Holy Land Historical and Biblical Studies

Dates matter to us. We remember things that happened in our lives or involving the wider world on definite days, in certain years. Depending on what each event was, we may celebrate its memory with joy, or we might weep over it. Some events we simply acknowledge, respectfully, as an anniversary passes.

Places matter equally. Places where important things in our lives have occurred recall memories to us when they are revisited. Further, when we examine a historical site, we seem to gain an understanding of the past that is deeper than any we possessed before we saw the scene, no matter how well we knew the story.

In God's dealings with mankind, He always instructed people who would follow in His ways to 'remember this place', 'remember this date' or 'remember what I did for you here'. He instructed people to erect memorials, usually of stones, to help them remember. He said that that people were always to return with their descendants to see those stones, to remind themselves and instruct their children about the past. He warned them that there would be safety and joy in remembering, but sorrow and disaster if they forgot the lessons of history.

SEEING JESUS IN CONTEXT

The story of Jesus of Nazareth is seen by most as an important one in human history. Because of the influence of the particular period during which He lived on the story of the successive civilisations, because of the fascinating way His singular life and death entered the consciousness of that developing history, and because of the impact His followers have had upon the global scene (for good and ill) during the last two thousand years of politics, religion, social behaviour, music, art and architecture, right to this day, His mark on the world cannot be exaggerated.

It is quite usual for people who know about Jesus to know also the main stories the Jewish Scriptures which describe the origins and establishment of the nation of Israel into which He was born. The main Biblical characters from these familiar stories have become part of a world-wide classical understanding.

Adam and Eve in their garden called Eden,

Enoch who suddenly disappeared from the world because he walked with God,

the most-aged-of-all men, Methuselah,

his grandson Noah with his ark,

Abraham and Sarah,

Lot,

Ishmael,

Isaac and Rebekah,

Esau,

Jacob with his wives Leah and Rachel,

Joseph, who had an especially attractive coat,

Moses,

Joshua, the man responsible for the demolition of Jericho,

Gideon,

Samson and Delilah,

Samuel,

angry King Saul,

the most-famed musically gifted King David,

the giant Goliath,

Bathsheba,

wise young Solomon,

the prophet Elijah,

the pagan King Nebuchadnezzar,

Daniel of lions' den fame,

....and the big, bad King Herod the Great,

All these are known world-wide as "story figures" whose names evoke memories of dramatic tales from eons ago.

Even though many people know those famous Biblical stories, usually when they begin to consider the life and work of Jesus of Nazareth, His story stands apart from the others.

For many people thinking of Jesus as the beginning of 'the Christian story, His life seems to occupy, not only the centre of a stage, but the whole stage. All the other people whose existence brought His nation and His time into being are allowed to fade into the background.They are remembered in their own right, but not seen to be forming a context for Him, at all. It is as though they ceased to be of great significance in 'the scheme of things' from the time He appeared. It is as though they were only incidental music played before a performance was ready to begin, or a lightly-sketched scenes used to ornament an empty set. When the main character appeared and the play began in earnest, all the music and the lovely scenes disappeared, having nothing at all to do with the main feature.

This can be a tragic loss to us, for with just a little careful examination, it might be discovered that the music we have heard and the sketches we have seen " before the show began" were meant to be viewed as part of the main performance!

They can provide, in an intricate and beautiful framework, deeper understandings of what was actually seen to be happening when Jesus walked and talked on earth, the brief time in which He lived, died and rose from the dead.

All the tunes developed into glorious song by the life of Jesus of Nazareth already had been heard, albeit in 'snatch and medley' form, long before His nativity in the little town of Bethlehem.

Those who lived when Jesus did, people who knew both their Scriptures and their own recent history so much better than we do, saw much more meaning in what He did and said than we, of another time and in far distant places, could possibly do. They lived where the ancient stories had occurred, thus physically walking, every day of their lives, through the settings of history. They were descended from the heroes of those stories, and often bore their names.

