This week’s
venture into Jerusalem was like stepping into a time machine. While the day’s emphasis was the New
Testament, we definitely saw some of the Old, as well as the present day mixed
in.
One of the major
clashes of old, new, and present was our first activity of the day: visiting
the Temple Mount, the Dome of the Rock. Times have changed, so we could not go
inside, and even our time on the mount was limited itself, but we were able to
walk on the grounds where the Temple once stood! Our guide, (this time Archaeology Professor
Chris McKinney) pointed out to us the bottom step leading up to the platform
with the Dome of the Rock. It was
slightly different than the steps above it.
The stones on the bottom layer date back to the Iron Age and are most
likely the steps from Solomon’s original Temple. The Temple Mount was huge, you
can always see the golden dome, but I had no idea how much land there was up
there- as our professor mentioned, it was built large specifically so that it
could hold a lot of people as the Jews would come to the temple three times a
year. It was built by Herod the Great and completed around 66 AD, only to be
shortly destroyed in 70 AD by the Romans.
The location of
the Dome of the Rock itself is not necessarily where the temple was located,
and even as large as it appears to be it is only about ¼ the size of the
Temple. The Dome shrines a rock
believed to be where Mohammed ascended into heaven, making it the third most
holy site in Islam. The rock is actually
apart of the mountain below, identified as Mount Moriah in the Scriptures (the
mount where Abraham was going to sacrifice his son). The area by the Dome of
the Rock was flat and still. It was easy
to imagine Jesus or Paul preaching and talking and getting a glimpse at what
that might have looked like. But it was all to easy to come back to 2014 and
see soldiers positioned, Muslims mingling, and security guards urging us off as
our time was up. 
After seeing what
is a holy sight in Islam, and a very valuable location for the Jews, we made
our way through the Muslim quarter outside the city to the Christian’s most
precious reminder of the Gospel, the Garden Tomb. The Garden Tomb is located right next to what
is believed to be the place of the Skull, or Golgotha (Mark 15:22). It is a first century tomb believed to be
that where Jesus was buried. It holds the
second oldest tradition for this location (the first is the Church of the Holy
Sepulcher). Unlike the other location,
shrined, surrounded by gold and incense, this site is in the open air,
surrounded by nature and preserved in a garden state. It might not be the
actual tomb, or actual garden, but its preserved and humble state, enabled us
to reflect on the most important aspect: that the tomb is empty. As the tour guide said himself, “we don’t
really care where He died…we care that it happened and that it is the most
important thing that could have happened in our lives: that He died for our
sins and rose again.”
After reflecting
on the Gospel at the beautiful garden, we made our way into the Jewish Quarter
of Jerusalem and descended below the ground into a museum that housed an
archaeological find of a mansion from the Herodian Period. There were beautiful
mosaics on the floor, some pillars, pottery, oil lamps, murals, plastered walls
with a little color left, and even some ancient “cocktail bars”. (Little tables
with two jugs underneath to hold water
and wine) The mansion seemed to be never
ending, and it was all in its own preserved world under the bustling life of
the city above. 
Next we made our
way to The Jerusalem Archaeological Park and the Davidson Center. Right at the base of the Temple Mount on the
South East is a park of excavations. One stone we saw was a replica of a corner
stone that had been thrown off, and nearby were massive pits in the road left
from the impacts of the stones thrown from the wall. These stones were not little ones either,
some of them were very large weighing several tons. In fact later on we saw the world’s largest
stone that is still intact with the Western Wall in an underground tunnel. The
road that had these pits in them was at once the road that traveled from the
City of David to the Antonia Fortress at the other end of the Temple Mount, it
would have been the road travelers would have walked on as they approached the
temple. 
Also in this park were remnants
of mikvahs. (They are all over
Jerusalem, but here is a nice one that we could walk in) A mikvah was a ritual cleansing pool used by
the Jews for purification ceremonies. Stairs go down into the pool, and are
divided left and right. The individual
would go down the right and bathe and come up the left purified. There is a similarity to the mikvahs of the
Jews and the baptisms of the Christian.
Mikvahs were done continuously to help alleviate their sin, but baptism
is done once as an outward sign of the inward cleansing and ultimate
purification by the blood of Jesus.
Around the East side of the Temple Mount we
got to sit on some stairs that led up to the wall. There used to be a gate
there that was the main entrance, now it is only identified by the three arches
seen in the wall. The stairs are mostly
modern, but there are a few on the lower levels that are original from the time
of Jesus. Chris gave us a visual by
saying that it might have been at these steps that Paul would have talked to
the people or even Jesus himself.
Another arch that we could see in the wall on the Southern side was
Robinson’s arch that used to be a part of a stair way leading into the temple
as well.
After wandering
around the excavations we were able to go towards the Western Wall (which was
actually quite filled with soldiers for a ceremonial banquet of some sort) and
descend below the ground into a tunnel tour of the Western Wall. You could tell
that the wall was from Herod’s time based on the masonry. Each stone was cut to perfectly align with
the one next to it and had no cement in between. Each stone was also perfectly cut to Herodian
design. Each row was also inset by one
inch as it went up instead of ascending directly up. This was done to give it the effect of
looking like it was always extending upwards as opposed to skyscrapers that
look like they are going to fall over.
As we walked along the ruins and excavations under ground we came to
what is known as the largest stone in the world. 42 feet long, originally 12 feet high and 15
feet deep, this stone sits! I was looking
forward to seeing this stone. Supposedly
it weighs about 570 tons! How did they
get it there? Because of where the
tunnel was we could touch it easily, but the actual road from Herod’s day would
have descended 45 ft. below the ground.
Most likely they used pulleys of some sort- it was most incredible! I loved seeing it because I love the imagery
of God as our Rock. (Psalm 18) I always thought of them as being hard, sturdy,
and reliable- but this rock tops them all!
When we came out
of the tunnel we were back in the modern world of 2014. We walked back to our bus and rode back to
the campus. Jerusalem is fascinating
that not only so many cultures can collect there, but also so many worlds of
time past can be seen and revisited again and again.
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