Jerusalem and Bethlehem

So at last we came to Jerusalem.

Starting from atop the Mount of Olives, we saw the massive Jewish graveyard that covers its western slopes, leading down to the Christian graveyard in the Kidron Valley and, opposite, the Muslim graveyard on the eastern slope of Mount Moriah going up to the base of the temple mount (pictured: rockin' the shades in the graveyard).

We worked out way down the mount toward the Kidron, passing through the Church of Dominus Flevit. Dominus Flevit means "the Lord wept," and refers to Christ's tears over Jerusalem. It commemorates his prophecy of the destruction of the temple, that not one stone would be left upon another. Unlike most tradition Christian churches, the structure purposefully faces west, not east; thus, it faces across the Kidron to the temple mount, bereft of its temple. Through the (again unusually) clear glass behind the altar, the congregation can see the Dome of the Rock.

At the base of Olivet is the Garden of Gethsemane and the Church of All Nations. These are most likely not the actual trees from Jesus' day, for although they can be dated around two thousand years of age, the trees from AD 30 would certainly have been used by the Roman Legio X Fretensis in AD 70 to build their siege works during the Great Jewish Revolt. Nonetheless, it is a serene and majestic place, and the facade of the church is truly magnificent.

The next morning, a Friday and therefore the eve of the Sabbath (called Shabbat here, by the way), we toured many of the Jewish sites around Jerusalem. Notably, we went to the Western Wall (and by the way, 'Wailing Wall' is somewhat disparaging) and then toured the exquisite Western Wall tunnels. The visible and iconic wall is itself called the Kotel, and this is merely the upper half of the entire Western Wall that continued several meters farther below ground and stretches the entire length of the temple mount. It is called the Western Wall because it was the western-facing retaining wall built under the direction of Herod the Great.

The Western Wall Tunnels were dug out by the Israeli government following the capture of the Old City in the 1967 Six Day War. These tunnels burrow along the length of the wall, allowing for more detailed archaeological work, and eventually get down to the first century street level. Here, archaeologists were able to capture a glimpse of first century life, in particular a water channel running along the wall and adjacent cisterns that supplied the massive amounts of water needed for the temple cultus; the remains of blocks left lying about when the construction was halted either at the beginning of the Great Jewish Revolt (AD 66) or with the destruction of Jerusalem four years later (pictured); and also a nearby quarry where stones lay half cut from the bedrock.

Aside: We were able to exit the tunnels from the other end, entering by the Kotel in the Jewish Quarter and exiting along the Via Dolorosa in the Muslim Quarter. Before 1996, however, visitors had to retrace their steps through the narrow passageway because there was no opening on the opposite side. Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the opening of the northern exit in September of '96, which Yassir Arafat condemned as an attempt to cause the collapse of the temple mount (in order to destroy the precious archaeological remains below?), sparking riots that ended in the deaths of eighty people.

Speaking of Palestinians, we then headed that afternoon for Bethlehem, where we met up with our excellent Palestinian guide. There we saw the Church of the Nativity, which is actually three churches (Orthodox, Armenian, and Franciscan) built atop a cave where it is said Jesus was born. Descending into that cave took about an hour of frantic pushing and shoving. Many in the group disliked the experience; personally, I thought the crowded and hurried environment was an illustrative lesson in what the incarnation was (and is) all about.The Son of God, after all, didn't come to earth to have a personalized, one-on-one spiritual experience; he came taking on flesh, to come from the womb in body and blood, to be tortured in crucified in body and blood, and to rise again to fill us with his body and blood.

From there we went to Beit Sahour, a pleasant Arab Christian town, and to Ein Karem, a suburb of Jerusalem associated with John the Baptist, and back to Jerusalem for the night.

So then came out final day together as a whole group. The day was pretty much the Via Dolorosa, the Holy Sepulcher, and Mount Zion, about two hours of each, ending with the Garden Tomb. Disappointments first: Mount Zion. The Cenacle, or Upper Room of the Last Supper, is obviously not the spot. It was picked arbitrarily by the Crusaders, and that structure was subsequently turned into a mosque. Equally arbitrary is the Zion site of David's tomb; David was most likely buried in the City of David just south of the temple mount, and the spot where he is commemorated is a Christian-Muslim fabrication. The only reason there is a Jewish tomb on the spot is because Mount Zion was the only place once within the walls of Herodian Jerusalem accessible to Jews before 1967.

