December Daily {:23:} Dead Sea Scrolls, Hezekiah's Tunnel, City of David, Steps of Ascent

Today was a really full day.  I'm absolutely wiped out!  But...it was a really awesome, fun filled day.  (updated with details and a gazillion photos...are you ready?!)

Last year, when I was home in the US, I was watching an episode of Jeopardy, and they had a category about Dixie, with video answers from the Dixie Museum in J-town.  (Sidenote: did you know that I am a Jeopardy junkie and have loved the show since I was about 8 years old?  Yep.)  The video showed a large scale model of what J-town would have looked like 2000 years ago, and seeing it on Jeopardy made me want to see it in real life.  So when Bound asked what I wanted to do in J-town, I was a big ole nerd and responded that I wanted to see "the Jesus places and go to the Dixie Museum."  She was happy to oblige.

So...off we went! Here is Herod's Temple Complex:

The Beautiful Gate that I pointed out yesterday from the Mount of Olives.

The City of David, (where his palace would have been), where we went this afternoon!  See that steep incline of a hill?  I climbed that...underground!

The steps up to the Temple that I pointed out yesterday, and where we went this afternoon!  It was neat to see what it would have looked like in its day, knowing that later in the same day I would be going to the actual place!

The Lion's Gate that we entered the city through yesterday.

The pools of Bethesda, which we saw yesterday.  Because of last week's snow storm, there was melted snow in the pools, filling them with actual water!  Pretty cool, huh?

Looking at the area where Jesus would have been tried and crucified.

Overlooking the whole model.

A worker from the museum entered into the model to do something to it...he gives you a perspective of the size of it.

Looking at the City of David from another angle. 

Time to go see the Dead Sea Scrolls!  The Dixie Museum is actually a pretty large museum complex, with several areas to it.  The Scrolls are housed inside the Shrine of the Book, which is shaped to look like the lid of the vases the Scrolls were contained in.

So, absolutely no photos were allowed inside the museum.  The workers would yell out "no photos!" anytime they saw a camera emerge.  I broke the rules.  I turned the flash off (I get the importance of that), but I wanted a picture of how they displayed the Isaiah Scroll, making it look like it is still on a wooden scroll with handles.  See the lit up part in the middle?  That's not the real Isaiah Scroll.  It wasn't currently on display...so they put a poster in that spot instead.  I mean, if you're gonna fake me out, could you at least make it look like the original so that I think I'm seeing the real thing?  I came all the way to Dixie, paid money to see the Isaiah Scroll, instead saw a poster, and I can't even take a photo of the poster?  Anyway, I like the way they displayed the poster.  On the ground level around the center piece were other scrolls from Qumran, including one (real) piece of an Isaiah scroll.

It was really, really cool to see the scrolls.  (Even cooler?  Seeing a Jewish man reading them to his sons.)  But, I thought while staring at them... The Word of God is alive and active.  The Bible I read at home is just as equally the Word of God as those scrolls.  The fact that I get to read it, study it, memorize it, meditate on it, and that it was even given to us is so much cooler than seeing old parchments found in a cave.  I am not in any way downplaying the Dead Sea Scrolls.  I think they are a huge archeological find, and immeasurably important to giving accuracy to the Word of God to the secular world.  When I defend the accuracy of the Bible to non-believers who claim that it has been changed, the Dead Sea Scrolls are the scientific reason I give as proof that it has not been changed.  What I am saying is that it is such a privilege to get to have access to the Word, and that to me, it is a greater privilege than getting to see extremely old, well preserved copies of the Word that I read in translated form.

The museum was having an exhibit about Herod, since his tomb was finally located a few years ago, after decades of searching for it.  Again, no pictures were allowed.  However, you can see a lot from the exhibit at THIS website, if you're interested.  It was really interesting.  By the time we were done, though, I was famished and museum'd out, so I didn't have the attention span to go through the rest of the museum.  And I was excited to get to Hezekiah's Tunnel

We grabbed a small bite to eat in the museum, and then walked about 40 minutes to get back to the Old City.  (We'd looked up online what bus to take and discovered that the bus ride would take 37 minutes...and we'd have to wait for the bus anyway, so we decided to walk.  Which was cool, because I got to see some Jewish neighborhoods and just their normal every day life.  I enjoyed that.)

As we were nearing the Old City, we were talking about what else I would have left to see after going to the City of David.  I realized that we'd never put on my list to see the Upper Room.  I asked Bound if it would be possible to go there on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day?  Somehow, our communication got a little off, and she figured it was on the way, why not stop there on the way to the City of David...but she didn't tell me that's what we were doing.  We approached this building, and I took a photo, thinking it looked cool...having no idea that it was the Upper Room.

As we were going in, (me thinking we were about to go to the City of David and thus, Hezekiah's Tunnel, for which I was pretty excited), I asked her if she was excited.  Sort of nonchalantly, she shrugged her shoulders and said, "I suppose."  We walked into this room, and she said, "Well, here it is!"

