The Old City

One of the reasons why the Arabs hate Israel is because every time that there is an excavation, it validates something in the Old Testament that demonstrates that the Word of God is given by God.

We will enter the city through the Dung gate.  We will pass by the western Wall, but we won't stop.  We'll come by later today.

We are passing through east Jerusalem.  Right around us seems to be an industrial area.  Again, very narrow streets.  What we are passing right now looks junky.  Shops are small and dirty-looking.  The trash in the street has not been picked up.

We are in a terrific traffic jam now as we are approaching the old city--all kinds of tour buses, plus the local traffic, and the streets are still very narrow.  This is still the Arab section where we are.

We have spent about five minutes at this intersection, and are finally going through it, with a lot of blaring horns around us.  One of the problems here is that the Arab drivers are ignoring the red lights and going through the intersection anyway.

Now we are descending into what I think is the Kidron Valley, approaching the Jewish area.

We are passing a cemetery and a number of ancient Jewish tombs.

We have reached the old city and are going through metal detectors.  There are armed guards standing at the side.  Two are carrying Uzi's.  

Inside the old city there is a lot of reconstruction underway.  We can see the top of the Dome of the Rock showing over the western wall.

We are in a large courtyard.  Across from us is the Western Wall--Wailing Wall.  This courtyard used to be a deep valley.  Where we are standing was midair.  The wall begins quite a distance below our level.  There were originally three walls forming the Hebrew letter Shiyn--standing for El Shaddai.

The stones visible at the bottom of the wall date to the time of Herod.  The smaller stones above are more recent.  Almost 2/3 of the wall is below ground, because the valley is filled in.  We see several men standing in the corner of the wall.  This is the closest they can get to the location of the Holy of Holies.

The men in our group have approached the wall wearing yarmulkes provided for the public.  We are approaching the corner, and a room that extends beyond the courtyard along the wall.  Women are not permitted here.  There is a small library and several men praying or studying.

The yarmulkes are provided in a box.  Heads must be covered to approach the wall.  I could have worn my hat, but wore the yarmulke instead.

We are walking through a medieval tunnel.  We will be walking a part of the wall that is still underground.  We are now walking around to Wilson's arch, where we were in the little library a while ago.  We will look in from the other side, so that the women can see it also.

From here we will be descending a ways and walking along the buried wall.  This was called the Secret Tunnel.  It was used to get to the wall before the time of Herod.  Herod scraped the top off of the mountain in order to create a flat area for his reconstruction of the second temple.

They have a great idea here.  Where the ceiling is low, they have installed thick leather pads to protect your head.  Somebody should tell the people at Timpanogos to do this--especially at 12-stitch.

We are now descending a stairway--a fairly long distance--going down to a level where they have excavated part of the bottom of the wall.

We are in a room that dates from the Hasmonian dynasty.  The walls here are similar in construction to the construction of the Western Wall.

We have climbed back up again and are going to another area.

We are looking at another section of the wall.  The stones at the bottom with beveled edges are Herodian.  The holes in the wall were for supports used to keep the water system which originally flowed through these tunnels from touching the walls.  The engineering here is fabulous.

These niches in the wall contain pieces of paper--prayers which have been written out and left here.  They are collected periodically.

There is a large stone in the wall beside us-- approximately 32' x 10' x 14' deep.  The stone was carried uphill to this location and placed on top of the other stones with perfect accuracy.  It weighs about 70 tons.

David suggests that somewhere in these arches there are mikvehs under the temple so that the high priest could cleanse himself if something happened while he was in the Holy of Holies.  He also suggests that the Ark of the Covenant may be buried, or hidden, there.  Much of this area has not been excavated.

The wall is almost perfectly perpendicular, with less than 3/4 inch difference between the top and bottom.

We are walking through a section of the tunnel now where along one side we can see--and even touch--the Herodian stones.  They are huge stones.  They look to me to be about 3' x 2' x who knows how deep.  These huge stones are set together perfectly.  Some of these joins you couldn't get a credit card or even a needle into.

Every once in a while we walk across a glass floor.  You can look down and see lower on the wall.  Much of this, of course, was a water system.

As we approach the end of this tunnel, the wall changes to natural bedrock.  The bedrock has been sculpted to look like the Herodian stones, although it is all one solid rock.  Herod actually had the top of the mountain flattened for his reconstruction of the second temple.

David has told us that dogs are considered unclean animals under Jewish religious law; cats are clean.  That's why there are so many cats in Israel--truly a civilized country!

