Day 7

Garden Tomb and Herodius

Garden Tomb
The Garden tomb is one of the possible sites of both Golgotha (Calvary) and the Tomb.  It has the distinct advantage of being 1. outside the city gates (something mentioned in the bible), 2. Looking like a skull hill (Which is what Golgotha means).  Being near a rich man’s garden – which is in the bible (Joseph of Arimathea) and the tomb is constructed in an unusual way that matches the biblical narrative.  Its disadvantage is it seems to have been identified late, unlike the Church of the Holy Seplucher which was marked as the site as early as the 100’s.

Regardless the tomb looks exactly like what you would expect was Jesus’ tomb.  There is a small opening (larger now than it would have  been) that opens to an anti-chamber and to the right is the area for the body. (This is the unique element to this tomb, most tombs have the body area behind the anti-chamber not to the right…read the account In John and see the detail).   My two cents or my gut feeling is that this is the Tomb.  We went in and had a few moments in the tomb…mind you you had to just stop and imagine the two angels sitting there and it was a little overwhelming.  Jesus body may have been right here for three days.  From here he might have stepped out resurrected and changed enough that nobody recognized him when they first encountered him.  He would have moved to the upper room from here, encountered Mary here, all of that stuff.  We read in Matthew sitting across from the tomb as we actually sat across from the tomb…it was surreal and hard to process.  This place was especially profound given that Easter is just around the corner.  After the crowds died down (We were a walking crowd – 50 in our group alone), I went back and spent some extended time in the Tomb.  There were ancient worship symbols inside – so some folks at least thought this place significant.  Some folks had put prayers in the walls like at the wailing wall, so i did the same.  Hope that was ok, but I thought, this is our Western Wall.  Its the place where heaven and earth met in a violent clash, where good overcame evil forever, and where the hope of eternal salvation springs forth.  I wanted a prayer there .   Superlatives fail me!

Herodium

The Trip
This was an added trip for Jeff Kirby, Paul Wilson (Connie’s Husband), and myself.  Jeff asked me on the buss if I would be interested in splitting a cab (150 dollars or so) to go out to the ruins of Herodium.  I jumped at the chance, and so did Paul.  All along I had decided I was going to get the most out of the trip and take every opportunity to totally experience the places we were.  I would wander off from time to time to spend more time at a place I felt was profound (Always keeping the group in view of course), I climbed down to the base of Masada, Climbed up on top of Bet Shan’s Tell, basically always did the extra thing and left no stone unturned.  This was another chance to do the same.

Our bus driver called one of his cousins (a cab driver) to come get us and we met him at the hotel.  Our cabbie (I didnt understand his name) was what I would call a prototypical normal everyday Palastinian Muslim.  He was a citizen of Jerusalem, so he could go in and out of the West Bank as long as he was transporting Americans or other tourists.  Herodium is in the West Bank just past Bethlehem, so we had to go through the checkpoints and see the walls and all that.  It was facinating to ride with this guy and listen to his stories.  Jeff really drew him out, asking questions about the peace process, his feelings towards Jews, Christians, Americans, violence, etc etc.  He was very nice and we enjoyed talking to him a great deal.  At the same time, I began to realize that if his opinions were typical of the Arab street – peace is likely permanently elusive.  Most of the time he was pretty “PC” but at times he would say things that just made you go wow – you really believe that.  For example, he mentioned that all Jews have four houses – something thats obviously not true, but that he totally believed.  He said no Jewish leaders have ever wanted peace, said that Jews don’t love each other even that they stab each other in the back all the time, just lots of those sorts of prejudicial statements.  He worked hard to evangelize us to Islam, but pushed back at any attempt to talk about Jesus as God.  In fact he said he loved the prophet Jesus but that he did not die – that he was taken up into heaven like Elija.  His response to every question was a radical fundamentalism – “The Prophet Told Us” was a typical answer.  I recalled several times the words around the Dome of the rock – “There is only one God – He has no son”.   Where he nailed us all was when he mentioned that he had read the whole Old and New Testament and asked if we had read the whole Koran.  Yikes, he was right we were losers…..lol.  Heck most American Christians cant even make the first statment – which is very scary.  We wonder why Islam is advancing and Christianity retreating in Europe and to some extent here…maybe its because they believe their faith more completely…Anyway I digress.  Needless to say this was a facinating extra part of the trip.

Herodium itself

You can read a lot about Herodium here but here are the basics.  Herod is the  same guy who build Cesarea (See Day 2), The Second Temple (See Day 4), Masada (Day 5) and massacred the innocents in an attempt to kill Jesus at his birth (See Day 4 Bethlehem).  He was a busy guy.  In addition to all this, he killed one of his 10 wives, and 3 of his 14 children.  His sons ruled after him and one of them was the guy who chopped off John the Baptists head.  He was Jewish (From a convert family), but also very Roman.  He rose from being the overseer of Galilee (Day 1,2) to be the Governor of all of this area.  He loved to build things.

Herodium was both a palace and a place of refuge for Herod.  While he died in Jerico (Day 3) after a long disease, his Tomb was recently discovered here.   We arrived and our cabbie became our guide.  I wasn’t 100 percent sure how accurate he was but it was helpful to have him with us.  Especially when we wanted to find the newly discovered tomb.  We climbed to the top after paying for entry.  This place had many fewer visitors, probably because of its West Bank location, but we did run into a German Camera crew doing a documentary.  As we climbed the whole region came into view.  You could see why Herod liked this place.  Whats wierd is that he took these two hills and dug out one of them and added it to the top of the other so it made a higher mountain.  Thats where we were.  On the way to the top we saw all of these rounded bolders – clearly used to attack people making the treck up the mountain in more dangerous times.  As we got to the top the sight was breathtaking.  To the east was the Judean Desert, home of Masada, the temptation, Jerico, etc.   To the west was Bethlehem, Jerusalem, etc.  There was a line where green turned to desert, it was striking.  Down below us shepherds were in their fields tending to their goats and sheep.  Its bizzare to see all of these scenes jump out at you as if they had been frozen in time 2000 years ago.

Dug into the top of the volcano looking hill, is a palace.  It includes a huge bath house,  a Synagog, living quarters, and all the entrapments of wealth. The place, like Masada, had huge cisterns that were fed by aquaducts.  We were able to climb down into the cisterns and see the tunnels dug into the rock in every direction.  We walked the tunnels and were just amazed at the engineering all of this took.  The tunnels allowed men to spring out of the sides of the mountains to supprise unsuspecting attackers.  We walked all over the place and were just amazed by everything.  It was very well preserved.  After a while we decided to go looking for the newly discovered Tomb.  This just came to light in May of 2007 so its very recent.  We walked down a path near active excavations (they were rolling rocks down this huge ramp as they dug).  We came down to the tomb area and were amazed.  This thing was huge, and looked out over the mountain towards Jerusalem.  Clearly its ornate nature meant that it was for Herod.  It looked like something a very wealthy person might have in an old Cemetery.  Jeff and I weren’t satisfied by the look we got so we climbed out further than tourists are suppose to go.  I call these our Indiana Jeff adventures.  We had a great time and found some cool stuff.

After an extended period of time on the mount, we descended and headed home, another adventure under out belts.

In case your interested in the Indiana Jeff Sagas there is:

Indiana Jeff and the Caves of Qumran
Indiana Jeff and the Temple Mount
Indiana Jeff and the Fortress of Masada
and of course Indiana Jeff and the Tomb of the Tyrant

All will be coming soon to theaters near you!