Bethlehem and the Monument to the Olive Tree November 12, 2009
Posted by Jeff Block in Bible Stories, Travel.Tags: Bethlehem, Herod the Great, Israel, olive tree, the Herodium
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We had lunch at a new kibutz after our trip to the wailing wall: the Mamat Rachel Kibutz. Good food, as always. Lots of humus, as always. Having not eaten until like 2:30PM the day before, Jace and I both snarfed a ZonePerfect meal bar at like 11AM, and then we ended up eating at like 12:15. How funny! But we were certainly glad not to have waited until so late in the afternoon to get chow.
After lunch, we visited a nature preserve for the olive tree – clearly one of Israel’s natural staples. I don’t know how many times I heard the “olive oil is great for you” speech from our tour guide.
The preserve had at its center a monument built to the olive tree. As monuments go, it’s definitely one of the coolest I’ve ever seen. The whole preserve was a testament to the number 3, being a very significant number in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Basically, they built three giant concrete pillars, at the center of convergence of three paths radiating outward into the preserve, where three different kinds of olive trees were planted. Then, on top of the three pillars, there were also three large olive trees. It was funky cool, and the picture above is really better than a bunch of words describing it.
After we got a chance to check out the monument, we walked over to the west side of the preserve. We sat down in a little mini theater, and looked out over the hill. Our tour guide pointed out that we were looking at Bethlehem, which is now Palestinian-controlled territory, so we weren’t permitted to go there. Later that night, a small group did take a taxi and go to Bethlehem. But I certainly didn’t; nor would I have recommended that they did.
From our perch up on the hill, you could clearly see a fence being built as the potential boundary line between Israel and a future Palestinian state. Our tour guide fully expects that a State of Palestine will be created soon. He didn’t express much remorse on that topic, only that it was necessary to give the Palestinians their own state, because at the rate their population is growing, they would take over Israel in a matter of 100 years.
We also saw the Mound of the Herodium, a fortress that Herod the Great built into the top of a mountain. We didn’t get to visit it in person, which was okay with me (I was interested in focusing on Biblical sites more than historic ones), but it was interesting to talk about Herod’s propensity to build pretty much everything big. This is also the site of Herod’s mausoleum, where he’s buried.
Lastly, one of the group suggested that we sing “O Little Town of Bethlehem”. It was amazing to actually be where the words of songs like that are describing. It wasn’t a deeply spiritually moving experience to sing the song, though, but I think his suggesting it was strategic in that it continued to expose our secular Jewish tour guide to the things of Jesus.
The Wailing Wall November 12, 2009
Posted by Jeff Block in Philosophy and Religion, Travel.Tags: Israel, Jerusalem, Jesus, prayer, Temple Mount, Wailing Wall
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Of course I’ve always known about the existence of “the wailing wall” in Jerusalem, but I confess I never really knew what it was. To be really honest, I think I thought it was a Catholic thing when I was younger. As an adult Christian, the most connected I’ve ever really been to the concept of the wailing wall was in a song by Point of Grace called “You Are the Answer” …
They line the wailing wall
The masses fill up St. Peter’s square
Confessions, emotions
Spill out of desperate prayer
This song is basically about peoples’ desperate needs and God’s abundant provision for those needs. And from even this crazy-limited perspective of this song, I always took the wailing wall to be a place where people gathered when that desperate human need was more pronounced than usual. Turns out, I wasn’t all that terribly far off.
The wailing wall is simply a part of the retaining wall that Herod the Great built to hold up the Temple Mount esplanade in Jerusalem just before the time of Jesus. The section of wall is probably a little more than 100 feet long, on the south end of the western face of the retaining wall. The open section of wall called the “wailing wall” spans between two walls protruding out from the retaining wall which belong to structures that have been built in this area over the centuries. Plus, the level of the ground has risen dozens of feet on this side of the temple mount in that time as well, so the ground people walk on to approach the wailing wall is actually vertically positioned about halfway up the retaining wall compared to where it would have been in Jesus’ day.
What’s so special about this section of wall?
The 2nd Jewish temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD, displacing Jews all over the world. When the Muslims set up shop in the 7th century, they built the Dome of the Rock where the temple used to be. This pretty much solidified the temple mount as a Muslim holy site to which Jews and Christians do not have access.
