Hung on a Weeping Willow in Lesotho
- Ntandoyenkosi
- 3 days ago
- 15 min read
Or alternate title, Ha Lehata -The Place of the Skull? Now in the search for locations that are Biblical, for those that are interested, if the site or area is under a banner say like a Heritage Site, like the Maloti Drakensberg World Heritage sites. Or you can look at the fact that in Africa in general you will find other types of heritage sites and especially, Unesco sites. These are hints from SoNiNi Himself. Because guess what, not all these Holy Places are meant to be trodden down by masses of people. Some are indeed open for tourists and locals to know about, protected by Angels and or other territorial spirits, while others are set apart. Completely. Preserved and Saved. Stored. Some even privately owned. Not for all feet to wonder. They are indeed special and set apart places, so they may not become Urbanised and places of human litter and filth, the realities that we unfortunately tend to bring with us. These things come either just through our modern way of life or worse, when we make housing areas or small towns. In our great numbers, we tend to destroy. That is why these Biblical areas often are remote and protected. You might even say they are protected against ourselves. So in our research, and actually close to were we stay, we find the dramatic and majestic Maloti Drakensberg. A very large chain of Mountains that mainly stretch through South Africa, Lesotho, Eswatini and Mozambique. So big is it that it is divided into North and South. In the Bible we see these as the mountains of Ararat and Abarim. Ararat being the Southern Drakensberg and Abarim being the Northern Drakensberg (the mountain range were Moses is likely to be buried at Mount Nebo) - and both these chains are described in our Scriptures. And in these vast mountains, in the southern or in the northern parts of Lesotho may just be the place of the Skull, also called Golgotha and Cavalry, close to Ts`ehlanyane National Park or it may even be as simple as the little known areas of Ha Lehata in Sotho - Let us get into this !
We are going to share with you here a few places that has A LOT of history attached to them and the old ones (Madalas) have different things to say about them all. All of them very interesting. One such old tale is that Msindisi was hung on a tree here in the Ts`ehlanyane National Park in Lesotho, Leribe district. Another equally interesting location is that He was taken to Ha Lehata, the place of the Skull a small village close to Sekoti. We have been looking into both. As there are many interesting possible Roman ruins at both locations. Now this is early days in this research, and there is a lot of ground to cover. We will be posting allot of locations from Lesotho in these coming months. And we have to mention an important person, most of us in this sphere know her as Johny John, and she is the source of the first location. And all of us doing this research and sharing our revelations - we thank SoNiNi naNiNi. The revealer of dreams and visions. The One that leads us by the right hand. Nigyabonga uBawo ngale ndodakazi, ndawonye sishintshe izinhliziyo zabantu.
Now as far as these and other possible important ancient locations, we have many sources saying similar things. So let us start to look into them. And if they are what they seem, these locations takes Jerusalem out from the areas of other side of Zambezi completely. And even in the event of redrawing a northern border of the Promised Lands - Jerusalem does NOT fit up there in Namibia or anywhere else really if you find and locate the place of the Skull (Golgatha / Cavalry or Lehata) to areas in Lesotho. As we keep telling all our fellow researchers, all locations must fit, you cannot have the one without the other. If you bounce around the continent of Africa you are in error and should stop spreading such elaborate theories that simply does not work. It has to make sense, these Biblical locations were within short distance of one another. You cannot have Mount Zion in Kenya and Jerusalem in South Africa/Lesotho. It does not work. So therefore, if you place Jerusalem (a very large city) up within the mountains in old Basotholand, close to Bethlehem, close to Nazareth, close to Mount Moriah, and quite literally on the Jordan River, it will work. The only "problem" as we see it, where is Lake Galilee, where is the Lake shaped like a Kinnor (Harp)? That one we have yet found a good explanation for, it will come though. All at the right time.
So then, lets look at the first one, the Ts`ehlanyane National Park. And it is a National Park in Lesotho located in the Maloti Drakensberg and a larger part of the Maloti Drakensberg Transfrontier Conservation Area. A lot of protection has been set up there. Makes you wonder even more. It is in a high altitude some 2,600 meters above sea level. Like most of Lesotho it is high up, close to Modimo some say. It has patches of rugged and remote wilderness, with an indigenous forest with a number of rare plants unique to these woodlands. Berg bamboo and spiral (alpine) aloe are of particular interest as Biblical plants.
