Stepping Back into the Old Testament

Today (Wednesday, February 18th), we took a giant step back into Old Testament history as we descended from the heights of Jerusalem to the harsh Judean desert. With its rocky cliffs inhabited mostly by wandering ibex and the ever visible Dead Sea, we began our journey with a stop at Qumran. Here two centuries before Christ, the Essenes, a break-away sect, lived in isolation where they prayed, bathed and re-wrote on sheep skin many of the Old Testament books. When faced with an inevitable Roman invasion in 68 A.D., they stored these texts in clay jars in the caves which they inhabited only to have them discovered by a Bedouin shepherd in 1947. Today, we know them as the famed Dead Sea Scrolls! How amazing it was to hike around these ruins, hear this history and see the almost inaccessible cave of discovery.

Further down the shores of the Dead Sea, with its azure water and receding shoreline (an environmental concern for Israel as the Sea’s fresh water sources are diverted for agriculture), we visited Herod’s palace/fortress at Masada. Less known by Christians, it is a special site of pilgrimage for Jews because of the 900 zealots who held the site against the Romans at the end of the Jewish revolt and the fall of Jerusalem in 73 A.D. In the end, rather than surrender to a legion of 10,000 Romans sent to capture them, men, women and children committed mass suicide as opposed to surrendering their faith and themselves to their conquerors. Happily, we could reach these imposing mountainous ruins by a spectacular funicular ride where we walked among the remains of Herod’s lavish palace together with busloads of local Israeli village school children exploring their own history. Following a well earned lunch at the foot of the cliffs, we made our way to the shores of the Dead Sea for a delicious float in those warm but acrid waters. And then – like so many others – we headed back through the security checkpoints to Jerusalem.