Over the many hundreds of years since this time, ostensibly because in their eyes God still dwells in the temple, the Jews (and some Christians I’m sure) have sought out places at least close to the old site of the temple to be considered “holy sites”. This section of wall is close to where the temple used to be, so in the eyes of many, it’s the holiest place they can get to. As a result, many Jews and Christians treat the wailing wall with tremendous reverence – as they would have treated the temple, where it still standing atop Mount Moriah. They believe that if they touch the wall, then their prayers will carry special weight. Or, they write prayers on small pieces of paper, which they then roll up and stuff into the cracks in the wall. Also, we had to cover our heads when approaching the wall because it is a holy site.
I felt sorry for the people there. It made me sad to think that people are so unfamiliar with who God really is that they still believe somehow God dwells in those rocks or on that mountain. And they didn’t just believe it a little. I saw people VERY worked up, special apparatus everywhere for confession and prayer, and more than one person in our group talked about how Catholic or Jewish friends had sent prayers with them to be stuck in the wall or relayed to God by the person on our tour … I guess because the person sending the prayer thought the person going to Jerusalem would be closer to God when they got there. Do they think God lives in Jerusalem? … and that He’s hard of hearing?
Touching a wall doesn’t make your prayers special. Being in one place instead of another does not make God hear your prayers more clearly. There is no special power in that span of rock, or any other for that matter.
The Most High does not live in houses made by men. As the prophet says:
“Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool.”
“What kind of house will you build for me?” says the Lord, “or where will my resting place be?”
“Has not my hand made all these things?” (Acts 7:48-50)
Ultimately, I did approach the wall to pray, but I prayed for all the people touching or who would touch the wall. I prayed that the eyes of their hearts would be opened to who God really is and where God really lives (for those who have allowed Jesus’ work on the cross to repair the separation from God our sin has caused).
Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. (1 Corinthians 6:19-20)
The wailing wall doesn’t make God hear you. Jesus does.
The Via Dolorosa November 12, 2009
Posted by Jeff Block in Bible Stories, Travel.Tags: Israel, Jerusalem, Jesus, Via Dolorosa
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The Via Dolorosa is “the way of suffering”. This is the path that Jesus walked from Antonia’s fortress, where He was convicted and severely beaten, to Golgotha, where He was crucified. This path, as far as we know, took him out the northern side of the city, and around to the east, where two major roads intersected, where He could be executed as an example in front of thousands of people. The clear message: don’t mess with the Roman empire.
Today, the part of the Via Dolorosa that is inside the old city walls is in the Muslim quarter. We walked through this area to get from Antonia’s Fortress to the Wailing Wall. I think the new name for it is the Via Shopolosa, or “the way of shopping”. It was lined with stores, and street vendors accosted us freely trying to sell us everything from Coke to bookmarks to hats. It was absolutely impossible for me to pause and reflect or to make walking this path any kind of spiritually contemplative event. But at least I was there, which was a blessing.
Antonia’s Fortress November 12, 2009
Posted by Jeff Block in Bible Stories, Engineering, News, Politics and Culture, Travel.Tags: Antonia's Fortress, Herod Antipas, Herod the Great, Israel, Jerusalem, Jesus, Pontius Pilate, Roman government, The Bible
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Antonia’s fortress was built by Herod the Great in 34 BC, as part of his fairly significant expansion of the temple and the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Situated on the northwest corner of the expanded temple mount esplanade, the fortress later became the headquarters of Pontius Pilate. Pilate is of course the Roman Prefect (Governor of the Roman province of Judea) who tried Jesus and ultimately approved His crucifixion. (See Matthew 27, Mark 15, Luke 23, and John 19)
By the way, I’ve always been a little confused at who all these Roman officials were in Jesus’ day and life. Let me take a quick second to try to clear up my own confusion, and perhaps you’ll find it beneficial as well. Rome made the region we now know as the State of Israel a province in 63 BC, following the Third Mithridatic War. After the war ended General Pompeius Magnus (also known as Pompey the Great) remained to secure the area. Subsequently, Herod the Great was installed as a “client king” over the region, called the Judaea Province. A client kingdom is a “term used to describe the subordination of one state to a more powerful state in international affairs” (Wikipedia). We might also call this a satellite, puppet, or vassal state. In Jesus’ day, this was called the Herodian Kingdom.
