The Temple Wall

Day 11

I spent most of the day in bed with food poisoning. Enough said.

But here is a picture of a cool model of what Jerusalem would have looked like in the 1st century.

Day 12

I felt much better today, but I was pretty weak. I slogged along with the group as we went to the Temple. Uri led us to an archeological dig that has unearthed the 1st century road where the marketplace along the Temple was at. There was a section of the original Temple wall that Harod had built still there, but there was also a huge pile of massive stones that the Romans had dislodged and pushed over when they sacked the city in 70 A.D. It was quite a sight to see.

From there we went around the corner to the steps leading to what was the main entrance of the Temple. Some of the steps were original from the 1st century, and Jesus would have walked on them. That was amazing.

These same steps are also believed to be the site where Peter gave his sermon from Acts 2. This is widely accepted due to the fact that the steps were a place where people gathered, the area had good acoustics to address such a multitude, and there were multiple ritual bath sites right there for all the baptisms Peter ended up doing when the people accepted Christ.

We made our way back to the western wall, but this time to the section devoted for religious use: the area referred to as the Wailing Wall. People were gathered around praying and crying for the loss of the temple. It was sad to see.

We spent the next few hours wandering through the pretty,  narrow streets of the old section of Jerusalem as Uri have us fact after fact. Information overload. The man is brilliant. If I retained a fraction of what he told us this trip, I'll be pleased.

When Jerusalem was being rebuilt in the 1970's after the Six-Day War (1967), archeological sites were discovered everywhere as they attempted to put in the foundations of new buildings. They had a dilemma: destroy centuries old remains to build a new city, or don't rebuild. The solution: build over the remains and make the basements into archeological digs and museums. As a result, under numerous stores and buildings are old ruins that have been preserved. Brilliant.

Underground section 

Scorched mosiac from when the Romans burned the city. It is one of the sections preserved underground.

We had a low key evening and I was wiped, but I was SO happy to be back functioning more as a human and able to be a part of normal conversations. It was good to be with my friends again.

Tomorrow is our last day in Israel.