Jerusalem: Hezekiahs tunnel

Here is another one of the paper i wrote for a class about our trip today. Enjoy. I will get Christina to post her paper on here sometime so you guys can read some good writing. 

Jerusalem: Old Testament

            Today we spent the day in Jerusalem seeing some of the Old Testament that the city offers. We started on the bus by singing songs. This is always a great way to start a day, and it seems like we will do it often. The thing about today that sets it apart is that it was raining. This makes an outdoor field trip rather interesting. We learned that Israel is currently in a drought and that the rain is something that Israel must trust God for. So despite the inconvenience the rain may have brought, we praise God for it alongside the Israelites. Our tour guide and teach Benj said that it was the most rain he had ever seen in Jerusalem. That doesn’t mean it hasn’t rained like that before but that it wasn’t often. From the beginning of the day we got to enjoy and work in the rain that God allowed to fall on the Holy Land.

            The first site we stopped at was The Broad Wall. This was a part of the wall that King Hezekiah built around the Western Hill, thus including it in Jerusalem. This was done around 1000 B.C. The Broad Wall had been found and a portion was excavated. The wall itself was around eight meters thick. The archeologist that found this wall did not believe it to be the Wall Hezekiah built even though she found some pottery dating to that time right next to the wall. In order to explain this away she said that someone had brought the pottery up from a later period and left it there. This is a bit of a stretch and it seems more logical that the pottery and the wall are from the same time.

            After a set back with our appointment time for the museum we went over to the Western Hill. The Byzantines thought that the Western Hill was Mount Zion but we know now that it isn’t. They also thought that they had found King David’s tomb on the Western Hill but there is now way that it could be. The Bible clearly tells us in 1 Kings 2:10 that King David was buried in the City of David, which is on the Eastern Hill. Despite the knowledge that this isn’t King David’s tomb, Jewish men and women still go to what they think is King’s David tomb and pray at it. After this we went to the Traditional spot of the Upper Room where the last supper supposedly took place. There is a possibility that it really was the place of the last supper. If that isn’t the place then it is within about 130 meters of that place. There we sang in Christ Alone. That is one of the most powerful moments I have ever experienced in my life. The song begins by saying that in Christ alone my hope is found and he is my light, my strength, and my song. That is what sets us apart as Christians, especially in a city like Jerusalem. To sing those lines in a room full of people, who may believe in things other than Christ, in either close proximity or the site of the Last Supper was outstanding. We also discussed a servant’s heart in that room. During the Last Supper Jesus showed a servant’s heart to the disciples. He washed their feet. Benj related that to our life and that we should have a heart of a servant to others if Jesus could have a servant’s heart toward the disciples.  

            After that we went to our appointment at the museum in which we saw a model of Jerusalem. I movie we watched talked about the uniqueness of Jerusalem and the history that it carries. Talked about the original city of David on the Eastern Hill and how it expanded up to Mount Moriah with Solomon building the temple. Then the movie covered the expansion of the city walls that Hezekiah put in. It was a good overview of the history of Jerusalem and also a good model to see Jerusalem from an airplane view. Then from there we slugged through the rain, it wasn’t that bad, to where we would eat our first combination of meat and cheese since America. It was a turkey and cheese sandwich, and it was good.

            After that we went to a cemetery that Oskar Schindler was buried. We briefly talked about his impact on saving many Jew’s lives during the Holocaust before we moved to the lookout of the Hinnom Valley. This is the valley which runs along the western side of the city. This valley has many references in the bible and is a major geographical aspect of the Jerusalem area. Then, to continue with the tombs, we went to the south east corner of the city. We saw where Hezekiah build on to the city walls and extended the walls from where Herod the Great had placed them. Just outside the walls were some tombs. These were for the rich and wealthy because they were extravagant tombs. The people who were in them were Absalom and in another was Zachariah. They tombs could possibly have been the tombs that Jesus was thinking about when we called the Pharisees white washed tombs.

