First Field Study

 Saturday morning, a week ago, a small group of us were on the bus, bright an early, headed for the Judean Wilderness and two Herodian fortresses.  No, not the famous ones: Masada and the Herodium.  We were headed to two fortresses that most people will have never heard of: Hyrcania and Cypros.  

 

After we headed under the Mount of Olives and zoomed eastward, descending into the valley of the Dead Sea, green hills flashed by.  After a winter of record rainfall, the Judean wilderness was more green than I had ever seen it.  Green, and part of it, purple with wildflowers.  

 

I was on the wrong side of the bus to get very good pictures of the purple...but hopefully you can get an idea with these pictures.  It was pretty spectacular.  

We took a turn off Highway 1 at three signs that pointed to "An Nabi Musa," "Hureqanya," and "Wadi Og."  

We paused first at the bridge over the Wadi Og/Wadi Mukalik.  The last time I had been there, it was filled with water, rushing down from the hills near Jerusalem where it was raining.  This time there was no rain, and the wadi bottom was as dry as ever.  

Our next stop was one of the three small Iron Age sites in the Buqei'a Valley.  

Joshua 15:61-62 mentions six cities "in the wilderness:"   Beth-arabah, Middin, and Secacah, 

and Nibshan, and the city of Salt, and En-gedi.  We are more or less sure where three of those are: Beth-arabah, the City of Salt, and En-gedi are almost certainly near the Dead Sea.  Middin, Secacah, and Nibshan, on the other hand, are virtually unknown.  However, there are these three Iron Age sites which may fit the bill.  So we paused at the middle one.  If you have a map where they are labeled, it's probably labeled as "Secacah."

 It was excavated once in the 70's, before the Buqei'a became a place for the Israeli army to play war games.  We are standing here on the remains of the city wall.

We had a little free time to explore the site and we found some nice...

 ...wait, THAT'S not Iron Age pottery.

We took our bus a little bit further down the road before starting on of first major hike of the day: to Hyrcania.

 It's wonderful to find flowers in the wilderness (the hill of Hyrcania is in the background, to the left.)  Their beauty is not only refreshing in a barren wilderness, but serves as a poignant reminder of the truths of scripture:

A voice said, Cry! And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all its grace as the flower of the field!  The grass withers, the flower fades because the Spirit of Jehovah blows on it. Surely the people is grass.  The grass withers; the flower fades; but the Word of our God shall rise forever. 
~Isaiah 40:6-8

 We got closer....but it was still a hike.

 Once we got to the top we found bits of glass and looked at maps and read from Josephus.  We learned that Hyrcania was named after a Hasmonean king, and had been a fortress before Herod got to it.  Long after the time of Herod it became a monastery, and monks dwelt there even into the 1920's.

 Then we hiked back down on a beautiful grassy hill...again, more grass than I'd seen in this area.

 We delved into the tunnels, made famous by the copper scroll and Bob the pilot.

 We paused for lunch at An Nabi Musa, a Muslim monastery and the first stop on the pilgrim route from Jerusalem to Mecca.  It is named after Moses, and claims to have his tomb (the tomb in question dates to a much later time), but it was a nice place to eat lunch.

This is the view inside:

 And the view outside.  A lot of Muslim graves, and "Moses" tomb on top of the hill.

After lunch we continued down into the Jordan Valley and stopped by the New Testament site of Jericho, heading to Cypros.  This fortress had be built by Herod and named after his mother, a Nabatean princess.

There was still some water in the Wadi Qelt from recent rains, and we enjoyed the sound of running water as we hiked along it.

 

At one point the water grew especially loud.  Somehow, large amounts of water had escaped the aqueduct that also ran along the wadi, and it was running free along the road.  It watered the roots of this tree and reminded us of the man in Psalm 1.

As we approached the top of Cypros (which had housed an Israeli army base at one point) we found that the bunker tunnels that we normally entered through had collapsed.  We found a way over.  

 And then we spent some time on top looking studious.

