Ottawa Citizen
March 26, 2005 Saturday
Final Edition
Stepping into history: As he travels through the Holy Land, a
plethora of ancient sites helps Bob Harvey trace the 4,000-year
history of Israel. It is a history dogged by bloodshed, littered with
peoples who sought to conquer the country and its capital.
by Bob Harvey, The Ottawa Citizen
JERUSALEM
JERUSALEM – Israel is a tiny, narrow country, just two-thirds the
size of Vancouver Island, yet it is revered as a holy land by half of
the world’s population of three billion Christians, Muslims and Jews.
Their prophets, saints and soldiers have gone, but the stones they
walked are still there to remind us of 4,000 years of bloody history
and miraculous events, as well as holy books that have shaped western
and Islamic cultures. The Bible, and the Jewish Torah and Talmud, all
began here and, according to tradition, the prophet Muhammad received
the Koran after ascending into heaven from Jerusalem.
Because the country is so small, I and three other Canadians managed
to drive from one end to the other in a busy week, viewing a
remarkable array of significant historic sites with the help of
Israel’s ministry of tourism, a $350-a-day tourist guide, a driver
and a van.
One of our first steps into ancient history was at a re-creation of
the village of Nazareth as Jesus would have known it.
The homes have been built near the ancient Nazareth and are made of
stone, the common material used by Jesus and other builders in old
Israel. Donkeys wander freely through the village and there are
storage caves, a synagogue, and one of the last remaining plots of
land that had been farmed by villagers at the time of Jesus.
The crops then and now are olives, almonds, figs, carob, grapes,
wheat and barley, and we see how the whole village would have turned
out to press the olives into oil and tread the grapes into wine. That
experience concludes inside a Bedouin tent with a first-century meal
of lentil soup, pita bread, vegetables and fruit.
On that same day, we drive along the Mediterranean coast from Tel
Aviv and the 4,500-year-old port of Jaffa to Caesarea, the most
important Christian centre of the Byzantine era. Thanks to advanced
computerized imaging, we are greeted by historical figures from the
town’s past, including King Herod, Rabbi Akiva, Saladin, and Saint
Paul, who was imprisoned here.
The most ancient of all theatres in Israel is to be found here. It
accommodated 4,000 spectators for hundreds of years after King Herod
built it, as well as an amphitheatre for horse racing and sports
events and a large artificial harbour.
When the new day dawned, we went sailing on the Sea of Galilee. We
may have been in a modern replica, but this was exactly the kind of
boat in which the fishermen among Christ’s apostles would have taken
Jesus across the water to revive the dying daughter of a synagogue
ruler.
A similar boat from 2,000 years ago is on exhibit in the nearby Man
in Galilee museum. Fishermen found it in 1986 during a drought that
lowered the water levels. They were sitting on the sand, when they
discovered a cache of Roman coins and, beneath the coins, this
8.2-metre boat. Experts were then called in to carefully excavate and
package the boat in Fiberglas and polyurethane foam before floating
it to a specially-built pool, where it was conserved.
The New Testament, in portraying Christ’s calming of a storm on the
Sea of Galilee, says: “Without warning, a furious storm came up on
the lake so that the waves swept over the boat.” Today the biblical
Sea of Galilee is known as the Lake of Kinneret, and violent storms
still sweep down from the surrounding heights.
Among them is the Golan Heights, the scene of many battles since
1967, when Israel took possession of what Syria views as its
territory. Another of the heights around the lake is the Mount of
Beatitudes, the site of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount.
On that mount, Christ promised that “blessed are the peacemakers,”
yet most of the 4,000-year history of this nation at the crossroads
of Asia, Africa and Europe is one of bloodshed. The “salem” in
Jerusalem means peace, but Romans, Greeks, Turks, Arabs, Hittites,
Egyptians, European Crusaders and many others have all sought to
conquer Israel and its capital.
The most revered religious sites in all of Israel are here in
Jerusalem.
Among them is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the site of Christ’s
crucifixion, his tomb and his resurrection. It is hidden away in a
maze of alleys and shops and there is a lineup at almost any time of
the day. Scholars maintain knowledge of the location was handed down
by oral tradition and proved in AD 326 by the investigations of
Rome’s Emperor Constantine, who erected a basilica over the Tomb of
Christ in 335 to mark the site for future ages. He also stopped the
Roman practice of crucifixion. The basilica burned down in 614, and
was totally destroyed in 1009 by the Muslim ruler of the time.
Today’s church was built by Christian Crusaders in 1149.
When we arrive, a Greek Orthodox priest is managing the traffic of
believers. The lineup includes Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox and
other Eastern Christians, and we all shuffle slowly up to the tomb of
Christ and do as others do: kneel and reach under the altar to touch
a portion of the rock of Calvary, where Christ was crucified. Some
also kiss the floor.
Despite its significance, the church lacks a sense of holiness. The
walls have been blackened by generations of candles, there is little
light, and, before we know it, we are filing out the door. The
responsibility for the Sepulchre is uneasily shared by Roman
Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic priests. Not long
after we left the church, Israeli police had to intervene to settle
an argument between the Greek Orthodox and Catholic Franciscans over
whether a door should be open or closed.
