From Galilee to the Dead Sea

After visiting Bet Shean (my personal favorite site), we took a long bus ride down the Jordan. Throughout the trip we could see the river as well as the country, usually staying within 100 yards or so of the border. We drove past the archaeological site at Jericho (which isn't impressive). Our first stop was at Qum'ran.

Now this city was where a bunch of nutters lived quite frankly. There is very little fresh water nearby, though the dead sea is right there. It was a monastery of essenes. It is quite likely that John the Baptist was an essene- a group of people strongly devoted to staying away from the sinful world. They would be baptized every morning and night in order to stay ritually clean. They also devoted themselves to communicating their values through the written word. As the Roman army was overtaking the area shortly before the time of Christ, this group of monks hid their valuables in a nearby cave (the area is littered with limestone caves). Included in the cave were parts of every book of the Bible (except Esther I think), and an entire scroll of Isaiah. There were also fragments of other documents as well These guys liked their apocalyptic prophecy, totally into the end times. Maybe Tim Lahaye is an essene in his own way.

At any rate, one day a shepherd boy was walking around the area looking for his sheep/goats. He thought one had gone into a nearby cave, tossed a rock in to scare the animal out, and heard a shatter. He went in to investigate the noise and found some old scrolls which he sold in the local marketplace. Long story short, they eventually made it into the hands of a collector, who shared the story and every Indiana Jones scrambled through the desert searching caves. There were two caves in which most of the scrolls were stored. And here are pictures:

Preview of things to come

So here is what the few readers I have can look forward to in the coming weeks

1) another picture post (trying to average 2/month)
2) more links to more resources (though probably not as many as have been)
3) a rewrite of the prodigal son story for an urban society
4) some of my personal thoughts and insights- i.e. changing the format of the blog from research oriented to response oriented
5) an overiview of all things cultivation


I will be working on some of this from home in the coming days (hooray for comp time). Then it will go up.
Hope you enjoy.

Yet another link

Some people wonder why I am not more original and creative on this blog. Quite frankly, originality and creativity are not my purpose here, though they are a byproduct. Occasionally (when I have time to reflect and be still) I will write my own perspective on things. But most anything worth saying has been said, I just pass it along when I hear it. So open the door to Dan Kimball's excellent blog on stages of church attendance.

Talk about the best job ever

Check out Pollard's assesment of the philosophy of film. First of all, Hancock

Bet Ab-Father's House

Here is the podcast.

Out of the galilee, into our hearts.

Let me just say that this was my favorite site. It was excellently preserved, and you could truly imagine what life must have been like in Jesus time. First pictures are a gladiator arena. Then the city itself. It's called Bet Shean.


Into the Arena. (the ramp is artificially created).




Some of the tools that were used to excavate the site were sitting in one of the prisoner holding areas.


A Panoramic view of the arena.


Can you imagine waiting in these holding cells for the door to open and rushing out into the arena to kill or be killed? How many Christians were murdered mercilessly in this very arena?



Bill, the mighty spartan, member of the order of sons of Nel.



This area was actually below ground originally. Now it has been excavated.



A zoomed out view of the city. This picture does the size of the area no justice.



An excellently preserved ampitheatre.









Call me obsessed, but I really enjoy the study of ancient toilets.


Someone left this handy reading material for Karen. You can see the physics of the public bathrooms. Typical of Roman cities.



While the latrine was very cool for us (and comfortable), imagine the stench if it were in use.



Toilet paper dispenser. Clean water would run down this trench. Though primitive for our standards, Romans were incredibly cleanly conscientious
.


I"m not even going to comment. . . But i already did.


This picture gives a little better idea of the scope...but the columns are way bigger than you expected.

This entire wall fell down in a documented earthquake. The stones were found just like this. Pretty amazing.




These columns were giant. I promise.

See what I mean?



Cooky, but this is an ancient sewer. I may have a problem.


Here you can see that the streets were sloped so as to run the rainwater down these ancient gutters.


Political paraphernalia. This mosaic describes who paved the sidewalk. Brought to you by your local city official.


Here you can see some of the sidewalk he maid. Smooth.


By the way, the main street in a Roman city was called the cardo ("heart"). Hence the title of this slide.


This was the creek created by Gideon's spring.

All of us after taking a drink from the spring.


The spring proper. We actually saw one of the three primary generals of Israel here. He had an entourage and everything. He also had a very nice motorcade.

Craig, bending over to lap the water from the spring.
Karen, on the other hand kept a lookout while we drank.

Wednesday night up and running

You can get a (partial) copy of our discussion regarding youth culture, postmodernism, incanational ministry, myspace, etc. Here

I will put up the teaching I did on bet ab later this week.

Trying to get more pictures from Israel up (not even halfway through).

At some point I will type my own thoughts as a traditional blog post again... when I have a group of coherent thoughts.

Feel free to comment on our discussion of post modernism. It is a conversation, after all.