Extra Day 2: Return to the Old City

Today was Sabbath, when, for a variety of reasons, LDS services are held. Today in the Jerusalem Center it was District Conference, so members from the branches and groups throughout the country gathered for a joint meeting, joined by many visitors like ourselves.

After our meetings were over, we drove through the campus of Hebrew University, quiet for Sabbath, and stopped at some overlooks on Mount Scopus, one that overlooked the Judean Wilderness to the east and another with views of the city. From there we also saw the remains of a Second Temple Period tomb with kokkhim horizontal graves such as was likely the type in which Jesus was buried.

Back to the Holy Sepulchre

We then took Tim and Teresa Wright back to the Old City to revisit the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and some churches and other sites we had not managed to see with the group earlier in the week.

In the Church of the Holy Sepulchre we first climbed on top of Golgotha to see the Latin altar of Calvary, that commemorated when Jesus was nailed to the cross, and the Orthodox altar, where he was lifted upon the cross and hung until his death.

We then descended from Golgotha to enter the Chapel of Adam, where a window revealed another exposed piece of the rock, cracked either from the cross or the earthquakes that followed Jesus' death. We then worked around the church in a counterclockwise direction, visiting the lower Chapel of St. Helen and the still lower Chapel of the Invention (Finding) of the Cross.

We then made our way to the Rotunda, viewed some services being held there, and entered the small Syrian Chapel of Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, off of which is small room that reveals two more kokkhim horizontal shafts that confirm that this area was, in fact, a first century burial ground.

Altar of Joseph of Arimonthea and Nicodemus

First century kokkhim graves

The iconostasis of the Greek Catholikon or sanctuary

Church of Alexander Nevsky

in the mid nineteenth century the imperial Russian government bought a prime piece of property in the Old City near the Holy Sepulchre.  Planning as a hostel for Russian pilgrims, they began construction, only to find significant archaeological remains.  These are preserved below and to the east of the sanctuary that they eventually built here as part of a larger complex.  This church is named after the Russian saint Alexander Nevsky, the patron of the Czar Alexander who was ruling Russia at the time.

These remains included the triumphal gateway into the Temple of Venus complex built in A.D. 135 by the emperor Hadrian when he re-built Jerusalem as a Roman city. It is believed that the Venus temple was built here to co-opt  the holy site of the Christians, namely where they had been commemorating the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.  Nearby are the remnants of the earlier Herodian Wall,  giving evidence for where the course of the wall was in the time of Jesus.  In this wall are the remnants of a city gate, called The Gate of Judgment and believed to be the one through which Jesus passed on his way to Jerusalem.  Just to the side of the gateway is a narrow slot that some have tried to argue is the "Eye of the Needle" to which Jesus referred in the Synoptic story of the Rich Young Man.  While this might be possible, see this link for a philological and historical discussion of the expression. All of these remnants support the traditional claim of the Holy Sepulchre to be the site at least of the crucifixion, and the original church complex built by Constantine extended at least this far.

Hanging above the sanctuary of Alexander Nevsky is a beautiful series of passion paintings executed by by Russian artist Nikolay Koshelev.  If you like the work of Danish Carl Bloch, you will love these painting.

  
Lutheran Church of the Redeemer

Everyone should have a church in Jerusalem, even the Germans. That is what Kaiser Wilhelm II thought when he made a visit in 1898 for the dedication of a beautifully simple (relatively speaking) church not far from the previous churches mentioned in this blogpost. The main sanctuary hosts services in Arabic, German, and Danish. This church holds a warm memory, because we frequently attended English-speaking services in the nearby Cloister led by our friend Fred Strickert while we were living here.

After visiting the shop of our friend Shaban, we then exited through the Jaffa Gate, leading a view of the Citadel behind us.

Herodian Family Tomb

Our final stop was a rich family tomb that has been identified as the family tomb of Herod. While he was buried in a massive mausoleum at the Herodion near Bethlehem, this is where members of his family were buried, in view of his palace across the valley.

