Jericho and Bethlehem

Saturday February 2nd

I had an early pick up this morning but since I was coming back to the same hotel, I didn't have to pack everything up.  The tour agency is well organized, mini buses collect tourists from the area hotels according to their proximity and bring them to a central spot where there is a major scramble where everyone gets on the bus going where they want to go that day.  It was a bit confusing because I need the Jericho and Bethlehem bus, rather than the Bethlehem and Jerusalem bus, but it all worked out.

Bedouin Settlement

Multilingual sign, more interesting than the site itself.

It was about an hour from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem where we picked up a couple other folks who were staying there.  From there it might have been another hour to Jericho.  We had two guides with us today, the driver did most of the talking at first, but  there was another guy along for the ride who was also very helpful.  I appreciated that the driver actually stopped at places where he suggested taking a picture and seemed to get that we wanted to see the things, not just pass by.  We saw more of the same Bedouin settlements as on the Dead Sea day, since it was the same road.  We actually got off the freeway at the sign for the Good Samaritan's Inn.  Someone is making it into an actual inn again, but right now there is nothing to see except an artistic rock wall.  The freeway sign is a good example of two things I noticed (besides the internationally accepted brown sign, which I have mentioned before), first there are three languages on every sign, and not just languages but also scripts.  There are places in the US where the signs are bilingual (Spanish and English), even biscriptal (a new word, you saw it here first) (Chinese or Japanese and English) but I can't think of any triscriptal signs that I have ever seen before.  The second thing, which could be a continuation of the first if you consider pictograms their own language, are the symbols below the sign.

Free breakfast!

I wish I had done a more coordinated job of taking pictures of the pictograms so I could try to figure out what they mean.  My best guess for these three are: historical/ruin, building and Christian.  I looked through my guide book and couldn't find a key.  I probably saw more than a dozen different symbols throughout Israel.    When we passed through sea level, we actually got to stop.  I had a free breakfast picture taken there, not that sea level is all that interesting, but it goes with the theme of other Hobee's pictures I have: Prime Meridian in Greenwich, England, the Equator in Ecuador and now Sea Level in Israel.  Next for the South Pole!  Or Mt. Everest  Well, maybe the tropic of cancer is more reasonable.

We had two stops before the actual city of Jericho, first the tree Zaccarius climbed up to see Jesus when he was mobbed by folks.  The guides claim that this is the actual tree and that it has been carbon dated to be appropriately old.  Uhuh.

The sycamore tree Zaccarius climbed up to see Jesus

Next we went to a view point to see the Mount of temptations.  Jesus was sick of the mobs and people in trees and all that, so he climbed this mountain where the only one he had to deal with for 40 days was the devil who kept trying to make his life easier, but of course Jesus would have none of it.

The mountain Jesus spent 40 days of temptation on and the monastery that commemorates it.

The modern city of Jericho

Finally we made it to Jericho which is in the West Bank, under control of the Palestinian Authorities.  We had to cross through a check point, although no one was there, and when we got to the historical site, our guide had to make way for a local guide.  I wasn't all that impressed with the site, but I guess that makes sense since the city is Biblically famous for falling down, there shouldn't be much left.  The excavations do show that there have been civilizations at this site for 8000 years and that there have been more than 20 different civilizations in that time.  

What is left has been reconstructed of the historic dwellings inside the walls of Jericho.

We had a shopping opportunity and I did buy some little ceramics and a date/nut log to share with my department when school starts again next week.  We had the opportunity to take a cable car up to the Mount of Temptations where Jesus went to meditate for 40 days and where the devil kept tempting him.  That might have been more interesting than the shopping, but I guess I needed to pursue it more aggressively since it was mentioned and then not offered again.  Instead I watched the peacocks and peahens outside the shop.  There were two males and a dozen females and they are very interesting to watch.  They can poof out their neck feathers when they are alarmed, I guess to look bigger and they all look the same way when there is a startling noise.  

This guy was preening himself , showing that no matter who you are, when your butt itches, you scratch it.

The Palestinian Flag flies over Jericho and the signs are only in Arabic and English, not Hebrew.

My favorite combo, oranges and pomegranates, displayed here in baskets made from recycled tires.  

 We said good bye to Jericho and the Dead Sea and climbed back above sea level and to the town of Bethlehem.  Bethlehem is also controlled by the Palestinian Authority, but here the security was a bit more strict.  On the way in we were stopped and asked who was on the bus, the driver said, Americans, Canadians and South Africans, conveniently forgetting his 'girlfriend' from Saudi, who he had already teased about being rich and willing to buy us all lunch.  I don't know that it would have mattered, but it was interesting that she was left off the list.  She didn't get off the bus in Bethlehem, so maybe it would have been an issue.  Anyway, there is a giant wall all the way around Bethlehem which was 'officially' put there to stop the Palestinians from bombing the Israelis, which I can understand, but it didn't seem to me that even non-bomb carrying Palestinians could cross, at least not easily.

The wall around Bethlehem from the Bethlehem side.  

The restriction seemed to go both ways.  (The picture was from Jericho, but there were similar ones around Bethlehem.)

The Palestinian licence plate

The Israeli licence plate 

 And your licence plate was an easy way to tell where you should/could be.  I saw both of these inside Bethlehem, and our tour bus certainly had Israeli plates, but we had to get off it not far inside the city and get on a different bus with a different driver/guide.

