March 16, 2011

For a gallery of pictures from today, click HERE.

Today’s itinerary included Qumran, Jericho, and Bethlehem:

Our Tour Guide, Nadir, is Syrian Orthodox-Palestinian with over 26 years in the tourism business and 16 years as a tour guide! Our bus driver, Salim, is a Palestinian Muslim and Nadir says they “get along just fine”. He is great, but often says “shake a leg” and “get a move on” to keep us herded and on time!

Here in Jerusalem we learned that every building must be covered by Jerusalem stone (local limestone) durring the Great Britain mandate. As we headed out of Jerusalem, we saw the outer wall of ‘Old Jerusalem’ which was built around 1532-1547 AD by Suleman The Great. We then passed from the somewhat vegetated Jerusalem into the barren ‘Wilderness Of Judea’. We passed sea level and went down to 1200 feet below sea level … the lowest place on earth. As we arrived into Qumran we could see the cave laden cliffs above the Essenes Ruins.

At Qumran we learned of the history of the Essenes, ‘The Children of Light’, of which John the Baptist and Jesus may have visited and/or stayed with for a time. We saw the cave of Qumran, where the ‘Dead Sea Scrolls’ were found in the ’50s. These are the oldest known scrolls of the bible, dating back to 29 CE and before.

We then headed up to Jericho, one of the oldest ‘cities’ on earth. We witnessed ruins dating back 10,000 years!

We headed back through Jerusalem to reach the ‘town’ of Bethlehem. We went to the oldest active church in the world, ‘The Church of the Nativity’ (dating back to 800 AD), where we got to touch the stone floor of the cave in which is the proposed birthplace of Jesus.

Our last stop was the ‘Shepard’s Field’ garden and chapel, run by the Franciscans, where the Shepard’s were supposedly visited by the angels.

Factoid of the day: the Bedouins are actually a semi-nomadic people, meaning they actually pretty much stay in the same places outside of the towns. They offer coffee to their guests, which in biblical times was a very valued item. They also will not ask any questions as to why you are there, unless you stay for more than three and a half days!