This Week in Jerusalem ...

So I know what some of you might be thinking right now... "Wow, another post about Jerusalem? That was last week's post! Doesn't she have anything new to tell us about?"  Well the answer to both those questions is YES! Yes, this is another post about Jerusalem, and yes I have lots of new things to tell you about!! This week, our group took two trips into Jerusalem. On Monday the 3rd, we went into the Old City again and focused on the Old Testament events, especially the 1st Temple Period, and then on Wednesday the 5th we went into the New City for the first time. Once again I learned so much, and enjoyed my time there more than I can even say!

This is the Broad Wall, which Hezekiah built to protect
Jerusalem. You'll see on the right an indicator of how tall
the wall was originally built: 8 meters!

Let's start with Monday! We left the Moshav at 8 am and went straight to the Jewish quarter of the Old City to a Museum about the 1st Temple Period. The 1st Temple Period is 1,000-586 BC, or basically the time of King David until the Babylonian captivity. Among the many things we learned at this museum, the most interesting was the history of the city of Jerusalem and its walls. When David conquered Jerusalem from the Jebusites, he established his city on the Eastern Hill, which has since been known as the city of David. Until recently, scholars believed that Jerusalem during the 1st Temple Period only consisted of the City of David and part of the Temple Mount. Then in 1970, they discovered a wall around the Western Hill and dated it back to Hezekiah, which radically changed the view of Jerusalem's size. This wall became known as "the Broad Wall" and still remains today. Hezekiah built a wall around Jerusalem in 700 BC in order to protect the city from Sennacherib and the Assyrians. Since part of that wall was found on the western hill, it only makes sense that there would have been people living there that would need its protection.  2 Chronicles 32:5 says, "And he [Hezekiah] took courage and rebuilt all the wall that had been broken down and erected towers on it, and built another outside wall and strengthened the Millo in the city of David, and made weapons and shields in great number." So Hezekiah fortified the existing walls around the city of David, and then built another wall around the rest of Jerusalem. This second wall is the Broad Wall, and we were able to see it on Monday! Isaiah also alludes to the construction of this wall in Isaiah 22, and said that Hezekiah "tore down houses to fortify the wall" (verse 10), and when this wall was excavated, there were remains of several houses from the same time period there too. More about Hezekiah to come soon ...

This entire room is the supposed tomb of David.
Behind us is the women's prayer room for meditation.

Some of the guys imitating Christ and John at the
Last Supper in its traditional location.

Next, we went to the supposed tomb of King David. If you remember from my last post, the Byzantines termed a spot on the Western Hill, "Mount Zion" because they thought it was the city of David. Then when they found a tomb there as well, they of course believed it to be David's tomb, since 1 Kings 2:10 says that David was buried in the City of David. However, that area is not the City of David, so this tomb does not belong to him. David's tomb has not yet been found, and probably won't be. We know that its location was known during the time of the apostles because Paul says in Acts 2:29, "Brethren, I may confidently say to you regarding the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day." His tomb could have, however been destroyed since then either by an earthquake that would cause it to collapse, or by rock quarrying in the area. The tomb that we went in to was really cool, though! It was absolutely massive! Right above the tomb site (literally right upstairs) is the traditional spot for where the Upper Room was. The tradition started with the Crusaders, and the room built on that site today was built by the Crusaders. Their guess is as good as anyone's. We really don't know where it is. It was a really neat place to stop for a while and talk about what Jesus said to His disciples during His last supper with them. Benj read John 13 for us, and we talked about Christ's incredible example of humility, and how that same demonstration of humble service is required of us today as well. I'm continually amazed by who Christ is! He humbled himself and became a lowly human being in order to save us from the penalty that our sin justly deserves. And on top of that, He spent his entire time on the earth serving others! He lived humbly, and demanded no special treatment from the people He was with. His abundant kindness and unconditional love is absolutely astounding, and is the example that we get to follow! 

I'm going to breeze through some of the other things we did on Monday, for the sake of time. We visited a couple different cemeteries in order to see a few specific graves, and to get a good view of the Hinom and Kidron Valleys. In the Protestant Cemetery at the Jerusalem University College, we visited the grave of Sir Matthew Williams Flinders Petrie, who was a very significant figure in the archaeology world. Most relevant to us, he actually discovered the Merneptah Stele, which was written by Pharaoh Merneptah in 1207 BC, and mentions the nation of Israel! This is important because it's the first extra-biblical text that mentions Israel, and its date fits right in with the early date theory of when Israel left Egypt and started the conquests. We also saw Horatio Spaford's grave. He wrote the beautiful song, "It is Well with my Soul" as he was sailing over the portion of the ocean where his four daughters drowned. His life was filled with sorrow, but his heart was filled with the joy and contentment of the Lord! We sang the first and last verses of his song together, right where he and his wife were buried. It was very powerful! After the Protestant Cemetery, we visited Oskar Schindler's grave in the Catholic Cemetary. Schindler saved the lives of countless Jews during the Holocaust, and is considered a major hero in Jerusalem today. Notice in the picture how his grave is covered with tons of rocks: This is how the Jews show reverence and honor to someone who has died. 

