AM, a half hour later than usual. We began today's journey by
visiting the Israel museum which now houses the scale model of the
1st century city of Jerusalem. This model used to be in an entirely
different location, but was recently moved in its entirety to this
location. Here, we also visited the scroll of the Book, the building
which houses most of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Some of the scrolls are on
tour in the USA right now and they have been temporarily replaced
with very good replicas. Other scrolls on display here are in fact
originals.
Next, we went to the City of David, just south of the Temple Mount.
Here, we went to the entrance of Hezekiah's Tunnel, dug by king
Hezekiah to protect the water supply of Jerusalem when the Assyrian
king Sennacherib was marching on the city. The tunnel brings water
from the Gihon Spring to the Pool of Siloam. In previous years when I
have gone through this tunnel (this was my fourth time through the
tunnel) you emerged into a small pool, which has been known as
"Siloam Pool" for many years. However, recent excavations have shown
that the original Siloam Pool from Biblical times is actually just a
little bit further removed. This pool has not been entirely excavated
yet. It appears that the pool will in fact be huge.
After a delicious pizza lunch, we traveled south of Bethlehem to the
Herodian, Herod the Great's palace in this region. In order to build
this fortress, Herod literally hollowed out the inside of a mountain.
Approximately 20 years ago when I first visited this site, there was
little else to see than the palace at the bottom of the crater.
However, they have now excavated an incredible water system below the
palace, with multiple cavernous cisterns. One is able to walk through
these cisterns on a nicely developed system of walkways and exit on
the side of the mountain.
Grace and Peace,
Maranatha,
Pastor Gunn
For your security this Message has been checked for Viruses as a courtesy of Com-Pair Services!