I looked around for a ticket office or a door to descend down into Hezekiah's Tunnel.  I was a little confused.  "Where do we go?" I asked her.  "What do you mean?  This is it," she replied.  "This is the City of David?"  I'm sure my face reflected that I expected more.

"No," she laughed, "this is the Upper Room!"

I literally jumped out of my skin I was so surprised!

Well, I've been having a bit of trouble getting the photos from Bound that she took on her camera (not for poor effort on her part, it just seems like the photo fates are against me), and so I don't know how to make this photo bigger.  But here I am in the Upper Room!  Just imagine Jesus coming through the wall in the photo above me after the Resurrection, shocking the disciples out of their skin!

There is a gorgeous Arabic stained glass window in there now.

I love how the Ten Commandments would be posted on walls around the city.  So neat.

We left the Upper Room and headed towards the City of David.  On the way, Bound pointed out this view.  That wall all along the hill is the separation wall between the Palestinian West Bank and Dixie.  My friend nomadruss was recently in Dixie, and took some awesome photos (as he always does) of the wall, which you can see HERE.

 

A current excavation site, right there in the middle of the city.  Before I arrived in Dixie, Bound had commented to me on Skype that since I had traveled all around Europe and seen Roman ruins aplenty, that a lot of the old stuff in J-town wouldn't seem like a big deal to me.  As we were walking, I told her, au contraire!  First of all, J-town is a lot older than Roman ruins, as we were about to see with the City of David and Hezekiah's Tunnel.  Second, there is a spiritual, emotional connection to these ruins.  Every single day, I read the Bible that takes place on the land of these ruins.  I can't say that about Rome or Marseille or anywhere else (okay, maybe Greece).  And...those other places didn't have excavation sites going on right in the middle of the city like J-town.  I don't know...it just is cooler to me than the other old places I've been.

On the way, Bound stopped and picked up a bread for us from a bread cart.  The bread was yummy.

But even more yummy?  The spices called Za'atar that was put in the bottom of the bag for us to dip our bread into.  It was so good that I bought 100 grams of it to bring back to France.  I've since discovered that I can buy it on the internet, or even make it myself.  I'm going to check at Noailles and see if they sell it there.  And I'm gonna ask my friends if they know about it.  Seriously, my new favorite spice mix!  Herbs de Provence out, Za'atar in!

Finally, after having been headed toward the City of David for over an hour, we were almost there!

So one picture I didn't take and wish I did was at the ticket office.  You know when you go to an amusement park, and they have a vertical stand showing how tall you have to be to ride?  They had one of those, showing how high the water would come on an adult and a child.  It made me laugh at the time, but after having gone through the tunnel, I get it.

Before we went to the tunnel, we walked by David's old palace.  Here I am with it.  Yep, me and some rocks.

We started going down.  (First time in J-town, where I'd only ever gone UP!  Haha.)

You may remember that before David conquered it, J-town was a Canaanite city.  (I didn't remember that.  I'm looking forward to rereading the whole Bible this year to notice stuff like that that I never paid attention to before.)  So here is some of the Canaanite fortress...wall...ramparts...something... I was so excited to get to the Tunnel that I couldn't absorb/retain all that Bound was telling me.  (Sorry, Bound.)

When you get to where Hezekiah's Tunnel is, there is a choice to go through the wet (actual) tunnel, or a newer, dry tunnel (that has lights).  When we told the security guy that we wanted to go through the wet one, he said, "Brave girls."  Haha.

So here's the story, because I'm guessing that you don't remember it from the Bible either.  (I didn't.)  Remember that the Assyrians were advancing towards J-town to (eventually) take some of the wandering Children into captivity, before they eventually all went to Babylon?  King Hezekiah, one of the few godly kings, in anticipation of the siege of the city, had a tunnel built so that the city could still have access to a water source during the siege.  "The rest of the deeds of Hezekiah and all his might and how he made the pool and the conduit and brought water into the city, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah?" (2 Kings 20:20).  See also 2 Chronicles chapter 32.  So awesome.

The tunnel is still there, and the water still run through it.  A few months ago, someone told me that Hezekiah's Tunnel is one of the coolest things to do in J-town besides all the Jesus stuff.  I'd imagined walking through ankle deep water.  Since it was December and it'd snowed last week, I imagined walking through ankle deep ice-cold water.  Since I didn't have any flip flops, Bound had suggested I go in socks and carry my boots, so I'd packed an extra few pairs of thick socks in my purse.  I took off my boots, hiked my leggings up to my knees, and donned two pairs of thick socks that did not match my outfit at all.  I looked like an idiot, but this was supposed to be fun!

When I saw the sign at the entrance about how the water could easily be knee high, I began to get nervous.  When Bound told me that sometimes the water can surge and go as high as your chest, I got more nervous.  I suppose I imagined simply walking through a long puddle.

So when we actually got to the water, where, at the entrance of the tunnel, it is gushing and moving and sounds rapid, I got scared.  I stepped in...

