This morning we took in one of the most popular views of the Old City – from the Mount of Olives. From here you can see where Jesus and His disciples celebrated the Passover (the Last Supper), walked through the Kidron Valley to the Garden of Gethsemene, Caiaphas’ house where Jesus was held overnight, and the courtyard where Peter denied our Lord! We will never read that part of the gospels the same way again!
From this view point, we walked to the Garden of Gethsemene. Some of these olive trees are old enough to have been here 2000 years ago… what a story they could tell! Of course, there are several churches here to commemorate the site.
From Gethsemene, we drove to the Israel museum where we walked around a model of what Jerusalem looked like in 66 AD. Our guide pointed out the different areas of the city, where the different classes of people lived, the Temple Mount area, and where the original walls from Solomon would have been, where they were after Herod rebuilt the Temple, and where they are today. Inside the museum, we were able to see fragments from the Dead Sea scrolls, including a facsimile of the 24 foot long Isaiah scroll. As an added bonus, they had a display featuring the Aleppo Codex, the oldest and most complete Hebrew Bible in the world. It was copied by the Masoretes in about 1000 AD. Some of the Dead Sea scrolls date back to 200 BC, allowing anyone that knows Hebrew to compare writings that are separated by 1200 years of time, were made by very different groups of people, yet agree exactly! How can anyone be aware of documents like this and not believe?!?
We next drove to Bethlehem. Since that is now under Palestinian control, our Israeli guide and bus driver could not go with us. At the checkpoint, we transferred to a Palestinian bus and made our way into the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. Although our guide and bus driver were Arab Christians, it was still eerie having to leave an Israeli-controlled area. All was fine and we were able to view where Jesus was born and the Shepherd’s Fields area, fields that have been used for grazing in the past and were representative of where the shepherd’s would have been watching their flocks by night!We are excited that we have two more days in Jerusalem, but sad knowing there is much we will not be able to see!
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