Day 2 in pictures.

We woke up at 7:00 a.m., had a delicious breakfast which consisted of quite a few things I’d never seen before, then got on the bus and went up to Governor’s Hill, which overlooks the city. The funny thing about Governor’s Hill is that the traditional name for it is the Mount of Ill Advice, and also happens to be the former location of the British headquarters and the current location of the U.N. headquarters. Mishi gave a short speech and Brandon gave his site presentation, which was an overview of the history and geography of Jerusalem.

From the view provided by the hill, it was easy to see how the Kidron and Hinnom valleys bound Jerusalem. They also pointed out where the City of David is (in front of the walls of the Old City, bounded on the right by the Kidron valley and on the left by what is now a street). Because of the challenging geography, Jerusalem would have been a difficult city for David to take from the Jebusites.

Next we went to the Israel Museum. There were many things to look at here, but Mishi took us on a route that emphasized some of the older history of the area. One thing that was interesting to see were the Ossuaries, which were ceramic containers, used a “second burial” in the Neolithic period. After the body had been buried for a year or two, they would remove it from where it was buried (all the flesh would be gone by this time) and place just the bones in one of these containers. We got to see another example of one of these later on in a display on the Mount of Olives. What makes this interesting is that when Joseph of Arimathaea let Jesus be buried in his tomb, he wasn’t giving up his tomb forever. The Jews of that time also used Ossuaries, so Joseph knew that, even if the resurrection didn’t take place, he’d have the tomb back for use in a year or two.

After the museum, we had lunch at a small restaurant/gift shop. The food was Falafels, which are a sort of Pita thing with deep fried, mashed garbanzo beans. They were quite good. After eating, we went downstairs to the gift shop. It was funny to watch some of the people in the group try to haggle with the owners. Some of them got some really good deals. My only haggling consisted of putting the item I wanted to purchase on the counter and the guy saying I could have it for 50 cents less than the marked price.

Then, we went to the Mount of Olives. This was probably my favorite part of the day; I got a lot of context for many of the events of the New Testament, and also for some of the reading we had to do before we came. For instance, I was skimming back over some of the Oxford Guide to The Holy Land after we got back, and instead of being a dry read about how Jesus could have easily chosen to escape from the soldiers coming to arrest him while he was in the garden, it was a personal experience. I had just walked that road. I know that it would have taken only about 10 minutes to go to the top of the mount from where he was; I saw the view of the desert on the other side!

We also got to walk through the Garden of Gethsemane (which, by the way, is more accurately described as The Orchard of the Oil Press) and visit The All Nations Church, which is over the rock that Jesus supposedly prayed at while in the garden. Some of the olive trees in the garden were well over a thousand years old (none that date back to Jesus’ time, though) and just being there and knowing that it was this same garden the Jesus went to was amazing!

Our final destination for the night was an antiquities shop in the Old City run by a friend of Mishi. He showed us some pottery and coins, some of which dated back to 4000 BC or so. We also got to walk through some more of the Old City and see what it looks like when more vendors have their shops open.

Dinner was unfamiliar, but excellent once again. Afterwards, we had a short debriefing talk with Dr. Hummel, then I called home, wrote this journal, and now it’s time for bed. We get up at 5:20 a.m. tomorrow.

Day 2 in pictures.