Israel Day 4 - Bethlehem & New Jerusalem

Day 4! We started the day by popping over to Palestine to see Bethlehem. Of course the highlight was seeing the cave where Jesus was born! They actually aren't sure which cave Jesus was born in, but the one we visited is traditionally accepted as His birthplace. The Church of the Nativity is built on top of the cave and serves as an active church to Armenians, Roman Catholics, and the Greek Orthodox. All three religions claim that spot to be important in their history, so compromises have been made to keep the peace. Honestly, seeing three totally different churches working together to preserve this site was amazing to witness. Anyway, both the church and the cave are divided into two sections - one for Catholics and the other for Armenians and Orthodox. We were able to see the Catholic side of the cave which included a shrine to St. Jerome, the man who spent 36 years of his life translating the Hebrew Old Testament and Greek New Testament into Latin. This is still the official translation of the Catholic Church nearly 1600 years later! The cave also featured what a manger would have looked like in 1AD, and it's actually made of stone instead of wood as is so often pictured in nativity scenes. Who knew. 

Cave traditionally accepted as Jesus' birthplace 

St. Jerome's Tomb/Shrine

Skipping ahead to what was probably the highlight of my day - the Dead Sea Scrolls! Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take pictures of anything inside the Shrine of the Book, but I still took a few notes. They were discovered in 1946 at Qumran and all the books of the Hebrew Bible (which makes up the Old Testament) except Nehemiah and Esther were found! Only the book of Isaiah was discovered intact in its entirety, which is crazy for two reasons - the book of Isaiah is pretty long compared to other books in the Old Testament and it's also one of the most quoted books by other books of the Bible. In a sense, finding it in its entirety also corroborates many other books' authenticity. It's also the oldest manuscript they found, estimated to be 2100 years old. So cool!! We'll be visiting Qumran later this week where the fun continues!

We finished the day at the Israeli museum where there were just tons of cool things to see. First, we saw the oldest piece of art ever discovered, estimated to be 233,000 years old. Literally hundreds of thousands of years old...I can't even wrap my head around that kind of time! We also saw the oldest Biblical manuscript ever found! It contains Numbers 6:24-26 : "The Lord bless you and protect you. The Lord deal kindly and graciously with you. The Lord bestow his favor upon you and grant you peace." Our guide, who is Jewish, spoke about how he still prays this prayer over his children every Friday evening, knowing that his ancestors did the same thousands of years before him. There were many other artifacts including pottery, jewelry, altars, inscriptions, and tombs that we were able to see as well!

Oldest piece of art

It's about the size of the tip of your thumb and kind of looks like a rock

The oldest Biblical manuscript

It's about the size of your pinky finger (shown on the right and enlarged on the left)

Other things we did: visited the Milk Grotto in Bethlehem, climbed a mountain to King Herod's second palace that overlooks Jerusalem, Bethlehem and the Judean desert, saw King Herod's mausoleum, walked through tunnels created by the Bar Kokhba Rebels, and saw a 50:1 scaled replica of Jerusalem from Jesus' day. I'm on information overload! Tomorrow, we're off to see the Temple Mount and have the afternoon to explore. Can't wait! Laila Tov!