ONE OF THE MOST MYSTERIOUS places in Israel is the recently identified Serpent Mound of Bashan. It’s three-quarters of a mile long, 20 to 25 feet high, covered with more than 140 megalithic tombs probably more than 5,000 years old, and it’s a quarter of a mile from Gilgal Refaim on the Golan Heights. 

With the release of our book ‘The Gates of Hell’ this week, we revisit our discussion of the significance of this and other monuments to the cult of the dead in the ancient kingdom ruled by Og, Bashan—the “Place of the Serpent.”

We also visited Tel Dan at the foot of Mount Hermon, where we showed how a misunderstood verse in the Book of Hosea reveals that the golden calves of Jeroboam marked a return to the worship of the entity who was believed to live on the mountain, the Canaanite creator-god El—who, as Derek shows in his book The Second Coming of Saturn, was known to the Hebrews as Molech.

And we visit the place where Jesus declared his divinity—literally at the base of Mount Hermon, the Canaanite Olympus, standing in front of the gates of hell.