Israel (Part 3)

Part 2 of our trip left off on June 7th (Sunday) about 3pm when we returned to the hotel to freshen up for our trip to Bethlehem.

One of the women on our trip, Ruth, is friends with the pastor of the First Baptist Church of Bethlehem (Pastor Naim Khoury) and she supports both his and his son's ministry. She has gone on this trip to Israel many times, and at the beginning of our trip, she called Pastor Khoury to see if we could come visit his church. He of course said yes and invited our pastor Kie to preach! Since Bethlehem is Palestinian controlled, it is illegal for Israeli people to enter, so Avi was not able to join us. Thankfully, our bus driver had a special pass, so he was able to drive us there and back. 

When we first arrived at Bethlehem, we went to the shop of the Nissan family who have a large olive wood shop in Bethlehem as well as a small shop in Jerusalem, where they make all kinds of hand carved items. They are a Christian family who only hires Christian employees, so Kie said he tries to visit one of the shops on all his trips. 

After we had some time to shop (we bought a beautiful nativity!), Mr. Nissan's son took us on a little tour of the Church of the Nativity and of the town. He was a great guide! Some interesting facts about Bethlehem are: its only 4 miles from Jerusalem, it is now only 20% Christian (used to be 85%), King David and Jesus were born here (no evidence that they ever returned), and this is where Ruth and Naomi settled when they came back from Moab. 

 We were able to drive by the fields that Boaz owned, and our guide told us that the culture of gleaning (leaving some behind for the widows and poor) is still done today throughout Israel at harvest time.

These are the fields that Boaz owned and where the Angels appeared to the Shepherds!

The Church of the Nativity was originally built by Queen Helena (mother of Constantine) around 325 AD and has had a long history of being destroyed and rebuilt. It is currently under restoration until 2016. This is the traditional site where scholars believe Jesus was born. The current church is split 3 ways with parts belonging to the Catholics, Armenians, and Greek Orthodox. There is an underground cave area where they believe Jesus was born. The whole church is covered with religious decorations, which is interesting! 

the door is the tiny square to the right, is called a holy door b/c you have to "bow" when you enter

holy door

carvings that are being restored

where they think the birth happened

area where they think the manger was

marble floor from Helena's time

 These pictures are from the other side of the church where they believe the angel appeared to Joseph to tell him and Mary to flee to Egypt. In one of these rooms is where they found bones from children killed by Herod.

These next 2 are from the room where Jerome lived and translated the Bible into Latin (circa 382 AD). His translation is called the Latin Vulgate which the Catholics used for over 1000 years.

So after a fast and furious tour, we went to the First Baptist Church where we met Pastor Khoury and his wife and heard their testimonies. We then attended the evening service where Kie preached. It was a really neat experience hearing the sermon in both English and Arabic!

       

       June 8th

Today we spent the day out in the Judean Wilderness! This area was called the wilderness in the Bible, but today they just call it the desert. The desert begins only 2 miles from Jerusalem (at the bottom of the mountain), but it only gets 4 inches of rain per year vs the 24 inches that Jersusalem gets! The desert has several Bedouin settlements and also several new towns that have been built and are flourishing. 

Our first stop was En Gedi. We didnt actually stop here but drove through the area. En Gedi means eye of the gazelle. The caves in this area are where David hid from Saul (1 Samuel 24) and also where David wrote Psalm 56.

Next we came to Masada. Masada was originally built as a fortress city of King Herod as it is a large plateau and very strong defensive position. It was considered almost invincible because it was so high (1200ft) on most sides, with the only vulnerable point being to the west. The main story from Masada is that it was used by Jewish Zealots who attempted to escape Roman persecution (circa 73 AD). Approx 960 people fled to Masada and lived here until the Romans came and found them. The Romans surrounded the hill and eventually broke through the gate by building a rampart on the west side (weak area) and burning through the defenses. After they broke through the gate, they went down that night to celebrate and were planning to come capture the fortress the next morning. However, Eleazar, the Jewish commander, gave a famous speech where he called upon the men to kill their wives, children, and then each other until the last man would then fall on his sword. Elazar wanted them all to die free vs become slaves to the Romans. It was from this speech that the modern Israeli Defense Force motto "Never Again" originated. So the people agreed, and when the Romans came up the next morning, they found everyone dead. The ruins of the city were pretty well intact since the Romans didn't need to plunder, and were only destroyed by earthquakes over the years.

model of masada

These walls are half original, half rebuilt, anything below the black line is original

view to the dead sea from the top

area where the storehouses for all the food were

storehouses (9 were recovered during excavation)

We were able to see an original Roman bath and walk through all the various chambers. They typically had 3 chambers (cold, lukewarm, hot) but this bath also had a "gossip chamber" before you entered where they would sit and eat, drink and talk.

