Golgotha two and Abraham's Tent

This was our last day with our tour group in Israel. We began with a visit to a second possible location for Golgotha and the garden tomb. It's on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho, just outside the city gate. The walking distance from the Temple Mount is exactly the same as it is to the church of the Holy Sepulcher, the site venerated since the fourth century. This site has a small outcropping that does look like a skull. Golgotha means "the place of the skull." Our host, an retiree from Dallas, related the story. The claim is that the crucifixion took place at the base of this skull hill, which would have made it a very public event on a highly trafficked road. In the same area, is a family tomb that dates back to the time of Jesus. Scripture tells us Joseph of Arimathea made his newly built tomb available for Jesus' burial. This tomb has a track in front of it that would have allowed for a circular stone to be rolled at its entrance. We celebrated communion as a group in the lovely gardens that comprise this spot. 

A word about the tombs of Jesus' day: they were family tombs with several rooms or niches carved into the stone bedrock. There was a larger preparation room where the body was laid out and prepared. Then it was placed in a notch for one year. After a year, the family would open the tomb and place the bones and skull in a bone box and these would be placed in a space where they would accumulate over the years. This allowed for multiple generations of a family to buried in one tomb. The Bible tells us Joseph's tomb was brand new, meaning it had not yet been used.

From here we journeyed out of Jerusalem into the desert to a place called "Abrahams Tent." It is a creative tourist site which invites you back to the time Abraham and Sarah entered the promised land. The focus is on experiencing biblical hospitality. We rode camels down a hill, in costumes, to the tent. In the tent, tables were set low to the ground where we sat on mats and ate the kinds of food Abraham's visitors might have eaten. It was a true feast though our old bones found it hard to sit for such a long time with our legs crossed. All I can say is "thank God for the invention of chairs."

From here we went to visit the traditional site for the Upper Room. It was underwhelming, to say the least. It was just an empty space in part of a church on a second floor. If you didn't know what it was supposed to represent, you'd think it was nothing more than a large room. We closed out the day haggling with merchants in the old city where tons of shops cater to tourists with a lot of the same stuff found in many of the stores.

We are writing this blog at 3 am at the Tel Aviv airport, getting ready for our flight to Athens. We will embark from there for our cruise on the Mediterranean and other biblical sites like Ephesus and Constantinople. We've been told we may have difficulty accessing the Internet at sea, so our blogging may diminish over the next week. We will catch you up as we are able to do so!