            Then we went back into the City of David and went into Hezekiah’s Tunnel. Hezekiah built this tunnel in order to transport water from the Gihon Spring to the Pools of Siloam. This was an effort to camouflage the Gihon spring so that an enemy of Jerusalem would not cut off their water source. On our way to the tunnel we stopped by a step stone structure. This structure was used as a platform for a building so that one could stand on top of the hill. It built up the ground around it to give it enough surface are to hold a structure above. This structure held some big building up that stood on top of the eastern hill. It is possible that it could have been David’s Palace but it was probably not. Then we went into the tunnel area. We first saw Warren Shaft. This used to be the site that it was thought Joab climbed through when he took the city. It is no longer thought that because it is a very steep shaft. It is straight up and also we know that he went up a water shaft. This shaft shows no signs of ever having water in it, so therefore it couldn’t be the entrance of Joab. Then we went into Hezekiah’s tunnel. We walked through it in about 15 minutes. The water was at our ankles and water warmer than the rain water we were used to feeling. The amazing thing about the tunnel is that it was dug from both ends and they met in the middle. There were points in the tunnel that took 90 degree turns. They were trying to find each other and trying to meet up as they got close. It is an amazing feat that they did meet up. There were many times when you could see them veer off to the right of the left thinking that it was a better way. At the end of the tunnel is the Pool of Siloam. In John 9 Jesus puts mud on the blind man’s eyes and tells him to go wash it off in the Pool of Siloam and he would see. The man does and is healed. This is the same pool which this miracle happens. This is where the tunnel brought the spring water too and filled it up.

            After we left the Pool of Siloam we went to another candidate for the tomb of King David. This time it was a tomb, or a tomb like structure. Our fearless leader Benj did not think it likely that this was the place of King David’s tomb because the structures did not look like tombs form that time. He pointed out that during Jesus time they knew where the tomb of King David was because he refers to it in one of the letters.

After this we went and met our bus driver who took us back to the warmth of our Moshav. 

Ben and Christina

Warren's Shaft

Hezekiah's Tunnel

Tunnel

Pools of Siloam

The end of the Mount of Olives. Dangerous territory. Arab community.

Oskar Schindler's tomb

Just some pictures for the last few days

So i thought if i was following someone's blog it might be nice to just look at pictures, so i put some up. Just some random ones. (I also didn't feel like writing). Enjoy. Leave comments, or questions, or whatever.Thanks for taking to time to look at this.

Church this morning. Our first Shabbat

Joffa or Joppa Gate into the Old city of Jerusalem

In the old city. Mexico?

Another part of the old city. It changes quick

Part of Joppa Gate. 

Christ Church in the Christian Quarter of the Old city

The ceiling is beautiful!

More of Christ Church

Christ Church has a cafe and that is the first taste of brewed coffee I have had in a week. It was much needed

Outside Christ church

Christ Chrurch

Christ Church

Us

Just inside Joppa Gate

Adidas is worldwide. That is were i plan to buy my authentic jersey

Behind us is the Old City wall

Last Few days

Well...not a whole lot has happened since the last post, so this will be short.

Tuesday most of us all went on a hike which started and ended here home. Home for the next few months is called Yad Hashmonah. I think i talk a little about it in a different blog so i will not again but it is a great place for IBEX. I plan on taking pictures soon but it is raining now so i cannot do it right now.

Our hike. Well we went over the hill next to ours and took some pictures. the biblical significance of the hike wasn't major but we did see a spring. It was just a nice hike to get out and see some of the land that was close around us. At one point we were less than a mile away from the West Bank. They have built a fence around it and we got real close to seeing it...but we didn't. On the hike back we realized that we would not make it before dark so the leader called some cars to come get us, but there wasn't enough room for everyone. So some of us had to walk back in the dark. It was a fun time. We went over the hill and back up to our place with a binch of flashlights. It was fun. Christina got a ride but i got to walk. It was a real good time.

So the food here is not that bad. I usually can find something at every meal that i like. The bread is really good when it is fresh. That is the thing. The meals sometimes seem like they were the same meal just reheated, which is fine with me. But when we have the same meal 3 or 4 times in a row it gets kinda old. So you learn to eat to get energy not for enjoyment. Like i said, the food isn't bad so that makes it better. Breakfast is everyone favorite meal of the day. They have cereal and granola and usually some sort of good breakfast food. We all make it to the 7 oclock breakfast.

We have been sleeping a lot, which any college student knows is weird The place usually shuts down around 9 and everyone usually is alseep by 10. Then in the morning almost everyone is awake before 7 in order to make breakfast. I haven't felt this energized in a long time. Good thing too because the coffee is instant.(but with half mike and two packs of sugar, it is bearable).

In an hour we are headed off to our first day in Israeli chruch then the rest of the day will be spent in the Old city of Jerusalem. It is crazy to think we will be hanging out in the city that Solomon, David, and many more used to hang out in. Oh yeah and Jesus didn't some things hear:) Not only will we hang out there but we will hang their on the Sabbath. To me thats a little more exciting.

God is good and has blessed us all greatly with this oppurtunity. Thanks for all the support and prayers!

Ben and Christina

The Old City

        Jerusalem!!!!!

