(I’ll go back to blogging on Morocco later this week)
This is apt for this time of the year! (As we are in Easter and Passover)
(Worth mentioning that this is from a secular Israeli news source)
Tag Archives: biblical history
Jericho – 4. View of Jericho’s plain
Joshua 4: 12 The men of Reuben, Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh crossed over, ready for battle, in front of the Israelites, as Moses had directed them.
13 About forty thousand armed for battle crossed over before the LORD to the plains of Jericho for war.
14 That day the LORD exalted Joshua in the sight of all Israel; and they stood in awe of him all the days of his life, just as they had stood in awe of Moses.
15 Then the LORD said to Joshua,
16 “Command the priests carrying the ark of the covenant law to come up out of the Jordan.”
Reading this makes me appreciate that Jericho is built on land thats completely flat.
All the towns I have seen in the non-coastal parts of Israel are mountainous.
So this is the view from the Mount of Temptation, now myself and Jeremy and Tim moved over to another part of the hill. Seems to be quite a varied range of fruit being grown in fruit of the mount too.
Given that Jericho is meant to be the oldest city in the world, it makes sense to start building on the most easiest terrain here I guess!
No churches in the sky here, just where you come up if you use the cable car, and a nice restaurants with amazing views, some of the caves here been given some clever uses, one of them is a bird aviary, another one shown closer below, contains things for sale in bazaar.
This was good time to get ice cream 🙂
To the right of these railings and down into yet another cave covered by some beaded string door you go if you want to make a deal for any ornaments and souvienrs.
Back down the hill, going down hill was considerably less work, as I think I lost a litre of sweat at least going up here!!
At the foot of the cliff, I see this highly unusual bush. Since I have been in Israel, I have got to try various unusual fruits I haven’t seen before, but these green things are something else. They look vaguely citrussy but they are hollow and squeezable like almost flat balloons. Can anyone tell me what they are, are they edible?
Next, off to see a much larger tree, without fruit, but some quite exciting background!!
1. Crossing into the oldest city in the world – 2. Jericho’s town centre – 3. Church on the cliff – 4. View of Jericho’s plain – 5. The tree
Jericho – 2. Jericho’s town centre
This fountain stands in the middle of the square in Jericho. As it was close to or exceeding 40c today, I really wanted shove my face in it, with lots of people around I decided to be civilized I opted to soak my hat instead.
Right by the fountain, I spotted this old Arabic coffee flask, now this bus service I like, I am not certain, but it seems customers riding on this bus get some Arabic coffee before they hop on. Even if this at extra cost, I think this is a great idea 🙂
Two things you see in Palestinian cities, butchers shops with mostly whole animals in the windows, and bright yellow taxis with green licence plates.
This logo seems to appear on cars and buildings owned by the Palestinian Authority. I don’t like this at all, this eagle symbol reminds of another force from history…. Oh never mind.
We took a quick look in this phone and computer accessories shop. My friend Jeremy wanted to get a case for his iPhone, this shop has these odd looking speakers which seem to be aimed as playback of music from a phone via USB or Bluetooth. I notice Arab people often play music on their phone in the street, and probably use them to play Islamic prayers and teaching material. By the way we were here a few days before the start of Ramadan.
The news seems to show all Palestinians as poor, but there is plenty of shops in the main cities like Jericho, Nabulus, Bethlehem, Ramalah and Gaza seem to have all type of businesses selling all the same goods you can find in Israeli cities.
I found the people of Jericho to be extremely friendly, not just the people that were trying to sell us stuff, people outside of shops and fast food places wanted to chat to us as we didn’t look Arab, so it was pleasant to chat to folk that we (well my two friends were on holiday from England, I didn’t mention about my reason for being here) and I didn’t see anyone else obviously foreign.
This particular iPhone 4 case here is distributed by a Palestinian company (you can just about make out the .ps domain address)
Apparently Jericho only has 20,000 people so it is quite a lot smaller than I thought it would be bigger being the oldest city in the world with a consistent population.
Soon! The mount of temptation where Jesus went to pray and fast, and I got to visit an old tree that had could of had some very special significance from the time of Jesus!!
1. Crossing into the oldest city in the world – 2. Jericho’s town centre – 3. Church on the cliff – 4. View of Jericho’s plain – 5. The tree
Jericho – 1. Crossing into the oldest city in the world
Heading to Jericho which is in Palestinian territories is only 40km from Jerusalem, This ancient city is somewhere I had always wanted to visit, and scouring the internet seems to not have much in the way of safety recommendations but seems popular with all kinds of visitors to the holyland, as some good friends from the UK were over it was a good chance to take a jolly over and investigate the oldest still inhabited city in the world….
After driving through an Israeli checkpoint, no action is needed as you only get ID’ed on the way out, so its just a case of driving slowly past a kiosk, a bit further is another checkpoint, just some concrete barriers and two soldiers from the Palestinian government who just asked for passport from my friend who was driving.