Most of these sites have recorded histories that back the claims for
the events said to have made them holy. One of many examples is the
Room of the Last Supper. It is here that wine and bread were shared
by Jesus and his disciples, establishing the Christian rite of the
communion or Eucharist. It is near the Dormition Abbey in the Old
City of Jerusalem, in the remains of a Judeo-Christian synagogue, the
traditional location of the Upper Room.
Canadian Catholics donated $105,308 during last year’s annual Good
Friday collection for the upkeep of such religious sites in the Holy
Land.
In the centre of Jerusalem sits the Temple Mount, a holy place for
Jews, Christians and Muslims alike. Jewish tradition teaches that,
about 4,000 years ago, Abraham offered his son Isaac as a sacrifice
to God here on a rock that was once part of the Garden of Eden. In
1006 BC, King David brought here the ark of the covenant, a box
covered with gold and holding symbols of the divine presence among
the Jews, including the 10 Commandments that God is said to have
carved on stone tablets. According to legend, David, the young
shepherd boy who succeeded Saul — Israel’s first king — also
deposited the head of Goliath here.
Today, the Temple Mount is the home of one of Islam’s oldest shrines,
the Dome of the Rock, and Al Aqsa, one of its most beautiful mosques.
The Dome of the Rock was built 50 years after the Muslim conquest of
Jerusalem in AD 638 and is an expression of the growing power of
Islam in that era, and what would become Muslim rule of Israel for
most of the next 1,300 years.
It was built either on or near what is believed to be the site of the
Jewish Temple destroyed by the Romans in AD 70 and its golden dome
still dominates the city’s skyline. One of the ornate inscriptions
inside this shrine affirms that God is One and not three; and that
Jesus was an apostle of God and His Word, and not His son.
The Temple Mount is seldom opened to non-Muslims, The first known
exception was made for the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward
VII, when he visited in 1862.
The one remaining remnant of the Second Temple is the Western Wall, a
must-see for Jews and Christians at the base of the Temple Mount. It
was a supporting wall of the temple and is sometimes called the
Wailing Wall, a term that most Jews dislike. They come here to
celebrate bar mitzvahs and other religious events and press written
prayers into the cracks of the wall.
It is the most sacred spot in Jewish religious and Israeli national
consciousness and tradition because of its proximity to what was once
the Holy of Holies in the temple, from which, traditional sources
say, the Divine Presence never departed. It became a centre of
mourning over the destruction of the Temple and Israel’s exile, on
the one hand, and of religious and national communion with the memory
of Israel’s former glory and the hope for its restoration.
Beneath the wall, there are now tunnels excavated by archeologists
and, if you walk them, you will step on stones that Jesus trod on his
way to teach in the temple. The tunnel also includes an engineering
marvel: huge stones, which were placed at the base of the Wall to
stabilize it and withstand earthquakes. Today’s best cranes can lift
only 250 tonnes, but these stones weigh 500 tonnes and were put in
place with manpower, pulleys and long-forgotten techniques.
There is so much to do in Israel, especially in Jerusalem, including
walking the Via Dolorosa and stopping at each of the stations of the
cross where Jesus stopped for a sip of water or a goodbye to his
mother, Mary, as he carried his cross to Golgotha.
Once you see the Holy Land, many passages from the Bible also take on
new meaning.
In a land where rain is scarce, Deuteronomy 11 includes God’s
promise: “If you faithfully obey all the commands I am giving you
today … then I will send rain on your land in its season, both
autumn and spring rains. … I will provide grass in the fields for
your cattle and you will eat and be satisfied.”
One of the last treats of our journey was a swim in the Dead Sea. It
is one of the the lowest places on Earth, 400 metres below sea level,
and is also known as the Salt Sea because of a concentration of salts
and minerals in the water. Because of those salts and minerals, even
heavy non-swimmers can lay down and float effortlessly.
Nearby, there are also some of the caves once inhabited by the
Essenes, the ascetic scribes who penned the Dead Sea Scrolls,
including Old Testament manuscripts that are 1,000 years older than
any previous version and other scrolls that have provided a wealth of
information on the times leading up to, and during, the life of
Christ. John the Baptist spent almost two years there, but left
before he could become a full member.
High above these caves and the sea itself, there is Masada, a
sprawling fortress atop a mountain where 967 Jewish men, women and
children held off 10,000 to 15,000 Roman legionaries for several
months. Toward the end of a Jewish revolt that began in AD 66, the
last of the rebels retreated to Masada, erected a synagogue, a public
hall and ritual baths and took advantage of the fortifications and
palaces built earlier by Herod as a refuge from his potential
enemies.
After conquering Jerusalem in AD 72, the Romans marched on the last
holdout of the rebels: Masada. They surrounded it and carried
thousands of buckets of dirt to its western slope to construct an
embankment that would open the way for them to surge up the mountain
and overwhelm the rebels. Today you can climb a steep path to the top
in 45 minutes. Most tourists take a cable car to reach the top.