The tomb with the triangular top is
named Zechariah's Tomb.

After we ate lunch (I had my first felafel and it was DELICIOUS), we walked outside of the city and overlooked the Kidron Valley. There are many tombs established there, and several bear the names of Old Testament characters, although none of them are actually for those specific people. Examples are of Absalom’s Pillar and Zechariah’s Tomb, both of which date back to the 1^st century BC, which was way after their lives. However, these tombs, and the others around them, were all around during the time of Christ, and could have influenced Christ’s words when He said that the Pharisees were like white washed tombs (Matthew 23:25).

The last (and most exciting thing) we did was visit The City of David! While being able to see the excavations of what some believe to be David's palace, the thing we were all most excited about was our opportunity to actually walk through Hezekiah's Tunnel! Remember that wall that Hezekiah built in 700 BC? Well this tunnel is related to it, and is mentioned earlier in 2 Chronicles 32. Verses 2-3 say, "Now when Hezekiah saw that Sennacherib had come and that he intended to make war on Jerusalem,  he decided with his officers and his warriors to cut off the supply of water from the springs which were outside the city, and they helped him." Knowing that Sennacherib was coming, Hezekiah made a very smart move with the city's water source. To make sure that Jerusalem would still have water, he channelled the water from the Gihon Springs into the city by digging a tunnel. His men helped him dig it, and they actually started digging from both sides. The miraculous thing is that despite the snake-like path the tunnel took, the diggers met in the middle! I've attached a map of the tunnel so you can see just how amazing it was! Towards the center, you can just see how windy it gets as they try to find each other, and as the map says, there are several "false tunnels" where they started digging, but then had to dig in another direction because they were headed the wrong way. All in all, this is an amazing feat, and it contributed greatly to rescuing Jerusalem from the Assyrians. As you can see in the picture of me in the tunnel, it is teeny tiny! There were many times where we had to be completely bent over as we walked through it, and at some points it was narrower than the width of our shoulders! We were also walking through water the whole time, and the deepest it got was to right above my knees. I really enjoyed learning about Hezekiah during this part of the trip. It was really cool to learn about his absolute trust in the Lord and confidence that He would protect His people, yet how he balanced that with his own responsibility to act and defend the people he was responsible for. This is a beautiful blend of God's sovereignty with man's responsibility. Yes, we can be fully assured of God's plan, but that doesn't mean we get to sit idly on our hands and expect everything to be done for us.

After Hezekiah's Tunnel, we saw a few other things, such as the Pool of Siloam from Jesus' day, where Christ sent the blind man to wash himself and therefore receive his sight (John 9). This is a recently excavated site as well, which was really exciting! We also walked through some ancient sewers, through which the Jews actually fled from the Romans during the Roman conquest in 70 AD. And those are the main points from Monday's trip! Ready for some more exciting information? Maybe take a quick 5 minute break to stretch, get a cup of coffee and crack your back.

Ok, ready? Great! Let's get to it again!

On Wednesday, like I said earlier, we actually went to the new City! Once again, we started in a museum. This museum contains much more than what we went to see, and Benj assured us that we would return to see the rest of the cool stuff there. On Wednesday we saw two specific things at the Israel Museum: a model of Jerusalem as it would have looked immediately before the Jerusalem Revolt in 66 AD, and part of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Solomon's Temple (well, a model of it)

The model was absolutely incredible! It was built in the late 60's/ early 70's by a guy named Avi Yona. It started as his own personal model, but then he donated it to Israel at the end of his life. The main source of information that he based his model off of was Josephus's description of the city. While Josephus is generally a very trustworthy source, there are some things that he potentially could have exaggerated about because he was trying to please both the Jews and the Romans as he was recounting the full history of the Jews. The model shows the three main walls that were around Jerusalem at that time, one of which was Hezekiah's Broad Wall. There are a few main things that I really enjoyed visibly seeing in this model, the foremost of which was the Temple and Temple Mount. The temple at that time was the temple that Solomon built, and was absolutely beautiful! In the model, you could see all the different courts (i.e. the court of the Gentiles, the court of the women, the court of the Israelites, and the court of the priests) and you could see the doors into the Holy Place, where the Holy of Holies was. During Solomon's time, the Ark of the Covenant was in the Holy of Holies, but in Christ's time, nothing was there. Other interesting parts of the model included Herod's Palace, a Roman theatre, the rock quarry where the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is now built (which is the spot where Christ was most likely crucified and buried), and a series of military buildings established by the Romans in order to monitor the city and control any riots that might occur. There's so much more that I'd love to say about this model! I put some pictures on Facebook and will add in the descriptions. Check out the album that correlates to this blog post to see the rest of the descriptions.

