Monday in Jerusalem

Now the day is over, at least the touring day.

We first went to the church of Gallicantu, the rooster crowing church. A jail like underbelly makes us wonder if this was the house of Annas that John says Jesus went to on Thursday evening. The dungeon-like atmosphere of the one part, with a hole in the top that gives you a picture of them lowering Jesus down by rope, brought powerful emotions.

The signs around the place indicate, however, that that particular hole as well as the dungeon like aspect of the place probably date to the Byzantine era, if I understand things correctly. It seems more likely to me, therefore, that Jesus would have been chained to the walls in the adjoining rooms. Of course it is not certain that this was Annas' house, although it fits the part of what we're looking for.

Outside, however, is a walkway that Jesus probably was brought up the night of his betrayal. Wilbur suggested it was the most certain site of all the sites in Jerusalem relating to Jesus.

We then went to a museum where they had a model city of Jerusalem. That was helpful in locating everything in relation to everything else.

We went to the Qumran museum. This was particularly enjoyable to me, although I didn't get to spend as much time there as I would have liked.

Then we went to the Jerusalem museum. Wilbur was like a cannon, boom, boom, boom, he moved from one thing to another with lightning speed. He'd been on this dig, then that one. Particularly memorable to me was his explanation of the Assyrian relief of the seige of Lachish. He was animated, a scholar comparable to any. This is a Wilbur to see. If you want to know what a scholar looks like, watch him when he goes into this mode. He becomes like a machine gun: tat a tat tat, tat a tat tat.

Particularly memorable to me there were some things I knew about but actually had in front of me: the Gezer calendar, Caiphas' ossuary, photos of Egyptian steles that mention Israel in the 12th century, mention of David in the ninth...

We had lunch, went to Bethany (Palestinian city), crawled into Lazarus' tomb--quite a crawl at one point.

We came back and went to the church of the Holy Sepulchre. To get there we entered the Damascus Gate and walked through a narrow passage of Arab shops, like a flea market. The church itself has chapels of Greek Orthodox, Coptic, Roman Catholic, Ethiopic, and Armenian. There are probably more but those are the ones we saw (that is, those of us who ran off after we'd seen the main sites, Charlie Alcock and son, the Bignells, and Clint Ussher).

What we saw of the traditional site of Golgotha was again a rock surrounded by holy drappings. We could reach in and touch the rock. I remember the History Channel expressing some doubts about this rock I think, but it's hard to remember from a TV program. I'll want to see it again now that I've been there.

I had imagined the church to be divided into three parts, but it really is a Greek Orthodox base with several side chapels. As far as I could tell, the only Roman Catholic chapel was next to Golgotha, which was upstairs.

Then we went to the traditional site of the burial, which the surrounding rock apparently taken away. There was also a tomb attributed to Joseph of Arimathea nearby.

But I seem to remember Jerome Murphy-O'connor suggesting a site further beneath. The Armenian chapel was downstairs from the other places, and it seems to me that he suggested a place down there as the most likely. We didn't find it in our quest, but there was a barred door I wondered about down there. I'll need to see the segment again.

We ended at the Garden Tomb, where we had communion. I think everyone in the group agrees that the feel of it is closest to what the original tomb would have been like. Nevertheless, few if any scholars think it was the original site.

That concludes today. I'll have to go back and fill in Friday and Saturday later.