Here is a little taste of the barrier walls that surround the West Bank.  Israel decided that they wanted to worship at Rachel's tomb which is on the way to Bethlehem and so they took it and surrounded it with a wall.  After all it is just a little piece. The people will never miss it

 complete with barbed wire

 The road in

 No scene is compete without the proverbial feral cat

The nearness of the West Bank neighborhoods

Here is ONE reason why the Pharisee's and Sadducees hated Jesus so much!

 After the 1967 war, when the Jews regained control of Jerusalem, they saw that the Jewish quarter had been so badly damaged that it was not rescue-able, so they tore it down.  Since it was leveled, they decided to do some archaeological digs before they began to rebuild.  They found what had been one of the premier housing area's of 2nd temple period Jerusalem.  We have toured through this pharisee house.  What you see in these photo's is a model of what the house might have looked like.  It is HUGE!  Each storey was probably about 2,000 square feet and they think it was 3 stories high, including the roof top for entertaining and to catch the cool evening breezes on hot days.  

 This is the main hall, probably a public room or judgement hall.  It could easily hold 100 people.  Some of the interior decorations are still visible on the actual walls (not the model).  It had to have been a stunning room.

 This pool is probably about 1/2 the size of an olympic swimming pool.  It was used for ritual cleaning for the priests before they went up to the temple mount... called a mikveh.  There were at least 2 smaller ones in other areas of the house.  They had a special walkway from where they lived so that they would not be contaminated on their way up to the temple mount to perform their priestly duties.

 The dining rooms had to be much larger than what we are accustomed to because all the guests were seated in a semi-reclining position at the table.

Here is a long view of the house.  The second floor was destroyed in the fire and destruction, so not much of an idea of how it was configured, but on the main floor we saw solid stone bath tubs, beautiful mosaic floors, marble tables, beautiful wall treatments, and other remnants that were found in the ruins.  I was struck by the fabulous wealth that these ancient leaders of the Jews possessed.  For the first time I had some insight and understood why Jesus was such a threat to them.  They had resorted to unlawful religious power when the Romans conquered Judea.  All the legal heirs had been put down.  For instance we know that had things followed their true course, Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, would have been the high priest at the time of Jesus' birth.  Their appointments had basically become political appointments and not based necessarily on personal righteousness, as the Savior often pointed out. As a conquered nation they could not collect taxes but they devised other means for enriching themselves, and they were fabulously wealthy.

King David's incredible wife, Abigail

 Here we see beautiful the foothills of Mt Carmel.  This is where David fed his flocks, and here Nabal also fed his flocks as recorded in 1 Samuel 25.  David's men protected Nabal's flocks from predators and robbers. At the end of the shearing season, David asked his men to approach Nabal for payment.  Nabal was a fool and refused to pay David's men and treated them rudely and sent them away.  David was so upset that he decided to wipe out Nabal and all that he had. He prepared and armed his men for war.  

 Abigail heard what her husband had done, from one of the servants who hurried to tell her what Nabal had done and what might happen to their family because of his rudeness.  Abigail quickly prepared a feast of 200 loaves of bread, 2 sheep skin bottles of wine, 5 measures of parched corn, 100 clusters of raisins, 200 cakes of figs and 5 sheep prepared for cooking.  She loaded all these on donkeys and sent her men to meet David and his men on the road and let them know that she was coming

As she came in sight of David she got off her donkey and fell on her knees with her face to the ground at David's feet.  She confessed that her husband had done foolishly and she, Abigail, took responsibility for her husband's folly. Abigail said that had SHE seen the young men she would have sent them away laden with the food that she now had with her.  She begged David to receive her gift and forgive HER for the oversight.  Then she did something even more incredible.  She told David that she knew that the Lord was with him, rewarding his friends and punishing his enemies and shouldn't David trust that the Lord would take care of his problems?  She was worried that if David should take action that it would ruin his political career, so to speak.  David was stopped in his tracks.  He confessed "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, which sent thee this day to meet me; And blessed be thy advice, and blessed be thou, which hast kept me this day from coming to shed blood, and from avenging myself with mine own hand."  The Lord took care of this problem in a far better way than David could have.  When Abigail told Nabal, the next day, what had almost happened to him and what she had done, his heart froze in him and he died some days later.  David ended up taking Abigail as his wife
 I am sorry for the misplaced periods.  I had to do this with Hebrew instructions and it is writing everything backwards...cheesh .

