Photos: Church, Garden Tomb, Mosaic

The chapel at the BYU Jerusalem Center. The stand in front of the theater seating has a panoramic view of Jerusalem behind the curtains.

The Garden Tomb.

The mosaic on the side of the Church of St. Peter and the Rooster showing Christ being lowered into the dungeon under Caiaphas' Palace.

The stone steps to Caiaphas' Palace.

These are beside the Church of St. Peter and the Rooster which was built over an earlier church and Caiaphas' Palace. These are the steps the Savior probably was taken up as a prisoner into Caiaphas' dungeon.

Marla and Shavon in front of his shop

Marla is holding the leather scripture covers tooled with images of Jerusalem that we bought from the kind shop owner, Shavon, in the Old City.

The Dome of Ascension

In the Garden Tomb where Jesus lay.

November 8, 2009--Sunday

Today is our last day here. We were on our own for touring. We went with the Maughams to the Old City. After walking around a while with them, Marla and I did the Ramparts Walk from the Joppa Gate to past the Dung Gate. It wasn’t what I’d hoped for. I wanted to see the city from higher up, but the area where we walked, there wasn’t much to see: parking lots, deserted field or two, garbage, some streets and sides of building. We could see out well, but I wanted to see in.

After that, we had lunch and then walked over to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. There was quite a crowd there, it being Sunday. We turned right inside the doors and went up the stairs to Calvary. Marla and I sat on a bench in the back that was above the stairs coming up, and I pondered the Crufixion and how painful it was for the Savior to speak, yet He did--to forgive and to comfort his mother.

We moved on and eventually found a cab to take us to the Dome of Ascension, which is on the Mount of Olives above Gethsemane. The driver first took us to a lookout point which overlooks the oldest continually used cemetery and then out over Jerusalem. From there, I could see the Dome of Ascension which is built over the place where Jesus ascended into heaven, and the angels said, “Ye men of Galilee, why look ye up?:

We went inside the Dome. It was a little church. Just outside the door was a fenced out sort of patio area that had a very old tile floor with flower and vegetable designs.

I know it is not about the places, but I want to be where I can feel the Spirit, and I can feel it where Jesus has been.
We are headed home tonight. It is a 12 hour flight to America (Phill.) and then to anther 2 hour flight to Atlanta. Thank you for sharing this with us. We have memories for a life time.

Christ lowered into the dungeon

This mosaic is on the side of the Church of St. Peter of the Rooster, showing the Savior being lowered into the dungeon.

In the Savior's footsteps

November 6, 2009--Friday
We started at the Orson Hyde Park and read his two-page prayer that was given to him by revelation. He blessed the land to be fruitful and to have water. At the time, Jerusalem was pretty wasted from Ottoman domination. They taxed according to the number of trees you had on your land, your fruit trees, so people cut down all their trees. Mark Twain during a visit called it a “….a God-forsaken land where the sheep would fain eat the rocks,” because there was little fodder for them.

Today, Jerusalem is a fruitful field with olive orchards everywhere, as well as farms and trees and foliage.

We walked down the hill from the park and stopped briefly at the Garden of Gethsemane. We are walking the events of the last few days of the Savior’s life, so we didn’t stop in Gethsemane. We took our shuttle bus to an upper room. The place where we stopped was an old building that the upper room dated to Crusader times, ca. 800-1200 A.D. Walking up to it, we walked past David’s Tomb. There was a long line, so we didn’t go in. I did go back to it after visiting an upper room while everyone else took a restroom break. The entry was divided into men and women’s sides. It was in a small room, and the tomb box itself was covered with a leather or vinyl covering.

In the upper room, there was no furniture. We sat in a corner while a Russian group sang and chanted. At the front was an artist’s representation of a small olive tree. The guide said he felt comfortable that the real Upper Room was somewhere nearby. Me, too.
Sang Love One Another in the Upper Room. Our voices rang our in the enclosed room as another group left.

We drove to a little olive orchard/garden that was up a narrow road from the Garden of Gethsemane. We went through a metal gate that had one side open, and a solid side on the right closed. It had a metal arch over the top.

We sat under an olive tree and read from the scriptures about Gethsemane.

Read DC 19, and as we did so, Muslim preaching via loudspeaker was going on in the Old City, which we could see across the valley.

An old Arab guy by the name of Abraham (who had lived in America, was 70 years old, and had two daughters with him who were about 5 and 7) brought olive oil he said was pressed from the olives of this garden. It wasn’t pure like from the store, and it was in an old plastic bottle. I bought the half bottle of olive oil from him for $20.

The Garden of Gethsemane was the spiritual highlight of the trip to me. But there was to come. We drove on to a Catholic church loosely translated as St. Peter of the Rooster Church. This was built over what was once Caiaphas’ Palace. In the main floor of the church’s chapel was a hole that went down below three levels. Two levels down was a dungeon area where people were scourged. Paul received five scourging, which was 40 lashes, save one. The reason for the save one was the Jewish priests were humane. They administered the lashes in three segments of 13 each. After each segment, they poured water on the victim and washed his wounds. The victim was being taught a lesson, not beaten out of rancor, supposedly. They wanted him awake and feeling his punishment to learn a lesson. They couldn’t give more than 40 lashes by law, so they only gave 39 to make sure they didn’t miscount and go over. If they erred, they erred on the side of the victim.

When all 39 were given, they poured salt water and vinegar over the back to stop the bleeding and help to heal the wound. Again, so the victim could live and remember the lesson.
The Savior’s scourging was administered by Romans who did consider the Jews animals. Stephen said imagine a Roman serving in a land that he disliked among people he disliked, doing things he disliked. Do you think he would relish taking his frustrations out on a Jew during a scourging?