Because of these things, the witnesses to the events of the life of Jesus must have felt a sense of "glorious deja' vu", time and time again, as the events of the life of Jesus unfolded. It is no wonder that so many thousands of Jews, and then God-fearing Gentiles, added to a little later by droves of pagans throughout the then-known world, believed that this Man was the Messiah God had promised would come to mankind. It was those first who believed in Him so absolutely who, it is said, "turned the world upside down."

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Please read on to discover some 'forgotten' examples of Jesus within the context of history and geography as His own people would have seen Him:

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The first miracle that Jesus of Nazareth ever performed was at a wedding in Cana of Galilee when the wine ran out. Prompted by His mother to help, though seeming to be unwilling to act at her suggestion, Jesus turned huge pots of water into the best wine of the feast. People have puzzled about why He did this particular miracle as His first one! He could have saved a life, walked on the water, or fed thousands of hungry people from a couple of bits of bread. He did all those things, and many more, later.

One seldom-remembered element of the history of this period opens an astonishing understanding of this story of the miracle that Jesus performed at Cana:

From more than 300 years before the time of Jesus, since the time when Alexander the Great had swept through the region to gather it into his empire, the nation of Israel was ruled by the Greeks and their allied successors. An extremely harsh example of the succeeding Ptolemy dynasty, in rulership of Palestine over a hundred years after Alexander, was Antiochus Epiphanes. Historical accounts of the period reveal that He tried in vain to force the Jews into worshipping the Greek gods, particularly Dionysius.

In those times, it was part of the ritual of imposed rule that a conquered nation must submit to the gods who had triumphed over their own gods. It was the 'way of the world' and was absolutely required. If a conquered people refused to bow to the victors' gods, they were not surrendering, and there could not be peace.

The Jews had accepted and acknowledged the loss of their political sovereignty to the Greeks. They had been forced to live as subject people in other, earlier, times. This was nothing new to them. They knew how to bow to foreign rulers. What they could not do, and would not do, was to bow their knees to a foreign god. They did not believe in the existence of these gods at all, only of their own One God, Jehovah. They were a strangely unique people in worshipping one god alone. They believed that their God had given them specific commandments to obey, and they were bound by love, by fear, and by solidarity as a nation to obey them. His first commandment to them had been that they should never bow to 'other gods.'

Jews would not bow to Dionysius. They were more frightened of the anger of their own God if they disobeyed Him than they were of the results of any offence caused to their conquerors by refusing to obey them!

Antiochus Ephiphanes celebrated his own birthday (25th December) on the same day as the feast of Dionysius, and he believed he was, therefore, this god in the form of a man. Especially on that day, he forced Jews to walk in his train, hailing and proclaiming him as god-in-the flesh Dionysius. Those who would not comply were killed, some by crucifixion. Still, many devout Jews resisted.

Sickened and angered by their stubborness, Antiochus Epiphanes decided to obliterate these stubborn, defiant people from the world. He began a campaign of extermination against them in about 168 B.C. Horrific incidents are recorded in the book of the Macabees in the Apocrypha, and in other historical accounts such as Josephus, describing the cruelty and terror of those times for the Jewish people. Their very existence was threatened as quite hideous outrages were committed against them and their religion. It was because of these things that the Maccabean revolt took place and the Jews temporarily regained their sovereignty as a nation. For the first time in centuries they ruled their own land, and did so for over a hundred years.

Then, in 63 B.C., when Greece's claim to domination as the greatest world power had been supplanted by the mighty Rome, Pompey the Great marched down the Jordan valley and climbed the hills of the Judean wilderness to lay siege to Jerusalem. Foreigners once again ruled the land. With them the Romans brought the requirement that the conquered Jews worship their gods, the Roman deities. Instead of Bacchus as the god of wine, they produced Dionysius again, the Greek god of wine, and demanded, as the Greeks had done in the days of Antiochus Ephiphanes, that the Jews worship him.