So, Pompey conquered the region in 63 BC. Herod the Great became king of Israel under Roman rule in 37 or 36 BC (there’s some dispute), and ruled until 4 BC when he died, ostensibly of natural causes. And here’s an interesting (read: sick) tidbit…
From the Wikipedia: Josephus Flavius (a prominent secular historian) records that Herod was so concerned that no one would mourn his death, that he commanded a large group of distinguished men to come to Jericho, and he gave order that they should be killed at the time of his death so that the displays of grief that he craved would take place. Fortunately for them, Herod’s son Archilaus and sister Salome did not carry out this wish. Wild!
Anyway, Pompey conquers in 63 BC. Herod the Great rules from 37ish BC to 4 BC, establishing the Herodian Dynasty. When he died, the kingdom was divided among his three sons:
- Herod Archelaus received the largest part of the kingdom of Judaea including Jerusalem and the bulk of what we currently know as the State of Israel. He also retained the title of “king”. His only real reference in scripture is in the dream Joseph had in Matthew 2, in which an angel warned him to take Mary and Jesus and flee to Egypt because Herod (the Great) was going to have all the children killed. Joseph ultimately returned to Galilee instead of Judaea to avoid Herod Archelaus, who was known to be as ruthless as his father.
- Herod Antipas became the Tetrarch of Galilee and a small slice of the territory beyond the Jordan River. This is the “Herod” we read about throughout the gospels in connection with Jesus’ life and death.
- Herod Philip II because the Tetrarch of much of what we now know as Jordan. This is the Philip who built Caesarea Philippi, and whose wife Salome so delighted Herod Antipas with her dancing (and whatever else) that he had John the Baptist killed in Matthew 14.
Here’s a map of the region from Wikipedia:
Herod the Great was king. His sons became Tetrarchs, which were like joint-lesser-kings. And Pilate was a Prefect or Governor for Rome in Judaea. Governors were responsible for taxation and financial management, they were the province’s chief judge, and they commanded the military forces within the province. In the Roman world, there two primary types of provinces:
- Imperial, over which the Emporer ruled directly
- Senatorial, over which the Roman Senate appointed governors
There were also equestrian provinces, which were “smaller, but potentially difficult provinces” (Wikipedia) that required special attention. These were typically newly-conquered provinces or places where the natives were particularly restless. Judaea was one of these provices. According to legend, Pontius Pilate was a particularly cruel, intractible man, so it makes sense that the Emporer or the local King (Herod) would appoint him over the Jews, because they were routinely rebelling and causing all manner of trouble for Rome.
So, it’s into this environment that Jesus was brought before Pilate in the fortress we explored today. Of course, that ancient building was completely gone, replaced by busy markets in the Muslim quarter. But we were able to go down under the city into what I would call “catacombs”. These were the foundations of the original Antonio’s fortress.
The foundations were the classic Roman arch architecture, which was used throughout Herod the Great’s design of the expanded temple mount esplanade. The arch was designed according to the fundamental principle of “compressive stresses”, which made it extremely strong, even when supporting extreme weight. In fact, our tour guide went out of his way more than once to talk about how these arches got stronger the more weight you put on top of them. I’ll have to research that more; maybe my phsycist brother will shed some light for us.
Anyway, we saw the arches that formed the foundation of the fortress, and the huge storerooms and cisterns which resulted. Some was original, some wasn’t. We even saw an etching in the concrete that was an ancient Roman game, I think called “Four Kings”. This is thought to possibly the game the soldiers were playing when they “cast lots for Jesus’ clothes” in John 19, for example.
The Pool of Bethesda November 12, 2009
Posted by Jeff Block in Bible Stories, News, Politics and Culture, Philosophy and Religion, Travel.Tags: Benny Hinn, Bethesda, Bethsaida, healing, Israel, Jesus, new life in Christ, The Bible
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Jesus went up to Jerusalem for a feast of the Jews. Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. Here a great number of disabled people used to lie — the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”
“Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”
Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.
This story, from John 5:1-9, took place just outside what was once the Sheep Gate at a place called Bethesda. Today, this is an archeological site in the Muslim quarter of the old city. Once there, we saw that (like many archeological sites), this one consisted of many layers built up over the centuries. The ruins of the original pool and colonnades were a good 30 feet down in a pit that had been dug by archeologists to reveal the past. At one end, we could see the stairs that the paralyzed man in Jesus story could have been sitting on.
