the "valley" or "plain" or "floor" of Megiddo may be referencing the rediscovery and use of this very item. This is a very serious topic for readers here who track Revelation as a book about the history of the text. The battle of Armageddon may be fought by people figuratively standing on this very floor. Maybe another year before I am ready for my side of that fight.

I don't understand all the patterns on all the sides of the 3d boxes found around the fish. But I am not yet done with everything, give me time.

For the rest of this room, for want of the measurement of the actual distance across the 6x6 square, I could go 3d print all of the related alphabet models needed for teaching using this room. This only for want of some remaining 3d design time, some 3d printer time and related model supplies including plastic and some nuts and bolts.

This Megiddo Mosaic floor is hard evidence FROM HISTORY that the prophetic journey and path we are on is correct. It is now established using hard evidence from history.

This system of items is what was being used and taught in all early communities of faith. This change in religion from "Joshua is god" to "Jesus is the son of god," has been lost to history. This is why nobody discussing this discovery can explain the obviously expensive details that went into the construction. Nor can they explain what those mosaic designs mean nor can they explain how they were used.

Indeed, this is a very, very interesting Megiddo Mosaic.

More Later,

Phil