After a good view of Jericho on top (including the Old and New Testament sites) and a good lesson and more reading from Josephus we found a different way down.

We walked along the wadi further and over looked the St. George's Monastery.  Unfortunately, by then, my camera batteries were dead.  For pictures you'll have to look back in time at a former post.  

Dr. Wright decided it was a good day  for ice cream, and we had a little extra time, so we paused in Jericho at a little, brightly colored store, and all got a scoop of ice cream.

 

All in all, it's one of my favorite field studies (and the third time I'd gone).  We came home exhausted, but happy to have seen some rarer places, off the regular tourist route.  

Western Wall Tunnels, Part 1

This last Thursday evening I went, with my Rabbinical Thought and Literature class and our professor Rabbi Moshe, to the Western Wall Tunnels. For those of you unfamiliar with this site, let me give you some background information.

You will doubtless remember from long forgotten Sunday school lessons, that David (and Joab) conquered Jebus (Jerusalem) and made it his capital. (Hint: for a refresher, see 1 Chronicles 11.) This is the area today known as "The City of David," on the Eastern Hill, located between the Kidron Valley and the Cheese-maker's Valley. Of course you also remember the story a little later of the plague that God sent on Israel that stopped when David offered sacrifices on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite (2 Samuel 24). Keep in mind that threshing floors are high points, and the closest high point to Jerusalem was directly north (the upper part of the Eastern Hill). Add to this 2 Chronicles 3:1 ("Then Solomon began to build the house of the LORD in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where the LORD had appeared to David his father, at the place that David had appointed, on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.") and we have the beginning of our story in the beginning of the temple. The majority view is that Solomon's temple (the first temple) was built due north of the City of David, under the area where the Dome of the Rock is now.

Of course, between Solomon's time and our own there are dozens of layers of history. The first temple was destroyed by the army of Nebuchadnezzar in 586BC. It was rebuilt ("Second Temple") by Ezra, and was finished about 516BC.

Then Herod the Great came along and decided that temple needed improvement. It was, perhaps, the most ambitious building project he ever undertook: it wasn't finished until 60AD, over 60 years after Herod's death. It was, at least, a stunning complex of buildings when finished, one of the wonders of the ancient world. However, in the planning stages, Herod was not content to merely use what nature had supplied. No. The hill upon which the current temple stood was not big enough for the grandiose structure he desired to erect. So he began by expanding the hill, fashioning vaults and filling in earth, creating a platform grand enough to hold a glorious temple.

That temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD. Today, all the remains is the platform, upon which the Dome of the Rock now sits. The only piece of the original hill that is still visible is the rock inside the dome, from whence it draws its name.

(Note: at this point I should mention that there is still some amount of scholarly debate over where the temple actually was, and if the structure which is today called "The Temple Mount" ever actually held the temple. However, the case stated above seems to be the majority view, so for the sake of this blog post, we'll assume they are correct.)

I suppose it is reasonable that the Jews would revere the platform upon which their most holy site had stood, but why the Western wall (which, by the way, they never called "The Wailing Wall")? The answer, of course, lies in classical rabbinic literature: "The Shekinah is in the west." Probably because the Holy of Holies would have been on the western side of the structure, the western wall of the structure is now the most revered.

Which brings me (finally) to the tunnels. When the Jews first gained control of Old Jerusalem and the Temple Mount/Dome of the Rock area in 1967, one of the first things they did was bulldoze an area west of the Western Wall, giving Jews the opportunity (and the room) to visit the wall for the first time in years. However, they only cleared a relatively small area, compared to the length of the wall. The tunnels start just north of that plaza and continue on, exploring the extent of Herod platform, under the modern homes and places of business of the people of the Arab Quarter. Parts of these tunnels are open to tourists (by appointment) and that's where we went.

Now that you have enough background information, I'm going to pause for the night and continue these thoughts in a second post tomorrow.

Second Temple Field Study

March 14, 2009

Today we had a field study for our Second Temple History class. However, one of the sites we went to is only available to the public on Saturday, and our professor for this class, Dr. Yigael Levine, is a religious Jew. So Dr. Paul Wright led the expedition.