Now then, we all know the songs. At Calvary so and so, which is the Roman name for the place were it all went down. The Place of the Skull. Eerie name, with a lot of history. The Litsumi Cave trail has some very interesting stories attached. This is said by some to be the place of the Skull of Adam. The place were Adam was buried. Fitting it would be the place where The Most High sent His Son to be the Great Sacrifice. For the one to knew no sin, to bear our sins. Bawo, enkosi ! Uliliwa lam. Ngaphandle kwakho ndiyawa.
Now, true as these stories may be about the place being were Adam was buried. Lets go a little further. Because if we venture deeper into the old literature and get into the etymology and the search for the origin of words, we will not find much of the modern name that resembles right... Or will we? The Roman and latin form will only send you astray, like Calvary or Calvaria. There is however a trace going from Koine Greek to modern Sotho, with Golgotha (Γολγοθᾶ) in Greek, becoming Lehata in SeSotho. Same ending, and there is even more of a trace to the Hebrew word Gulguletha (גֻּלְגֹּלֶת) and to the Sotho. Lehata or Gulguletha. Meaning Skull or The Head. We will examine the prefixes further below, Gho and Gha. There is more than just smoke here, the word is very similar as we shall see further below.
Before that location, lets look at the verses themselves. What does our Bible say about Golgotha or the place that looked like a skull?
We can find this in Matthew 27,33:
33 They came to a place called Golgotha (which means “the place of the skull”).
Again we see the abbreviations in Greek, which means Ho estin (ὅ ἐστιν), meaning these phrases and terms are indeed translations of a source material, being either Aramaic (Nguni sounding language) or Hebrew (a Tswana sounding language). They came to the place of Golgathâ (Γολγοθᾶν) or meaning Skull. Which comes from the modern Hebrew verb גלל galal which we are told means to roll. Again, we are not sure about that. You cant read English right if you do not understand it. The proposed Aramaic word rings more true, Golgoltha - HaLehata. Not far Etymologically speaking. The old Syriac version will bridge this even more as far as the Ha or the GAH at the beginning, the Syriac Scriptures reads Gagultha (ܓܓܘܠܬܐ), meaning the Ha or Ga should be pronounced as a Sotho speaking person pronounces an H (in technical terms it is called a voiceless glottal fricative). Those that know they know. Another trademark of Paul being from a Sotho/Hebrew speaking tribe, as this pronunciation of words are easily detectable to say where you come from. Paul was revealed from his manner of speech. This means that the prefixes we find in our modern Hebrew Scriptures are to be spelled and pronounced differently, so a Go or is more like a Ho, with a Sotho sounding H not an English sounding G. If you do this, the Scriptures start to change drastically, and start sounding more and more Tswana from every word you read. Sotho-Tswana is very different from the stereotypical Bantu languages. Especially phonetically. Sotho Phonology is unique and you can, if you are a native speaker, read the modern Hebrew from it. With an older vocabulary, you will get far. We will post another article on this and include more Sotho-Tswana words in our Bibles.
The Biblical Lore
If we check up on what the Desert Church Fathers or Early Church Fathers wrote on The Skull, we find many different comments but with the central theme intact. Adam was and is connected to this area. We find that Jerome he said it was a place of executions, even beheadings. Tertullian wrote that the place looked like a head, Origen said more on the legends of the skull of Adam being buried there. Hence the hill took the shape of Adams head. Most of this is sourced from the Book 2 of the Anti-Nicene Fathers Volume 4 (Vol.4;276), available online for free. The Skull has been used as lore in many extra Biblical works like The Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan (6ht century) and Cave of Treasures (7th century). Rather recent books, the last written or at least translated by Eutychius of Alexandria a man who wrote strictly in Arabic and may be one of the links as to why Hebrew took that shape it did, as it as a source language had gotten of the continent by now. Away from its African origins. Now this place of the skull is used as central hemes in many Indiana Jones and Alain Quartemain like explorer movies. Often depicted as a place that has treasure. Physical treasure. And the place does indeed have treasure, only not in therms of Gold or material, but deeply Spiritual and a place of Higher Powers for sure. A place of beginnings some would say. Some would even say ancestral. You see - Everything is spiritual, even those that seek to go here on material grounds will not be welcome, this is a holy place. Protected by its people and guarded by the spirits that live there.