And chickened out.  At that point, I thought--it's gonna be rushing water?  Like this?  That could surge?  Ahead of me, Bound was saying that it was a lot deeper than normal, perhaps because of last week's snow?  I chickened out and went back out of the tunnel.

I didn't want to be wet up to my neck with melted snow water.  I didn't want my purse and coat to get wet.  I didn't want to slip and fall and get soaked.  I figured I could tell people I stepped into it, and that would suffice.  Let's head back to the dry tunnel.

Bound had gone a little bit ahead to see how deep it would get.  While she was gone, I talked myself out of my nerves.  This is a once in a lifetime (for me) thing.  What's scary about a little bit of water? I know how to swim.  So what if I get really wet?  I'll dry.  It's worth it.  I can hold my purse above my head if I need to.  I went back in.

Right as I stepped in, a woman at the entrance hollered at me, wondering what I'd done with my shoes.  I told her that we'd put them in a bag and were carrying them.  She seemed like she was in the same place I had been, not sure if she wanted to go through with it.  As I was talked to her (sort of yelling, over the sound of the water), Bound had returned and took this photo of me with my crazy socks and head lamp.  Haha.

She's even more bold than me and went barefoot!  The rocks were much more smooth than I'd anticipated, and thus weren't uncomfortable to walk on at all (except right near the end).  The most painful part was walking on that grate to get in and out of the tunnel.  Also, the water wasn't cold at all.  It was a glorious temperature.  I was so surprised by that.

You can see in this photo that the water was about mid-calf.  It was mid-calf for most of the tunnel.  However, some parts were well above my knee.  (I hiked my skirt, coat, and purse up to my waist for more than half the journey.  For that, I was thankful for how dark it was in there, and that we were alone, because otherwise whoever would have been behind me would've gotten quite the view!)

You can also see how small a space the tunnel is.  At some points, the ceiling was much higher, but sometimes, the walls were touching my arms and head.  Not a place for a claustrophobe.

 This is my "I'm having so much fun and I'm so glad I got over the silly fear and went ahead and did this!" face.

Right before the end of the tunnel (which takes about 30 minutes to walk through), we saw this plaque...

 ...talking about this super old inscription in a rock...

We came out and I struck my victory pose.  Look how dorky I look!  I don't care.  Also, note how wet the bottom of my skirt is.  While I wasn't cold the whole time in the water, the cold of being wet got into my bones later, and I was frozen the rest of the day.

Remember the story in John 9 about the man born blind who Jesus healed and told him to go wash in the pool of Siloam, which means Sent?  This is where that pool would have been.  I suppose you could say, having gone through the waters that supplied that pool, that I too have washed in the pool of Sent.

Next came... another tunnel.  This one follows the old road that would have led up to the Temple.

 A picture of the pools was on one of the walls along the way.

Another "I'm having so much fun!" photo.  After a morning of using my brain at the museum, it was super fun to be physical and active and just do something fun.  I kept thinking how much Woody would have enjoyed this day.

The tunnel got much more narrow...

And sometimes with lined with sandbags over the old rocks and stones...  It made me think of an army bunker from a war.

 Again, not a place for claustrophobes!

As we approached the Temple Mount (from underground), we began to see the written prayers shoved into rocks.

Do you remember when the disciples pointed out "the buildings of the Temple, but he answered them, 'You see all these?  Truly I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.'" (Matthew 24:1-2) Then do you remember from history that the Romans destroyed the Temple in 70AD?  Here are the stones that were thrown down, and still remain there today.  Wowzah.

The stones were so big and heavy that they broke the road when they fell.  Again, it's been left like this since then.  Wowzah.

We turned the corner to head toward the steps of ascent that I told you about yesterday, and were treated with another beautiful sunset lighting of the Mount of Olives.

The steps of ascent.

Me leaning against the southern wall of the Temple mount.  Note that my skirt is still very wet.  Also note how BIG the stones are.  That one is a few feet taller than me!

 More prayers jammed in holes.

Looking up at the Temple Mount from below.

This is what it would have looked like back then.

On our way out, we stumbled upon another awesome mural.

Girl looking at herself in a mirror.  Some things never change.  :)

Kid chasing a bird.  Again, some things never change.

Twilight.

We went to get felafel for dinner before heading home.  I love felafel.  And I'm a little snobby about it, because I don't like it unless its fresh.  And the felafel place in Paris is so delicious that I tend to only like felafel from there.  So I was pretty excited to try some Dixie felafel and see how it compared.  Bound took me to a place she liked.  I was a little confused while ordering and kept nodding yes.  She commented that they charged me for schwarma, for some odd reason, instead of for felafel.  I took a bite and realized it was because they'd given me schwarma.  Oops.  Good thing I like schwarma.  

Such a great day!  I really liked combining the intellectual of the museum this morning with the fun of the tunnel this afternoon.  I highly recommend Hezekiah's Tunnel for anyone who isn't claustrophobic!  Definitely one of the coolest things I've ever done!  Tomorrow's Christmas Eve!!!