GEOLOGICAL AND TRIBULATION FEATURES ON ISRAELI TOUR PATHS
PART 5B
Dead Sea – Masada – Ein Gedi– Qumran – Jericho – Jerusalem – Normal Fifth Day of Tours in 2 Parts
Part 2 of 2 parts for Fifth Day
The Ruins of Qumran
The site of Qumran ruins (Khirbet Qumran) had been occupied at various times in antiquity. At a low level were found the remains of walls and pottery from Iron Age II (8-7th centuries BC). A deep circular cistern also belongs to this period (centuries later it was incorporated in an elaborate system of aqueducts and reservoirs). Probably this was the site known as the Biblical “Ir ha-Melah” – City of Salt.
In approximately 130 B.C. new occupants cleared the circular cistern, added two rectangular cisterns, constructed a few rooms, and installed two pottery kilns. 30 years later two- and three-storey buildings were added, and an elaborated water-collecting system was constructed (incorporated the earlier ones) consisting of cisterns connected by channels and supplied by aqueduct from a dam. There is a vast evidence that the manuscripts discovered in the Qumran caves belonged to the library of the occupants of the site in this period – a small hermit community referred as the Dead Sea Sect .
During the Jewish War the place was apparently stormed by Romans and ruined, and then occupied by a Roman garrison for 20 years.
Bar-Kokhba fighters occupied the ruins in 132-135 A.D.
The main building on the site occupied about 37 square meters, constructed of large undressed stones, and with a strong tower in the northwestern corner. On the west side is a long room used apparently as an eating-
room. In the adjacent smaller room over a thousand of ceramic vessels were found. They may have been manufactured on the spot, since the excavations brought to light the best preserved pottery thus far found in the Land of Israel.
A first-storey room in the southwest part of the building was evidently furnished as a writing-room. Flour mills, a stable, a laundry and various workshops were also uncovered. The occupants apparently aimed to be as self-sufficient as possible. There were apparently no sleeping quarters; tents or caves may have served the occupants for shelter. Near the settlement and separated from it by a wall there is a large cemetery
The Dead Sea Scrolls
In 1947 two Bedouin shepherds accidentally came across a clay jar in a cave near Khirbet Qumran that contained seven parchment scrolls. The scrolls came into the hands of dealers in antiquities who offered them to scholars. The first scholar to recognize their antiquity was E.L. Sukenik, who succeeded in acquiring three of them for the Hebrew University. Between 1948 and 1950 he published specimens of them, his “editio princeps” appearing posthumously in 1955. The four other scrolls were smuggled to the United States, where three of them were published in 1950-51. Later they were offered for sale (in a usual newspaper ad, five lines long, under “Miscellaneous for sale). Yigael Yadin, the son of E.L. Sukenik and also an outstanding archaeologist, succeeded in buying them and bringing back to Israel.
The Israel Museum in Jerusalem constructed a special site for exhibiting the scrolls – the Shrine of the Book (opened in 1965). Strict atmospheric conditions are observed there to minimize the possible dam age
to the scrolls.
In the meantime a group of scholars under the leadership of R. de Vaux began to search and excavate the cave where the first scrolls were found, as well as some 40 caves in its vicinity. Many scrolls and thousands of fragments were found in 11 caves. Y. Yadin has acquired several important items from them. Due to difficulties in deciphering, the material it was published very slowly.
Most of the manuscripts arrived to the Rockfeller Museum in Jerusalem, and became available to to Israel scholars after the Six-Day War in Jerusalem.
The Qumran manuscripts were mostly written on parchment, some on papyrus. They are dated by the closing period of the Second Temple and assumed to be a part of the library belonging to a community from Qumran, known also as a “Dead Sea Sect” . In some caves the manuscripts were carefully placed in covered cylindrical jars, whereas in other ones they appear to have been dumped in haste. In a cave that yielded the greatest amount of documents, the storage conditions were the worst, and the manuscripts disintegrated into tens of thousands of fragments, which had to be pieced together with the utmost patience and care.
The news of the discovery of the first scrolls in 1947 aroused intense interest throughout the world and considerable controversy, especially with regard to their dating. The largest manuscript (the complete Isaiah Scroll in Hebrew, 7m. long) was authoritatively dated by around 100 BCE. Some scholars claimed that the scrolls belonged to a much later date and have no scientific importance. However, this was proved wrong when similar materials were discovered at Masada, in the archaeological stratum dated not later than 73 A.D.
The documents contain over 100 copies of the books of the Hebrew Bible, most of which survived only as fragments. Out of 24 books all except the Book of Ester are represented. Fragments of Septuagint text have been also identified, some of them evidently the oldest documents of this kind.