In the same spirit as that which had caused their forebears to refuse, these Jews would not bow to Dionysius. The Romans could understand and accept, the historians say, that these people baulked at surrendering to and worshipping some of their more threatening gods when they had such strong and distinctive beliefs of their own, but Dionysius was reckoned to be a fairly mild, "jolly" sort of god, and they could not understand how acknowledging him could really be a problem for them.

The Jews, though, would not submit, and the killings began again. Sepphoris, the hilltop town that was the capital of Galilee at this time, that had been ruled by Herod the Great in his youth and passed on to his son Herod the tetrarch at his death, was the scene of a particularly violent revolt and of executions and destruction to quell it. When Jesus was growing up in Nazareth, just a couple of miles away as the crow flies or ancients walked, the recently-destroyed Sepphoris was being rebuilt by Herod the tetrarch who went on to rule the province of Galilee from there. Just before Jesus became a public figure, though, Herod moved his capital to Tiberius, a new capital city on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee named in honour of the Roman emperor.

On the floor of a Roman villa recently uncovered as part of an important archaeological dig at Sepphoris, there is a most beautiful mosaic clearly depicting the fable of the pagan god of wine, Dionysius. Though the villa is dated to the 3rd century of the Christian era, it was built upon the site of an earlier structure of importance, very near the crown of the hill. The mosaic's scenes tell the story of Dionysius as it was understood over a period of several centuries in the Greek/Roman world.

The panels show, that Dionysius was the only Greek god who was born to a human mother, but whose father was a god. It shows him as the god of wine, of music, and as one who loved children. Also, there were stories connecting him with shepherds. There are scenes of the wedding of Dionysius, and then of a to-the-death struggle with his closest friend. The final scene on the mosaic shows Dionysius, who had won this tragic battle, riding a donkey or a goat in a 'triumphal procession', an olive wreath on his brow, and his followers hailing him by waving palm branches as he rode before them.

The god Dionysius, according to pagan legend, could produce wine from only water and sunshine. Dionysian shrines have been found in various places in the land of Israel, and it appears that a feature of the Dionysian worship was a 'magic act' when the god turned water into wine.

During the centuries when Israel was dominated by Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans, there were many pagan temples established in more remote parts of the country, especially in the north. Galilee became known as 'Galilee of the gentiles'. Gentiles who lived there, as well as hellenized Jews, well knew the stories of the pagan deities, as well as the ceremonies connected with their worship.

This story of a pagan challenge to Judaism, then, lies very powerfully in the background of the story of Jesus and His mother when, accompanied by His newly-chosen followers, they attended a wedding in Cana of Galilee.

This was not the first time, or the last time, that the God of Israel was seen to be 'in a contest' with the gods of pagan people: consider Moses and Aaron in their protracted duel against the gods of Egypt at the time of the plagues and the Passover. Remember, too, Elijah in his challege to the gods of Baal worshippers on Mount Carmel.

At the scene of the wedding in Cana, the mother of Jesus of Nazareth, was the only person in the world who could know with absolute certainty that her Son was the Son of God, not of a human father. The narrative in John's Gospel tells us that she was the one who asked her son to act. Though reticent, He did so.

Christian theologians have long explained that Jesus did this miracle to inagurate the Mass, or the communion service, to sanctify marriage, or to simply identify His willingness to deal with peoples' needs.

Messianic teachers say that the symbolism involves the use of the ritual cleansing waters, showing His identification with the holy Jewish rites for worship and daily living.

The New Testament account in the gospel written by John, the cousin of the Lord, the one described as His beloved disciple, concludes with the information that 'by doing this first miracle in Cana, Jesus revealed His glory, and because of this, His disciples believed in Him.' Set against "the music and the sketched backdrop of history", the simplest, plainest, clearest point that Jesus of Nazareth made when He turned water to wine in Cana was that .........

...................and those who drank His wine declared it to be delicious!

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The Bible story reads that two followers of Jesus of Nazareth left Jerusalem sometime on Resurrection Sunday, heading for a village not far from the city.

A stranger joined them on the road and asked why they seemed so sad. They explained to him that the man they had thought would deliver Israel from the foreign occupation, the one they had believed to be the awaited Messiah, had been executed by the Romans. Their hopes and dreams were shattered.