This picture was taken some distance away, and this is the best zoom I could do, as for obvious reasons I don’t want to be found taking pictures of any kind of checkpoint crossing anywhere!! Seeing uniformed soldiers with their lapels in Arabic with Palestinian symbols was quite scary for a minute there!
I came to the city trying not to have any preconceived ideas, I have been to Bethlehem and passed through a few small Palestinian towns and also visited Arab Israeli cities like Nazareth and Akko.
This corner shop was the first business we came to. CocaCola is a brand you find everywhere in the world, especially in this corner of the world and I remember somewhere, one of the Arab nations were trying to make an equivalent Cola drink for the middle east market.
This part of the West Bank is quite odd, there are old and new parts of Palestinian society together. For instance, there are run down looking houses, factories and farms, and there are large overhead gantries over the main road advertising technology and home furnishing trade conventions.
This sign is for Jawwal, a Palestinian mobile phone operator.
This concrete wall, isn’t a separation barrier, or any kind of border, seems to be a fortified car park for police vehicles, it does look unfinished with unrendered concrete looking like just as a imposing as the wall I see next to Bethlehem about 3-4 miles from my house. Maybe its inspired by the ancient walls of Jericho…
Next: to Jericho’s city centre!
1. Crossing into the oldest city in the world – 2. Jericho’s town centre – 3. Church on the cliff – 4. View of Jericho’s plain – 5. The tree
The Jesus boat in Ginosar
My two days of work projects were done, and it was nice to take off a friday from work and relax and see some places. I booked into a youth hostel in Tiberias and made friends with a South Africa pastor and got to see a lot special places.
The community of Ginosar is a Kibbutz on the banks of the Kinneret, this concrete exhibition hall has this wonderful piece of history.
In my home city of Portsmouth, a historic ship from the time of Henry the Eighth was pulled out of the harbour in 1982, at the time craning an ancient ship out of the sea without it breaking up, a not so conventional bit of archeology probably not been done before, and I remember as I child watching it at school on live television as it was shown all over the world.
Just a few years later, this ancient boat found in the Galilee in unusually high tide conditions in 1986, archeologists sprayed it in foam and carefully lifted it out.
Mounted in a metal cradle you can see the boat, it has been treated in wax to stop it rotting.
Its dated from the first century AD, so its quite possible it was owned by someone who may have known Jesus maybe.
There is some nice drawings on the wall of this museum, although it is very small, as well as the video showing how it was carefully excavated and cleaned up, you can see the whole exhibition in less than 10 minutes.
Interestingly enough, the boat is fabricated from 12 different types of wood as the colour coding here shows.
Left: photos of the boat being winched out after being covered in foam, and a model shown. Right: a model of what the model looked like in its day.
Ginosar also has these nice new bungalows which look very new which look out onto the sea.
There was also a folk music event happening, there were people camped out and bands playing close to the sea. I asked the man at the car park who was checking tickets where the Jesus boat was, after he spoke to his colleague, I heard him say the word ‘Yeshu’ rather the ‘Yeshua’ this was sad, as the Yeshua is Hebrew for Jesus but Yeshu, spelt similar is a insult sometimes used by critics of Christianity and Messianic Judaism in Israel.
This chap who worked in the gift shop had an interesting tatoo from the Psalms. He told me he is a Jewish believer in Jesus, so I shook his hand 🙂
Next a ferry around the Kinneret…
Check out the official site of the Jesus boat here:
A day in my work in the Galilee – The Jesus boat in Ginosar – The Kinneret Lake – Tiberias evening light show – Preaching and miracles of Jesus in Capernaum – Tiberias city centre and Muriels and Maimonidies
In Sepia: Holyland pictures collection part 3
Galilee road trip part 3 : Miracles of Jesus on location
Back to continue the camping trip I did in the Galilee in May. The towns surrounding this lake are where Jesus spent most of his ministry.
With the aid of a few supplies we took on our expedition, I decided to do some photos to recreate some of the miracles the Lord did on this very place.
Water into Wine. As mentioned in John 2 : 9. Jesus did this at a wedding in Cana which is a town some distance away from the west side of the sea, although I am the east side.
The sea and the coast can look quite foggy at times. The places where we camped has this amazing view, this wall is great to sit on and view until the sun goes down.
Five loaves and two fishes. I have used some tinned pilchards, as I think using fresh fish in a car with 5 people and loaded with other stuff on a hot day would not be very a popular.
The scriptures here mention this was done by Jesus in a place called Gennesaret on the north west of the sea. Check Matthew 14.
This sign is famous for its comedy value, I saw this is a park in a far up north part of Israel. Some of my friends said they had seen this in national parks in other parts of the country.
The middle symbol looks like its saying ‘No walking on water’!
Brit In Jerusalem 