A further contribution to the biblical material from Qumran is made by the commentaries on various books. Since the biblical text is quoted in them phrase by phrase before the comment is appended, they provide important evidence for the text of the Hebrew Bible at the end of the Second Temple time.
Before the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls, three variants of the Hebrew Bible texts were known: the “proto-masoretic” type (one that was a base for a later canonized text), the type apparently underlying the Septuagint, and the one close to Samaritan Bible. Not only texts belonging to all three types were found in Qumran, but texts of types unknown before, as well as texts of mixed types.
Several important apocryphal documents in Hebrew and Aramaic were found, some of them previously unknown.
Certain manuscripts apparently describe the life of Qumran community: the Manual of Discipline, the Damascus Document, the Thanksgiving Psalms, and the War scroll. They tell about the community’s origin and history, its rules of life, and expectations for the dawn of new age.
The Dead Sea Sect
The community to which the Dead Sea Scrolls apparently belonged occupied Qumran around 130 B.C. to 70 A.D., and possibly lived also in other places in the region. The name “Dead Sea Sect” was given to it because the main knowledge of
the sect derives from these manuscripts.
The sect was an extremist offshot of the Jewish apocalyptic movement, whose basic doctrine was the expectation of the soon end of days.
When it comes, the wicked would be destroyed, and Israel freed from the yoke of the nations. Before this, God would raise for Himself a community of elect who were destined to be saved from the divine visitation, and who were the nucleus of the society of the future.
The Dead Sea Sect carried these views to extremes specific to itself. They believed that God had decreed not only the end but also the division of mankind into two antagonistic camps called “the sons of light and the sons of darkness”, lead by superhuman “prince of light” and “angel of darkness” respectively. Reference is also made to “the spirit of truth” and “the spirit of perverseness” which are given to mankind. Of these, each person receives his portion, in accordance with which he is either righteous or wicked. Between these two categories God has set “eternal enmity” which would cease only in the end of days, with the destruction of the spirit of perversion and the purification of the righteous from its influence. Then “the sons of the spirit of truth” would receive their reward.
The bulk of mankind was immersed in evil and liable to suffer divine visitation. To avoid this destiny, members of the sect chose to go to the wilderness and to conduct there a strict way of life in a zealous preparation for future reward. The members of the sect regarded themselves as “an eternal planting”, and lived in readiness for the advent of the end of days, when God would raise up for Himself the future Human society, in which they would be “leaders and princes”.
The members of the sect may have had several forms of organization. Two of them are described in documents known as the Manual of Discipline and the Damascus Document. The Manual of Discipline called for a full communal life: “they shall eat communally, and bless communally, and take counsel communally”. The document does not deal with an event of anyone being born, and the community was presumably a celibate male one. The community strictly observed the laws of ritual purity, regarded all non-members as ritually unclean, and insisted on “obedience from he lower to the higher”. For this purpose there was a list of members according to their gradings that was drawn anew every year. The members of the sect were “volunteers” who joined its ranks of their own free will. Offenses against internal discipline were punished, in accordance with the special code, by temporary exclusion.
Due to the Damascus document, however, another form of organization also existed, allowing private property, women and children, and organization as a whole was looser.
Jericho
Jericho is the capital of the Jericho Governorate, and has a population of over 20,000 Arabs.
Situated well below sea level on an east-west route 16 kilometers (10 mi) north of the Dead Sea, Jericho is the lowest permanently inhabited site on earth. It is also believed to be the oldest continuously inhabited city of the world.
Described in the Hebrew Bible as the “City of Palm Trees”, copious springs in and around Jericho have made it an attractive site for human habitation for thousands of years.[6] It is known in Judeo-Christian tradition as the place of the Israelites’ return from bondage in Egypt, led by Joshua, the successor to Moses. Archaeologists have unearthed the remains of over 20 successive settlements in Jericho, the first of which dates back to 11,000 years ago (9000 BC).
Ancient times
Jericho is believed to be one of the oldest continuously-inhabited cities in the world, with evidence of settlement dating back to 9000 BC, providing important information about early human habitation in the Near East. The first permanent settlement was built near the Ein es-Sultan spring between 8000 and 7000 BC by an unknown people, and consisted of a number of walls, a religious shrine, and a 23 feet 0 inches (7.0 m) tower with an internal staircase.