They were disturbed, though, by reports from some of the women who had also believed in this man, that their leader's body had disappeared from the tomb, and by the belief of these women that he seemed to have come alive again.

The stranger did not seem to be surprised by this news. In fact, he began to explain to them how he saw this as having been predicted in the Jewish Scriptures.

As darkness fell, the travellers approached their destination. Entirely in keeping with the Middle Eastern culture of hospitality, the two invited their stranger companion to stay with them. They insisted that it was too late for him to travel further down the road that night.

Food was prepared and it was when they began to eat together that the guest was discovered to be their mourned-as-lost Leader. The followers of Jesus immediately rushed back to the city to tell the disciples who were gathered together in a room there what had happened. ........Luke 24

There are several places in the Holy Land that lay claim to being the Emmaus where Jesus walked with, talked with, dined with, and then revealed His identity to two of His followers as Resurrection Day drew to a close. No one has been able, with absolutely certainty, to identify this gospel story's Emmaus.

Further, more than one site in the country, both in the Jerusalem area and in the Galilee was referred to anciently as an 'emmaus', the name implying quite simply the presence of quality springs of water.

One of the places vying for the particular honour of being recognised as Luke's Emmaus is Latrun, fully 20 miles from Jerusalem on the road to Tel Aviv. For any who would believe the Biblical account to be in any way accurate, Latrun must be discounted because it is too great a distance from Jerusalem to make the story credible.

An Emmaus being just over 7 miles distant from Jerusalem, as described in Luke's narration, makes the entire account much more believable, and there are two claimants for this title that distance from the city. These two places, both Arab villages in modern times, appear to be a good distance from each other when they are visited now, simply because they are approached from entirely different roads leaving Jerusalem. In fact, as a bird flies or the ancient walked, they are very close to each other, only about three miles apart, lying at either end of the same distinctive ridge of hills circling Jerusalem on the west and south west.

One is Abu Ghosh, a Christian Arab village lying tucked into the eastern slope of the prominent hill situation of Kiriath Jearim on the main road between Jerusalem and the Mediterranean coast. The other is Qubeiba, lying sheltered behind the even more obvious height known as Nebi Samuel.

Both of these places are extremely significant in the history of God's dealings with the ancient nation of Israel, as recorded in the Jewish Scriptures, and no Jew in the days of Jesus would have approached or entered them without a powerful 'sense of history' being evoked in his memory.

Near to Qubeiba rises Nebi Samuel, possibly the ancient gathering place of Mizpah. This was the place where the sacrifices of Israel were made at the old tabernacle in the days of the prophet Samuel, throughout the reign of King David, and is believed to be the burial place of Samuel. This was the place where David's son and heir asked his God for only one gift as King of Israel, the gift of wisdom. The entire area was full of meaning for any devout Jew, meaning associated with the Law of Moses, the prophets of God, and the reign of the household of David.

At the opposite end of a ridge of hills, not far away, Kiriath Jearim by Abu Ghosh is the traditionally acknowledged site of the house of Abinidab which sheltered the Ark of the Covenant for many years before King David took it to Jerusalem.

The Ark of the Covenant, containing the tablets of law that Moses had brought down to the people from Mount Sinai, had been the place where the glory of God (His shekinah, or presence) had descended visibly among the Israelites after they had escaped from their slavery in Egypt. It thus had become the nation's most holy possession, the visible reminder that God was with them. It is said that, as well as the stone tablets with the Commandments, the rod of Aaron which had budded as a miraculous sign in the contest between Aaron's God and the power of the magicians of Egypt, and a jar preserving a sample of the mysterious manna that fed the Israelites through all their wilderness years were also kept in the Ark.

In the dark period of Jewish history that came after the years of conquest in the land under the leadership of Joshua, Israel's very darkest moment was when they lost of the Ark of the Covenant during a battle with their ever-present enemy, the Philistines. The Israelites had behaved wrongly when they had presumptuously taken the Ark with them into battle as a 'good luck charm'. They had been unexpectedly and heavily defeated in this battle, and the Ark was captured by the Philistines. This loss had been such a shock and cause of sorrow that the old high priest Eli had died when he heard the news.