This tomb, featuring an intact rolling stone, gives some sense of what a rich tomb, like that of Joseph of Arimathea, would have been like in this period.

We then saw the Wrights off in a taxi to the airport, so Rachel and I will be on our own the next couple of days.

Extra Day in Jerusalem 1: City of David

With the Paces and the Wrights at the City of David panorama view, with the Al Aqsa Mosque in the background

Most of our group left for the airport last night right after our farewell dinner. We saw some others this morning who were going to Egypt with Dan Peterson, but two couples, the Paces and the Wrights were staying a bit longer, so Rachel and I spent some time this morning taking them to the City of David National Park.

The site is, to be honest, a bit controversial. It is a very important archaeological site representing the earliest settlement area, both Canaanite and Israelite, in the Jerusalem area. But today's City of David also lies in what was formerly part of the Arab neighborhood of Silwan.

 While today's City of David is outside the current Old City's walls, which are Turkish dating to A.D. 1538 and follow the course of the earlier Hadrianic Roman walls of c. A.D. 135 (but not the more extensive Byzantine walls of Jerusalem's Christian three centuries), it was always the heart of Jewish Jerusalem.

The earlier Canaanite city and the City of David itself were situated on a narrow "thumb" of land extending south from Mount Moriah, later known as the Temple Mount.  It had steep valleys on the other three sides---the Central Valley on the west, the Hinnom Valley on the south, and the Qidron Valley on the east.  The Qidron Valley continues northward, separating the Temple Mount from the Mount of Olives on the east.  Interestingly, the City of David and the slightly higher Mount Moriah to its north are NOT the highest of the hills of Jerusalem.  The Western Hill (appearing here labeled as "Hezekiah's Extension" and "Mount Zion") and the Mount of Olives to the east are much higher.  But the reason that the City of David was chosen for settlement first is because it is the only hill with a good, constant supply of water in the form of the Gihon Spring.

Davidic-era ruins built on bedrock

There are a lot of interesting First Temple period excavations to look at in this park, though some of them, like the important stone retaining wall of Area G, were not readily viewable because of renovation projects going on in the park. Also, given our friends' interest and our rather tight time schedule, we hurried on to the probably the most interesting part of the City of David, which is Hezekiah's Tunnel.

East side of the City of David with the "stepped structure," which might have held up Davidic buildings

Hezekiah's tunnel was built in advance of the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem in 701 B.C. It brought the waters of the Gihon Spring into the expanded city of Jerusalem, funneling them under the City of David into the new Pool of Siloam at the base of the Central Valley, which was within Hezekiah's expanded city which now included the Western Hill.

So we doffed our shoes for water socks or sandals, unzipped our gators (turning field pants into shorts) or rolled up our pants, and plunged into the tunnel and its waters. We then slogged through 533 meters of the winding tunnel with only one flashlight and our camera phones for light. Through part of it we happily sang hymns and harmonized. It was fun.

The water has, at least since the Byzantine period, emptied into a small-ish pool that recounts the events of John 9, when Jesus healed the man born blind. However, fairly recent excavations have uncovered a much larger pool from the Second Temple Period that better fits the description.

Standing in the traditional Byzantine pool after emerging from the tunnel

 We then walked up an other tunnel, this one created by archaeologists to reveal the previously buried street that led up the valley from the Pool of Siloam up to the Temple Mount. At one point, our modern tunnel veered and went under said street so that we could walk through the Herodian drainage tunnel that ran under that street.

This archaeological tunnel can be taken up to the Davidson Archaeological Park at the base of the Temple Mount, but we exited it a bit early to see the new Givati excavations, which some think may be the remains of the palaces of the Queen of Adiabene.

Rachel and I spent the afternoon picking up a rental car and attending a meeting at the Jerusalem Center. In the evening we went to dinner with our friends at the Notre Dame of Jerusalem restaurant, which boasts some splendid views of the city.