From there, we went down one level to a square chamber hewn out of the stone. After I walked
down in it, I started to feel the Spirit, and I wondered why. What happened here? We read about the Savior’s illegal trial by the Sanhedrin after dark. Stephen believes there were just a group 23 priests, one-third of the total 70 (the high priest was the 70th) who judged Jesus.
The Jews were allowed to put people to death under Roman rule in just two cases: a violation of the temple and a violation of the Sabbath. Accusers came, but no two agreed. The ones that said the Savior would destroy this temple and build it again in three days were close, but not enough. Then Caiaphas blasphemes by saying the name of God in demanding from Jesus if he is the Son of God. The only time the high priest could say the name of God was in the proper place in the temple. The Savior responds that He is, but he doesn’t use the name of God. So Caiaphas blasphemes and then condemns the Savior from blaspheming.

Stephen asked, where was the Savior after the trial? Where was he during the night? I never thought about that. I thought he was up all night.

He was lowered throw a hole into that dungeon in the bottom of Caiaphas. The dungeon was probably pitch black.

On the side of the Church is a mosaic of Christ being lowered in a harness into that dungeon, below all.

Outside, out back, was a statue of Peter, the maiden and the soldier in the palace. There were also stone steps dated to the 1st century--the steps the Savior was marched up those stairs on His way to the dungeon. The ground level behind the church met the stairs about one-third of the way up. I walked down the stairs to the bottom and walked all the way up, in the steps of the Savior.

The condemned usually carries just the cross piece of the cross. The post is left by the road at the place of crucifixion, as a warning to obey the law.

Crucifixion was a drawn out process. Records of at least one taking ten days to cause death. There was a little saddle of wood for the condemned to sit on. When he hung down on his nailed hands, he couldn’t exhale so he suffocated with a breath of air in his lungs. Or he stood up on his nailed feet to take a breath. Every word said would be through extreme pain. The Roman soldiers broke the legs so the condemned couldn’t stand up to take a breath so they suffocated.
Add to this the Savior’s scourging, which ripped and tore his back muscles, making it hard to pull up to breath.

The exertion caused the heart to burst. When the soldier thrust the sword into Jesus’ side, he knew if water and blood came out separately, it meant the heart had burst, and Jesus was definitely dead and didn’t need his legs broken. Stephen thinks John spoke with the soldier with the spear is how he knew about the blood and water.

At the Garden Tomb, we entered the gate to a ticket booth-looking area, but they don’t charge to get in. We went through another gate and walked along a path on the right side to some stands by Golgotha. There were skull-looking indentions, and the guide for the Garden Tomb listed scriptures that would seem to show it was the place of crucifixion. But he didn’t think on top of the hill was the place because the Romans crucified by the road for people to see, and the scriptures said people read the sign over Jesus’ head.

I did meet a young man from Cameroon there with a group. He felt this was the place from the things the guide had said, and he also said the place wasn’t important because Jesus wasn’t there. True. Yet, the Spirit is important.

We next went to the Garden Tomb, which was just as we’d seen it in pictures. There were crowds of people there in groups, lined up to go into the tomb. We took our turn and went in. There were two small chambers: the one on the left was the weeping chamber, and the right one, across the top side of it was where Jesus was laid.

The ground in front was all stone. The trough for the stone was on both sides of the door. Event though we had to stoop to go through the doorway, we learned it had been extended higher. So Mary and Peter and John really had to stoop to look in and go in.

The Spirit was there.

After our group had gone through, we went to a small area and sat and read about the Resurrection. Then we sang, How Great Thou Art. It was a very spiritual time.
I imagined the Savior appearing to Mary Magdalene there.

Marla and I sat for a while on benches that were on a level up from and facing the tomb. When there were only a few people at the tomb, we went down to it. I took some more photos, and when only a couple of people were inside, I went in again. They left, and I was alone in the tomb. I left as someone else was coming in.

Again, it is not the places, but the Spirit and the Savior that are important.


November 7, 2009--Saturday, the Sabbath
We went to church at the BYU Jerusalem Center today. What a beautiful place! The chapel has tiered seating, and behind the stand is a panoramic view of the Old City of Jerusalem. It was a good fast and testimony meeting, and I was enthralled looking at the city.

This is in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. This is the traditional site of the Calvary. The large arch in the middle with the figures of silver under it is over the spot where the Savior was crucified, some believe. This is all in the church.

One of the alley streets in the Old City of Jerusalem.

Here we are at the South Wall of the Temple.

I am ritually washing my hands in the purification rite at one of the sinks in the courtyard of the Western Wall.

Western Wall, Dome of the Rock, etc.

The Western Wall of the outer court of the temple.

This marks bedrock in the courtyard platform with the Dome of the Rock that our guide said was where Abraham offered Isaac.

The Dome of the Rock.

The six-foot-high pepper plant farm in the Valley of Elah where David met Goliath.

Calvary and the Shepherds' Fields

November 4, 2009--Wednesday
We traveled first to the Old City of Jerusalem and entered through the Dung Gate (for all the garbage) right to the Temple Mount. To see the walls of Jerusalem which have been standing for millennia, in various stages is astounding. Walls were added to the original walls as the city grew. There were about three sets of walls. Today, about 30,000 people still live within the city walls.
We passed through security and walked across the wide courtyards to the stairs leading to the Dome of the Rock. Under the gold dome on the walls were large blue, green and white ceramic tiles with Arabic designs on them. The doors were closed; we couldn’t go in, anyway. We did buy a set of photos, one of which showed the inside and the rock. This is where Muslims will say Mohammed ascended into heaven. The guide said Mohammed was in a cave when he had a dream about ascending to heaven on this spot. He also said Muslims say Abraham offered up Ishmael here, not Isaac.

We walked across the courtyard around on side of the Dome, and it (like the lower courtyard or platform) had stone tiles as the base, or the flooring, throughout. The guide pointed out a large square of tiles on the northeastern side. These were a different style of stone tile than the rest of the courtyard because in the early 1900s, they pulled up the tiles and started to dig. They found the corner of a wall. Realizing it was probably the top of a a previous temple’s walls, they covered it up. The Muslims at that time admitted it was a temple wall, but now they don’t want to say the Jews had a temple there before they did.

Then the guide took us to the northwestern corner to a small place with stone columns and a dome roof. Under it on the ground was bedrock. He said that the altar of the temple, would have been on bedrock, and the altar of the temple was placed where Abraham offered Isaac--not on the rock in the Dome of the Rock.

