160 The Fundamentals in the Bible. of the Israelites, at the time when they built the Tabernacle.* Moreover, there have recently been made some discoveries in the Holy Land connected with the different places where the Bible locates the Tabernacle during the long period of its history in that country, which, to say the least, are not contradictory, but rather confirmatory of Biblical statements. One such discovery, as we will call it, is connected with a fuller exploration recently made of that old site where for some 365 years, according to Jewish tradition, the old Mosaic Tabernacle stood, and where it underwent the most interesting of its experiences in the Holy Land. That site was, as is well known, the little city of Shiloh, located near the main thoroughfare leading up from Bethel to Shechem. In the year 1873 the English Palestine Exploration Fund, through some of its agents, made a thorough exami11ation of this old site, and among other of its very interesting ruins was found a place which Colonel Charles Wilson thinks is the very spot where, once and for so long a time, the Tabernacle stood. That particular place is at the north of a rather low "tell," or mound, upon which the ruins are located; and, to copy from Colonel Wilson's description, this tell "slopes down to a broad shoulder, across which a sort of local court, 77 feet wide and 412 feet long, has been cut out. The rock is in places scarped to a height of five feet, and along the sides are several excavations and a few small cisterns." This is the locality where, as Colonel Wilson thinks, the Mosaic Tabernacle once really stood; and as confirmatory of his conclusion he farther says that this spot is the only one connected with the ruins which is large enough to receive a building of the dimensions of the Tabernacle. Therefore his judgment is that it is "not improbable" that this place was originally "prepared" as a site for that structure. *See Page 187.
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