Bible.org posted an article I wrote about Israel as setting based on my recent travels. You can read the article here.
Trendy Archaeology
November 11, 2009 By 4 Comments
In Israel, I was trendy. I saw some of the latest archaeological digs.
We passed a main street in Jerusalem from Byzantine times, drove by a sanctuary recently unearthed in Magdala, stepped into the believed house of Peter (the apostle of Jesus), peeked into the palace of Queen Helena (from first century AD), and walked through King David’s Palace.
In 2005 through 2008, a woman named Eilat Mazar (who happens to be the granddaughter of the archaeologist who unearthed the Temple Mount) excavated the area just south of the Temple Mount. Her team found remains of a foundation wall underneath centuries of buildings.
The foundation of King David’s Palace, she said.
Thence broke out a cage-fight. Some, including archaeologist Cahill, say this is the Jebusite fortress, not King David’s palace. They donned brass knuckles and had it out.
Exciting stuff, no?
After wandering through the remains (via guide, Asher, who didn’t respond quite so positively to my "As in My Name Is Asher Lev" comment as I would’ve hoped), I had to have a copy of The Palace of King David: Excavations at the Summit of the City of David, Preliminary Report of Seasons 2005-2007. Who wouldn’t?
Side note: This was the second time I almost lost the group. As I pursued my copy of the book, they pursued the bus. Thank goodness for an easy-to-spot group of journalists.
Two interesting things I learned from the digs and further reading in the report (rather, I will limit myself to two things):
First, as we climbed down into a water tunnel, Asher climbed onto a ledge and told us that here archaeologists found artifacts from Hezekiah’s time and a much earlier time. In suspense, we walked further down the tunnel as he revealed the mystery: this tunnel had originally been built and used by Melchizedek. Offhandedly, he gestured toward a roped-off area. "Oh, that was discovered a few months ago." And he moved on.
Right.
So here’s the thing. The tunnels lead to the Gihon Spring, the major water source for the city. The magnitude of the tunnel system helps us understand the size and significance of Jerusalem as far back as Melchizedek. Jerusalem, which became the religious and political center of Israel, had been an important religious and political center of Canaanites for centuries. When David conquered them, it was no minor feat. And it proved by leaps and bounds God’s sovereignty and his choice of Israel as his instrument to reign religiously and politically. (That last part is my interpretation, be ye warned.)
Also, at the Gihon Springs, archaeologists discovered a tower. This helps us understand 1 Kings 1 when David tells Nathan the prophet to take Solomon to Gihon and crown him the king at a time of political upheaval. Why accomplish such a momentous event at a spring? Because that spring and that tower, we can now say, was a hub with political signficance.
Second, putting together history and the new archaeological digs, we can understand the person of Uriah (from 2 Samuel 11, the man from whom David steals Bathsheba). It appears that Uriah was a successor to Jebusite rulers. "The story of David’s defeat of the destitute Uriah (2 Samuel 12) marks the very end of the Jebusite royal dynasty in the city" (Mazar, Preliminary Report, 2009). This presents a nuance to the story we know so well about David, Bethsheba, and Uriah. More than a story of lust, it has political ramifications. When David killed Uriah and took his wife, it symbolized his ultimate defeat of the Canaanites of Jerusalem.
One last word about Israel: love the food, love the scarves. I may have loved the food more than the sites, but don’t tell anyone I said that.
A Few of My Favorite Things (Set to Israeli Wedding Music)
November 9, 2009 By 7 Comments
The world-weary traveler (more like world cuisine-stuffed traveler) has returned home and is ready to offer up thoughts on Israel and New Jersey packed in brown paper packages tied up with string.*
I cried thrice in Israel.
My first tears occurred at the museum that houses the Dead Sea Scrolls (The Israel Museum in Jerusalem). Men belonging to a Jewish sect called the Essenes lived with their families in the first century B.C. around caves, which we call Qumran. The men would leave their families to enter into these caves and copy what we refer to as the Old Testament. These scrolls were discovered accidentally in 1947 by a shepherd and contain sections from every book of the Bible except Esther and Nehemiah, including the oldest copy of Isaiah (known as the Isaiah scroll), a scroll that is complete of the whole book.
Why would this excite me, you may ask.
