If You Ever Get to Israel…
Israel Sites and Experiences
I was in Israel two times, helping at an archaeological dig, with the Associates for Biblical Research, a Christian organization specializing in archaeology related to defending the historical reliability of the Bible. On week days, the professional archaeological staff and volunteers worked at the dig, while exploring Jerusalem some evenings and touring the country on the weekends.
For traveling outside Jerusalem, I would recommend going as part of a registered tour group. Places of interest, in clockwise order, generally, from Jerusalem, would include the Roman remains of Caesarea on the Mediterranean Sea coast, Megiddo, Shiloh, Capernaum, Tiberius, the Sea of Galilee, Nazareth, Tel Dan, the Jordan River, Jericho, Masada, En Gedi, the Dead Sea, Herodium, and Bethlehem.
Focusing on Jerusalem, and ignoring the many museums you can visit and the traditional tourist sites, I would recommend the following places which were especially meaningful to me:
1. The Western/’Wailing” Wall and Tunnel- This wall is actually part of the western retaining wall used by King Herod to expand the area of the “Temple Mount”. For religious Jews it is the closest they will go to the site above where the Jewish Temple was located on the flattened-off “Mount”. Close to the Jewish area of prayer is the entrance to the Western Wall Tunnel. Pay to take the Tunnel tour, which takes you under the current ground level along the side of the retaining wall to see its massive rocks from the 1st century, which are amazingly precisely cut and fit together.
2. Dome of the Rock- There is strong evidence that the Muslim “Dome of the Rock” shrine on the Temple Mount stands on the actual site of the Jewish Temple built by King Solomon, re-built after the Babylonian Exile, and renovated extensively under King Herod in the 1st century. In fact, evidence shows that the rocky area in the center of the Dome of the Rock was the actual Holy of Holies, and a flattened rectangular area on the rock is the exact place where the Ark of the Covenant rested in Solomon’s Temple. Unless you are in Jerusalem during a time of heightened Jew-Arab turmoil, you should be allowed to go up on to the Temple Mount, and then you can pay a small fee to go into the Dome of the Rock. Don’t go there on a Friday, when lots of Muslims would be in that area for their Friday prayers at the nearby Al-Aksa Mosque, or on Saturday, the Jewish sabbath. Be humble and respectful, and you will need to take your shoes off before entering the Dome of the Rock.
3. Cave of Gethsemane- At the base of the Mount of Olives in the Kidron Valley is a cave. Recent archaeological analysis of the cave has found the remains of an ancient olive press inside the cave. Situated near the olive groves, that cave was the place of crushing the olives to get olive oil. It also would be the one place available for Jesus and his disciples to be ‘inside’ and out of the weather. “Gethsemane” means ‘the place of the crushing the olives to get the oil’. The cave has two areas, one near the entrance and another further in. Clues from the Gospel texts (Lk.22:40 and Jn.18:2- “the place”; Lk.22:41, Mt. 26:39, Mk. 14:35- “going a little further (in)’; Jn. 18:4- “went out”) fit this description. The anguish of Jesus’ at that time also fits that place as He experienced His own ‘crushing’.
4. Hezekiah’s Tunnel- Pay a small fee to take a 500+-yard walk of wading through the water of the tunnel originally dug by King Hezekiah (2 Kings 20:20, 2 Chron. 32:30).
5. Walk around the Old City from atop the city walls for some nice views of the area.
6. Walk through the Kidron valley and up the slope of the Mount of Olives for the view of Jerusalem that Jesus had on Palm Sunday.