Next, we went to the Western Wall of the Temple. The guide said that calling it the Wailing Wall is a little anti-Semitic, in that Jews don’t call it that, but westerners did when they called their praying wailing. The wall was not part of the temple, but the wall around the courtyard to the temple. However, the guide said the Jews considered it all the temple.

From there, we drove to a park with a gigantic scale model of Jerusalem from 66 CE. On the grounds there is the Shrine of the Book which has some of the fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls. There are parts of Isaiah, Habakkuk, the Temple Scrolls and laws of the Essene community.
After lunch, we drove out of the city and stopped just off the road in a place called Zorah. It was here that Samson was born and grew up. We read his story and looked out over the valley where he tied firebrands between the tied tails of foxes (300) and sent them through the Philistines’ corn, burning up a year’s worth of food.

We moved onto the Valley of Ela (Elah) and walked along the edge of a plowed field by the Brook Kidron. In the field were all these smooth stones, showing they were river rocks. We looked for round, smooth stones a little smaller than a golf ball. Marla found the only one that really fit the parameters, even though 13 of us were looking.

We read the story of David and Goliath as we sat in the valley between four hills; Philistines on one side (of the road that is there now) and Israelites across the road on one or both of those two hills. There are a couple of apple orchards on the Philistine side now, and there is a bell pepper garden with six-foot-high plants on the Israelite side of the road In this valley was where David bested Goliath.

November 5, 2009--Thursday
We headed to the Old City this morning, We headed through the narrow alleys of Jerusalem to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the traditional site of Calvary and the tomb of Christ. The church was hit by an earthquake in 1927, and you can still see metal bands around a bell tower holding it together. Because three churches claim authority over different places of the church, they don’t allow one another to repair things because that would show ownership. The traditional tomb of the Savior has a large wooden structure around it. It was damaged in the earthquake, too, but it has scaffolding around it to hold the damaged parts together. The British tried to repair it, but there was an uproar, so they put up the scaffolding, and it has remained there since.

Because of the churches’ squabble, a Muslim holds the key to the church. When one group held it in the past, they locked the others out.

Going in the large wooden doors, to the immediate right are stone stairs leading up Calvary. They aren’t very high.

Going straight ahead through the door is the Rock of Unction. This is traditionally where the Savior’s body was laid and anointed before burial. Many people were kneeling down to kiss it or touch it. I read on the internet that this is not the original rock, if it is where this event happened. The rock has been replaced twice.

Over it hung several lanterns, one from each of the churches that claim responsibilities in the church.

Because they were cleaning the stairs up Calvary, we had to go up the exit stairs. At the top were three arches over where the crosses were located. Under the arches was bedrock where the crosses were erected. On a wall under the arches were these large silver representations of Jesus, Mary and another man, didn’t hear who he was (Joseph? Peter? John?).

To touch the bedrock, people had to kneel down and go into a little cubicle, and put a hand through a brass circle. A guy on the tour touched it and said it was smooth to the touch. We didn’t touch it because our guide talked about how pagan this appeared in being required to kneel down before images. He spoke about how when a religion loses the Spirit (which the Jewish and Christian religions originally had), it becomes a shell that needs relics and ritual to inspire. But it was a spiritual place.

The tomb in the church, as one prophet has told us, is not the tomb of the Savior.
We walked around a circular corridor in the church and passed a glass case around bedrock. It had no sign explaining what its significance. Then around the corner was another case around the same rock. The guide said there is a tradition that the tomb of Adam and Eve is below Calvary and that the Savior’s blood seeped down to it, and they were the firstfruits of the Resurrection. There is nothing doctrinal said about it.

We walked through the Old City to the Western Wall. It was the day when bar mitzvahs are held there, and several were going on. The men, with heads covered, went down one side, and women went down the other. I saw one woman who was walking with a man down the male side get stopped and sent to the other. Didn’t know the rule, I guess.

The main part of the ceremony was held along the fence separating men and women so the women could look over it and watch. The ceremony involved getting the Torah rolls out of a wooden, upright box and taken to a table. The young man reads part of the Torah, everyone cheered, and the women threw candy over the fence.

After lunch, we toured the Archaeological Garden and the south wall of the temple. We sat there on the steps leading up to where the south gate to the temple used to be, but is now walled up.
On the southwest corner at the foot is a replica of a corner piece from the top of the wall. The actual piece is in a museum because it is so important. It had an inscription about it being where the trumpeter stood. This was a pinnacle of the temple, and there the trumpeter stood who blew the trumpet to announce the beginning of the Sabbath. The guide said he believed this was the pinnacle the Savior was taken to by the Spirit and where the third temptation of Satan happened. This overlooked a main commercial street in Jerusalem with all of its shops, a perfect place for the temptation to throw himself off so He could be saved by angels in front of everyone down in the street.

Hardly anyone came along the South Wall, so we sat on the steps and looked out over the city across the hills. It was peaceful. Below the steps were excavated walls of the ceremonial places of washing. This was where everyone, including the Savior, would have immersed themselves and cleansed themselves before going into the temple.

From there, we drove south out of the city. We could not go to Bethlehem because it is in Palestinian control, but we did stop at a monastery built where traditionally Elijah stopped to rest on his way to Sinai. We walked around behind and to the right and sat down on a hill overlooking a valley. Across it on the other side was Bethlehem.

Sorry to burst a bubble, but there are no plains in Judea so the hymn Far, Far Away On Judea’s Plain, while inspired, is not exactly topographically correct.

The guide showed us where the Church of the Nativity was by pointing out four towers in a row, the minarets of mosques. Near the last one on the left was the church.

We read about Ruth, David’s grandmother, who came with Naomi back to her hometown of Bethlehem. We also read the Christmas story. It was a very spiritual time for us as we looked over the valley of terraced olive trees to Bethlehem.

Beatitudes and St. Peter's Fish

We had a lunch one day at a restaurant on the Sea of Galilee where they serve St. Peter's fish. Unfortunately, Marla's didn't have a coin in the mouth, as did some of the others on our trip.

This church was built on the Mount of the Beatitudes in the early 1900s and looks out on the Sea of Galilee.