After a few centuries, it was abandoned for a second settlement, established in 6800 BC, perhaps by an invading people who absorbed the original inhabitants into their dominant culture. Artifacts dating from this period include ten skulls, plastered and painted so as to reconstitute the individuals’ features.[9] These represent the first example of portraiture in art history, and it is thought that these were kept in people’s homes while the bodies were buried.[14][5] This was followed by a succession of settlements from 4500 BC onward, the largest of these being constructed in 2600 BC.
Archaeological evidence indicates that in the latter half of the Middle Bronze Age (circa 1700 BC), the city enjoyed some prosperity, its walls having been strengthened and expanded. The Canaanite city (Jericho City IV) was destroyed c.1200 BC, and the site remained uninhabited until the city was refounded in the 9th century BC.
In the 8th century BC, the Assyrians invaded from the north, followed by the Babylonians, and Jericho was depopulated between 586 and 538 BC, the period of the Jewish exile to Babylon. Cyrus the Great, the Persian king, refounded the city one mile southeast of its historic site at the mound of Tell es-Sultan, and returned the Jewish exiles after conquering Babylon in 539 BC.
Remains from Herod’s palace
Jericho went from being an administrative center under Persian rule, to serving as the private estate of Alexander the Great between 336 and 323 BC after his conquest of the region. In the middle of the 2nd century BC, Jericho was under Hellenistic rule, and the Syrian General Bacchides built a number of forts to strengthen the defenses of the area around Jericho against invasion by the Macabees (1 Macc 9:50). One of these forts, built at the entrance to Wadi Qelt, was later refortified by the Herod the Great, who named it Kypros after his mother.
Herod initially leased Jericho from Cleopatra after Mark Antony gave it to her as a gift. After their joint suicide in 30 BCE, Octavian assumed control of the Roman empire and granted Herod free rein over Jericho. Herod’s rule oversaw the construction of a hippodrome-theater (Tel es-Samrat) to entertain his guests and new aqueducts to irrigate the area below the cliffs and reach his winter palace built at the site of Tulul al-Alaiq.[17]
The dramatic murder of Aristobulus III in a swimming pool at Jericho, as told by the Roman historian Josephus, took place during a banquet organized by Herod’s Hasmonean mother-in-law. The city, since the construction of its palaces, functioned not only as an agricultural center and as a crossroad, but as a winter resort for Jerusalem’s aristocracy.[18]
Herod was succeeded by his son, Archelus, who built an adjacent village in his name, Archelais, to house workers for his date plantation (Khirbet al-Beiyudat). First century Jericho is described in Strabo’s Geography as follows:
“Jericho is a plain surrounded by a kind of mountainous country, which in a way, slopes toward it like a theatre. Here is the Phoenicon, which is mixed also with all kinds of cultivated and fruitful trees, though it consists mostly of palm trees.
It is 100 stadia in length and is everywhere watered with streams. Here also are the Palace and the Balsam Park.”
The rock cut tombs of a Herodian and Hasmonean era cemetery lie in the lowest part of the cliffs between Nuseib al-Aweishireh
and Jebel Quruntul in Jericho
and were used to between 100 BC and 68 AD.
The Christian Bible states that Jesus passed through Jericho where he healed two blind men and converted a local tax collector named Zacharias. After the fall of Jerusalem to Vespasian armies in 70 AD, Jericho declined rapidly, and by 100 AD it was but a small Roman garrison town. A fort was built there in 130 that played a role in putting down the Bar Kochba revolt in 133. Accounts of Jericho by a Christian pilgrim are given in 333. Shortly thereafter, the built-up area of the town was abandoned, and a Byzantine Jericho, Ericha was built a mile to the east, around which the modern town is centered. Christianity took hold in the city during the Byzantine era and the area was heavily populated. A number of monasteries and churches were built, including St. George of Koziba in 340 AD and a domed church dedicated to Saint Eliseus. At least two synagogues were also built in the 6th century CE. The monasteries were abandoned after the Persian invasion of 614.
Bethany
Bethany is recorded in the New Testament as the home of Mary, Martha and Lazarus, as well as that of Simon the Leper. Jesus is reported to have lodged there after his entry into Jerusalem, and it was from Bethany that he parted from his disciples at the Ascension. Bethany is commonly identified with the Palestinian village of al-Eizariya located about 1.5 miles (2 km) to the east of Jerusalem on the south-eastern slope of the Mount of Olives.[1]
The oldest house in present-day al-Eizaraya (Arabic, meaning “Place of Lazarus”) is a 2,000 year old dwelling that has attracted pilgrims who believe it might have been (or at least serves as a reminder of) the House of Martha and Mary, the sisters of Lazarus.
Then to Ambassador Hotel in Jerusalem
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