jerusalem

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today we are starting to get tired we left at 815 and went to the garden tomb there is conjecture as to whether this is the burial place of Jesus is or the church of the holy seplechre or most likely neither place but I still enjoyed going to this site more than the church because it looks more like I would have imagined from the bible record it is in a garden and it is a tomb which would have had a stone rolled in front so you can easily imagine here the scene when the women came in the morning to prepare the body and found the stone already rolled away.

we went out of the garden tomb and across the road to the quarry of solomon this was Amazing huge underground quary under the muslim quater of the city of Jerusalem probably used by Solomon but definitely by Herod and we noticed at the back of the cavern modern saw cuts

we then drove to Amunition hill where they told the story of capturing the city of Jerusalem in 67 here the jordanians were dug in with trenches and bunkas and it was the most difficult hill to take before they moved on into jerusalem

we then drove out of the jerusalem area and into arab teritory to Mickmash and Geba where Jonathan and his armourbearer climbed up to attack the philistines geba is today a jewish settlement and mickmash is Arab

on the way to Geba we drove along the security fence for some distance sometimes it is concrete others it is wire mesh.

we had a falafel not bad for vegetarian meal and then went back to jerusalem to see the jerusalem archaeological park an area excavated at the south end of the temple mount.

when you look at the stones you can tell when they were layed for example the sones layed in Herods time always have a routered edge framing each stone whereas later building just used square edge stones. the lower stones on the corner are 10m long and 4m thick no wonder people marveled when jesus saide they would be thrown down and when he said he could build it in 3 days

the Israel museum has a large model of the city of Jerusalem and also has the scroll of the book which houses the dead sea scrolls the oldest original parchments in the world dating to 100 bce and written in a language still used today

falling asleep writing this and its only 830

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Photos

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garden tomb

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garden tomb

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solomons quary

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Danny and Es at the garden tomb

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solomons quary

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trenches at amunition hill

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bunka at amunition hill

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amunition hill

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mickmash and geba

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corner of the temple mount herods time

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scroll of the book

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model (city of david)

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model of jerusalem as if looking from mt of olives