If we read what most of these early church fathers wrote, they seem to agree and pretty much all of them tell the same story. The legend goes that Shem and Melchizedek got the body of Adam from Noahs arks resting place (which is not far from here as there are two possible locations not far from here). And then they where guided by angels to Ha Lehata or a place were there was a skull shaped hill at the centre of the earth. A place were Adam had previously crushed the serpents head after they fell from Modimos Grace in the Garden of Eden. They all pretty much tell the same story. Now this would be the right place, to fulfil The Scriptures, setting right all sin and correcting or remedying the Fall of Man. After we ate the fruit that changed us internally.
More Etymology and Scriptures
Now, lets go even deeper. And really look at the words here. Let us not get lost in the Calvaria (Latin) and Kranion (Greek). The Hebrew Golgaotha is likely a contraction, like all ancient Hebrew words are written in a shortened form, Gol or Gah Goatha, The place of heads or the place of executions. We can see another mention of this in Jeremia 31,38-40:
38 “The days are coming,” declares SoNiNi, “when this city will be rebuilt for me from the Tower of Hananel to the Corner Gate. 39 The measuring line will stretch from there straight to the hill of Gareb and then turn to Goah. 40 The whole valley where dead bodies and ashes are thrown, and all the terraces out to the Kidron Valley on the east as far as the corner of the Horse Gate, will be holy to SoNiNi. The city will never again be uprooted or demolished.”
Is it talking about the same area, maybe... Goah (same grammatical form as for Skull) could be the skull reference and the Jerusalem Gate at the far Corner (farthest south) could be the one. Stretching to the Horse Gate towards the East. Jeremia would have known were Adam was buried so it is likely a reference to the area of either A Skull or Skulls. Meaning peoples heads ended up there.
If we put speculation aside, and check our Scriptures. We can find some more references to people that may have ended up in this Valley of Skulls. You see the place may have been known as a cemetery, as people would have wanted or honouring Adam, they saw it as their ancestral duty to be buried next to Adam. Therefore it seems likely to believe that Josephs Tomb, were Christ was laid to rest, was not a stand alone tomb. There were many others in that hillside. And if we read Josephus, we can see descriptions of a monument made there for the high-priest John. Check more descriptions of this in the Siege of Jerusalem by Josephus. Vivid materials to go through, the devastation made real by the Romans. Times of Trouble... Mfecane is a word used by Zulus, or as the Sothos would say Difaqane, times of forced Migrations. Time of Trouble.
So we can see that the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Constantine, did indeed become very active in Southern Africa, especially after the Gospel was spreading, and therefore there will be many remains of Roman ruins in these areas if we dig a little in the soil. Stones would have been reused by locals, but foundations will be left remaining. As Lidar scans show ALL kinds of things in the ground in Southern Africa. Now, Sothos are well known for their skills of building sandstone houses and limestone roads. Even Maseru as a name is referring to that stone quarried in the nearby areas. This skill of building solid structures of stone os maybe a heritage trait, now considered indigenous, but maybe its latest techniques was rather recently learned and perfected, from the building ways of the ancient Romans before they assimilated totally and their empire fell. They has very complex was of moving water, just look at the aqueducts in Europe. Grand Architecture. Now the ways of constructing houses, both Egyptian and Roman, we think there are remains are still to be found underneath many Southern African cities. Lidar will confirm this in time.
