3rd Jerusalem Walk - NT

Shalom, compadres!

Such an amazing country is hard to describe in words. If you haven't checked out my first set of Jerusalem pics, you should! I will try to update a new album soon.

We spent Tuesday night - Wednessday evening in the Old City for yet another wild ride with our Land and Bible professor Todd Bolen. Weather was not on our side - as I sat in the library doing some homework on Tuesday afternoon, the sky was dark and the rain was gushing down out of the sky. It eased up a bit for our travels that night, but I still wore a t-shirt, a thermal shirt, a longsleeve t, a fleece, a hoodie, and a light rain jacket...I won't go into what I wore to keep the rest of me warm :o)

We went to the Jerusalem museum and viewed a spectacular model of the city according to our knowledge of it in the first century, specifically 66 AD. In other words, we saw a mini-version of what Jesus would have seen. It really helped to "map it out" in my head. On the model, a person would have been half-an-inch tall. It was very nippy and raining just enough to make the lines run on my notebook paper, but we stuck to it and made it through. I won't go into a lot of detail in this post, since you would really need to be looking at the model to be able to understand the layout. Points of interest that we saw were the temple mount, Herod's palace, and the Antonia Fortress. If I find a good website with drawings or something, I will put it in the links to the top left.

After we were sufficiently frozen, we continued on to a very special place - The Shrine of the Book. The Shrine of the book is where the Dead Sea Scrolls are housed and displayed. Not just little tiny pieces - legible, whole specimens, along with many original artifacts from the Qumran community - 2000 year old pieces of the past. It was quite amazing. My favorite was a small pick-axe looking utensil labeled "small trowel for burying human feces" (I thought "obviously"). Also housed in The Shrine of the Book is the Allepo Codex, the oldest remaining Bible, not including the Dead Sea Scrolls. Photos were not allowed, sorry.

Thus concluded our evening class, we headed back to the hotel in the Old City, where I had Kosher pizza on the town with Analee and her friends Nat and Jess.

The next morning we set out at 7:20 for the Temple Mount. We booked it over there - by the end of the day, gained a new appreciation for the flatlands, after the agonizing up/down/up/down of the Holy City :o) At the Temple Mount, we discussed the Dome of the Rock (standing over area claimed by both Jews and Moslems as holy ground), Al-Aksa Mosque, "Solomon's Stables", the sealed Golden Gate, the Dome of the Tablets, the story of Jesus driving out the moneychangers, the story of Paul, when he used his Roman citizenship to excape a beating in the once nearby fortress, as well as the political sensitivity of the Temple Mount, generally speaking. It is indeed a fascinating place.

Next, after retrieving a few items from the hotel, we went to the South wall of the Old City, near "Dung Gate", were we saw Tanner's Gate and the Valley Cardo, a secondary "main street" built by the Romans. Here we entered the Southern Temple Mount Excavation, an "Archaeological Park". Fascinating remains of the walls, Robinson's arch - once supporting a stairway into the Royal Stoa on the Temple Mount, shops that used to be operated under the massive staircase, and other such interesting things. To exit, we walked through an ancient house under the present ground level, and went to the steps of the Southern Wall. Among other things, we learned that this is possible where Psalms 120-134, the songs of ascent, were sang, every other step - and we did just that, alternating the reading and having a really neat time reading together and experiencing a piece of history. Much more to be said, but let's move on - this is going to be another long post!

After eating lunch, we viewed ruins of ancient houses in two places. The first place was interesting in that it was preserved very well, with whole walls intact, mikveh-ot (ritual baths), regular tubs, tables, mosaics, and such still visible. The last of the three houses in this area was massive, called the Mansion, and would have been set up around a courtyard. Seeing this layout, one better understands what could have taken place when Peter denied Jesus. A courtyard such as this one very well could have been where these events took place. It was very hard to understand exactly how the walls and the different levels all connected, but this is to be expected with so much modern clutter in the way - the houses are preserved beneath a modern structure!

The second place we viewed ruins of a house was at a place called the "Burned House", where the basement of an ancient dwelling place from the time the second temple was destroyed has been baked into preservation by fire. The remains suggest that this may have been a priest's dwelling, and that it was probably burned during the attacks by the Romans. We watched a very cleverly designed multimedia presentation, which I thought was very helpful in bringing the remains to life, by means of 3-D characters acting out what "might have happened".

It was then time for one of the highlights of the day - the walk through Hezekiah's tunnel. It was an adventure, for sure. I was hunched over for most of the way, and the water was unfortunately only about ankle deep after the initial pooling of water near the entrance. In all we made it in about 15 minutes - record time. Go IBEX '07!

To finish the day, we viewed the newly discoverd Pool of Siloam, and were able to speak with the archaeologist who discovered it - just by a chance meeting. We sat on the steps that have been uncovered - the rest still lies beneat a garden owned by a church. No one knows when or what we will learn more about this important place in the ministry of Jesus Christ.

That's about it for now! So much more could be said - I could write books of my thoughts about many of these things - I only hope to give you a little taste of how amazing our God works, by allowing us such reminders of His Son's stay here on earth.

Dan