Though the loss of the Ark had been Israel's fault, a direct result of their own sin, God intervened and caused the sacred object to become such an annoyance and curse to the Philistines that they became desperate to get rid of it. They recognised that the very real and powerful God of Israel would plague them as long as they kept it. They put it on a cart, harnessed the cart to a couple of recently-calved milk cows, and sent it away in the direction of an Israelite town. The cows made a big noise, but still walked right away from their calves, entirely against all the instincts of the beasts, delivering the Ark back into the hands of the Israelites at Beth Shemesh. Even here, things did not go well. The Israelites of Beth Shemesh did not adequately respect the precious box, and when it was seen to have brought death among them, too, they sent it on to Kiriath Jearim the nearest of the cities established as a habitation for the Levites (the official priests). These people were legally the correct guardians of all holy things.

The hilltop site of the house of the Levite named Abinidab was known by Israel, forever after, as the home that prospered from the blessing of God during the many years that it sheltered the recovered Ark of the Covenant. The Ark remained there during the time of the prophet Samuel and the reign of King Saul until David of Bethlehem, the promised king from the tribe of Judah, could bring it with great ceremony and popular joy into the city of Jerusalem, capital of his kingdom.

Even ten centuries later, no Jew would ever have approached that hilltop, directly on the road that led between Jerusalem and the Mediterranean, without inwardly saluting the greatly-blessed house of Abinidab, or remembering the joy of Israel in their miraculous recovery of the Ark of the Covenant.

In a beautiful monastic garden graced by a Crusader church at Abu Ghosh, there is an abundant spring of clear water. The village gathered around this spring has been a stop for travellers along the main road from early times. It has also served as an encampment area for threatening Roman troop movements, as is evidenced even by the words on a pillar there identifying the site with the tenth Roman legion. There is long tradition of an association between this place with the story of Emmaus.

Was this, then, the place that the two followers of Jesus approached as they walked so sorrowfully toward "Emmaus" at the end of the resurrection day?

As they approached the place where the Ark had rested, or the place where God had met with Israel on Samuel's mountain, just over seven miles from the city, it was he who was explaining to them that the Tanakh, the Jewish Scriptures, showed in many places, including the stories of Moses and the law and the other writings and prophecies, that the promised Messiah had to die before He could enter His glory.

They pressed him to stay with them, because it was night, and he should not travel on in the dark. He accepted their invitation. They produced food. He, their stranger guest, said the Jewish blessing and broke the Passover matzah, for it was still the week when the Jews ate only unleavened bread to remember their deliverance from Egypt.

Suddenly they realised who he was, that He was the Lord Himself. (Some say they saw the nail marks in His wrists when He broke the bread; some say they knew His familiar voice in this familiar blessing; others say the 'scales simply had dropped from their eyes.' Does it matter which, or, even, if all are true?)

When 'their eyes were opened and they knew Him', He disappeared from their sight, and they realised what had happened. They agreed with each other, as they rushed back to Jerusalem (only just over 7 miles, and by moonlight, since it was Passover) that 'their hearts had burned' in them as He had explained the truth to them as they had been walking with Him. They were still explaining what had happened to the assembled company of disciples, perhaps in the upper room of the Last Supper, when Jesus appeared there with them, in that room too, back in Jerusalem.

There was another incident in this area that is Biblically associated with the story of the Ark of the Covenant and Kiriath Jearim.

It relates to the transference of the Ark from Kiriath Jearim to Jerusalem in the time of King David. After the Ark had begun its journey from the hilltop house of Abinidab, somewhere along the route (as the story reads, not too far from Kiriath Jearim) the procession crossed a certain threshing floor and the Ark began to sway on its cart. Uzzah (or Uza), one of Abinidab's sons reached out his hand to steady the Ark. Like the people of Beth Shemesh, he was 'too casual' in his behaviour with the sacred object, and he was struck dead on the spot. This greatly upset David, and the rest of the journey was abandoned out of fear. The Ark was, thus, placed temporarily for safekeeping with another family who, like Abinidab, found themselves blessed for their hospitality.