It was clear that the perspectives had changed.  So far in Israel, most of the sites I had seen were Biblical, and the guides refered to Jesus or Jesus Christ.  In Jericho, our guide said Jesus the Christ, and in Bethlehem he became, 'our Lord.'  George, the Bethlehem guide was the first guide to be explicit about his faith, which I thought was interesting.  Our first stop was the milk grotto.  MJJ stopped here on their way to Egypt and while Mary was breast feeding baby J, some milk spilled on the rocks and turned them all white.

The church of the Milk Grotto

The cave of the Milk Grotto.  I am not sure how no one noticed that most of the rock in the area is lime stone, which is white...

 Lots of pictures/depictions of Mary and baby J here.  Some depicting the action for which the grotto is named.

Next stop was the Shepherd's cave.  I was surprised (skeptical) by how close this was to everything else.  I had always pictured the Shepherds off in the fields, a day's walk at least from Bethlehem when the angels came to tell them to come see the kid, but it turns out it was just around the corner.  

The Shepherd's cave

 The main point, of course, of going to Bethlehem was to see the church of the Nativity.  Not unlike the Church of the Holy Sepulchure in Jerusalem, this church has several churches inside.

The steeple for the Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem

 The main sanctuary is run by the Greek Orthodox.  It is over the original church, built by Helena (mother of Constantine and one busy woman back in the day).  The mosaics of the original church are still there and on display under the current floor.  The original church fell down in an earthquake.  Fortunately it wasn't destroyed by the Mamelukes(?) when they came through since the outside of the church had mosaics of the three wise men in Arabic garb and they thought the church belonged to their culture.  (This story strikes me as fishy for several reasons, but never mind.)  Unfortunately the mosaic is gone now, due to 'natural factors' so we couldn't see it.

We had to wait several minutes here because the Greek Orhodox priests were having a service and we were allowed to stay, but couldn't move on to the next part of the church until they were done.

Mosaics on the walls of the Greek Orthodox chapel.  

The Greek Orthodox priest in the service

 When we could continue, we went down below the sanctuary to the cave - inn (not cave in) where there was supposedly no room.  George tells the story a bit differently.  He says the guest house cave was part of the same cave as the stable cave, just different parts.  There were so many people in Bethlehem for the census that while Mary and Joseph may not have had their own cave, they had a place to stay and it was only when she was going to give birth that she went to the stable cave for a little privacy.

The 14 pointed star marks the spot of Jesus' birth.  The 14 points represent the three sets of 14 generations between important folks in Jesus' lineage.  

 Here's an awkward question for you, if part of the prophesy is that Jesus is of the house of David, but it is Joseph who traces his lineage to David, and in theory, Joseph didn't have much to do with Jesus' conception, then how are they connected?

On the other part the same room is the replacement manger.  The original one was wood and was stolen by the crusaders(?).  If it was wood, how would it have lasted the 1200 years needed for the Crusaders to steal it?  

The tomb of baby bones.

 George asked us if we believed this was the actual spot of the birth of 'the Lord' or was it just close enough (for government work - my addition)?  I was on the side of close enough, I liked that most of the guides up to now referred to places 'according to tradition' being the place that such and such happened.  With so many years going by and so much not being written down until later and so many egos and politics getting involved over the last 2000 years, how can one know anything for sure?  Anyway, the correct answer was clearly, this is exactly the spot, and how can we tell?  Well, first there is the Bible, which says that it was here, then we have the church which was built here - why would they build a church of the Nativity in the wrong place? and finally we have baby bones.  Herod was killing all of the babies trying to control the competition for King of the Jews and there were baby bones found in this cave, so it must have been where Jesus, I'm sorry, 'our Lord' was born.  I have no problem with the Bible as allegory and with identifying places where things happened according to tradition, but George, your evidence is circumstantial at least and self referential at best.  I think its more likely that this is near/similar to/like the cave which might have been near the one where Jesus was born according to tradition, but since it was the cave where St. Jerome worked to translate the bible into Latin hundreds of years later, it is convenient to say this is the cave.

St. Jerome's grotto - St. Jerome worked to translate the bible into Latin while living in the cave of the nativity.  Coincidence?

 Again we had a retail opportunity, where every dollar we spent would support the Palestinian Christians.  Despite my skepticism at George's certainty, I do support Palestinian Christians and I did make some purchases at their shop before being conveyed by Palestinian minibus to the border.  Due to some confusion, my part of the group got left behind (not that kind of left behind) when the main part of the group went, but we caught up with them anyway because the border crossing is quite something, almost like going to a soccer match in Istanbul.  First you have a long corridor to walk down with bars on both sides, then there is a warehouse, which was empty when we were there, but I got the impression it could be quite full.  Then a line to stand in with a turnstile which lets only one person at a time through and it can be stopped at any time.  This leads to a metal detector and x ray machine not unlike airport security.  Here you have to show your passport to a guard.  In my local part of the line we were all Americans/Canadians and the guard didn't even open the passport up but waved us through.  I didn't think it would be kosher to stick around to see what type of passports the folks behind us had, or what they had to do/say to get through.
 The Jerusalem/Bethlehem bus was waiting for us on the other side and we joined the rest of the group for a ride back to Tel Aviv.

Jericho and Bethlehem were interesting to visit and no visit to the Holy Land would be complete without seeing the Church of the Nativity, but the take home message was definitely the wall and what and why it divides.  A topic I am not qualified to write about, but have been thinking about.