Day 38 - The Garden Tomb, Hezekiah's Tunnel, etc.

Friday, June 21, 2013

Another day, another adventure.  The Garden Tomb was beautiful, other sites interesting, but Hezekiah's Tunnel was far cooler than we we expected.

Better informed than yesterday, today we arrived early at the Garden Tomb.  They offer free entrance and audio guides.  We saw the rock face that looks like a skull (sort of) which may have been the origin of the name Golgotha, or "place of the skull."  Less than 100 yards away, through a garden, is a tomb.  For many reasons, some think this is the most likely site for Jesus' burial.  Most churches reject it, but as someone once said, "it should be" because it is so beautiful.  We read scriptures and felt the Spirit there.

Ruth in the Garden Tomb Doorway

The Garden Tomb Garden

The Skull Before and Now

Then we toured the Pools of Bethesda, where Jesus healed a paralyzed man, and the adjacent church housing Mary's birthplace.

Southern Pool of Bethesda, Nearly Empty

Then we hiked to the main Garden of Gethsemane site (of the 4 contenders for the title) in the courtyard of the All Nations Church.  One of the olive trees is over 900 years old.  Inside the Church of All Nations is the Rock of Agony, on which Jesus prayed.  It is a large, flat, white rock surface, maybe 10 feet wide.

Garden of Gethsemane

Across the street we visited Mary's Tomb in the Church of the Sepulchre of Saint Mary.  It looked like a flat, pitted, white rock under glass in a tiny tabernacle with a crotchety old priest hurrying worshippers along.

Then on past the Valley of Kings to The City of David and Hezekiah's Tunnel.  We watched the movie to get oriented and looked at some of the ruins of houses of nobility before entering the tunnel.  It starts at Gihon Spring, the only spring in Jerusalem, which some think makes it the true site of Solomon's Temple, but that's another topic for debate.

The tunnel is amazing!  It is 1500 feet long but feels much longer because we were wading the entire time in running water that was sometimes 2 feet deep, in pitch black except for our flashlights, in a passageway too narrow to pass another person and often too short to walk upright.  All of that makes the 1500 foot stone tunnel seem like miles.

Wading Through Hezekiah's Tunnel

At the end of the tunnel was the Pool of Siloam (or Shiloah) where Jesus sent a man to bathe and be healed.  Then we hiked through another 1500 foot, modern, dry tunnel to get back to our starting point.

Pool of Shiloah

After leaving the tunnels we passed the Western Wall and saw a singing, drumming, dancing, Bat Mitzvah procession focused on a happy young girl.  We ate in an Old City cafe, picked up some groceries for the sabbath (Saturday here) and went home.