In the time of Constantine, a church was built on this site. Then, later, the Muslims built a masque there. Both have distinct architectural styles that our guide pointed out, but I can’t remember the details of either by looking at my pictures. It’s enough to say that these places are hard to envision when we see them buried under layers of other things that other people built there.
This pool is also referred to as the Pool of Bethsaida. One thought I found interesting is that it is believed this might have been a translation error, and that translators of Ancient Greek Biblical manuscripts mistook the name “Bethesda” for name of the town of Bethsaida, where Jesus fed the 5,000 in Matthew 6 – a place to the NE, now in modern-day Jordan.
But the most interesting thing to me about this place is the Biblical story…
A man is laying there on a mat paralyzed for 38 years. Evidently, when the waters of this little pool “were stirred”, the first person who got in the pool was healed of whatever ailed him. What’s up with that!? Did that really happen? Seems a little mystical and bizarre, doesn’t it? Was this perhaps an ancient day version of the same shenanigans people like Benny Hinn have perpetrated in our time? Who knows!
But when Jesus arrived on the seen, He had compassion on this man. Who knows who else was there or what their problems were, but God “will have mercy on whom [He] will have mercy, and [He] will have compassion on whom [He] will have compassion.” (Exodus 30:19 NIV) So, God chose this man, ostensibly not choosing others. And who knows why? All I know is that it’s amazingly wonderful to be chosen by God, as it was for the paralytic at Bethesda.
So, Jesus asks him if he wants to be well. Amazing question. Most people – myself included at times – complain a lot, whine about their circumstances, blame all kinds of people for all kinds of things, but very few do the hard work of changing. I think we like being victims. I think we’d rather wallow in our circumstances and be pitied and get free lunches because we’re downtrodden than to do the hard work of actual change. And I think this has implications in my personal life, in the corporate life of the church, in our country’s pursuit of “social justice”, and all kinds of other areas.
But here, Jesus wants to know (I assume) if the man is sincere. “Are you sure you want to no longer be able to lay here and play the victim? It might seem like your life now is hard, and surely it is, but the new life I have the power to give you is also hard. It’s different-hard. Better, but not free of pain or challenge or obstacles. Even once you can walk, there will still be places you want to go that others will beat you to, etc. Now, do you want to get well?” Obviously, I’m putting words in Jesus mouth here, but they seem like reasonable words, don’t they? … knowing our Father.
The man says “yes”, and Jesus says, “well then get up and walk, and take your mat with you”. This was the Sabbath. Jesus knew that. It was unlawful (in the eyes of men) for the paralytic man to carry his mat on the Sabbath. Jesus knew that too. I love Jesus’ style! He was never all that intimidated by the laws of men. Nor is God intimidated by your laws or the rules of your church/denomination that don’t come from the Bible. God’s actually pretty secure. And He routinely and overtly tramples underfoot man’s attempts to “ascend above the tops of the clouds, and make myself like the Most High” (Isaiah 14:14). And here He does it again.
The Pharisees wigged out. They couldn’t care less that the man could walk. No compassion. No mercy. No rejoicing in his new found life. Imagine the man’s shock when all they cared about was that he was carrying his mat. Talk about raining on his parade. Can you imagine how he must have thought, “Are you kidding? I can *WALK*! Screw the mat!” What else could possibly have mattered to him?
So, for me, the Pool of Bethesda is a reminder of many things…
- God has a new, better life to offer us.
- God desires this for everyone, but not everyone will be chosen to receive it. Harsh but true.
- We have to want it, and be willing to reach out for it. This will always mean leaving something behind in which we are tempted to place false value
- The world around us is always focused on the wrong things. They will always think they know better for us than God. Forget the mat! Focus on Jesus.
- The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. (Mark 2:27)
- When Jesus gives you a new life, make sure you remember that it was God’s doing and that others around you need to hear what God has done for you.
Hopefully I will take these things away from this place, not just pictures of a few layers of history.
The Temple Mount November 12, 2009
Posted by Jeff Block in Bible Stories, Philosophy and Religion, Travel.Tags: Abraham, David, Herod the Great, Isaac, Islam, Israel, Muhammad, Temple Mount
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As I’ve already mentioned in another entry, Solomon built the first temple on the site where Abraham was prepared to sacrifice his son Isaac in Genesis 24 and where David built an altar to God in repentance for his sinful choice to number the fighting men of Israel in 2 Samuel 7. Therefore, thousands of years ago, this place became a place of paramount holiness to the Jews.