I'll save a rant on the Holy Sepulcher vs. the Garden Tomb for another time, but suffice it to say, both were highlights as finales for the trip. The Holy Sepulcher (pictured) was amazing, despite an almost two hour wait a crowded line that included a trash tractor buzzing through the church; no matter, the resurrection is meant to redeem the world, not shut it out. Since I think that the Holy Sepulcher truly is the spot where Christ died and was raised, that outshines all imperfections. The Garden Tomb, conversely, is almost certainly not the spot, but we held a final prayer service there that included a communion experience, and that was particularly special because I'd grown so close to each and every member of the tour group.

That night I said goodbye to my parents, because they were leaving at 1:30 in the morning for Ben Gurion Airport. Fortunately, as it turned out, several other members of the group stayed for an additional two days, but that's another post.

The Exodus

I'm well out of Egypt at this point, but I thought that on this leisurely Sunday afternoon, while I'm resting up for a possible hike into Jericho tomorrow, I'd take time to bang out my assorted chaotic thoughts about the Exodus.

So we all know the story: Moses, raised as an Egyptian aristocrat, comes to find himself caring for the enslaved population of Hebrews. Defying his Egyptian way of life, he defends one mistreated slave to the point of killing a fellow Egyptian, and so spends forty years in the Sinai wilderness. There he meets his father-in-law and wife, and, more importantly, he meets the god of the Hebrews, who tells him that he is Yahweh, 'I am who I will be,' revealing this tribal god to be the creator-God of the universe. He is commissioned by this Yahweh to bring the Hebrew slaves out of Egypt, and does so despite personal inadequacies and political opposition.

The dating given in the Torah and Former Prophets (J0shua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings) is somewhat unclear, but it places the exodus somewhere in the second half of the second millennium BC, between 1500 and 1200. The exodus cannot have been any later than 1203, since that is the latest possible date of the Merenptah stele. The pharaoh Merenptah of the 19th dynasty reigned in Egypt from 1213 to 1203 BC, and his stele- a slab of rock prepared for a funeral and placed at the tomb to record the great deeds of the person in question- mentions, among other things, his great victory over an otherwise unknown tribe in Canaan called Israel, alongside victories elsewhere in Palestine.

So by 1203 Israel is already in existence as a power in Canaan, but only as one tribe among many. This is prior to the days of the United Monarchy (which is generally agreed to be about 200 years later), when tribal warlords- out of respect, we call them judges- fought against neighboring powers.

What about the earliest possible date?

The beginning of Exodus makes reference to the city of Pi-Ramesses, where the Hebrew slaves worked with mud-brick building materials (at this point the limestone pyramids at Giza were a thousand years old, so the Hebrews certainly did not work them). The city of Tanis (the later Greek name) was once identified as this site by the archaeologist Pierre Montet, who found inscriptions here labeling the site Pi-Ramesses. Unfortunately, Tanis was built far too late for the exodus, during the twentieth dynasty, and it was thus thought that the reference was merely an anachronism. However, it was later discovered that the building materials at Tanis were taken from a separate site after its destruction, and Montet's inscriptions did not identify Tanis as Pi-Ramesses, but rather the site from whence the building materials had been removed. This was traced to Avaris.

Avaris, as it turned out, was the capital of the Hyksos invaders of the Second Intermediate Period (more on that below) and entered into a new round of construction under the Pharaoh Horemheb. Horemheb, the final pharaoh of the 18th dynasty, reigned 1319-1292 BC, is likely the earliest possible pharaoh for the exodus.

This leaves only five possibilities: Horemheb of the 18th dynasty, and Ramesses I, Seti I, Ramesses II, and Merenptah of the 19th dynasty. Does this make sense?