The place on the road between Kiriath Jearim and Jerusalem where this sad incident occurred was dubbed 'Peretz Uzzah' in Hebrew, meaning 'breaking out of Uzzah'. According to the Scripture accounts, this name stuck to the place. A couple of miles from Kiriath Jearim on the road to Jerusalem there is still exists a village, beside a very ancient settlement with springs of water, called Motza. The word Motza, if broken down, can conceivably come from "m'"(from) with "otza" (uza), so possibly 'from Uzzah'. The word appearing as a whole carries the meaning of 'a place from which something breaks forth' and this supposedly is derived from the presence of an ancient spring at the bottom of the valley just there. To reach the village of Motza from Kiriath Jearim, one must descend from the hilltop ridge of Abinidab's house through the village of Abu Ghosh, travel through a sort of valley area with another slight rise and descent under the hill fort called Kastel, follow a curve at the valley bottom passing the area of the ancient synagogue and spring of Motza, and then immediately begin the final steep ascent to Jerusalem. It is easy to imagine a cart wobbling as it rolled over a threshing floor at the beginning of the climb from the valley floor.

Looking from Jerusalem toward Kiriath Jearim, the hill top of Nebi Samuel or Mizpah is seen on the right hand, rising proudly above neighbouring western heights. As already noted, these two hilltops, Nebi Samuel and Kiriath Jearim, form the terminal points of a virtually continuous ridge system, only about three miles long, surrounding and protecting Jerusalem on the west and southwest.

the effect of approaching that place on Resurrection Day in the company of Jesus would have been undoubtedly important to the disciples. Walking toward Nebi Samuel, devout Jews would be reminded forcibly of the tabernacle during the years when Israel was wandering in the wilderness with God leading them as a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, of the sacrifices for sin made at that high place through all the years of the prophet Samuel and throughout the reign of kings Saul and David until the building of the temple in Jerusalem under Solomon, of the great gatherings of the Israelites that took place there, and of the burial of one of the great prophets of Israel, Samuel himself.

Travelling toward Qubeiba, with the powerful visual backdrop of Nebi Samuel on the right hand and Abinidab's house further to the left, both points of this ridge glowing in profile against a setting sun, the minds of the followers of the slain Jesus would have discovered, under the guidance of their stranger companion's words, that they themselves were witnesses of and participants in the greatest story of all time, the Resurrection of the long-awaited Messiah from the dead. As they walked, and as He talked with them, they learned that this story was perfectly fulfilling the hitherto mysterious promises hidden away in the Law, the Psalms and the prophecies of their own Scriptures, was very beautifully shadowed in the lessons of their nation's history, and was testified to by the memories of the landscape through which they walked on the road to Emmaus.

these same impressions would be formed, but there would be added a further, even more powerful element in their experience. They would be discovering that a beautiful re-enactment of the recovery of the Ark of the Covenant to Israel was taking place.

A thousand years earlier, the Israelite ancestors of these men had lost the sense of God with them by their own sinful actions, and had not had played any part in the recovery of the lost Ark. God had brought it back to them, Himself, by His own sovereign power.

When He had been seized by the disbelieving leaders of the religious Jews and handed over to the pagan Romans for sentencing and execution less than a week later, He had been stolen from a people who had come to hang on His words and actions, to hope in Him for national deliverance as well as personal salvation. These believers in Him had lost the 'presence of God', the Shekinah, from among them and with His death they had lost all hope of deliverance as a nation.

Jesus had been delivered from the power of an enemy by the sovereign act of God,

As the Philistines had not been able to hold the Ark, death could not hold the Son of God.

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The sight of Mount Zion rising from the Hinnom valley, framed by the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem and crowned by the impressive Dormition Abbey, must be one of the most beautiful city scenes in the world. Personally, I had a tremendous sense of unreality when, for the first time, I crossed the valley and started to climb its slopes along the twisting pathway that rises steeply between masses of fragrant blue-blooming rosemary bushes.

