The day after that trip to the Kidron Valley, we took a field trip down to southern Israel to see the Dead Sea, Masada, Ein Gedi, and Qumran. All four places were amazing! Masada is a mountain that used to be a fortress in the 1st century, Ein Gedi is a little green area in the middle of the Judean wilderness where David hid out from King Saul for a while, and Qumran is where they found the Dead Sea Scrolls! That was definitely my favorite part, just because I've thought the Dead Sea Scrolls were super interesting every since I first learned about them. Earlier this semester, we also learned about the Covenanters at Qumran, the people who would have hidden the Dead Sea Scrolls, and we got to see the ruins of their community when we were down there. They have an interesting story--they felt they had been called by God to preserve the true covenant, because all the priests in Jerusalem had become corrupt (which was true). We have their customs and ceremonies preserved in some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and they have some interesting similarities with Latter-day Saints. For one thing, they called themselves Latter-day Saints... Their records of the Old Testament are also important, of course, because they're some of the oldest we have.
Here is a picture of Masada from near the top. You can see why it would have been so difficult to attack:
The day after that trip, we started getting ready for final exams in New Testament and Ancient Near Eastern Studies, both of which were scary. I spent the whole rest of the week studying, except for a brief adventure Thursday night when a group of us went to Ben Yehuda Street in West Jerusalem. Every Thursday, people just gather on the street there to hang around and listen to street musicians. It was a fun atmosphere, and we ran into some Orthodox Jewish girls from Brooklyn who were fun to talk to. Most of the people we saw there were dressed conservatively and wouldn't dance, but there were a few Jewish men who danced a little bit.
The next day we finished exams! Since then, life has been so relaxed around here. Everyone was so relieved--except that now, we have to worry about packing and getting ready to leave!
We had another free day yesterday, and my roommates, James, Jonah and I went to visit a Jewish neighborhood just outside the Old City called Yemin Moshe. There is a windmill there built in the 19th century (it was never actually used, but like that whole neighborhood, it's picturesque). We also wandered into a Scottish church nearby, where, lo and behold, they found a fragment of an Old Testament scroll from the 7th century BC! We had never even heard of that before. But there was the cave where they had found it, right below the church, and a little sign explaining the find.
There was also a park nearby that contained the Herod family tombs. King Herod himself wasn't buried there, and actually I'm not sure who from his family was, but the tombs were impressive compared to some of the others we've seen. They were just tucked into a hillside there in the park--once again, unmarked and unheralded.
Then today, we went on our penultimate field trip! Today and tomorrow, we are retracing the steps of the last week of Jesus's life. So, today we drove to Bethany (it's only a few miles from the center, but it's in the West Bank, so we had to go drive to the closest checkpoint), where we saw Lazarus's tomb. Then we went to Bethphage, where Christ taught about the dead fig tree and started the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the Pater Noster Church, where Christ may have taught the disciples about the Lord's Prayer, and Dominus Flevit, a cool church shaped like a teardrop that commemorates the place where Jesus wept for Jerusalem. Then we ate lunch in the Orson Hyde Memorial Park and went to a room that may have been the Upper Room where they ate the Last Supper. (There are three potential sites I know of for this--one of them is actually Mary's Tomb.)
Tomorrow, we're going to finish the trip, ending up at the Garden Tomb. It should be great!
I got a good shot of the city today from Bethphage, with the Temple Mount right in the middle:
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