  For one of the classes at Ibex we have to write a field report after we have a field trip day. I just finished my first field report and thought i would post it as my blog because it describes the day throughly. There is a lot of info with it but i put pictures in the help make it more exciting:)

  Today we went to the Old City in Jerusalem. This was an amazing day. I saw things I never thought I would see, things I wanted to see, and things I didn’t even know existed. There is so much history and age in the Old City that I did not quite expect to see. I knew that there would be many biblical sites but I did not fully thinking about the age that they date back to. The fact that some of these sites were over 2000 years old amazed me.

            We started the day on top of a hostel just inside Joppa (Joffa) Gate. This was a good way to start this trip because it gave us a layout of the land of Jerusalem from up above and allowed us to become familiar with it. From there we saw for the first time the Dome of the Rock, The Holy Scepter, The Hebrew University, Agustin Victorian Hospital, and the Russia Church of Ascension. Out of all of these places the one that stood out to me the most was the Dome of the Rock, because it was the most recognizable to me. I had seen it on the news and different places so I recognized it right when I saw it. From the top of the hostel we could see almost all of the Old City. We could see into the four different quarters, which are the Muslim, Christian, Jewish, and Armenian quarters. The Old City was much smaller than I thought because we could also see the walls on the eastern side as we stood on the western side.

            From there we stopped by Shabon the money changer and got shekels. Then we went to the pools of Bethesda. This site was mentioned in John 5 as the place in which Jesus heals the man on the Sabbath. He tells the man to stand up and take his mat and leave but because it was the Sabbath it was against the law to pick up his mat. He does it anyway and the Jewish leaders address him and then they address Jesus asking him if it is lawful to heal on the Sabbath. Jesus gives them an outstanding answer with which they don’t know what to say. The beginning of this story, the part with Jesus healing the man and the man standing up and walking, takes place at the pools of Bethesda and that is where we were. That really had an impact on me. I stood not only in the same biblical site that Jesus did, but it was also a site of one of his miracles. These pools were very deep and amazing to look at because they displayed the engineering of the day. The other significant thing about this site was that before Jesus healed the man there the people believed that this was a place of healing and that the water healed people. This was a Hellenistic superstition that the people believed. So when Jesus healed this man there it was as if he was saying that he had the power over that superstition and that he could heal by his power alone.

      

      Next we went to the Struthion pool. It was at this site that tradition says Jesus went through the arches and was handed over to the crowds that brought his crucifixion. These arches would have been covering the pools but we know from the accounts of Josephus that the pool were in fact not covered, which means that what tradition says was wrong. The arches here were not around during the time of Jesus but the pools were. This was probably not the place in which Jesus was handed over to the crowd.

            After that we grabbed some lunch and then went through Damascus gate to the top of the wall. The first stop along the top of the wall was a view of Gordon’s Calvary. This is a hillside outside the walls of The Old City which is a candidate for the site of the crucifixion and burial of Jesus. Charles Gordon saw a skull in the hillside, with a creative imagination, and believed it to be the place of the skull were Jesus was offered Wine mixed with gall. This cannot be true because there are tombs there that date back to the O.T. times and Jesus was buried in 33 A.D. which is not O.T.

Then we continued on top of the wall to the eastern side with a front row seat to the Mount of Olives. There we read about Christ’s return in Zechariah 14. It says that Christ will come and stand on the Mount of Olives and the mountain will split in two and a valley will open up. That was amazing to look at the mountain as that passage was being read. It also talks about how Jerusalem will change and with a turn of the head we could look into Jerusalem as that part of the passage was read. That was a candidate for my favorite part of the day.

Then we walked up into the Jewish quarter out of the Muslim quarter. That was change in scenery. The Muslim and Jewish quarters are easy to tell apart because they are completely different. In the Muslim quarter people are selling everything you can think of and in the Jewish quarter the first thing we saw was history. We saw Hezekiah’s road. He built this road to connect more of the city together. It was discovered in 1967.

After that we went to the Western Wall. The Western Wall was the climax of the Jewish quarter. After getting stopped at the security for the pocket knife I had in my backpack, we went down to the wall. We saw the men and women standing up against the wall putting their prayers into the wall. They were in full Jewish attire and were fervently praying. The guys went inside the wall, which required something wore on our head. Jewish men were praying and reading all within and around the wall. I got to place my hand on a stone that was put in place during the reign of Herod the Great, which was around 36B.C. - 4 A.D. This wall is considered the holiest place in Judaism because it is the closest to the Holy of Holy’s they can get. Interestingly the Holiest Muslim place stands right behind the Western wall.