Reaching the city walls I found a carved stone confirming in its title what I felt in my heart: I was walking the "Ascent to Mount Zion". This was not, anymore, a spiritual parable; my feet were firmly on the golden stones of a very physical place!

Books and leaflets had told me what was on Mount Zion. There was, of course, the dramatic Dormition Abbey towering above all other structures. Nearby was a complex of buildings which, in various sections and approached through different entrances, contained an odd combination of places of interest to visitors: a study centre, a holocaust memorial that pre-dated Yad Vashem, the place honoured by the Jews as the tomb of King David, and the one regarded by Christians as the site of the upper room of the Last Supper.

It was a very moving experience to stand before the tomb of King David. Guide books said that this probably wasn’t really the site of King David’s burial, but the devout Jewish worshippers I saw there didn’t seem to know that! Their prayers, intense and melodious, were stirring. It was a privilege to be able to stand among them as respect and affection were openly demonstrated. David was a great king and the "Sweet Singer of Israel." Many of the words of his psalms were woven by familiarity into my memory. I felt quite emotional when I found that I could decipher several of the words embroidered in Hebrew letters of gold on the velvet cover over the place of the tomb: "David, King of Israel."

I wandered away from this Jewish place of remembrance and began to search for the Christians' "Upper Room of the Last Supper", by all accounts not far away. It was a confusing exercise, trying to find that place, and I found that I was not the only person in that state of perplexity. Instructions about where the traditional upper room actually is were not very clearly given! It was eventually located, though, a large chamber with a strange combination of Crusader and Moslem architectural features and a model of the "tree of Jesse" on a platfom. As Christian groups were often there singing, reading, or praying, it was a most interesting place to visit, and I returned several times just to "be there".

One day I began to wonder where the room of the tomb of David was in relation to the upper room. I went up and down staircases, around corners, followed windows and roofs from below, and finally, to my astonishment, realised what I should have seen from the first visit, since a closed staircase runs from one to the other. The upper room is above the tomb. Why had I never read or heard that from anyone? I really could not understand this, and developed a sense of curiosity about these two sites being so near each other.

A pattern I had adopted when I arrived in Israel was to read what I could find in the Bible about every place I visited. Usually I tried to do the readings first, so that I could look with fresh Biblical understanding at what I was seeing. This time, I read afterwards. I looked for passages that related to the burial place of King David. I found that I had written on my special Jewish/Christian Israeli calendar that the first date of Shavuot was the day when the devout Jewish people especially commemorated the death of King David and went to pray at his tomb. As I then read the story of the Last Supper, I understood properly, for the first time, the geographical settings in the description of Jesus and the disciples leaving the room on Mount Zion, walking down the steep hillside to the valley below, and crossing the Kidron Valley to the Mount of Olives and the Garden of Gethsemane.

I noticed something for the first time, something that everyone else had seemed to have taken for granted, that the events of the Day of Pentecost may have taken place in the same upper room as the place of the Last Supper. Immediately, the account of Pentecost in the book of Acts, especially the speech that Peter made on the day of Pentecost, acquired an entirely new meaning and emphasis.

The story begins (Acts 2) nearly two months after the death and resurrection of Jesus, with the disciples meeting "together in one place." In a vivid description of the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the followers of Christ at Pentecost, we are told that there was a sound like strong wind, and "tongues of fire" came to rest on each of the followers of Jesus. Then they started to speak in many languages. The account in Acts relates that there were religious Jewish people from many places in the world visiting in Jerusalem and when they heard the loud noise, they rushed to the place from which the sound came. There they heard this group of mostly Galilean (country) men speaking to them fluently in their own languages. They thought the disciples were drunk.

