Day 6 in pictures.

The first thing we did today was to climb the Roman siege ramp at the desert fortress of Masada. When they told us that these were the plans, I happily envisioned a very long hike up a steep, rocky mountain slope. Instead, there were steps and hand railings; I was disappointed. But, it was still a very interesting site.

Masada was a fort that was in use all the way back to the Hasmonean period (which happened between the Old and New Testaments). Many of the structures at the top of Masada are from when Herod the Great built it up as a fortress for his family and as a backup plan for himself. Some of the Roman luxuries he created in the middle of the desert are absurd. He built a full Roman bath with elaborate fresco paintings on the walls when most people in the area would have been worried about just finding enough water to drink.

However, the most interesting story of Masada comes not from Herod, but from when the Sicarri, the extreme wing of the Jewish zealots during the first Jewish revolt, used it as a stronghold. Masada was one of the last Jewish holdouts left standing at the end of the revolt, and because it has impossibly steep cliffs and immense water and food storage facilities, the Romans couldn’t take it immediately. The Romans ended up camping around the site for two years, built a huge siege wall around the whole area to keep the people that were already inside Masada in and prevent anyone from coming to their aide, and built an enormous siege ramp to wheel their siege engines up for the final attack. But, the night before the Romans would have come in to kill everyone, the Jews all committed suicide. Mishi said this event has contributed a lot the current Jewish mindset. Not that they agree with the Sicarri stance of holding freedom as more important than life, but that they want to never be in that situation again.

After Masada, we traveled a short distance to En-gedi, an oasis about 30 miles southeast of Jerusalem. I was particularly looking forward to this area because I did the site presentation for it. I really enjoyed being able to see the place in real life after reading so much about it in books. The most recognizable Biblical event that happened here was when David cut the corner from King Saul’s robe in one of the caves around the spring. There are some ruins, the most important of which is a Canaanite worship center that dates back to about 3000 BC. But we mostly looked at the streams and waterfalls coming from the spring that is the center of the oasis. The plants and animals of the region were awesome to look at. We saw dozens of wild ibex, a few hyraxes, and all kinds of birds. The contrast between the nothingness of the desert just a little ways away and the lush vegetation of the area was hard to believe.

Our next stop was the settlement of Qumran. The most important group to use this area was the Essenes. They were a Jewish sect that protested what they saw as corruption in the temple of Jerusalem by moving into the desert. They studied the Bible (just the Old Testament; this was before Jesus’ time) nearly all day long and wrote several commentaries on it. What makes them especially interesting to us today is that many of the manuscripts they wrote survived. In fact, the oldest manuscripts we have for most of the Old Testament come from here and are known as “The Dead Sea Scrolls.” Something I found interesting was that all but the book of Esther is included in their writings. I asked Mishi why this was, and he said it was because there was still some dispute at that time on whether or not Esther should be included in the “canon” because it is the only book that does not reference God by name. So, the Essenes were just following the accepted practice of the time.

Of course, since we were so near to the Dead Sea, there was no way we could pass up an opportunity to go swimming! It was crazy; the extremely concentrated salt water really does make you float. Leaning back and not sinking is a very strange feeling. We all covered ourselves with mud (which people often pay a lot of money to do) and took plenty of pictures. But, it was soon time to go if we wanted to get to the hotel in Tiberius in time for dinner.

After we got to the hotel, we learned that the day before there was a conflict between Israel and Palestine. Israeli soldiers took two prisoners from Jericho and moved them to an Israeli prison because Hamas was going to free them. It sounded very serious the way it was portrayed on CNN, but Mishi assured us that it really wasn’t that big of a deal.

Day 6 in pictures.