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
add a comment
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
2 comments
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
add a comment
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.
Model of Jerusalem in Jesus’ Day November 11, 2009
Posted by Jeff Block in Bible Stories, Travel.Tags: Israel, Jerusalem, Kidron Valley, Mount Moriah, Pool of Siloam, Temple Mount
add a comment
To wrap up day 5 of our tour, we stopped at a museum and saw an amazing 1:50 scale model of the city of Jerusalem during the first temple period. This is how the city would have looked during Jesus’ day. I will include a few pictures, and describe a few key points from the pictures here.
Temple Mount Esplanade
This is the view of the city from the south. The large “building” to the right is actually the esplanade of the Temple Mount. It is 15 sq acres in size, having been extended far beyond its original size by Herod the Great. He created the massive retaining walls you see here, by stacking stones weighing from 5,000 to 800,000 lbs on top of each other offset inward by one inch per layer. And I’d say a layer is about 6-8 feet. The 800k lb stones we saw up close were probably 8 feet tall, 25 feet long, and who knows how deep. I think our guide told us, but I don’t remember. He then leveled off the top of Mount Moriah and filled in the man-made pits created by building the huge retaining walls. But not before using Roman arches to build massive foundations so that he could have store rooms under the royal colonnade and other buildings he intended to construct atop the temple mount. It was unbelievable.
Kidron Valley
The valley to the right is the Kidron Valley, separating Mount Moriah (on which the temple mount is built) and the Mount of Olives (to the right off screen).
David’s City
See the two walls fairly close together running top to bottom (north to south) in the picture. The area between these walls is considered David’s city, the original size of Jerusalem in David’s time.
Pool of Siloam
In John 9, Jesus restores the site of a man born blind by having him wash himself in the Pool of Siloam. The square pool in the bottom left corner of this picture, just outside the SW-most corner of the wall of David’s city, is the Pool of Siloam. The pool was evidently fed by an underground aqueduct running under the Kidron Valley from a spring on the Mount of Olives. Hard to believe, but that’s what they told us.
River of Gehenna
To the west of the “back” wall of David’s city, behind the Pool of Siloam, flowing south out of the city is the River of Gehenna. Why it’s called that when it’s in the Tyropaeion Valley, I don’t know. Where it originates, I don’t know. Why the pool of Siloam is fed by an underground man-made channel and not this stream, I don’t know. So, it looks like I have some research to do. But for now (while I have very little Internet connectivity), that’s what I know.
Two Socioeconomic Classes
Observe the great majority of the city – from the rear wall of David’s city all the way to the far west wall. Rows and rows of houses, but in two styles. The houses nearest to you (in the south) are the lower of two socioeconomic classes. These are servants and laborers (shockingly, much of the work for Herod the Great’s expansion projects was accomplished by paid, skilled labor, not by slaves – some slaves, but mostly paid workers). The larger structures with red roofs, which occupy the northern side of the city, are for the richer upper class.
Wealthy Suburbs
First, this is a better, up-close view of the northern side of the city and the homes and shops of the upper class.
Unknown Structure
I can’t remember for the life of me what this monument / structure is. I’ll figure it out and update.
The Wailing Wall
Notice the high retaining walls of the Temple Mount esplanade in the background. You’re looking at the southern wall and about half of the western wall at that time. What is now called the wailing wall is a small section of the western retaining wall. The exposed section to which pilgrims now have access is in the middle of what you see of the western wall in this picture, both horizontally and vertically. The section is about 75 yards long north-to-south. It’s in the middle of the wall top-to-bottom, because centuries of layers have filled in the base of the retaining wall.
The Royal Colonnade
On top of the Temple Mount on the south end (to the right in this picture) where the Al-Aqsa mosque now stands is the royal colonnade. This was built by Herod the Great on top of great Roman arch foundations that served as storehouses. These were shops and guest quarters for visitors to Herod’s kingdom. The Temple Mount was an all-around amazing place to visit, which was Herod’s goal. Our guide emphasized over and over again that he was somewhat of a Megalomaniac.
The Temple
To the left of the image, in the middle of the Temple Mount esplanade, is the 2nd temple. More on that below.
Enormous
A picture of as much of the model as I could fit in … to demonstrate just how big Jerusalem at that time really was. It’s hard to see in this picture, but there were actually four sets of walls: the retaining wall of the Temple Mount esplanade, the inner wall, the outer wall, and the walls surrounding David’s city. Seems absolutely huge, in my world.
It’s good to be the king
It’s not really obvious from this picture, but if you look to the far left side of the image, near the westernmost wall of the city, you’ll see three tall buildings that stand above all the homes and shops around them. These are buildings that Herod the Great had built (essentially) to show off. They are places his mistresses might like or that foreigners could stay. They’re the kind of thing you do when you have seemingly infinite resources to build and if you run out of those you just conscript some more slave labor. I guess it’s good to be the king!
The Royal Colonnade
This is the best shot of the model Temple Mount that I got. It shows another (better) look at the Colonnade.
The Temple of the Second Temple Period
In the center of the Temple Mount from north to south is the temple of the 2nd temple period. The first temple (Solomon’s temple) was destroyed long ago from the perspective of this model. Ezra and company rebuilt it in the 1st century BC, and Herod the Great expanded it dramatically. These images depict the temple after Herod had done much of his work on it (which was a never ending project, evidently), and is the way Jesus would have known it. I’ll describe the temple in more detail with the next picture.
The Eastern or Golden Gate
The eastern gate, called the “Golden Gate”, is located at the base of the Temple Mount retaining wall on the east side closest to the camera. This is the gate through which Scripture foretells that the Messiah will enter the city of Jerusalem (see Zechariah 14:4 for the prophecy).
Antonia’s Fortress
The northwest corner (the upper right in the picture) of the esplanade is dominated by Antonia’s fortress. This is where Jesus was tried before Pontius Pilate. He was severely abused and soldiers cast lots there for His clothing. He was then marched out of the fortress on the road leading north from the Temple Mount – you can see the road heading to the right from the Temple Mount on the extreme right side of the picture – and crucified there at the main junction of roads leading east-west to the Mediterranean and north-south from Damascus to Egypt.
The Fenced Area
In the picture, there is a fenced area to the south of the temple (left of the picture). I don’t remember who was restricted to this external area; I’ll have to look that up and update.
The Outer Court
This is the courtyard nearest the front of the photograph (the east side of the temple) was for gentiles, women, lepers, unclean Jews, etc.
The Inner Court
Only priests and cleansed Jewish men could enter the inner court behind the outer court. And the Holy of Holies, all the way to the back of the picture against the west wall, was exclusively accessible by the High Priest, only once a year, and only after extensive cleansing rituals / sacrifices. Even then, he would go in with a rope tied around his waist, so that if God struck him dead, the priests could pull him out of the inner sanctuary.