We have come back out now, and we have a stone here that has the name of Tiberius on it.

We have come out of the tunnel.  Where we are standing would have been outside the city in Jesus' day.  There is a large Franciscan church--The Church of the Condemnation.  Where we are standing was a highway going from Jerusalem to Jericho.  Beyond the wall right next to us is where the Praetorium was, where Jesus was sentenced by Pontius Pilate.  Today there is nothing to take a picture of.

We have passed through the church and are looking at street stones from Jesus' day.  This is the beginning of the Via Dolorosa.  The Via Dolorosa was designated sometime in the 10th-12th centuries, something like that, because following an actual route Jesus may have traveled would be very long and very difficult.  The tradition of the 14 stations of the cross began at that time.

We are walking down an alley now, going into the Moslem quarter.

We are entering the grounds of St. Anne's church now.  Tradition is that this is where Mary was born, but there is no research to back this up.  Research shows that she was born in Sepphoris, the former Galilean capitol, near Nazareth.

There is a beautiful garden on the church grounds.  David pointed out a pepper tree, and I ate one of the peppercorns.  Not quite ripe enough to be strong.

Still on the church grounds we are viewing the remains of ancient pools, including the Pool of Bethsaida, where Jesus healed the lame man in John 5.  These pools were fed by aqueducts from Samaria.  A Byzantine church was built over the pools.

Under the church we are looking at a cave where Mary was supposedly born.  This seems very unlikely.

We are now entering the main part of the church, where we are going to sing.  The acoustics here are unbelievable.

We sang several songs here--Amazing Grace, Majesty and one other.  Then the Mennonite group came in behind us and we joined them in singing Holy, Holy, Holy.

As we were standing around, David talked about brining the Moody Chorale through here.  I can hardly imagine what that would have sounded like.

We have come out of the old city through St. Stephen's gate.  Supposedly, somewhere below us is where Stephen was stoned.

I'm looking now above the gate.  To the side of it you see lions and the lion is holding a mouse in its paw.  The lion represents the Moslems and the mouse represents the Christians.  This section of the wall is not original, dating from Suleiman the Magnificent.

We are waiting for the bus now.  It's turning out to be warmer than expected.  I'm wearing a jacket and a sweater, and I'm going to take the jacket off.  I'm beginning to wish I didn't have the sweater.  Of course, it was cool when we started out.

Between us and the Mount of Olives is the Kidron Valley, or Valley of Jehosaphat.  Remember that Jesus went down and across the brook Kidron to go into the Garden of Gethsemane.

We are looking at the Eastern Gate, also known as the Gate Beautiful.  Suleiman had it blocked in because of fears that the Messiah would return through it.  Below us is the Kidron Valley and the Mount of Olives, with graves facing the gate.  I now understand the significance of the song, "I will meet you in the morning just outside the Eastern Gate."  Jews want to be buried on the Mount of Olives, opposite the gate, because they expect to be resurrected to meet the Messiah when He comes through the Eastern Gate.  Zechariah is also supposed to be buried in the Kidron Valley.

To the left of the tomb are some pillars, and below that to the right is the tomb of Jehosaphat from whom the valley gets its name.  His name means "Jehovah-filled judge."

We are looking down the Kidron toward Silwan, the ancient city of Siloam.  The Pool of Siloam is still extant, but we can't go there.  It is around the hill from where we are.  The City of David is beyond.  When David fled, he ran up the Kidron.

We have walked from the Northern wall to the Southern wall.  It's not a very great distance.  We are on top of Mount Zion.

We are entering the traditional Upper Room, located above King David's tomb.  We are going in a roundabout way, because the Jews below at the tomb of David have blocked it off.  They don't want their young people to come up here.

This is a Roman room.  It is possibly the place.  There is no way to know for sure.  It is a typical dining room of the Crusader era, which, of course, was many years later.  Although this has a Roman basis, it's hard to tell whether it is the actual site.  There is a pillar here bearing a Christian symbol, which suggests the possibility.  The symbol is a pelican--a bird which eats its own flesh.  This became symbolic of the eating of bread during the Lord's Supper.  Jesus said, "This is my body, which is broken for you."

Most of these places that we will see in and around Jerusalem have nothing to show whether they are the authentic places or not.  These sites were chosen at some time in the past, several centuries after the events, and given a name.  They may be close, or approximate, but there's no way to tell for sure.  This particular site may also be the place where Pentecost occurred--or it may not.

We're going back into the old city now.  There is a section of the old wall here that has bullet holes in it from the war of '67.  We are in the Armenian quarter, walking to the Jewish quarter.