The TUNNEL

Almost every day we have to go through this tunnel at least once.   It is about 1 1/2 mile long.  In this photo the traffic doesn't look too bad, but there are times that it takes us 15 minutes to get through this tunnel.  It passes under the worst of the traffic around the old city, so believe it or not it is still better than driving on top.  The boys like to see if they can hold their breath the whole length of the tunnel.  

 Jeremy caught Jared doing some theatrics for your enjoyment.

 Is he going to make it????

O, curses, foiled again!

 This is an artists rendition based on the digs of what the theater originally looked like.  The theater was situated so that the sun was to the back of the audience and shown on the stage.  Most plays are thought to have been performed during daylight hours.  They had stuff coming up from under the stage as well as ropes and pulleys from the ceiling when they wanted certain "gods" to descend.

 dah,dah, ta dum ti dum!

where's Waldork?  

Powerful earthquakes took the city down.  After the first in 363 a.d. the city was partially rebuilt but the second considerably more powerful in 749 a.d. leveled the city and it was not built again until the modern era.   For a thousand years it was little more than a pit stop between Damascus and Cairo.  For the 1,000 years before that it was the capital of the Decapolis or the 10 Greek/Roman cities that ruled the area.    

 Here we see the Greek,Roman, Muslim Beit She'an.  As with most digs only a portion of the city has been uncovered.... and mostly government buildings or the "downtown" area of the town.  Back left is the amphitheater that could seat 20,000 people.  Back right is the public bath house complex.  You can see the Cardo maximus (main street) and the Cardo minimus in the lower left.  The vacant square us from the Muslim era and would have been filled with tables and stalls selling wares.  On the street going left to right are a couple of Roman temples.

 The public bath house was one of the prominent features of the ruins.  There were beautiful mosaic floors, message rooms, baths, steam rooms...

 ... and even an ancient public toilet facility for the convenience of their customers!

Uh Oh!   ... uh Jared!  I am sure that those toilets don't work any more....

Tell Beit She'an, Egyptian Ruins - 5 Feb 2012

a stella taken from the Egyptian governor's house is at right.  The layout of the governor's house is clearly visible below.  He had an incredible view. His house was probably destroyed by the Israelites under Joshua's command and the Egyptians driven out.

Another section of the tell

and a view from the tell looking east towards Jordan.  If you look closely, you can see the remnant of a Roman bridge among the trees.  This tell was bordered by 2 small rivers.  

Mt. Gilboa - 5 Feb 2012

In the background you can see Mt. Gilboa.  We are standing on top of the tell of Beit She'an.  I will show you some more photo's, but we are standing in the corridor that feeds into the valley of Armageddon to the west and the Jordan valley and on to Damascus, to the east.  Mt Gilboa is where King Saul and 3 of his sons, Jonathan, Abinadab and Malchi-shua died in a tremendous battle with the Philistines in about 1060 BC.  After he knew that his sons were dead,  Saul fell on his sword and killed himself, when his servant refused to kill him.   His entire army was pretty much wiped out and the Israelites in Beit She'an and the surrounding towns fled in terror and the Philistines moved into Beit She'an.  The next day they found Saul and his sons, on the battlefield, and cut their heads off and sent them home and hung the bodies on the walls of Beit She'an.  That night some valiant men from further down the valley (towards Armageddon valley) stole into the city and took down the bodies and brought them home for burial.

the tell of Beit She'an is a small area, about the size, on top, of a football field.  I am sure that it started out as a hill but it was built and destroyed either in wars or earthquakes about 17 times.  It's last inhabitants were the Egyptians.  In the foreground of this photo you can clearly see the mud bricks that were the preferred building materials of the Egyptians.  In the background is another view of Mt. Gilboa which is part of the Gilead mountain range that extends up to Jerusalem, about 30 miles away to the south.   

a Palestinian.... Dog?

      We were out walking and this caught our eye.... Kind of looks like the sign... don't you think?

 Many Christians believe with the Catholic Church that the crucifixion site is now in the north-west corner of the old city.  Outside the present walls however is another site maintained first by Armenians and now by a British Protestant group and is called appropriately, "The Garden Tomb".  Who knows if it is the right place, but at least it is not gaudy and covered with gold and incense and has an air of reverence. This is called Skull Hill and can be seen from the garden.   This is the view of the tomb coming from Skull Hill.  Things look pretty spartan in the winter.