A young cow stipulated by the Mosaic regulation recorded in Num 19, whose ashes, after it had been sacrificed, was to be used for the cleansing of the priests to make them ceremonial fit for service before Yahweh.
The last red heifer is reported to have been killed by the high-priest Ishmael ben Phiabi II, in the reign of Agrippa II and its ashes used up by about the time of the Temple's destruction in 70 AD. According to Moses Maimonides, only nine red heifers that meet the requirements have been sacrificed in the entirety of Israel's history, and the tenth would be born just before the coming of the Messiah and the rebuilding of the Temple.
The need for the ashes of a red heifer poses a major problem for modern religious Jews longing to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. Even if they can find a way of ousting the Muslims from the Temple Mount, without the ash of the red heifer no Jew (assuming one could be found to qualify as the high-priest) can be purified and made ceremonially clean to ascend the Temple Mount to begin any kind of consecration and rebuilding. Despite valiant efforts at breeding—by Jews as well as dispensationalist Christians wishing to hasten the coming of the Messiah—no red heifer has been found in modern times that fulfils all the rabbinic requirements for such an animal, though there were a few very near misses. Journalist David Landau of the secular Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz calls the red heifer "a four-legged bomb," because its birth and ashes (it would be ready to be sacrificed at age three) would set of cataclysmic activities aimed at the Temple Mount by fundamentalist Jews (and Christians on the right) that would fracture Middle East politics like few things have before.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Timothy P. Weber, On the Road to Armageddon: How Evangelicals Became Israel's Best Friend. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004. Esp., pp262-266.
©ALBERITH
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