Beside the fact that Israel brought out my inner nerd (yes, I know), seeing the different handwritings, some tall, others small and neat, still others slanted, reminded me that everyday men sat down and wrote out these stories, both these copies and the originals. They sat with ink and parchment to attest to God’s work in their lives. These particular copies have been preserved over centuries, a testimony to God’s preservation work of the Scriptures, not just in hard copy (such as these), but through the work of the Holy Spirit in the universal Church. Scriptures are alive and active. This work does not negate personality but draws on it, employs it, gives it meaning. God works primarily through humans, unique, beautiful, and weird.
The Caves at Qumran: where shepherds accidentally found the Dead Sea Scrolls
The second time I cried, our tour guide, Karl, had been telling us two stories of Holocaust survivors, one from Romania, one from Hungary. They were the stories of his parents. He told us these stories at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial center, in the Garden of the Righteous, a garden that remembers the goyim, or Gentiles, who put their careers, lives, and families at risk to save Jews.
Yad Vashem is Hebrew for hand and name, which are two ways of remembering–the body and the name. The architecture of the place symbolizes the deterioration of the Jews as a people group before the Holocaust, the darkness of the Holocaust, the open light at the end, and the strength of the Jews now. My favorite story shows the hope and healing Yad Vashem offers. Yad Vashem keeps archives of the names and stories of those who suffered in concentration camps. One woman put her name into the system to find that it had already been entered. By her sister. From whom the woman had been separated since the Holocaust. Each had assumed the other had died. Turned out the sisters lived close to one another in Israel. They were reunited after fifty years.
Whether you visit Israel for its archaeology, as a pilgrim, or for its food, you must visit Yad Vashem. It is a center not for hate but for healing, to which its architecture attests. I’d recommend going without a tour guide and allowing yourself to take your own pace. (One of the journalist with whom I traveled wrote a piece about Yad Vashem, which I recommend. You can read it here.)
My third set of tears came at our goodbyes.
Nineteen writers traveled together for a week, spending almost every waking second together (except when we parted ways to update Facebook, where we often ran into each other), communing together at meals, dancing together, and sharing an experience that took us all by surprise. I did not expect to find friends in Israel. What can happen in a week? Even now, I can’t articulate what happened, but somewhere between the laughter, the awe, and yes, the sarcasm, on 4000-year-old remains, friendships emerged. I must have known them for decades, I think. If I believed in reincarnation, I would’ve argued we came from the same family a few centuries ago. I’ll offer the only explanation I have: God.
It hurts to be separate from them. In the new earth, I’ll search them out, and we’ll dance together again (perhaps on the Sea of Galilee sans boat).
Dancing on the Sea of Galilee: photo by Peter Fleck
*Fine print: You’ll find a more detailed article about the setting of Israel in the story of the Bible upcoming at Biblical Studies Foundation, aka bible.org.
Tips for a Trip to Israel
October 26, 2009 By 3 Comments
After returning from Israel (and having some sense of coherence return to my life–although not much), I thought I’d compile a list of tips for those of you out there desiring to make a trip to the Holy Lands. Or for those of you armchair travelers who prefer seeing the world through the travel channel. You still may need these tips before the Israel episode.
- Travel with cynical writers. I worried the trip would be made up of constant emotional breakdowns and holy moments. Israel’s a great place for them. But as Keith, one of my fellow travelers, said, "All of creation is holy lands" (or something to that effect). We’re no closer to God because we traveled to Israel. What a trip to Israel does is give a framework, a set, for you theater lovers, for understanding the Bible. Instead of emotional breakdowns, I had ah-ha moments. As I’ve listened to the Bible the past couple mornings, I’ve been able to better picture the stories, to enter into them. They’re human, earthy, real, and at times, smelly (the stories, not the writers, although . . . ). Traveling with cynical writers not only keeps the trip entertaining (which it was), but keeps it down to earth.
- Hire a tour guide with degrees in botany, history, and archeology. It makes for a well-rounded education. One minute he rubs medicinal geranium, the next, he explains the excavations of King David’s palace. You may also be treated to traditional Jewish songs.
- Also make sure he’s loaded with humor and patience. Especially patience.
- Learn shorthand. It’s impossible to jot down all the new information otherwise.
- Take a washcloth. Little did I know that most hotels, even the high-class ones, don’t provide washcloths. Using the corner of a hand towel is cumbersome. Especially when you accidentally slap yourself with it, forgetting how long and wet it is.
- Make sure your camera doesn’t have hidden folders hogging all the memory space.
- Don’t publish random thoughts on your blog at night after long, grueling days. You have no capacity for decent editing at that time.
- Take sleeping pills. No matter how tired you are, you most likely won’t sleep through the night. On the plus side, you’ll enjoy plenty of sunrises.
- Pack Band-Aids. You will get blisters on your feet.
- Don’t shave before swimming in the Dead Sea. Don’t pick at your cuticles while in the Dead Sea.
- Don’t fill up on the first course at dinner. The waitress has plenty more to bring.
- Recalibrate your understanding of old and new. Anything under 2000 years old–new. Even after seeing 4000-year-old excavations, I felt that remnants from Jesus’ time were new.
- Take The Holy Lands: An Oxford Archaeological Guide by Jerome Murphy-O’Connor. Only read the brief historical outline before coming. Each night, read the sections on the next day’s sites. This book gave me categories so I could retain much of what I saw and heard while at the sites themselves. It kept me from getting lost.
- Speaking of, if you get lost (not that I’m speaking from experience, eh-hem), no worries! Almost everyone speaks English. I’d recommend doing so with another good-hearted scarf-lover, though. If you feel like getting behind the group, that is.
So there you have it. Heather’s travel tips.
Dancing on the Sea of Galilee
October 17, 2009 By 3 Comments
Jesus said we’d do greater things than he. He walked on water. Today, we danced on it.
This morning, our group went out on the Sea of Galilee in a replica of a first-century boat. A couple in our group used this opportunity to renew our wedding vows.
Which evolved into traditional Jewish wedding music.
Which evolved (devolved, perhaps) into ABBA. And Cotton-Eyed Joe. And Israeli techno music.
And we danced.
Someone noted today that the trip isn’t as spiritual as she expected. But here’s how I see it: the people of the Bible may have lived in a different culture, but they were human with human emotions and motivations. They sang and danced and farmed and cried and married and ate and died. They may have even had sex. Visiting Israel makes this more real to me. It’s an earthy, human place with earthy, human history.
Oh, also today, I snuck wine into one of the churches. Illegally. How did the guide know to ask me to be the one to do that?
Raw Thoughts #1
October 16, 2009 By Leave a Comment
We missed out on Cana. Drove through, but didn’t get to stop at the church that’s built over the traditional site of the wedding. Too bad. I was looking forward to a good glass of wine.
In Caesarea, there are ruins underwater from this pier Herod built (it was destroyed by tsunami) as well as wrecks from ships. I asked if it’s open to the public for diving. It is. Someday I’d like to return and see the ruins down there.
I ran out of room on the camera within an hour. So I went back and deleted some of the pics I took, switched it to snapshot, and took much fewer pictures than I would’ve liked (especially at Meggido, aka Armageddon). When I downloaded them tonight, I discovered this “trash” folder with 400 pics. Nice. So I got rid of them, and hopefully tomorrow I’ll have lots of space.
Speaking of Armaggedon, I didn’t start any wars, you’ll be glad to know. All is still safe.
I’m learning so much. And I’m making connections in a new way. With some things, we don’t really see anything (we drove by Mt. Carmel, where Elijah and the prophets of Baal had it out, and the area where Saul died or the Mount of Transfiguration–all smashed close together!), but knowing that this is really the place where it happened makes it more real. I expected everything to be big. The world of the Bible seems this larger-than-life place. But it’s small. Everything happened so close together. And Meggido (or Armeggedon), the high place that became the city to have, had 25 civilizations burned and rebuilt, saw more battles than a divorce lawyer (no wonder it became the symbol for the place of the war to end all wars!) was a small hill overlooking the fertile Valley of Jezreel.
History is boiling, our tour guide says. It’s tangible here. David’s palace was discovered six months ago. But more than that, it reaches into today here. An archeaologist named Jones (the real Indiana Jones, our tour guide jokes, though his first name is Wendell) searches for the Ark of the Covenant. When he finds it, the Jews will be able to rebuilt their Temple (more on this later), and all hell will break lose, they suspect. Mixed in with this are stories like the city named after the man who brought Louis Pasteur’s system to the States and saved hundreds of lives (he also pawned jewelry to support the orphans of the Titanic) and heroes and survivors of the Holocaust. All of these things matter. From Elijah to Maccabees to Nathan Strauss–they all make up the stories and identities of the Jews.
Building things here must be a nightmare–they’ve had to move roads, prisons, and all sorts of things when they discover something new (rather, something old) underneath. Voila! New excavation site.
It’s hard to grasp how old everything is. They tear down places as old as our country without thought–a building only 250 years old is considered new.
I must go to dinner now. We’re going to do what our tour guide is calling a Jewish communion. If I understand correctly, he means part of the typical Sabbath celebration, although I can’t be sure. In the meantime, a couple of pictures:
Mosaic floor from a 1st century Roman bath house in Caesarea
Meggido: Some of the layers from the 25 civilizations here. The round circle is a Canaanite altar.
So Funny Story
October 14, 2009 By 1 Comment
Coming to you live from King David Lounge in JFK airport.
So apparently El Al won’t let you check-in until a certain time before your flight. To keep their business travelers happy, they provide a lounge on the outside of the security gate so you can relax and enjoy their overstuffed recliners, olives, hummus, some identified yet delicious tabouli-like salad, and well-stocked bar while you wait to check-in.
Which would’ve been nice to know before we ate over-priced Chinese food in the common area (should I add “with the common people”?).
We had been told we’d be able to enjoy the business-class El Al Lounge before checking in, but when we asked an El Al employee at ticketing, she told us the lounge was inside the security gate. Since El Al won’t allow you to check-in early, we were out of luck.
She was wrong.
So we kept it real and hung out with the peeps.
(Side note: I’m not flying business class, but they’re giving us a few of the business-class privileges.)
Good news: we’re now in the lounge, enjoying all the privileges I can before we need to board our flight.
A peek inside the lives of the rich and the famous.
Fellow travelers and writers hard at work. Sort of.
We’re thinking of you, of course.
Shalom!
Let Me in the Sound
October 13, 2009 By 5 Comments
Last night, I attended the latest U2 concert. Attended is the wrong word. Participated in fits better. A U2 concert is more than a group of talented men standing on a stage singing. It is about how they invite the audience to participate in something greater than themselves–in the music and in the work of bringing blessing to a hurting world.
Chris, two friends, and I were on the floor. And though my feet and knees punish me today for that decision, I’m glad we did that. We were closer to the stage than I expected we would be, and it disallowed any opportunity to sit and let the moment pass by.
An interesting observation, though: So many people around us were more intent on getting pics and capturing bits with their cell phones than participating in the moment. I’ll have to think more about this later.
I want to give you a thoughtful review, but I leave for Israel tomorrow, and my brain is too jumbled to process things like the two lines from A Mighty Fortress Is Our God I’m sure I heard The Edge quote somewhere in one of the songs (I can’t even remember which one) or how they led into Where the Streets With No Name with Amazing Grace or how Bono invited us to pray with him at the Moment of Surrender as he knelt on stage not noticing the passers-by. U2 offered praise in Magnificent, and they remind us that the blessings are not just for those who kneel (which went along nicely with the retreat I taught this past weekend–we are God’s instruments of blessing to the world).
They skipped many songs from the new album, but I expected this. In this album, I felt, the band played with sounds in a studio-experimental way. Songs like Fez: Being Born (my favorite off the album) aren’t concert friendly. Still, I would’ve liked to have heard White As Snow or Cedars of Lebanon. So they had time to sing numerous old favorites. My one real disappointment was that they didn’t sing Pride. Why, this is the song that they sang to my husband and me in my dream a year ago! How dare they skip out on it here!
But I have no more time for reflection. I have to pack! Capernaum, here I come!
Reason #186 Why I Love Being a Writer
October 5, 2009 By 3 Comments
It may not pay well, it’s true (with a few exceptions–Stephen King, cough, cough), but the job is priceless.* Not only does it allow me to run around with my imaginary friends instead of dealing with real people, not only does it allow me to travel to the land I love (South Jersey) on a regular basis (in imagination, if not in real life for research), but now, it’s given me an all-expense paid trip to Israel.
My friend and mentor, Sandi Glahn, had suggested me to the Israeli Tourism Board as a journalist for their upcoming Christian Press Tour. I will be participating as a representative for bible.org.
To be honest, I’ve never had this desire that apparently all good Christians have to pilgrimage to our mecca, but I’m getting excited about walking on water, tasting wine fresh from the cleansing water jars, and splashing around in some healing pools (I hate being nearsighted).
In all seriousness, our itinerary includes traditional stops (this is where tradition says Jesus died, for example–I can’t imagine that being an easy visit, even if it’s an unverified traditional site), archeological digs (where I plan to discover something like the Rosetta Stone), and historical sites (Jonah ran from this port–he is my cowardice hero, after all). After my last post on the mindset of setting, I have a feeling this tour will reveal more about biblical stories.
It may not pay well, but I could do worse.
*Post sponsored by Mastercard.