The Beatitudes and Capernaum

Our self portrait on a rainy day at Capernaum where the Savior performed 85% of his recorded miracles.

Capernaum. This is the remains of the government building where Paul made his case before King Agrippa and Festus.

Nazareth, Cana, Caesarea, Joppa

November 3, 2009--Tuesday

It was raining again this morning.

Turning left out of the hotel, we passed Magdal (“tower”) where Mary Magdalene was from. We passed Taran (sp?) where Jesus and the disciples were going through the fields on the Sabbath and were hungry. Stephen said they took wheat in their hands, rubbed it together to winnow it, and ate it. The scriptures say it was corn. Doesn’t matter.

The principle was the same. When the Savior was questioned by the Jews, he gave them the example of David and his men eating the shewbread in the temple which wasn’t lawful for them.
Jesus was a son of David, so it was lawful for him to do likewise.

We passed through Cana. There are two churches there, one Greek Orthodox and the other I can’t remember, and they both have six stone jars in them, to represent where the Savior turned the water into wine. Both can’t be right, and it is possible that neither is the correct spot.
Stone jars and dishes are used because they don’t absorb the impurities and other things that make a Jew impure, so they can be washed out and used again. In the restaurant in Tiberius, we were served on glass plates since glass doesn’t absorb anything, and it is cheaper than stone. So they can serve meat on it for one meal, wash it, and then serve a dairy product on it for another meal.

This brings up the subject of kosher. One of our tour members asked for a glass of milk at an evening meal. They were told no milk was served with meat because it wouldn’t be kosher--wouldn’t keep the law about not seething, or cooking, a kid in its mother’s milk. This was an Arab custom or delicacy, but it was considered cruel to do so. Under the Law of Moses, sacrificial animals had to be killed in the quickest and least painful way to be the least cruel. Cutting the throat was the method which took the breath and the blood.

The Jews who keep kosher--and Stephen said about 20% consider themselves orthodox, yet about 50% or so keep kosher, and about 80% fast on the holiest day of the year--only eat meat from an animal that has a cloven foot and chews its cud. With fish, they must have scales and fins. Fowls are like meat so they don’t have them with milk.

Back to Cana, the Savior told Mary that His hour had not yet come, so he would do whatever she wanted him to. His hour with wine was going to be when He instituted the sacrament.
Wine and blood are recurring themes. Moses first curse on Egypt was turning the river into blood, and his last curse was the death of the firstborn. The Savior’s first miracle was turning water into wine. His last in this mortal life was in the death of God’s Firstborn.

We passed a little town called Mished, the traditional birthplace of Jonah. Later in the afternoon, we went to Joppa, which is right by Tel Aviv, and where Jonah took ship to Tarshish (Spain) rather than go prophecy to the Assyrians in Nineveh that they would be destroyed in 40 days. Even though Jonah tried to reject his calling from the Lord, he was still a testimony of the Savior. Jesus told the Jews asking for a sign that the only one they’d get was the sign of Jonah.
Also in Joppa was where Cornelius the Centurion lived who had the visit from the angel. He is told to send men to Peter in Caesarea, which they do, about 25 miles away. Peter has his vision there, and then goes to Joppa and preaches to Cornelius and all his family, who are baptized.
St. Peter’s Church, a Catholic Church, is there in Joppa. We went in and saw it after we read of Cornelius’ experience and after visiting a tel up the street from the Church. The tel had a few layers of buildings from different civilizations. Herod shipped in cedar from Lebanon there for the temple. The great brass doors for the temple came through there. Napoleon took the city from Muslims, and decimated it, and his soldiers were decimated from the diseases from all the dead bodies.

We drove through Nazareth, or Nazareth Elite, which is on the top of a hill. There are about 40 churches there, on spots where incidents in the Savior’s life are mentioned. There are more churches than verses about Nazareth.

There is a Church of the Precipitation, or the Church of Jumping. When someone was stoned under Jewish law, they were thrown off a cliff. Then, the witnesses against him had to go to the bottom of the cliff to see if the condemned was dead. If not, the witness had to take the first large stone and throw it on the chest and crush the heart to finish the deed. You really had to be dedicated to be a witness. After that, stones were thrown on the person to cover them up and bury them. This was done in abandoned quarries.

The Church of the Precipitation stands near where the Savior was taken to be thrown off the cliff after reading about himself in Isaiah in the synagogue and saying the scripture was fulfilled. He escaped, of course.

The main business in Nazareth then and now is stone quarrying. Stephen said the Greek word for handyman has been translated as “carpenter” for Joseph’s job, but it could have been stone mason since that was the main business there, and it would have been symbolic of the Savior as the Rock.

We stopped on the side of a high hill to look out over the Valley of Jezreel and the Valley of Armageddon. To the left was Mount Tabor, where Pres. Kimball said the Transfiguration happened. We couldn’t see it for the clouds. We didn’t go there because there are 18 switchbacks up and 18 down the mountain, and it would have taken us about two hours to do so.
Six days prior to the Transfiguration, Peter had been promised that he would receive the keys and the sealing power. Moses and Elijah came with those keys. He and James and John probably received their endowment there and were told to tell no one. In ancient times, hilltops were used as temples, such as Mt. Sinai.

When Elijah and Moses returned on April 3, 1863 in the Kirtland Temple, they came on Passover.

About lunch time, we went to Caesarea, which is where the rich live today. We drove past a Roman aqueduct that was originally eight miles long. We were only allowed to take pictures from the bus because the wind and sand were blowing hard from the Mediterranean Sea.
We stopped next at Caesarea. We saw a film there about how Herod the Great built a great city there and a protected harbor. He knew that ships had to weather the storms of winter in the Greek Islands. Then it took them three or four weeks to sail back, load up with olive oil, bread, dates, wheat and so on to sail to Rome and other places to sell it. By having a protected harbor, Herod’s ships could get to those cities first and get a better price for their goods.

Caesarea was a huge success as a commercial center. It also had an amphitheater and a hippodrome for chariot races, larger than the one in Rome. It suffered earthquakes, and a Muslim army conquered it at one time and destroyed the town. Crusaders came in and conquered it after that.

