I Really Did Walk Where Jesus Walked

Wednesday: a gorgeous sunny day in Jerusalem.  High in the low 80s with a really nice breeze off the Mediterranean starting mid-afternoon.  This morning we enjoyed a stimulating lecture at the Jerusalem University College campus.  Our instructor, Aubrey Alexander, combines unrelenting enthusiasm with detailed knowledge of all sorts of Holy Land minutiae.  We spent time talking about Israel's climate, topography and vegetation and how those have affected what people do and where they live.  In one sense, Israel's climate is just a drier version of Oregon's.  A somewhat damper western part of the country gives way to the incredibly dry Dead Sea area, which is in a rain shadow much the same as in eastern Oregon.  Another similarity is that most of the moisture comes in the winter, and then the summer is dry.  We don't think anything of that, but in the eastern half of the U.S. the summer is often the wettest time of year.  That's how they grow all that corn in Iowa and points further east.  Gordon Nyhof has said to me that Oregon "becomes a desert in the summer (after July 4, at least!)."  In that sense, Portland and Jerusalem are alike.

We spent the afternoon on a rather rigorous walking tour of the Old City.  The Old City is, as the name suggests, the old part of Jerusalem, dating back several thousand years.  In fact, it's the 2nd oldest continually inhabited city in the world (Jericho being the oldest and just 20 miles down the road).  We visited the probable site where Jesus ate the Last Supper with his disciples, which may also be the place where the Holy Spirit came on the Day of Pentecost (which we just celebrated last Sunday).  This location is an educated guess, but probably a pretty good one.  Think about it: the Old city is not that big (maybe the same size as the entirety of downtown Portland).  That means there are only so many places where something could have happened.  Historical memory has fixed on that one spot so there's good chance that I sat on a roof beneath which Jesus ate the Last Supper with the disciples and where the Holy Spirit invaded the Upper Room.  Pretty cool!

The rest of the time was spent around the site of Herod's Temple, where Jesus preached and contended with the Pharisees in the week leading up to his crucifixion.  A mosque sits on the site now, but the edge of the enormous complex bears many historical marks of the older, Jewish influence.  We walked along a street where merchants sold their wares, about which our teacher said, "We can be pretty sure that Jesus walked along this very street."   We took some pictures here that we will try to upload (by the way, we haven't had a good enough connection to upload videos yet; we're still working on it).

We also visited the site of the Pool of Bethesda (John 5 if you're interested in recalling the story).  An interesting spot.  Actually, the whole city is a giant archeological theme park.  There's no place you can go and not touch biblical history.  Anything that took place in biblical Jerusalem happened within a two-mile radius of the hotel room where I'm sitting.  It doesn't get much better than that!