We then made our way outside the city walls and went to what are called Mikvas. They were pools of water that people would walk into impure and then walk out pure. It was a ritual cleansing and probably where baptism came from. These specific Mikvas most likely date back to the time of Christ.

Our last stop of the day was the Zion gate. This gate is different from the other gates in that this was the gate that the Jewish took back to Old City through in the 6 Day war. Around the gate we saw the bullet holes from when this took place in 1967. When they did this they took the Western Wall, and the Jewish quarter.

The trip into the Old City is one I will never forget and one that I will replay in my mind often. I look forward to many more trips into the Old City and seeing more of these sites and others. 

We also had our first schwarma. It was a favorful experience. 

Thanks for reading!

Ben and Christina

Qirat Ye'arim

Qirat Ye'arim

Qirat Ye'arim (The hill top)

Jerusalem( The furtherest building that are visible)

We made it to Israel yesterday (Sunday) night. We came in in the dark so we did not see much. I feel as if i have learned so much about the culture already in just this one day.

We woke up around 7 for breakfast and then an early start on the orientation material. We read through that and took a tour of the Moshav. In Israel there are small communities called Moshavs that people live in. Not all people in Israel live in these communities but many do. Our particular Moshav was founded by Finish people. There were 7 women and 1 man who founded this. He was a Holocaust survivor. The way in which the Moshav makes money in tourism. They used to do this back woodworking but have turned it into a tourist place. There are places to stay at the Moshav for the tourist and sites to see. It is in the hills of Judea so it is also a sort of a get away. 

At the Moshav the students have a library, 1 classroom, a email room with computers, and a Miklat, which means bomb shelter. This bomb shelter has never been used and has been around for many decades. It was turned into a sort of hang-out for the students. There is a projector, bunk-beds for relaxing on, a refrigerator, and a bathroom. It is a place that we can go hang out. Eating here is fun. There is a central cafeteria that everyone at the Moshav eats at. The food has been fine, better than i thought it would be. 

After lunch we had our first class and then we set out for our first field-trip. We went to Qirat Ye'arim. At this spot the Ark of the Covenant sat for over 100 years. The Philistines brought it up off the coast to this strategic location. The place in which this mountains sits act as a guard for Jerusalem. To get into Jerusalem one must travel through these mountains so it was a popular spot on the map. Also, from one side of the hill you can almost see the Mediterranean coast and the other side you can see Jerusalem. Qirat Ye'arim is also a city that is the connecting point of three tribes; Benjamin, Judea, and Dan. So that also brings in lots of travel through this area. We actually walked the route that it is to believed that the Ark went up on top of this hill by!

The Ark, after sitting there for over 100 years was brought up into Jerusalem by King David.

Then we went down into Abu Dosh.  There we saw some of the culture of Israel. This is a city of Arabs that are Israeli citizens. They submitted to Israel when Israel took it over. So it was a bit different than normal Israel because of the Arab influence but it was not fully Arab. We saw some temples there and got to sing it is well and give thanks in two different Catholic churches. It was a great experience. 

We are all still tired and trying to overcome Jet-lag. I was ready to go to sleep at 6 tonight but i am forcing myself to stay awake so that I can have a full nights rest.

Christina and I got Jobs today. She will be getting to mail and cleaning certain areas and I will be getting up at 7 each morning to unlock the library and email room as well as cleaning some things. We both will be doing set up for church and chapel friday and saturday. 

Tomorrow we will be going into Jerusalem all day and seeing those sites. I am really looking forward to it!

Thanks for the prayers.

Ben 

Pre-Israel/Blog Tester

I have created this blog as a way of communicating to friends and family while i am in Israel. Christina and/or I will post things on here as constantly as we can remember to. This will also serve as a way of documenting my thoughts and reflecting on the time over there so that i can look back on the trip and remember more from it.

I hope this to be a place that you all can follow us around when you think of it.
I will post pictures on facebook and on this blog if i can figure out how that works.

Right now we are both spending lots of time with family and packing (or should be). We leave on Sat. Jan 22nd and am very exciting about it.

If you could remember us in your prayers that would be awesome. Specifically, you could pray that we would soak up as much information over there as possible and that we would constantly be putting effort into learning. The way i see it, the more we put in the more we get out of the experience, which is the same with all things. Thanks for the prayer support.

If you see that we haven't posted in awhile, send me an email reminding me. I have never done a blog, or anything of the sort as much as i plan on being constistant i don't know if it will happen. So help me.

Looking forward to this trip and all that it will bring.

Ben