Now then, and we are coming back to the connection of language. We have made the Tswana and Hebrew connection many times in our earlier days. And as we see it, not much has changed, the Nguni we can read from our Scriptures was a dialect that uMsindisi spoke, being the so-called Aram language, and the Tswana/Sotho languages are the remains (if you use the older form) the ancient Hebrew. And in this we have been conferring with the man that has by now become a dear brother - Keletso Nkabarang, the person behind, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2Q1OWZWtz0&t=3s - he has been making better known the Hebrew and Tswana/Sotho connection. He says this about the similarities between Ga for a MoSotho and Ha for a Motswana:
...The Basotho people use Ha pronunciation. The Batswana people use Ga pronunciation. For example, praise in Sesotho is Halaletsa. In Setswana praise is Galaletsa. Of which both have the same meaning with a variation in pronunciation of which a Mosotho person and a Motswana person can hear each other on what they are saying. For instance Halehata in Sesotho and in Setswana it is Galegata.
This is an ancient Hebrew Prefix. We can see the obvious similarities between the Southern and the Northern Kingdom of the Sothos, which we believe is the very same Southern and Northern Kingdom of Ancient Israel. The connection was always in the language. This prefix forms like HA and GA will help us better translate our Bibles from ancient Hebrew to modern Tswana, applying the ancient alphabet and words in a modern context. It has to be read like the ancient Egyptian language. With the vowels placed into the Words. It is the way its spoken and not the spelling that enables us to read the Paleo-Hebrew of the Tswana/Sotho. We will come back to this.
New References
If we go to our Bibles, we can see references to that the Impalement/Crucifixion, took place outside Jerusalems Roman Walls (Hebrews 13,12):
11 The high priest carries the blood of animals into the Most Holy Place as a sin offering, but the bodies are burned outside the camp. 12 And so uMsindisi also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. 13 Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore. 14 For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.
The city that is to come Paul says. We see here that He did indeed suffer outside the city gates and Josephus yet again being confirmed as being a sound witness and underpinning the fact that he, Josephus - actually visited these places.
This place was close to a Garden, and we can read about the burial of Christ and Joseph or Arimatheas involment in John 19,38-41:
38 Later, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Immanuel. Now Joseph was a disciple of Christ, but secretly because he feared the Jewish leaders. With Pilate’s permission, he came and took the body away. 39 He was accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Immanuel at night. Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds. 40 Taking Immanuels’ body, the two of them wrapped it, with the spices, in strips of linen. This was in accordance with Hebrew burial customs. 41 At the place where Immanuel was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid. 42 Because it was the Jewish day of Preparation and since the tomb was nearby, they laid Immanuel there.
So it was a place nearby. Everything and every place your read about was nearby, just like Jerusalem would be nearby. A well trafficked road, with loads of foreginers drawn in for trade, as we read about the Cyrenian coming from the road forced into service, and that nation that is modern Cyrenians has been blessed from that contribution of taking on a cross ! Now from these verses, we know there are only two roads leading into Jerusalem, one coming in from Bethlehem (which would likely be on either Caledonspoort or Phuthaditjhaba / QwaQwa crossing now known as Monantsa Pass) and the other one would be Siloe by the Pool of Tjiloa (Revelation), which we have several possibilities as likely locations. One is Maseru and the other is further and deep into the south. Anyways, this place where he was displayed was a busy road, that much is understood. Look at the people passing by. Busy place of display. Roman tactics. Dramatic but very effective, only this would make sure the news spread far and wide. SoNiNi knew this, and the Greeks became the best spreaders of the Gospel as we still have their writings to this day.
We can quote Matthew 27,38-39:
38 Two rebels were crucified with him, one on his right and one on his left. 39 Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads
Same verse in Mark 15,29 and lastly, as the third and last witness, in Luke 23,26:
26 As the soldiers led him away, they seized Simon from Cyrene, who was on his way in from the country, and put the cross on him and made him carry it behind Immanuel.
This road was entering Jerusalem. Remember this was a time before Jerusalem was absolutely destroyed in 70 AD, according to Josephus. The palce was outside a major gate close enough to the passer-byes could not only lock eyes with him but even read the plaque, King of the Hebrews. A well known place.
So the interesting fact to take note of, when trying to map the circumference of Jerusalem - is that this place of the skull was said to be RIGHT outside the Roman Jerusalem walls, BUT not the ancient Jerusalem walls which. These we believe would be found in mountain passes themselves. Christ was taken outside the Roman made wall. Should not be hard to find remains of today. This is up for conjecture though, either wall needs to be located.
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