New Testament Walk Around the Old City

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Coming off of three hours of sleep from the beautiful but exhausting night before, the day felt longer than usual. We took another walk around Jerusalem. Today, instead of going site by site and explaining each specifically, I’ll do a quick run-through and then build out from there. Here’s where we went:

1. First, the archaeological museum and sites around the original site of the temple, which included: a museum, Robinson’s Arch (the arch that led into the temple, destroyed by the Romans and named for its discovered, William Robinson), and the remains of a Byzantine house, the shops outside the Temple, a Roman road, and the Temple steps (possibly where Saul of Tarsus was educated, and where Jesus may have taught.) We discussed Herod the Great extensively, assessing his stamp upon the land with the expansion of the temple and the many other building projects he accomplished.

2. The second main site we went to was St. Anne’s Church and the Pool of Bethesda. St. Anne’s church is a church built in commemoration of the home of Mary’s mother. As our group stood in reverence, hymns welled up from our throats and from our hands, echoing in the stone of the domes.

3. Finally, we climbed to the top of a German Hospice to see a view of the city. It was a hazy day, so it was difficult to see much.

Doing so much in one day can be incredibly overwhelming. Once, I jokingly claimed that I had discovered that I would never be an archaeologist, to which a teammate responded, “Why? When you look at things, don’t you wonder how it was made, what is was used for, and who used it?” I claim to love storytelling, and to believe in the importance of cross-cultural story sharing, yet I frequently found my eyes flickering closed whenever Dr. Wright waxed eloquent about the surrounding shapes of gray-white stone. A lot of what we’re doing here is called “historical geography,” a discipline which involves mapping the land according to a certain story line – reaching deep into the bedrock and seeking out the imprints of the peoples come before us. This bit of pottery, that edge of rock, that slope of the land, that rocky outcrop with its former temple, even down to the types of limestone that form the skeleton of The Land Between – these are the curves to which the cloth of the Biblical text is fitted.

For me, a notoriously geographically and directionally challenged person, my sense of orientation is not usually what I turn to when I think of the Bible. But north, south, east, west – here, it means the difference between water or wilderness, safety or attack.

There is nothing like reading Psalm 48 in the place it was actually written, and seeing the hills that the Psalmist raised his eyes to. Lord, may we fulfill the psalm, and count the towers of Zion that we may tell the next generations of your guidance.