'Titanic' filmmaker: Atlantis found – and linked to Jewish Temple

"Atlantis Rising," a new documentary by "Titanic" director James Cameron, argues the "mythical" city is the biblical Tarshish.

Breaking News Israel reports the "lost city of Atlantis has been found, and it’s straight out of the Bible – at least according to a stunning new National Geographic documentary."

Emmy-winning journalist Simcha Jacobivici worked with Cameron on the newly released film.

BIN reported the two followed "ancient clues through Greece, the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic on a search for Atlantis."

"Along the way, they discover mind-blowing biblical connections to Atlantis, including a 3,000 year old carving that ties the mythical city to the Jewish Temple," the report said.

"So often, when you tell people you are looking for Atlantis, they think it is a crazy project because they think it is a thing that was made up by Disney or Hollywood, a city full of mermaids," Jacobovici told BIN.

He explained the references to the city are ancient.

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"The only ancient source for Atlantis was the Greek philosopher Plato in the 4th century BCE. In his dialogues, Plato wrote about a traveler, Solon, who learned about a highly advanced, wealthy civilization, described in depth. It was a port city located 'past the ‘Pillars of Hercules,'' which Jacobovici explained is known today as the Straits of Gibraltar," the report said.

The city was lost eventually to a natural disaster of mud and water, eventually sinking into the ground and disappearing, a circumstance Jacobovici "equated to a tsunami."

Plato was detailed in his writings about Atlantis, but no one else wrote about it, he said.

The problem is that Greeks often renamed people and places.

The clues led searchers to the Iberian Peninsula, "where they began to make a connection between Atlantis and an ancient city known as Tartessos – which appears, amazingly, in the Bible," BIN reported.

Jacobovici described many artifacts and ancient writings that show "that 3,000 years ago there was a great city of Tartessos, very wealthy and with a powerful navy."

"Though we don’t know exactly where it was, it was purported to be somewhere in Southern Iberia, Spain or Portugal, precisely the area that Plato gives for Atlantis."

The conclusion was reached that Atlantis was Tartessos, mentioned in the Bible as Tarshish, including in Psalms, which says: "For, lo, the kings assembled themselves, they came onward together. Trembling took hold of them there, pangs, as of a woman in travail. …With the east wind Thou breakest the ships of Tarshish."

It also records King Solomon fought battles alongside the kings of Tarshish.

And it is to Tarshish that Jonah fled rather than accept God's instructions to go to Nineveh, BIN noted.

And the report cited other revelations.

Spanish researcher Georgeos Diaz Montexano "showed me Bronze Age symbols, 3,500 years old, carved into ancient shrines," Jacobovici told Breaking Israel News. "Montexano believes that after the tsunami destroyed Atlantis, or Tarshish, the refugees made these shrines to commemorate the destruction of their city and to pray to their gods that Atlantis should rise again."

The report said the symbols "are strongly reminiscent of Plato's description of the port of Atlantis: three concentric circular docks with a central rectangular temple to Poseidon, with a canal connecting out to the sea."

Jacobovici said one of the symbols is remarkably similar to the Menorah.

The Australian newsite News.com.au noted Cameron found a cluster of six 4,000-year-old anchors near the entrance to the Mediterranean.

"The idea of an advanced ancient civilization lost to history certainly has eternal appeal," the report said.

"While the show travels throughout Greece, the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean tracking 'sightings' of Atlantis, much is made of the discovery of a cluster of Bronze Age anchors on the Atlantic side of the Strait of Gibraltar – which some believe to be the 'Pillars of Hercules' Plato states the civilization was 'beyond.'"

The report suggested the ancient Minoan civilization, based on the island of Crete, was "an advanced race of ocean-going traders."

"Snake and bull worshiping goddesses feature prominently among their art."

It explains a possibility is that the volcano Thera erupted, triggering landslides and tsunamis that caused the "collapse of the entire civilization as it engulfed much of northern Crete."

"Into the ruins marched tribes of Greeks."

Watch the trailer for "Atlantis Rising":

In an interview with People magazine, Cameron said, "When I’m not doing my day job as a Hollywood movie guy, I'm doing my other job as an ocean explorer.

"The payoff is that in the course of searching for Atlantis and exploring the possible sites, we came up with some pretty good evidence that there was in fact a ship-based trading culture outside the so-called Pillars of Hercules, which is the Strait of Gibraltar, just off the coast of Spain. That's pretty big."

Jacobovici told People: "I think a lot of people when they hear the word 'Atlantis,' they put it in the same category as alien abduction. That is simply not the case. Somebody wrote this story down, and it's not just anybody – it was Plato, one of the most famous philosophers in history.

"You can't just think of Atlantis as one spot that people argue either existed or didn't exist. Reading the original text very carefully – and it's amazing how many times you can read the same pages and not see it – Plato doesn't say it’s just a spot. He says it's a civilization. It's an empire."