There are still parts of Crusader walls to be seen there.

We sat and read the story of Paul before King Agrippa where the government building had been, where Paul probably made his case.

Earlier in the day before Joppa, we drove up Mt. Carmel, which has residential areas and businesses and overlooks Haifa and the harbor. It was at the foot of Mount Carmel where Elijah had his challenge with the 450 priests of Baal, and it was on Mount Carmel where they were taken an executed.

This challenge happened because the children of Israel were secretive--they were worshipping both Yahweh and Baal (which means “Lord“). Elijah had cursed the land with no rain for three years because of this, so he had a throw down, which also proved that his God was responsible for the drought.

We passed over the Brook of Kishon where the priests’ blood made it run red down the mountain.

Side notes: the police have their flashing lights on all the time, as a deterrent rather than trying to sneak up on people; the bathroom sinks are round with flat bottoms; and there are two buttons in the wall behind the toilet for flushing, one bigger than the other (the bigger one gives more water in the flush).

Mount of the Beatitudes

November 2, 2009--Monday
We visited Tel Dan Nature Reserve where there is a tel, a mound where several civilizations have built one on top of the other. We didn’t see much there--it was a nature walk. We did stop by a stream that had some pottery shards in it that washed down from the tel, which dated to 3300 to 2700 BCE. There was also the ruins of a temple there that Jeroboam had built, but we didn’t go see it due to lack of time. This was in the land where the Tribe of Dan settled, and they almost immediately turned to idolatry. Jeroboam put two golden calves in the temple there.
We drove by the Golan Heights which border Lebanon, and we drove by several fields with signs marked them as being mined.

We then drove to near the ruins of Caesarea Philippi. They are on the top of an escarpment, but we didn’t go up. We did see some stone column parts and lintels from the Temple of Pan there. It was at Caesarea Philippi that Jesus asked Peter, “Who do men say that I am?” and “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.”

From there, we went to lunch in the town of Tiberius. After that, we were supposed to take a boat ride on the lake, but it was pouring rain, and the wind was blowing at 25 mph or so. The tempest wasn’t raging on the Sea of Galilee, but there were whitecaps on the waves.
So we went on to the Mount of the Beatitudes. It looked like a garden with grass, palm trees, and flowers. There is also a nunnery and a church there dedicated to the Beatitudes. It has the attributes of the Beatitudes on the floor, such as charity and providence, and the blessings in glass in the circular walls under the round roof. Between them symbolically would be either the person or the Savior. There was an altar on the floor.

After walking around the church, we walked out a walkway and down the yard and sat under some trees while our guide discussed the Beatitudes and compared the two records of it in Matthew 5 and 3 Nephi. Some words are added in 3 Nephi, particularly v. 6 that adds after “…be filled” with the Holy Ghost.

The Sea of Galilee (Kinnerett) is down the hill from the Mount. I never pictured it being there, just down from the mountain.

After that, we drove back to the hotel, which was only about five minutes away, and went to a museum near it that has a 2000-year-old boat on display there. It was found buried in the beach by two brothers. A crew of archaeologists and other experts figured out how to dig it out, enclose it in Great Stuff to keep it from deteriorating in the air, float it out so a crane could get under it, and lift it out of the water. It was restored and installed in the museum. It has 11 types of wood in it, and it has ribs every six or eight inches or so. It was impressive.

While out and not paying attention, I stepped on a hose, slipped, twisted my ankle, and fell. This was the one thing I tried to avoid before the trip, but I lost concentration and blew it.
My ankle swelled up, so we have been putting ice on it and then heat. I am praying that the swelling will go down because I am going to be doing a lot of walking in a day or so.

Marla with catapult balls left at Masada.

Marla floating in the Dead Sea

Masada and Qumran

November 1, 2009--Sunday
Last night, we watched Israel’s version of Survivor on TV. They did a challenge like on our version, but at the end, they talked among themselves and left two guys behind, I suppose for elimination, but the show ended there. It did show clips from next week with one of those guys in it.

One thing really different, at commercial breaks they had a hostess with four Survivors who had been kicked off. They talked about the other contestants and showed clips, and did funny things like playing the theme music from the show Friends, showing guys hugging each other, arms on shoulders together and such. It was pretty funny,.

At the end, they had the kicked off Survivors voting on whom they thought would get kicked off.
We drove to Masada this morning, leaving at about 7:30 and traveling back the way we came last night. We only saw a little of the town and of the Old City and the golden Dome of the Rock. Jerusalem is on top of a high hill, and that is why they always say in the scriptures that they “…went up to Jerusalem.”

We passed some Bedouin sheep camps on the way out with the traditional tents but also some shanty-like one-room houses made of plywood, plastic and tin. Jerusalem is a modern city so it was odd seeing young men riding donkeys along the roads here and there. They were all Palestinians or Bedouins; I don’t Israelis ride donkeys these days.

While we were driving near a place called the Samaritan Inn, Stephen Rona, our tour guide, related a different interpretation to the Parable of the Good Samaritan. He said that the Savior was not trying to show the priest and the Levite as bad men. In their tradition, they could not touch a dead person or go through a cemetery or they would be defiled and could not participate in the temple ordinances. Perhaps to their view, the Samaritan was dead or nearly dead. They chose to avoid him than be defiled.

Stephen said that a Jew can break any religious law to save a life. They can go into a burning house on the Sabbath to save a life, but they cannot put out the fire if no one is in the house. Stephen said he believes the Savior was trying to show that they were being good for the wrong reason. Their action was legal, but they missed the higher law of compassion.

We stopped at a gas station, and along with a souvenir shop, there was a guy there with two camels, selling rides I assume. Marla bought some fresh dates, and they are the best we’ve ever eaten.

We again passed the same gas station we passed last night, and the camel was there again, ready for a ride.

We passed En-gedi where David cut off part of Solomon’s coat when he went into a
cave to “cover his feet,” or use the restroom.