We have walked maybe two blocks and are now at the beginning of the Jewish quarter.  For the most part, it is necessary to walk here.  The street is very narrow, and only a very few vehicles are allowed in.

Everywhere we look we see military officers with carbines.  When we went into the area by the Western Wall, we saw officers with Uzi's.  The female officers were carrying carbines.

We have reached the ruins of the Cardo Maximus.  It runs through the middle of Jerusalem.  At one end is the Damascus Gate.  This is the widest Cardo--75' across.  Like the others we have seen, there are shops behind the pillars.  These date from the Crusader era.

Most of the places where we go in the Old City, we are 12-20' above the level of Jesus' day, because dirt and silt blowing into Jerusalem catches here and builds up.

We are looking at a section of the wall from the time of Hezekiah.  This is where Rabshakeh held the city in siege for Sennacherib and shouted at the people on the wall in Isaiah 36.

We have passed from the Jewish Quarter into the Christian Quarter.  It is very crowded--very narrow.  It is like when we were in the Arab bazaar in Nazareth.  The difference is that it is much cleaner here.

We are at the entrance to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.  This is a Crusader church, built on top of a church that was built by Helena in about 300 AD.  There was originally a five-pointed gold star on the top of the church.  It was stolen one night in the middle of the night and became the spark that ignited the Crimean War.

Inside the church we see a number of representations of the stations of the cross.  To come in here we climbed a  very steep set of stairs, which is supposed to represent the climb to Golgotha.  Here we find the place where the body of Jesus was supposedly prepared for burial and a mural representing the preparation of the body.  Beyond this is the supposed tomb, itself.

There is a first-century Jewish tomb next door.  The very fact that it is next door indicates that where the supposed tomb of Jesus is, is not normal and that this is not actually where He would have been buried.

We see a rift which is supposedly proof of the earthquake that occurred when Jesus died.

We have passed through an open air meat market.  There are all kinds of meat here, including goat heads.  Also lots of flies.

We are looking now at some of the ruins of the ancient wall.  A moment later we are standing on the actual road that ran along the Western Wall in Jesus' day, where there are still some of the original stones.  It appears to have been about 25'-30' wide.  The actual top of the wall is higher than what we can see.  Other stones near us were pushed from the Wall during the destruction of the city by the Romans in 70 AD.

We are looking now at the Southern Wall.  Stones at the very bottom are from the Herodian period.  Everything above that is Arab.

On the outside of the wall we see the steps going into the Temple area.  Some of these date from Jesus' day.  He may actually have walked on some of these, since this was the path He would have had to follow to the Temple.

There are mikvehs all over below us here.  They have found about 50 of them.

The steps are constructed in a pattern that requires the person ascending to take first one step, then two steps, then one step and then two steps.  This was to slow the walker down and create reverence as the Temple was approached.

There were three entrance gates to the Temple area.  These have been bricked in by the Arabs.  There was a separate gate for exiting.

I'm getting really hot.  I shed my jacket some time ago.  I'm still wearing the sweater, and I am hot.

I am sitting on the Temple steps, looking down on the old City of David.  Over to the left a ways is the Mount of Olives.  All of this is very close together.

One of the things that is impressive here is that there are hundreds and hundreds of people inside this Old City.  Even though it is very, very small, this seems to have been adequate space to have held a huge population.

We are going through the Temple museum.  We don't actually know what the Temple looked like.  We are coming up on some pictures of different imaginative concepts of what the Temple was from different times.

We are going now into the Valley of Gehenna, just to the west of where we were.  We will drive past Bethlehem.  We can't stop, of course, because that's controlled by the Palestinians.  

We are passing through one of the new settlements.  This was purchased in 1960.  Trees were planted for reforestation.  This area is not disputed.  The section on the left is for Jews.  The section on the right is for Palestinians.

We have stopped where we can see Bethlehem in the distance.  There is a large hotel on the side of the hill.  Right behind that is the location of the Church of the Nativity.  We can't get any closer than this.  A Bedouin is approaching us with a flock of goats as we stand here.

I hadn't realized how close this is outside of Jerusalem.  It's just a very short distance.

We are taking a driving tour through some of the neighborhoods of Jerusalem.  This is a fairly large city.  Except that the houses are made entirely of stone and masonry, this looks just like any other large urban city built on hills.  It may be that some of these are cement structures, textured to look like brick, or with brick facades.

This has been a very long day.  We are more than glad to get back to our hotel.