Josephus Flavius, one of the leaders of the revolt, abandoned what
had become a hopeless cause and became a Roman citizen and a
historian. He wrote that, when Masada’s leaders saw they could no
longer hold out, “they then chose 10 men from amongst them by lot,
who would slay all the rest: every one of whom laid himself down by
his wife and children on the ground, and threw his arms about them,
and they offered their necks to the stroke of those who by lot
executed that melancholy office.”
That was in AD 73, and the last man still standing then set fire to
the royal palace and ran his sword up to the hilt in his body.
Masada became a symbol of willpower and heroism, and has been
declared a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Images of more than 100 priceless artifacts from Israel, including
some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as brief outlines of important
moments in Israel’s history, have been posted on the web at
It is an online virtual
exhibition of the popular Ancient Treasures and Dead Sea Scrolls
exhibition that attracted record-breaking numbers at The Canadian
Museum of Civilization from December 2003 to April 2004.
– – –
Israel has neither diamonds nor oil and depends heavily on the
tourist industry.
One of the government’s goals is to change the country’s image. It
has more security checks than any other western nation and car
accidents probably kill many times more people than terrorists do.
But, when you mention an upcoming trip to Israel, friends and
colleagues ask: “Aren’t you afraid?”
The number of visitors to Israel reached its peak in 2000, when 2.7
million came from around the world.
But when the second intifada broke out at the end of that year, the
numbers started to drop, and in 2002, only 980,000 tourists arrived.
In 2004, the number began to rise again and by the end of October,
1.5 million, including 36,000 Canadians, had visited Israel.
A Capsule History of Jerusalem:
1900 BC: Abraham, who made the covenant with God that established the
Jewish people, knows Jerusalem as Salem, a city ruled by Amorite
kings
1011-971 BC: David seizes the fortified city from the Jebusites,
re-names it the city of David and makes it the spiritual and
political heart of the nation.
971-931 BC: David’s son, Solomon, builds the first temple.
586 BC: The Babylonians destroy the temple and Jerusalem and carry
the resident Jews to Babylon as slaves.
539 BC: The Persians defeat the Babylonians.
515 BC: Jews are allowed to return to Jerusalem and build the second
temple on the remains of the first.
334 BC: Under Alexander the Great, the Greeks conquer the Persians
and conquer Jerusalem.
168 BC: Another Greek ruler, Antiochus Epiphanes, persecutes the Jews
and blasphemes the temple by sacrificing a pig on the site. The Jews
are outraged and the Hasmonean revolt, led by Judah Maccabee,
liberates Jerusalem and purifies the
temple.
63 BC: Pompey, a Roman, seizes the land of the Jews.
37 BC: Another Roman, Herod the Great, seizes Jerusalem, names
himself king and rebuilds the temple.
AD 70: The Jews revolt once again and Roman legions destroy the city
and the temple.
AD 135: Another Jewish revolt and this time the Roman emperor bans
Jews from Jerusalem and renames it Colonia Aelia Capitolina, a Roman
colony dedicated to the pagan god, Jupiter.
AD 200: Most of the Jews have left Israel and settled elsewhere.
AD 333: Helena, mother of Constantine, the Romans’ first Christian
emperor, lifts the ban on Jews living in Jerusalem, but makes it an
almost entirely Christian city.
AD 638: The Muslims conquer Jerusalem and, in 684, begin building
Islam’s second most sacred shrine, the Dome of the Rock, on the site
where the temple once stood.
AD 1071: Radical Muslims, the Seljuk Turks, capture Jerusalem and
defile the Christians’ holy sites.
AD 1099: Christian Crusaders reclaim the city and establish Jerusalem
as a kingdom.
1291: The Mamelukes, slaves seized from non-Muslim families and
trained as cavalry soldiers, drive the Crusaders out of the
Holy Land.
1517: The Ottoman Turks, also Muslims, conquer the area.
1881: Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, one of the first Zionists, moves to
Jerusalem, with his wife, Deborah, to dedicate themselves toward the
rebirth of the nation of Israel, in its own land, and resurrecting
Hebrew, their own tongue, which had not been used conversationally
since the second century AD. Together they establish the first
Hebrew-speaking home in modern Israel and Eliezer teaches Hebrew and
coins new Hebrew words for objects and verbs that did not exist in
ancient Israel. He is credited with the revival of Hebrew as a modern
language.
1897: Thanks to Theodor Herzl, a Hungarian Jewish journalist, the
first Zionist Congress meets in Basle, Switzerland, and declares:
“Zionism seeks to establish a home for the Jewish people in Palestine
secured under public law.”
1918: The British drive the Turks out of Israel.
1948: Jews form the reborn state of Israel. But, in the war that
immediately follows, they lose East Jerusalem to Jordan.
1967: Jews and Arabs fight the Six-Day War and the Jews reclaim the
entire city of Jerusalem.
1980: The Israeli government declares the entire city of Jerusalem is
the capital and promises to protect all holy sites from desecration.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress