Filling in the Blanks

Before I recap today, Tuesday, our final day here, I thought I would fill in the gaps.

I left off I think in terms of continuity with Qumran on Friday. It was truly great for me to be there since I have delivered a paper on the Dead Sea Scrolls and twice taught a course on the intertestament. Let me say how incredibly helpful it is for me to remember things when I can picture it. I now know where at least some of the caves are in relation to Qumran (and can now dismiss out of hand the fanciful theories that suggest the scrolls might have nothing to do with the site).

I've seen the graves running north and south now, to the east of the site. I've seen the miqvaoth (baptismal pools), the tower, the so called "scriptorium" (bad choice of words for extraneous meaning imported in) and the refractory. These are great things. I had a novelistic picture of it (yes, I did once start a novel with Judas starting in the Qumran community) that was quite wrong.

Then we swam in the Dead Sea, which was great. I wish we could have swam all the way across to Jordan. I already mentioned that Ian Swyers, Clint Ussher and I climbed up Masada. That was a highpoint for sure.

Then we made our way to a hotel in Arad.

The Sabbath was soon approaching at the hotel there, and Jewish women could be seen scurrying to the elevator. The elevators here on the Sabbath run on their own so that no one has to push a button and thus "light a fire." They won't turn on coffee pots on Saturday or do any of these mundane things. Wilbur told a story of how he actually had to turn on the oven for a hotel back in 58 I think it was, with a rabbi standing guard over the kitchen to make sure no Jew did.

I'm too tired to pontificate, but I think some of the legalistic practices of my own Wesleyan background approach such silliness.

I'll just mention the problem Jews have with having meat and dairy products together. It goes back to a verse that appears in three different places in the Pentateuch about boiling the kid in its mother's milk. So they won't serve meat (the kid, I presume) with any milk. Of course discoveries at Ugarit show, as usual, that this is in part a reaction to Canaanite practice and thus that the Jews are making a big hullaballo about a verse that has nothing to do with them or having butter with supper.

I'm too tired to pontificate, but Wesleyan buns and not letting guys have goatees measure about the same on the "I don't have a clue what the words of the Bible were really about" scale.

On Saturday morning we went to Arad, Israel's defense from the southeast, and Beer Sheva, Israel's defense from the southwest. This was in Rehoboam's time.

Very interesting to me in Arad was the fact that Rehoboam had set up a three part temple in the fortress. I think Hezekiah may have dismantled it in his attempt to make Jerusalem the only legitimate place to worship Yahweh.

Then we stopped at Lachish for a few. Then we came up to the Valley of Elah where the Philistines and the Israelites met and traditionally David killed Goliath. Then we came to Bethlehem.

It was crowded with Palestinian police all around. We went into the church where Palestinians just a couple years ago walled themselves up and where there were bullet holes (I didn't personally see any). The church is Greek Orthodox again and the traditional site is in a cave under the church. There is as usual a place to touch or kiss, and a place to the side where the baby Jesus traditionally was laid.

You come up to a Fransiscan church right next to it. As usual it's hard for me to know what to make of it, since I have no confidence that any of these spots are the right spots.

Then we came here, I discovered wireless in the rooms, and the blanks are filled.