Last Days in the Holy Land

Our last two days here were a whirlwind! On Sunday we went into Jerusalem and visited the Holocaust museum. It was incredible. They did such a magnificent job with it. It was very crowded and overwhelming - at some points I found people crying or sitting silently in contemplation. There was so much information and many, many pictures. It was humbling and devastating and heart wrenching. They did not allow any photographs to be taken inside the museum. At the very end they had a giant memorial to all of the holocaust victims called the "Hall of Names". It was a large circular room with a cone of photographs of people overlooking a pool below. Around the outside were books and books and books filled with names and information about people who were murdered. It was beautiful and very sad. The Yad Vashem Museum is also a research facility that tracks down Jewish people who were lost in the war in order to memorialize their names and stories in this museum. So far they have found over 4 million.

After this we then went shopping in the marketplace inside Jaffa gate in the Old City of Jerusalem. It was quite the experience! We learned a lot about bartering and found some beautiful things to bring back to the States.

The next day we visited three places. The first was Qumran, which is located on the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea, several kilometers south of Jericho. In 1947, in a cave just south of Qumran, Bedouins found the first Dead Sea Scrolls. Following this discovery, Qumran was excavated by the Dominican Father R. de Vaux in the years 1951-56. A complex of buildings was uncovered, dating to the First Temple period. The location of the site and its plan, the scrolls found in the vicinity and the simple ceramic vessels of the inhabitants, bear witness in de Vaux's view, to a settlement of the Essene sect.

Scrolls and other objects from the Second Temple period were found in several caves near Qumran, both in natural caves in the hard limestone cliffs west of the site and in caves cut into the cliffs near Qumran. When the Roman army approached, the inhabitants of Qumran fled to the caves and hid their documents in them. The dry climate of the Dead Sea region preserved the manuscripts, written on parchment, for 2000 years.

Cave where the scrolls were found

In Cave No. 4, in the cliff south of the site, the excavators found only 15,000 small fragments of an estimated 600 different manuscripts. Individuals in ancient times or modern Bedouin may have removed scrolls from this cave, leaving only scraps. This cave was used by the Essenes as a geniza, a place for keeping worn-out sacred writings.

In the 1950s and 1960s, many caves in the canyons of the Judean Desert along the Dead Sea were surveyed and excavated. The documents found there, and in the caves around Qumran, include copies of all of the books of the Bible (except for the Scroll of Esther). The most famous of these is the complete scroll of Isaiah, which was written sometime between the 2nd century BCE and the destruction of the site in 68 CE. This date was recently confirmed by a radiocarbon examination of a sample of the parchment of the scroll. The books of the Qumran library are regarded as the oldest existing copies of the books of the Bible. Writings of the Essene sect, whose spiritual center was located here in the 200 years preceding the destruction of Jerusalem and of the Temple, were also found in the caves near Qumran.

We then drove to Masada, which in Hebrew means fortress. It is a place of gaunt and majestic beauty that has become one of the Jewish people's greatest symbols as the place where the last Jewish stronghold against Roman invasion stood.

1800 foot gondola ride to the top of Masada

Herod the Great built the fortress of Masada between 37 and 31 BCE. Herod had been made King of Judea by his Roman overlords and “furnished this fortress as a refuge for himself.” It included a wall around the plateau, storehouses, large cisterns ingeniously filled with rainwater, barracks, palaces and an armory.

Some 75 years after Herod’s death, at the beginning of the Revolt of the Jews against the Romans in 66 CE, a group of Jewish rebels overcame the Roman garrison of Masada. After the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple (70 CE) they were joined by zealots and their families who had fled from Jerusalem. There, they held out for three years, raiding and harassing the Romans.

Then, in 73 CE, Roman governor Flavius Silva marched against Masada with the Tenth Legion, auxiliary units and thousands of Jewish prisoners-of-war. The Romans established camps at the base of Masada, laid siege to it and built a circumvallation wall. They then constructed a rampart of thousands of tons of stones and beaten earth against the western approaches of the fortress and, in the spring of 74 CE, moved a battering ram up the ramp and breached the wall of the fortress. 

Remains of Roman Legion encampment

Herod's palace at Masada

Once it became apparent that the Tenth Legion's battering rams and catapults would succeed in breaching Masada's walls, Elazar ben Yair - the Zealots’ leader - decided that all the Jewish defenders should commit suicide; the alternative facing the fortress’s defenders were hardly more attractive than death.

This is the rampart of stone and earth that the Romans constructed to breach the walls. You can see the remains of one of the Legion's encampments far below.

Apparently the defenders – almost one thousand men, women and children – led by Ben Yair, burnt down the fortress and killed each other. The Zealots cast lots to choose 10 men to kill the remainder. They then chose among themselves the one man who would kill the survivors. That last Jew then killed himself. To many, Masada symbolizes the determination of the Jewish people to be free in its own land.

It was so hot we were practically melting.

Mosaic tile floor still intact

 Our last stop of the day was to the Dead Sea. We changed into swim suits and floated out on the water. It was a weird experience. The water literally tasted like death... I'm not kidding. The girls and I scooped up mud from the lake floor and rubbed it on our bodies like everyone else was doing. It was gross, but afterwards our skin was amazingly soft and luxurious. The Dead Sea is the lowest point on earth at about 1,300 feet below sea level and it lies at the southern end of the Jordan Valley. Its waters, with the highest level of salinity and density in the world, are rich in potash, magnesium and bromine, as well as in table and industrial salts. Not only are its waters unique, but so is the very atmosphere above it: there is an atmospheric pressure high enough to filter the sun’s harmful UV rays, more oxygen than at sea level, and more calming bromine in the air around the Dead Sea than anywhere else on earth.

The girls and I right before floating out

Sitting at the "Lowest bar in the world"

Just after swimming in the Dead Sea.

 What can I say about the last few days? So much information and we are so exhausted. It has been a long trip packed with so many great sights and people. I learned so much... about myself, about Jewish and Arab people, Israeli and Palestinian. I learned so much more about God and His Word and scripture just comes even more alive to me now that I have physically seen so many of the places where Jesus walked and lived and loved. I had judgements and ideas before I came that have been blown out of the water. I now know people here and they have names and lives and homes and they love God and love their kids and just want them to be safe and to put food on the table, just like I do. And some of them are God's chosen people, and some of them are like me, gentiles who are grafted into the vine or someday will be. Regardless, we are all His people, and He longs for us all to know Him in a personal and real way. What a privilege to visit these Holy places and these Holy people. What an unforgettable journey we have had with you Jesus! Thank you, thank you, thank you.

¹⁰ For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” - Luke 19:10

 ¹⁷ On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” - Mark 2:17

 ⁷ Therefore Jesus said again, “Very truly I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. ⁸ All who have come before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep have not listened to them. ⁹ I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved.  They will come in and go out, and find pasture. ¹⁰ The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full." 
- John 10:7-10