original floor of outer courtyard

outer courtyard of bath

gossip chamber

bath the Jews built for immersion in the gossip chamber (for the ritual bath)

these stairs let to the cold chamber (fridgidarium)

leukwarm chamber (tepidarium)

hot chamber (cauldarium) had a 2 floors, they used special shoes to walk on it b/c it was so hot

pipes used to make steam in the room

ceiling of the hot chamber was sloped so when steam went up and turned back to water, it would run down the sides instead of dripping on people in the room

area where the furnaces to heat the hot chamber were

Next we went to the northern area of Masada where Herod built his palace. He built the palace in 3 levels and took advantage of the northern breeze to cool his palace. On the middle level there was a round structure with high walls and large windows. They would hang wet straw and then the air would come in the window and evaporate the water making cool air that would then go out through pipes onto the upper level (air conditioning!).

middle level 

model of the palace 

On the western side of Masada, we saw their huge water cistern where the water for the whole community was stored. When Herod first built Masada, he set up a pretty impressive aquaduct that would allow the water to flow from the brook at the base of the hill, through 12 different underground cisterns all the way up the hill to the one at the top.

water cistern

line of vegetation is the brook

model that showed how the aquaduct worked

These next 2 are the outlines of where the roman camps were, there were several that surrounded Masada

Masada of course had a synagogue, and archaeologists found a copy of Ezekiel 37 on a scroll in a chamber of this synagogue.

This next picture is of the Columbarium tower which is where they had their pigeon coops. The small squares you see are where the nests were, and the people used the pigeons for food, their poop for fertilizer, and their feathers for pillows and blankets.

This is the weak area (west side) that the Romans used to build a rampart and eventually break through the wall of Masada. (you can see the side view a few pictures earlier where I talked about the brook)

After leaving Masada, our next stop was Qumran. Qumran is approx 31 miles southeast of Jerusalem, and it where the dead sea scrolls were found. In 1947 a Bedouin shepherd name Mohammad the Wolf was chasing one of his goats and the goat went into a cave. To scare the goat out of the cave, Mohammad threw a rock in, and when he did that, he heard the sound of something breaking, which turned out to be a clay jar with scrolls. He went in and found 24 of these clay jars full of scrolls. He then sold them to a Greek Orthodox church for $30. They exchanged hands a few more times and eventually Israel bought them back for a quarter of a million dollars in 1952. These scrolls kept really well because the desert has no humidity, and there were not bugs or other critters to eat the scrolls. They found parts and entire books of every book in the Old Testament except for Esther. They also found a lot of commentaries of various books of the Bible that were written by the people who lived in this area, the Essenes. In all of the caves they found a total of about 800 scrolls. This discovery was important because prior to these scrolls the oldest manuscripts of the Old Testament only dated back 900-1000 years, and these were much older. When they compared these scrolls to the Old Testatment, they matched word for word.

caves where the scrolls were found

this area is prone to earthquakes, and the landscape is changing, so there may be more buried 

The Essene people were an interesting group of Jews that lived in this area and who wrote all these scrolls. They lived here from 200 BC-68 AD. The word Essene means puritan, and they were called this because they were so purely devoted to scripture. They came here from Jerusalem to study the Bible. They believed that the Judaism practiced in Jerusalem was corrupt so they came to separate themselves from the culture. The majority were men, but they did find evidence of a few women and children who lived here. They would either: farm, develop commentary and copy the scriptures, or read the scripture aloud to the men farming. The Essene people rejected the sacrifices and instead focused on a new covenant that they read about in Jeremiah. They were also apocalyptic and felt that the end of days would come in their lifetime. Yahad means "sons of light" and they referred to themselves both as sons of light and "the way." Another one of their customs was to baptize themselves by immersion daily. These people were destroyed in 68 AD and before they were destroyed, they hid all their scrolls of both the Bible and their commentaries in clay jars.

Our pastor Kie actually believes that John the Baptist was either a member of this Essene community or was heavily influenced by them because of several reasons: he lived in the desert according to Luke 1:8, he was an apocalyptic preacher, he taught about light and darkness, he baptized, and every gospel writer identifies John with the prophecy in Isaiah 40:3 which is almost identical to the Essene motto of: "we are the voice of one crying in the wilderness make a straight path for the Lord."
Some pictures of the ruins of their town:

above ground aqueduct

We ended our day with a stop at the dead sea for a swim! The dead sea is the lowest land point on earth, and has not one single life form in the water. It is full of salt, as well as lots of other minerals like magnesium. The water color changes throughout the day from a lighter blue in the morning, to a darker blue later in the afternoon.There is a huge skin care company called Ahava that makes all kinds of products from the mud and water at the Dead Sea and I of course bought some!  Its crazy because you really do float even if you are trying not to!

Up next, the final day in Jerusalem before coming home!