On the one hand, there is the story of Joseph, who goes before his family into Egypt and establishes himself there. Later, a pharaoh who does not know about Joseph enslaves the resident Hebrew population. To me, this makes the most sense if Joseph's pharaoh and the exodus pharaoh are from different dynasties or, as I believe, different kingdom periods altogether. The Middle Kingdom came to an end with the Hyksos invasions around 1650 BC. The Hyksos were a Semitic people from Asia, like the Hebrews, who wrecked havoc on the established rule in Egypt and ended up controlling the Nile Valley for themselves. This lasted until the beginning of the 18th dynasty, when Ahmose I consolidated the Egyptian people and drove the last of the Hyksos out of Egypt around 1550. However, while the Hyksos were conquered and driven out, Semitic peoples show up as slaves working on mud-brick structures three hundred years later. It seems apparent that if the hated Hyksos were driven out by the Egyptians while the Hebrews were kept as slaves, the Egyptians would have good reason to fear and hate these fellow Semites. And if the Hyksos and their fellow Semites were concentrated at Avaris, where else would one expect to find Hebrew slaves working to rebuild the site?

On the other hand, the 18th dynasty had seen a major upset in the world of Egyptian religion. Thirty years before the reign of Horemheb, the heretic pharaoh Amenhotep IV, known to us as Akhenaten, abolished the pantheon of Egyptian gods and introduced the first monotheistic religion known to the world: Atenism. Notice the change in name: Amenhotep, or Amun-hotep, means Amun, the sun god, is satisfied. Akhen-aten, on the other hand, means 'the effective spirit of Aten,' or the power behind the sun. Atenism looked beyond Amun-Ra, the amalgamated sun god of Upper and Lower Egypt, to the inner force behind. His most famous successor, Tut-ankh-amun (living image of Amun), was originally named Tut-ankh-aten (living image of Aten).

While the priests and the people despised Akhenaten and Atenism, it had to wait until Horemheb, who came to power fifteen years after the former's death, to truly end the monotheist heresy. None of the other pharaohs had been effective enough or lived long enough (remember the boy pharaoh Tutankhamen), but Horemheb was first and foremost a general. He was not technically a family member of the 18th dynasty, and was therefore a transition figure between the family of Ahmose I and his successor, the Vizier Ramesses I. Yet when he came to power, he persecuted Atenism viciously.

So here are the Hebrew slaves, Semites like the hated Hyksos, worshipers of one single god like the Atenists. And here, too, is Moses, an Egyptian aristocrat, and possibly raised as an Atenist, now out of favor with the court? It seems to me that Horemheb is an excellent candidate for the pharaoh of the exodus, placing it somewhere at the end of the 14th century BC. This is enough time for the Hebrews to become established enough in Canaan to be worth mentioning in the Merenptah stele.

Anyways, those are my own musings. If this actually interested anyone, I highly recommend James K. Hoffmeier's excellent books Israel in Egypt and Ancient Israel in Sinai.

Israel: The Dead Sea

After Tiberias we headed south along the Jordanian border toward the Dead Sea. Our first stop for the day was Yardenit, a popular group baptismal site along the Jordan River. While the traditional sites are farther south near Jericho, this site is used for tourists who don't want to go into a Palestinian Authority-controlled area (which our guide did and could not). Mom stayed out because the water was apparently freezing, but dad went in, and I was assigned the role of photographer. One of the pastors on the trip, Dale, was good enough to perform the baptisms; otherwise, people would have been baptizing themselves! So a special thanks to him.

Then we headed a bit farther south, still in Israel proper, to Beit She'an. I wasn't entirely sure I was going to be able to make it to Beit She'an at any point, so I was thrilled we were there. Like Megiddo, Beit She'an is a series of ruins built one atop another, thus forming an impressive tel. The earlier sites date back to the second millennium BC, when it is first mentioned as a conquest by the Egyptian Pharaoh Thutmoses III (whose tomb I'd crawled in to a week earlier). Like Megiddo, it sits at a strategically vital spot, blocking the way to the Jezreel Valley. Therefore, it was rebuilt numerous times in Israel's history, and finally by the Romans. The Roman city is not atop the tel but instead in the plain below, reflecting the empire's militarily superior position. This has allowed archaeologists to examine both the tel and the Roman city without harming either. We didn't go up to the tel for lack of time, but I hope to be able to some time next month while I've scheduled myself a free day in Tiberias.

At this point, it became clear why Dani had adjusted the schedule and packed three days into two: he wanted to get us to the Dead Sea resort before sundown. Unfortunately, during our stop for lunch outside Jericho, we ended up with a medical emergency. Frank, an elderly man on our tour, went into some form of diabetic shock. His wife Mickey was so terribly afraid. Thank God, ambulances from Hadassah Medical Center, the top medical care facility in the Middle East, arrived in excellent time. After stabilizing Frank, the couple decided they would go to the hotel in Jerusalem to rejoin the group later. While they never felt confident enough to go on tour in the city, it was good to see them at the hotel in the mornings and evenings. They were also able to get out on their for a bit on the last day.

Despite Frank's inconsiderate timing, we were still able to make it to the Dead Sea before dusk. On the one hand, it's pretty much what you'd imagine: you are extraordinarily buoyant, and it's impossible to swim, and getting water in your eyes is a terrible, terrible idea. At the same time, your body is totally unprepared for the experience. Evidence this picture:Yeah, it's like that.

Anyways, the hotel was first class, so us younger folks walked around the resort town until we found an open hotel with pool tables. One member of our group who works with Palestinian children had the good sense to strike up an argument with some off duty soldiers, which was fun for those of us watching.

The next day we slowly worked out way back up north. Our first stop was Masada, just a twenty minute drive north of the resort. Spectacular. King Herod the Great built this fortress partially as a defense of the entry route into Israel on the southern end of the Dead Sea, and partially as a secluded, luxurious getaway from the religious zealotry in Jerusalem. The ruins of the fortress today are very well preserved because of the totally dry desert heat, much like in Luxor. We took the cable car up to the top (next time I'm walking) and spent about two hours at the site. Not enough time, really, as we never made the descent to the lower levels. We did, however, get a spectacular view of the Roman encampments and siege ramp (you can see them on Facebook) from AD 72/73, when the empire destroyed the last vestige of the zealot revolt. Infamously, they arrived to the top to find the site of a mass slaughter and suicide, for the Jewish defenders preferred suicide and the killing of their own families to slavery and crucifixion.

From this cheery scene it was on to Qumran, also destroyed by the Romans earlier in the Great Jewish Revolt, c. AD 68. The members of the Qumran community, which called itself the Yahad, were the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls, found fifty years ago in caves nearby the site (pictured: the famous cave #4). Unlike Beth She'an or Masada, there are no palaces, no bathhouses. The community was simple, almost monastic. They seem to have been founded by priests disaffected by the Hasmonean John Hyrcanus, who declared himself king of Israel even though he was of the priestly line of Aaron, not the kingly line of David. Viewing the temple as impure, they left for the wilderness to escape the 'Wicked Priest,' led by an anonymous 'Teacher of Righteousness.' They practiced twice-daily immersion for purification, and looked for the war of the Sons of Light (themselves) against the Sons of Darkness. This ideology may have had an indirect influence on John the Baptist, Jesus, and early Christianity. Perhaps.

Afterward, we headed toward Jerusalem. After a very brief glace of the city on the road, our driver took us to top of the Mount of Olives for the most spectacular view. I'll post on this and our days in Jerusalem next, but here's a preview for everyone:

Update on Pictures

Just to let everybody know, my pictures on Facebook are finally updated, tagged, and labeled.

Israel: The Coast and the North

It seems I can once again post pictures, and thank God, because the view from atop Mount Precipice was just spectacular.

So we crossed in to Israel to meet our tour guide, Dani. He's extremely difficult to understand and goes off on tangents and talks incessantly on his cell phone, but when you actually get him talking at the site he knows his stuff. He should probably be teaching in Hebrew at a community college. Fortunately, that didn't detract from the trip at all.

Pictured: Dani in his element.

Driving from the Jordanian border at the Allenby-King Hussein bridge, we passed Jerusalem to see Jaffa and settle in for the night in Tel Aviv. Our bus got stuck on the tiny back roads, squished between merchant's booths for about twenty minutes. Absolute absurdity! Here we added several new people to the tour who were only doing the Israel portion. Without mentioning everyone, one new-comer was Laurie, whose family is visiting her but who herself lives here and will be an excellent guide to the practicalities of negotiating Israel and the West Bank.

After a rather dull night out on the town, wherein the only excitement was getting lost and worrying Maria on my way back to the hotel, we headed north the next morning for Caesarea Maritima. This port was built by Herod the Great in the first century BC, but was most prominently used by the Romans as their provincial capital of Judea after the AD 6 takeover. We didn't spend nearly enough time here, but I ought to be going back with St. George's College and, failing that, for a full day shortly before Maria arrives. Somewhat disappointing was the famous theater, pictured above, which is so thoroughly resored that it serves as a modern amphitheater complete with railings and lights.

No matter, the remainder of the day was amazing. Our next top was Mount Carmel, which is more of a mountain range with one particular peak sticking above the rest. Here Elijah challenged the pagan prophets see whose god was more powerful, Baal or Yahweh, and ended with an exploding cow and a mass slaughter. Today a monastery sits atop it, but most impressive it the view:

On a clear day, you can see the Mediterranean to the west and Nazareth and Mount Tabor to the north. The picture, of course, cannot to it justice.

We ate lunch in a Druze village, and I must say, it's nice to finally get hummus, falafel, pita: all those things I expected but just weren't there in Egypt or Jordan.

From there we went to Megiddo. For those not in 'the know,' a tel is an artificial mound composed of cities built atop cities. At Megiddo, there are some twenty such layers. There were pottery shards just spread across the ground, so I picked two up: one for myself, and one for David. There was an underground water system that you can crawl though, as well; pictures are on Facebook.

The last stop for the day was atop Mount Precipice, from which you can get a very nice view of Nazareth and Mount Tabor (first picture). Unfortunately, our tour guide insisted that there is "nothing to see" in Nazareth, and so we all passed it by. Of course, I'll be going there several times, but it's hard to justify calling the Church of the Annunciation, the largest church in the Middle East, and Nazareth Village, an outdoor living museum of first century village life, "nothing."

No matter. That evening we went to Tiberias and slept just south of the city on the Sea of Galilee.

The next day we did the Galilee and the Golan. We began the day with a boat ride across the lake from Tiberias to Ginnosar, where he saw the famed Jesus boat. The boat almost certainly did not belong to Jesus or his disciples, but it is an excellent example of a first century fishing boat. From there we saw the Church of the Beatitudes, and then drove north via Kiryat Shmona to Caesarea Philippi.

Caesarea Philippi was constructed at the base of Mount Hermon in the far north of Israel by the son of Herod the Great, Herod Philip (thus the name), who inherited this portion of his father's land (hopefully I shall soon make a post on the Herodian dynasty, once I do the previously promised one on the exodus). The site had long been in use as a shrine to the mischievous god Pan, and is now known as Banias (because Arabs, who long controlled the site, cannot pronounce their Ps). It is more well known to us as the place where Peter made his confession of Jesus as the Messiah, and where Jesus in turn told his disciples that upon that rock he would build his church. It is also, significantly, the mouth of the Jordan River.

That afternoon we saw several sites related to the ministry of Jesus around the northern shore of the sea of Galilee, namely Tabgha, the location of the multiplication of the loaves and fish, and Capernaum, the ancient town that Jesus used as his base camp. The ruins here are truly impressive, and include a late first century synagogue built atop the one used in Jesus' day, presumably by the Lord himself.

So that evening it was back to Tiberias for another night, and so ended our romp along the coast and in the north.

Jordan

I can't even begin to explain how impressed I was with that little country. Amman is a very modern, very clean city. Truthfully, it might as well be San Francisco. And the royal family, the Hashemite dynasty, are such progressive monarchs.

But before all that, Petra.

We arrived at our hotel at 9pm, without sleep since the 1:30am wake up for climbing Mount Sinai. Suffice it to say, waking up the following morning was difficult. Our Jordanian guide, Fadi, is a fantastic guy. The engine on the bus was absolutely roaring, so it was hard to hear him that first night, but he turned out to be extraordinarily helpful, informative, and compassionate. You couldn't ask for a better guide. It's really hard to weigh him against Osama, but in any case there's no need. Just two amazing guides. Well, the following morning we drove a mere ten minutes to Petra.

If you've seen Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade or Transformers 2, you've seen the great treasury building at Petra. As it so happens, it wasn't a treasury at all; local Bedouins believed that there was treasure hidden in the carvings, and so called it (they even fired rifles at it, the holes of which can still be seen).

But if you think that the Treasury is the highlight of Petra, there's so much more. The amazing thing about the Treasury is that the observer walks toward it through a very deep, narrow crack in the earth to emerge in a large open area. However, the walkway through Petra continues several miles farther into a series of temples, palaces, and storehouses. It's enormous, and one could spend days just hiking it's alleyways.

Petra was the capital of the Nabataean civilization, a major commercial and trading power at the edge of the Roman Empire in the first centuries BC and AD. They basically controlled the supply routes between Damascus and Yemen, the major Indian Ocean port. Petra rose to prominence because it was a secure position at the crux of the trade route. To really understand this amazing city in the rock, one must imagine the walls of its already narrow alleys lined with vendors, money changers, and hordes of animals.

After a night in the wonderful city of Amman- where I met a Saudi in the hotel internet cafe who invited me to his country, oddly enough- we headed for Mount Nebo, or Jabal Nibo. This was the site where Moses died, looking across the Jordan River at a massive panorama of biblical Israel. On a clear day, you can see all the way from Beersheba to the Sea of Galilee. It was breathtaking and spectacular. It was a Sunday morning, so there was an Italian group holding Mass in the Franciscan chapel at the summit. I slipped in between services while the rest of the group was on a bathroom break.

After leaving Mount Nebo we drove to the Allenby-King Hussein bridge. This is the only place where Palestinians are allowed to leave the West Bank for another country now that the Gaza airport and seaport have been closed thanks to the Hamas takeover. The bridge is named after General Edmund Allenby, the British commander who took the Levant from the Ottomans during World War I; on the Jordanian side, it is called the King Hussein bridge, after the long-reigning monarch Hussein of Jordan.

So saying goodbye to Fadi, we crossed into Israel.

Sinai

It's been a while since I've updated due to the fact that internet access has been sketchy at best. Fortunately, I'm now in a swank hotel in Jerusalem, so I'll do my best to catch up; unfortunately, the connection is too slow your pictures, so those will have to wait.

After Cairo we went to the Sinai Peninsula. The day started with a very long drive to the Suez Canal (we drove under it in a tunnel), and then a series of stops at biblical oases inhabited by semi-settled Bedouins. Osama gave an excellent talk on the possible routes and timing of the exodus, which I may post on in more detail later. The Bedu are amazing people, and they have great tea- very strong and very hot. After several such stops we arrived in the tiny town of St. Catherine's, near the base of Mount Sinai.

The biblical Mount Sinai is of uncertain location, but it has traditionally been identified with Nabi Musa, or Mount Moses, as it is known by the local Muslim Bedouin who have guarded the mountain and its Christian pilgrims for a thousand years.

The climb up the mountain began with the 1:30 am wake up call. By 2 we were at the site, and by 2:30 we were mounted on camels heading up the mountain. There are two possible routes up the mountain- the camel or snake path, a winding series of switchbacks, and the Steps of Penance, which are grueling. Both paths meet higher up on the mountain, where camels cannot go, and the 750 steps to the top begin. Along the way, the Bedouins offered us lodging in warm booths they have set up to protect pilgrims from the sub-freezing temperatures.

We made it to the top before sunrise. Alongside our group was a traveling circus of 400 very excited Nigerian pilgrims. Sadly, one of them, an elderly man, died of a heart attack on the climb up. And yet from the summit, all you could hear was their songs of praise, a beautiful mix of somber liturgical music and traditional African tunes. The stone chapel at the top was gorgeous, though it was closed so I'll have to see the interior when I go back. And the sunrise from the top: you can see for a hundred miles in all directions, and the shadow of the mountain looms over the rest of the range. It's breathtaking, and you can't help falling to your knees in prayer.

And thus I saw the first sunrise of the new year from atop Mount Sinai.

After the walk back down we saw St. Catherine's Monastery. The monastery was originally built by the mother of Constantine, Helena, and reconstructed by the Emperor Justinian. Inside, it's icons and mosaics survived the iconoclasm and are some of the only remaining examples of early Christian art. Contained inside is a large bush, said to be the burning bush (somehow I doubt it, but as an object of meditation it serves its purpose), and the well of Jethro. In any case, I can't wait to go back.

With very little sleep we headed toward Taba. Taba, Egypt, Eilat, Israel, and Aqaba, Jordan, are all port cities in their respective countries, and we crossed through them all. After that four hour process, we said a very sad goodbye to Osama. He was such a wonderful guide, and a genuinely good man. From there it was on to Petra.