This is where the museum is located. It is shaped like the
lid to the jars in which the scrolls were found.

We also went to the museum's "Shrine of the Holy Book," which is all about the Dead Sea Scrolls. For those of you who don't know, the Dead Sea Scrolls is one of the most important collection of documents ever discovered! Some of the scrolls, along with fragments of 800 other ancient documents, were found in a cave at Khirbet Qumran, while most of the actual scrolls were found in an antiquities shop! Of the documents found, 200 of the were Biblical manuscripts, while the other 600 were all important Jewish writings that revealed Jewish thought and approaches to Scripture at that time. The oldest of the documents found dated back to 250 BC, and the youngest were from 68 AD, right before the Romans destroyed the city. These documents were probably hid in the cave in order to save them from the Romans, and because of the cold and dry conditions of that cave, the documents have been beautifully produces for 2,000 years! Probably the most amazing of these documents is the Isaiah scroll. Parts of the original were actually in this museum, and we got to take a look at it! Sadly, pictures were not allowed. Scholars were amazed by this scroll because when compared to the Masoretic copies of Isaiah, there were hardly any differences. This Isaiah scroll pre-dated the Masoretic texts by nearly 1,000 years, yet God's Word was still preserved. What an amazing story! Our faithful God has kept His Word preserved throughout the centuries, so that the copy we hold in our hands is reliable, and still the inspired Word of the Creator of the Universe! Anyways, the museum about the Dead Sea Scrolls was so incredible! Since I've been learning a little bit of biblical Hebrew (basically just the alphabet, as well as some vowels) I was able to actually make out what some of the words on the original Isaiah scroll said! Benj pointed to a word and said, "Hey Catie! You can read this word." He was right. The word was Israel.  Biblical Hebrew looks like this, although the ancient Hebrew was a bit different:  The letters are (from right to left) yod - sin - resh- aleph- lamed. For some reason, that moment of actually being able to read that word was so powerful for me! I guess all the emotion of being in Israel, looking at the Isaiah Scroll, and actually reading even just a word of it overwhelmed me a little bit. Benj then showed us another part of the Isaiah scroll. He pointed out that chapter 40 started on the bottom line of one of the pages. Why is that significant? Well, contemporary liberal scholars have proposed that Isaiah was written by several different authors, rather than just one, and they usually break up the book of Isaiah at chapter 40. But if that were true and the scribe who wrote the Isaiah scroll was aware of that, why would he write the scroll in a continuous fashion? If he believed they were different texts, he would have at least put chapter 40 on the next page. Basically, I loved this museum, and would love to go back!!

After the museum, we ate pizza in the park, and then headed to a modern supermarket called The Shuk (I have no idea how to spell it, but it's pronounced shuke). It was a really neat market where they sold, produce, clothing, candy, flowers, jewelry, gifts, and all sorts of other stuff! In that general area there was tons of shopping too, so it was a really neat place to hang out. The girls definitely have plans of returning there in the near future. Here's just one picture of what they had there, but believe me when I say that there was a ton more!

I'm really falling in love with Jerusalem! It's an incredible city filled with tons of history, culture and excitement. It's such a blessing to be living here and studying here. I am so thankful that the Lord has given me this opportunity, and I sincerely hope to use it for His glory. My prayer is that my eyes may be enlightened, my heart may be softened and my life be changed. 

Again, there is so much more I'd love to tell you about. Check out the Facebook album that corresponds to this post, and hopefully within the next couple days I'll add in all the descriptions so you can get a more complete picture of what I've been learning. 

Thank you so much for reading, and thank you also for your prayers! 

2 Chronicles 32: 7-8 

“Be strong and courageous, do not fear or be dismayed because of the king of Assyria nor because of all the horde that is with him; for the one with us is greater than the one with him. With him is only an arm of flesh, but with us is the LORD our God to help us and to fight our battles.” And the people relied on the words of Hezekiah king of Judah.