As I mentioned before, much of Israel is desert. You have to wonder why the Lord would bring them here after they’d traveled in the wilderness and desert for 40+ years. As I read somewhere, “Forty years of traveling, and we came to the only place with no oil.” Our guidebook (which provides all the tour information about all the places we are going) points out that the Lord didn’t bring them here to tame the desert, but for the desert to tame them.
Masada was an incredible fortress. It is out in the middle of nowhere on top of a mesa. We rode up a cable car up and could see how sheer that side was. Herod the Great left two of his wives there while he went to Rome to get his commission. When he returned, they were nearly starving, so he made Masada a great fortress, that actually was used at one time by the Romans as a place for R&R. He built a palace on the north side of the mesa, partway down the side. Although most of Masada was destroyed over the years, some of the bases of the walls for the rooms and quarters are there, and they have rebuilt some of the walls with the existing rocks. The commandant’s quarters still has some color on the walls, as does the bath house, which the Romans built.

The Jews living there at the time needed bath areas there for ritual washings so there are succeeding baths or fonts. The Jews did do immersion; they wouldn‘t call it baptism since that is a Christian word. The guide said they immerse people who want to join their religion.
For the daily ritual bathing, they needed pure water, rain water, and flowing water. This was in short supply, so the rabbis decide they can use part of the pure water to purify a tub of regular water.

There was a tannery there, so they had animals all the way up there.
To get water, they had a system of cisterns dug into the side of the mountain that were fed by rain water from the surrounding hills that was caught by small aqueducts, like the one we saw in Petra. It was quite ingenious. In one place, there was evidence of carbon and charcoal, and the guide said they filtered their wash water into a cistern so they could use it again. When the Romans laid siege to Masada, they bucketed their water from the springs of En-geni. (En means spring, and gedi means a type of deer.)

The Jews held out while the Romans built a siege ramp on the back side. You could still see the remains of the Romans’ siege camps and part of the ramp. When they got it mostly built, the Jews started lobbing round rocks at them with catapults. There were still some of the round rocks left there in Masada that we saw. The Romans backed off, and then hauled Jewish slaves from their capture and destruction of Jerusalem, and used them to build the ramp--correctly believing that the Jews wouldn’t throw rocks at their countrymen.

When the ramp was complete, the Romans moved up their guys with battering rams. The shock wave produced by the battering rams knocked rocks out of the opposite side of the wall. To counter this, the Jews put up wooden beams with dirt between them and the wall to hold the rocks in place. Soon, the Roman brought their siege tower up the ramp to burn the wooden beams. The wind turned on them and almost burned their siege tower down.

The leader of the Jews gathered his people on the last night because they could see the Romans building ladders to scale the walls. He knew their time was up. He made a speech saying it was better for them to die than to be made slaves by the Romans and to have their wives and children abused. In their religious belief, it was worse to be a slave to anyone else but God than to die. He proposed that the fathers kill their wives and children in what he thought was the most humane (and sacrificial way) by cutting their throats. Then ten men would be chosen to kill the men the same way. One man would be chose to kill the rest and then fall on the sword, so technically, only one person committed suicide at Masada. The rest killed rather than have their families become slaves.

He also proposed they burn all their equipment and belongings, but not their food. They wanted the Romans to know they sacrificed themselves for their religious beliefs rather than for lack of food. And so they did.

One of the rooms we saw was the Room of the Lots. Here, they found ten pieces of pottery with the names of men written on it, possibly the ten who were selected by random to kill them men. One of the names was the leader of the group.

During the excavations, they found a synagogue there. It was a room with like bleacher seats on two sides and an enclosed room in the back. When their scriptures become damaged or too worn to use, they honor them by burying them, as you would do to honor someone who died. In that room, they found parts of scriptures buried and one complete chapter of Ezekiel--chapter 37. While this does talk about the stick of Judah and of Joseph, the guide believes that chapter was there because of the scriptures about the field of dry bones--and their belief in an eventual resurrection.

From there, we drove to a café for lunch and then for a swim in the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea is about 47 miles long and 16 miles wide. It is receding two feet a year because more of the water from the Jordan River, which feeds it, is being used. A British explorer in the 1800s marked the shoreline, and not the remnants of that line are to the west of the highway that parallels the Dead Sea, and the sea is 400 or 500 yards from the highway.

Marla and I and one other guy were the only ones in our group to swim in the Dead Sea. Some of the others waded in it. It was a rocky beach. Marla floated in the water first while I took her picture while she read a book. Then she took mine. We were holding the Book of Mormon.
From there, we went to Qumran. We saw the stone wall remains of the society there. They had a kitchen, pottery, scriptorium where they wrote the scrolls and other rooms. Our guide said that even though they were communal, their living quarters were separate. They found them by metal detecting for the tacks used in their sandals that fell out.

The Romans conquered them, too, but not before they hid their scrolls. We will see some of them in Jerusalem at a museum. A part of every book of the Old Testament except Esther has been found in the scrolls, as well as the complete Book of Isaiah, the oldest copy of it.
The Essenes who built Qumran did so to be alone and to worship their God in purity. They were Ascetics. You have to admire them for living out in a desert place and enduring its hardships for their religion. They understood the importance of purifying yourself and your life, to make yourself ready to meet God.

We are traveling north now to the Sea of Galilee where we will spend the night in a hotel run by a kibbutz. The kibbutz don’t just do farming these days. They are into other industries. One makes creams and facial products from the mud and minerals of the Dead

We passed a sign saying that the traditional place of Jesus baptism was to the right in the Jordan River. We did not stop.

There are more farms here and towns. It is greener.

Petra

October 30, 2009--Friday
Today, we went to Petra in Jordan. We met in the lobby of the hotel at 7 am and met some others in the group. We have hung around with Roger and Dianne Roundy from Paradise, Utah.
The hotel gave us a boxed breakfast since we were to leave when the restaurant opened. In it was: yogurt, bread, an apple, a persimmon, a tomato, a cucumber, two types of cheese, olives, two slices of poppy seed cake, and a bottle of water. It seems some vegetables are standard fare for breakfast.

