Today is our wedding anniversary! It’s also the day we said goodbye to Galilee and our Magdala Hotel and headed to Jerusalem, with some stops along the way.
Our first stop was Gideon Springs at the base of Mt. Gilboa. By the way, I found different names: is it Gideon Springs, or Harod Springs? I’m going with Gideon. This is the place where Gideon had his ten thousand men drink from the spring, and he selected the three hundred who didn’t drink by making a cup with their hands. Then his army of three hundred defeated the Midianite force of 135,000 men. Kevin taught from Judges 7:1-7. This is an ‘A’ site.
Next we went to the site of the ancient Roman Decapolis city of Beit She’an. Extensive excavations have been done at this site. There is a large theatre that seats 7,000, Roman bathhouses, a public latrine!, Palladius Street, mosaics, etc. The Romans built a complex system that piped water and heated air throughout the bathhouse. Jesus preached and performed miracles in the Decapolis cities. Beit She’an is also where Saul’s corpse was put on display after he was killed by the Philistines.
Finally, we got to the best stop of the day (in my opinion): Bethlehem. Due to the political situation, we went through a checkpoint into the West Bank, where Bethlehem is located. Our guide, Ikey, wasn’t allowed to go through the checkpoint because he is Jewish, so we had a new female Arab Christian guide for this portion of our trip.
Our first stop in Bethlehem was the Church of the Nativity. There is a long and storied history of this Church, being built, and destroyed, and rebuilt, from Constantine, to Justinian, to the Persians (who looted and destroyed all the Churches in Bethlehem except this one), to the Moslems, to the Crusaders, and on and on. You can do your own research 😊 (see here or here for example). In the present day, different parts of the church are allocated to three different Christian denominations: the Catholic Church, the Greek Orthodox Church, and the Armenian Orthodox Church. The church is built on top of the traditional site of Jesus’ birth. There are stairs leading down to a grotto, which is a series of caves, to the place of Jesus’ birth. There is a lot of beautiful religious art in the church. The Bethlehem icon of the Mother of God, which has a smiling Blessed Mother, has a storied history. See here, for example. Restorations of the walls have revealed mosaics from crusader times. There are trapdoors on the floor which, when opened, show mosaics that were found under the floors.
Immediately adjacent to the Church of the Nativity is the Catholic Church of St. Catherine of Alexandria (it shares a wall with the Church of the Nativity). This is the church where Christmas Mass is celebrated, and broadcast around the world. There are caves under this Church also, with an interesting history. St. Jerome and his friends (all of whom became saints) lived there for a while. St. Jerome stayed on for 34 years and lived as a hermit while he translated the bible from its original language to Latin. This is known as the Vulgate Bible (‘vulgate’ means the common language of the time, which was Latin), and it was in use for 1600 years. More information can be found here or here.
Our last stop was the Dan Boutique Hotel, which would be our home for the rest of the trip. The rooms were nice, though smaller than at the Magdala Hotel (where the rooms were larger than usual). The breakfast and dinner at this hotel were on par with what we had at Magdala – excellent! It was located very close to the Old City of Jerusalem. We could walk into the city, which Mary Ann and I did on Day 8.
The next post will be for Day 6, our very busy day in Jerusalem.