In the 7th century AD, after Islam had burst onto the seen and Mecca and Medina had been conquered, From TempleMount.org: Muhammad is fabled to have “mounted on the winged steed called Al Burak ‘the Lightning’ and, with the angel Gabriel for escort, was carried from Makkah (Mecca), first to Sinai, and then to Bethlehem, after which they came to Jerusalem. ‘And when we reached Bait al Makdis, the Holy City,’ so runs the tradition, ‘we came to the gate of the mosque (which is the Haram Area), and here Jibrail (Gabriel) caused me to dismount. And he tied up Al Burak to a ring, to which the prophets of old had also tied their steeds.’ (Ibn al Athir’s Chronicle, ii. 37.) Entering the Haram Area by the gateway, afterwards known as the Gate of the Prophet, Muhammad and Gabriel went up to the Sacred Rock, which of old times had stood in the centre of Solomon’s Temple; and in its neighborhood meeting the company of the prophets, Muhammad proceeded to perform his prayer-prostrations in the assembly of his predecessors in the prophetic office Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and others of God’s ancient apostles. From the Sacred Rock Muhammad, accompanied by Gabriel, next ascended, by a ladder of light, up into heaven; and, in anticipation, was vouchsafed the sight of the delights of Paradise.”
So, basically, after 1,000 years of real history, Muhammad (and this isn’t even in the Koran) supposedly rides a magical horse to Jerusalem (for no apparent reason), prays there, and then is taken to heaven on a ladder of light. And with that, the Muslims have claimed for 800 years that this particular piece of mountain is sacred to them too, and therefore endless battle over it.
It was clear that our tour guide deeply resents this entire thing. The Jews discount the Muslim story as a blatant attempt to intrude upon their holy site with the goal of simply being a thorn in their collective side. In other words, the Jews believe that the Muslims created this story and the Dome on the Rock just to piss them off, not because the spot holds any actual historic and spiritual significant for them And I tend to believe the Jewish account more than the Muslim one. (I’m sure you picked that up.)
Anyway, Herod the Great, just before Jesus’ day and long before the Muslims got there, greatly expanded this area. He built a massive retaining wall, and smoothed out the top of Mount Moriah to create a 15 acre temple mount esplanade. Then he greatly enlarged the temple that Ezra and Nehemiah had built hundreds of years before.
That temple – called the Zerubbabel temple – was destroyed in 70 AD by the Romans when they pretty much leveled Jerusalem in general. Interestingly, the Roman commander ordered the soldiers NOT to destroy the temple, because Romans greatly valued architectural beauty. However, because there were rumors that the Jews had hidden massive quantities of gold in the walls of the temple, the soldiers burned it anyway, and then pried the stones apart looking for gold. Hence Jesus prophecy in Mark 13 (and elsewhere) was fulfilled that “Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.”
We had to go through long lines at a security checkpoint to gain access to the Temple Mount. Once through security, we ascended a temporary wooden scaffold that was pretty rickety and actually made me a bit nervous. It didn’t help that on the way up there were stacks of riot shields that looked pretty well used. That took us up onto the temple mount esplanade.
The south end of the esplanade, which was the royal colonnade in Jesus’ day (where Jesus overturned the tables of the money changers in Matthew 21), now hosts a large masque called Al-Aqsa. The Dome of the Rock itself stands in the middle of the temple mount esplanade. It was fairly unimpressive to me. Of course, I’m predisposed against its presence there, so I guess that makes sense. It was obvious that a LOT of work had gone into creating the mosaic that surrounds it, and a big gold dome is also pretty cool. But otherwise, it was very plain.
We were not allowed inside, because we’re not Muslim, which makes sense. And I generally didn’t feel in danger or threatened in any way on the Temple Mount. I was impressed by its cleanness. There were trees planted on the mount, and I saw men sweeping up the needles that fell from the trees to keep the area as neat and clean as possible.
We also saw the eastern gate, which was sealed by the Muslims to be a thorn in the Jews’ side. More on that in my post about the Necropole, if you want to read it. I cover that ridiculousness pretty thoroughly there.
One other interesting thing was that there were natural markings in the marble from which the Dome of the Rock itself was built. One of the sections of marble looks like the following. I’m not into signs and portents, but this looks pretty creepy. What do you see when you look at this picture?
Our tour guide sees a demon and pointed it out to us. I guess a bunch of others do to. You be the judge.