We boarded a shuttle bus and rode to the border crossing into Jordan, which was about five minutes away. We got there before 7:30 to beat the crowd--the gate opened at 8. We went through the Israeli passport control. The Israeli side had a man in a watchtower with a rifle.
In Jordan, we had our pack scanned and our passports taken to get stamped so we could proceed. That took about an hour. We were finally loaded onto our bus around 10:30. The whole time, we were burning up in the sun. I had on jeans and a dark blue short sleeve shirt. I was regretting that decision the whole time.

We drove near Aqaba, and our tour guide was giving us what seemed like a little propaganda about how Jordan only had this one narrow area for a port on the Red Sea, implying that Israel prevented them from having more. He said the government was investing $10 billion in construction in the town, which seemed pretty high to me. There were a lot of low apartment buildings being constructed. But no one was working today. We heard the government gave everyone a day off.

As we drove across Jordan, it looked like a wasteland, just dirt and hills and mountains. We saw a couple of tomato farms, but that was about it. We saw a lot of 18-wheelers, but very few cars. The tour guide said there are six million people in Jordan, and two million live in Amman, the capitol.

We stopped at a tourist trap about halfway in to go to the loo. It was near the top of the highest Jordanian mountains in the south, and the temperature was really cold, and the wind was blowing. We went from burning heat to freezing cold. The jeans felt good.

Back on the road, we drove down those mountain slopes as we neared Petra.. The town of Petra was really the only one we saw after we left the border; saw a gas station and a small compound or two of blocky homes made of cinderblock, but no towns. Petra is as big as it is because of tourism, thanks a lot to “Indiana Jones.”

After arriving, we walked past a few shops to get to the dirt road. One shop was Indiana Jones, one was Titanic, and so on. We walked down a long dusty road with the tour guide stopping every few minutes stopping to tell us about the funeral rooms carved out of the rock. This was before the slot canyon that is about a mile long going to Petra. We stopped along the way there, too, to see things. There was a small aqueduct carved into the base of the rock wall on one side that held a ceramic pipe that brought water to the town.

When we finally made it down the slot canyon, Petra was amazing. The Treasure House is fantastic, of course. It must be 40 or 50 yards high. We walked through the narrow canyon area and saw quite a few other carvings and funeral rooms, too. There is also an amphitheater carved into the side of the rock.

Marla rode a camel and so did Diane Roundy, friends we made. Roger Roundy and I walked back and took photos.

Marla said that while she was riding back to the Treasure House, a guy asked if she was an American, and she replied she was. He said that when he was in America, people called him a camel driver, but now she was a camel driver. She didn’t reply to him other than to say, “Okay,” but she should have said, “Let it go, Indiana.”

I asked her if he was Caucasian, and she said he was, so we don’t know what his problem was.
The guide told us that Petra has been put on the list of one of the Seven Man-made Wonders of the World. It became a trading capital because two caravan routes crossed nearby, and the caravans would hang out there for protection for robbers. Petra charged them a fee and became rich. It’s kingdom extended to Damascus at one time. It’s golden age was between 200 BC and 200 AD.

It eventually attracted the attention of the Romans who took over the area. They carved an arch across one point of the slot canyon entrance, which fell a few hundred years ago. At one time, the Romans paved the road in with stones. Some are still there. Most of the stones have been washed away.

The Roman influence can also be seen there in Corinthian columns carved in the walls of the burial tombs, which is one of the things Petra is famous for, in addition to the Treasure House (which is what the Bedouins who used to live there called it because they thought treasure was hidden in the top of carving).

Greek influence is also seen in some of the carvings.

It was magnificent.

It wasn’t hot at all in Petra; in fact, it was a little cool. The dust blew threw pretty regularly, as it does in the desert.

The tour provided a late lunch at the Magic Petra Restaurant. There were lots of salads, rice, a broiled or baked chicken with spices, a battered fish chunks in a red sauce a curry chicken dish, and other entrees.

During dinner, I spoke with a young lady that was on our tour who was from Mexico City. She was Mexican, but she looked European. I had heard her say earlier that her grandparents are German. So I asked her if she spoke German, and she said, “No.: I complimented her on her English. Another woman in our tour asked her how it was that she was touring Israel. She replied that she had just graduated from high school and was taking six months off to tour Europe. She started in London, went to Paris, then on to Italy, Belgium, Germany, Spain, then back to London and now to Israel. She is Jewish, and she said she was now doing the two-month training in the Israeli army. I know all the young men and women have to do army training, but

I guess they will train anyone Jewish to defend the homeland.

When we got back to the hotel last night, I had a layer of Petra dust covering my shoes. I took a picture of them to commemorate the day.

Marla and I began observing the Sabbath at sundown.


October 31, 2009--Saturday, Halloween
We slept in this morning. After breakfast, we took a walk by the shops along the Gulf of Aqaba (Red Sea). This is a tourist town, so they have all the tourist shops. They had a slingshot ride where someone straps in inside a round cage of steel bars and gets flung up and down about eight or ten stories high. Wanted to see someone do that, but no one did until we were about three blocks away. I saw the round ball cage go up and then snap back down.

They don’t have Halloween here.

On the TV, there was a French channel, German, Russian, Spanish (soap operas), Nickelodeon, CNN/BBC, sports channel (with American and European basketball), American movie channels, Hallmark channel, and Israeli channel. No religion. I saw a guy in the lobby wearing a t-shirt with CCCP on it and heard some ladies speaking Russian. It was an international resort.
We just rested and packed after that. Marla got out a map, and I opened to the maps in the Bible. Eilat is at the northern tip of the Gulf of Aqaba that leads into the Red Sea. The shows the traditional route Moses led the Children of Israel along out of Egypt and across the Sinai. It leads to Eilat. They then headed north, I think when they wandered 40 years in the wilderness because they circled back to Eilat. Then they went north on the east side of the Dead Sea and across the north end of it to the west into modern day Israel. So we were in the area of the Exodus.