Our first stop was at Hyrcanus, a fortress in the Judean Wilderness, first build by the Hasmoneans, I believe, and then later used and improved by Herod the Great. Hyrcanus just happens to be in a sort of heavy artillery firing range. There is an Israeli military base nearby, and 5 or 6 days out of the week the relatively level ground in this area is bombared by various and sundry weapons of "minor" destruction. On the 7th day they rest from their bombardment and various and sundry non-religious Jews and Gentiles are free to go exploring. Which we did. We drove the bus quite a ways into the valley (possibly the valley of Achor?) by Hyrcanus and then hiked the rest of the way back. Hyrcanus is a pretty typical Herodian fortress, in that it is a tall, lonely hill, connected to any nearby hills only by a small spur or saddle, over which water from the aqueduct comes. Matt, Elise, and I climbed up a nearby hill, looking for what had at one point been some sort of monument, perhaps a funerary monument. We ended up skirting around Hyrcanus on a sort of ridge route and coming to the actual fortress by way of the connecting spur. We were able to see part of the aqueduct on the other side of the ridge. We also came across a hole dug in the ground, too regular to not be man-made. I wish I knew who dug it and why!

Hyrcanus, unlike Masada and Herodium, is really not well kept up or reconstructed, so there is less to see of the actual physical ruins. There were some nice mosaics, though I'm not sure if they're Herodian of Byzantine. Either way. There were also some cool rocks - agates, purple one, and green ones. (Yeah those are the technical names.) I really want to know what the green ones are. They reminded me of copper, but copper isn't exactly common in this area of the world...so I wonder.

At any rate it was a fun place to visit, a bit of the beaten trail, and I even found a...well...not exactly sure what it is. A bullet like object? Some remnant of the army's bombardment.

We paused by the Old Jericho tell on our way to our next stop to eat lunch. It was welcome.

We then took the bus part of the way up the "original" road between Jericho and Jerusalem. We didn't get very far before we had to stop and walk. We didn't have to walk as far horizontally, but the vertical distance to our next location was nothing to sneeze at. Well, really, it wasn't that bad, compared to Montana. This was another of Herod's fortresses, "Cypros." No, I don't mean Cyprus. And it's pronounced "kip-ross," named after Herod the Great's mother. According to Dr. Wright, NO ONE visits this site. Though again, I think it used to be an Israeli army base. No longer. Again, not many visible remains, but it did have an amazing view of Jericho. On both hills we talked about their history, their purpose, Herod, Herod's family, etc. Both were "fortresses," but were more than that - with all their luxury and splendor, evidences of which are still evident, these were pleasure palaces. Places for Herod to escape the pressures of political life, or for him to entertain Roman guests away from the prying eyes of the disproving Jews.

Back in the day, a few years ago, Physical Settings classes would always hike down the Kidron Wadi. Recently the road has been bad, and so most recent classes haven't been down that road or seen the Monastery on it. Since we had some extra time and energy, we headed west from Cypros to see St. George's Monastery. I had taken the road past it when I was here with my family, 10 years ago, and that was one of the only places that I hadn't yet re-visited since coming to school here. So I was excited to see it again. At first I thought we would just look at it from across the wadi, but then Dr. Wright decided that we could take the time to walk down to it and then continue the trail down the wadi. It's a really beautiful area, in spite of the fact that its in the Judean Wilderness, possibly because of the aquifer that still brings in spring water. We actually got to go inside the monastery and see their relics and the chapel build around the cave that is supposedly "Elijah's cave." I didn't get to do that last time, so that was pretty exciting. After that we continued down the wadi to Jericho, eventually met up with our bus, and came home.

(This is looking back at Cypros, the highest hill in the background. In the foreground is a Palestinian boy riding a pink bike.)

It was a lovely day, weather-wise and just in general. Not too hot, but still some sun, new and unusual places to explore, fond memories revisited, a chance to hike (about 7 miles), and some good friends to share the experience with. It was a good day.