At 3 pm, we checked out, and a shuttle bus picked us up to take us to the bus terminal. We thought it would be in town, but it is about two hours away across the and then walked out the gate to the no man’s land between Israel and Jordan around ten. Sat and waited a lot. desert. We have passed at least eight groves of date palms that look like a forest, hundreds of palms, in the first half an hour of the trip. I have to keep updating the number because we keep passing more.
Marla spotted an ostrich farm, and she pointed out writing made out of rocks on the sides of hills. It isn’t all graffiti, if any of it is: one had a heart and a couple of names, she said (I saw P heart K); she saw one by a road leading to a house (perhaps the family’s name); she saw one in the outline of a large tree. The are all over the hills. No one seems to care; they leave them there. I want to get out and do M heart M on a hillside.

The mountains to the east in Jordan look like the Rocky Mountains of the Wasatch Front, maybe a little lower.

The roads here have lines down the middle. In Jordan, they did not. They had divided highways, two lanes wide, but no lines for the big trucks and buses.

We passed a compound with a wooden fence that looked like a restaurant or rest area, but at the north end it had a guard tower with an armed soldier. We just passed a huge number of hothouse, in the half-moon, Quonset-hut shape. I tractor was pulling a cart filled with boxes of some kind of vegetables, and there was a flower garden, too. Marla thinks the compound we passed was an oasis that provided the water for it. But it had a sign outside that said, “Take it away” in English. It had names in Arabic and Hebrew, too.

Yesterday and today, it amazes me how people used to cross these deserts on foot and camel back. You would need a great desire or need to go on this long of a journey. Most of southern Israel is desert today. Of course, almost all of Israel was desert before the modern day. Most of the cities are in central Israel.

We are in Jerusalem now, about 2:40 pm EST after a four-hour ride in the shuttle bus. Gas stations are rare in the desert. We passed one that had a camel tied up under a street light and his rider was dancing around in front of him, holding the long cane he used to direct his mount. I wished I could have taken a picture and a video of that. I also wished I could have taken a photo of the Camel Crossing sign and the red triangle sign with just an exclamation mark inside.

Tomorrow morning early, we go to Masada and then Galilee. We will be gone two days.

In Israel

Flying into Tel Aviv.

The wing on the plane must have been 30 feet long.

In Philadelphia, we checked into the US Airways waiting area for our flight to Israel. We weren’t in Kansas anymore, Toto. Hebrew was being spoken by several people. Several were wearing Yamahas or black hats with long, curled sideburns. We were definitely tourists there.

On the plane, there was a family of about six with two sons in white shirts and ties like their day and yarmulka. I wondered if they were going to Jerusalem and the Western Wall of the Temple for a bar mitzvah because one of the sons looked about 13. I read that Tuesdays are the traditional day for foreigners to hold that ceremony there. I have been told that a bar mitzvah isn’t held just when a boy reaches manhood at 13. He has to earn it, like an Eagle Scout rank. He has to go to Jewish school and learn Hebrew and pass tests, reciting many verses in Hebrew.

The wings on this plane are extremely long. You need lots of lift to get all this weight off the ground.

I feel we are going into a different world. This morning after the pilot woke us up at 6 am EST, a young Jewish man wearing the traditional fedora hat and his phylactery on his forehead stood with his scriptures in hand to say his morning prayer. Marla noticed a leather strap he had wound around his left arm from above the bicep to around the hand. It looked like stripes that she said he put on and then took off after his prayer. I have no idea what it represented, but I will find out.

An hour before landing, the pilot announced that everyone would have to be in their seats half an hour before landing. While standing in line to use the restroom, the young man who had said his prayer walked up behind me. After I greeted him, he commented how smart it was to require everyone to be seated half an hour before landing. He said they would abort the landing if someone was up.

I thought he was referring to the safety factor so no one fell down, but he then said, “Eighty-five percent of hijackings happen within a half hour of landing. There have only been three hijackings of Israeli planes, and two were during that half hour of landing.”

I don’t think about hijackings very much when I fly, rarely, if ever. But as I said, this is a different world.

When we touched down in Tel Aviv, everyone clapped. I have never heard that before on any other flight anywhere in the world. The Jews are happy and grateful to be home.

The airport adventure

About halfway to the airport, I suddenly exclaimed, “I forgot the camera bag!”

I just bought a camera for the trip, and I was looking forward to taking lots of photos in Petra and Israel. I was heart-broken because there wasn’t time to return and get it. Then I realized Ethan just might be able to bring it to me so I called him. He found the camera bag right away, and after quick instructions to take 285 around Atlanta because traffic was heavy going in, he headed out. We asked Leah to pick up Makalu at school, which Ethan was going to do.
As Leah dropped us off, she tried to pep me up by saying that she was sure there was plenty of time for Ethan to bring us the camera since our plane didn’t leave until 5:30 pm, and it was about 3:45 then. And I agreed with her.

And then we arrived at the ticket counter--and the agent informed us that we had been rerouted to a Delta flight leaving just a little later. Okay--and then he found that that flight was canceled. So he put us on an earlier flight; one that was supposed to leave at 3:05. It was delayed and scheduled to leave at 4:45, he told us. No chance to get the camera bag. Marla had a small pocket camera, but with no extra rechargeable batteries.

So we headed over to Delta, made it through the line, got checked in and then was told that the flight would leave at about 5:15. Maybe, just maybe Ethan could make it.

We walked over to security to see if I could come back out and get the bag and was told I might as well wait for it. I called Ethan, and he had successfully made it onto 285 West. Mind you, he has driven to the airport only once, going down I-75, so I was worried he’d get on 285 East instead of West. But he did.

I asked Marla to go to the gate while I waited for Ethan so we could time how long it would take me to get there. I walked out to the exit to find the door number and to find the quickest way back. I called Marla, and it took her more than ten minutes to get to security and onto the train.
Ethan called me when he got on Camp Creek Parkway and started naming the park and rides he was passing. Again, I worried he’d miss the turn to the airport, but he called me just a couple of minutes later saying he was at the South Terminal. I went out, and he spotted me before I saw him.

He stopped in traffic to let me cross and then he handed me the bag. “You saved me life!” I called to him as I grabbed the bag with a big smile. And then he was off, and so was I.
I actually made it to the gate with 20 minutes to spare.

Our first adventure on the trip.

Oct 9, 2009