Peter and the other disciples stood up as leaders of this group and Peter addressed the mocking spectators. He told them the story of how Jesus had recently been crucified in this very city, but had risen from the dead. He then said that King David had predicted this would happen, that the Holy One of God (the Messiah) would not remain in His grave. He said, "Brothers, I can tell you confidently that the patriarch David died and was buried, and HIS TOMB IS HERE TO THIS DAY. But he was a prophet and knew that God had promised him on oath that he would place one of his descendants on his throne. Seeing what was ahead, he spoke of the Christ...."

Three thousand people in Jerusalem became believers in Jesus as the Christ on that day. This was the Day of Pentecost, the Jewish feast of Shavuot, the day when devout Jews came from all over the world, not just for religious observances at the Temple, but to pray at the tomb of their greatest king, David. If the place regarded as the tomb of King David is just below the upper room, it is no wonder that on that particular day so many people heard the sounds when the Holy Spirit descended on the assembled company of believers. The disciples would have been directly above them!

Fr. Bargil Pixner, Prior of the Dormition Abbey on Mount Zion, has written extensively about places in the Holy Land and their connection with Biblical accounts. He has pointed out in great detail the influence of the Essenes upon the teachings of Jesus and His disciples. It is his contention that the place of the upper room on Mount Zion might have been, in fact, an Essene guest house. Recent excavations have uncovered the Essene Gate into the old city wall nearby and, in the same area, an Essene ritual bath.

Among the Essenes, the day of Shavuot was the Day of the Renewal of the Covenant between God and the Israelite people, just as this time marks for present day Jewish worshippers the day of rejoicing over the giving of the Law (the Torah) on Mount Sinai. In Christian belief, the Day of Pentecost is the day that signalled the coming into effect of a New Covenant that God made with all mankind, a covenant made possible because of the redemptive effect of the death of His Son Jesus Christ. The sign and seal of that New Covenant was the giving of the Holy Spirit to believers.

Is the reason that so many people from so many places heard and thus believed the message of that day was that it was the one day of the year when devout men from many nations would be praying on Mount Zion, a good distance away from the Temple? Is the reason Peter spoke on the subject of the prophecies of King David so markedly not only because David had made prophecies relating to the Christ, but also because King David was on the minds of those praying at his tomb?

Just about two months earlier, on Palm Sunday, Jesus had been hailed as the "Son of David" in His triumphal procession down the Mount of Olives. This had openly marked Him as a claimant to the throne of his ancestor, the beloved King David. Less than a week later, Jesus had been crucified nearby with a sign over His cross naming Him "King of the Jews".

The world had been astonished by claims from witnesses that Jesus had risen from the dead and then, just less than two months later, the commencement of His new kingdom was marked with the sound of a rushing wind and flames of fire ( ? right over the tomb of King David on Mount Zion). That Day of Pentecost turned out to be the Inauguration Day of a newly-declared Kingdom of God, one whose Sovereign was the Son of God and the Son of David.

Josephus records that the tomb of King David was robbed twice by successors who ruled the Jews, neither of whom were rightful claimants to his throne. Apparently the actual burial sites for David and Solomon were vast places, built deeply into the earth and cunningly disguised. There are descriptions of rooms full of treasures nearby, all in a very complex underground tomb. Many years after the death of David, Hyrcanus, a high priest, robbed one room in the sepulchre of 3,000 talents to buy the city out of a siege by Antiochus. Yet later, King Herod the Great, having heard of this episode and in need of money himself, tried also to "steal" from the tomb of David. Herod, however, was not successful in his attempt: "...two of his guards were slain, by a flame that burst out upon those that went in....So he was terribly affrighted, and went out, and built a propitiatory monument because of that fright he had been in; and this of white stone, at the mouth of the sepulchre, and that at a great expense also....And indeed Herod’s troubles in his family seemed to be augmented by reason of this attempt he made upon David’s sepulchre...."

Thus, there are two accounts of "fire" (?on Mount Zion)! One was fire "beneath the surface" a fire that seemed to protect the place where David is buried. The other was fire "from the air" that announced the coming to reign of one of the one who would remain on his throne forever.

From Josephus, it might be deduced, though not necessarily, that King David was not actually buried at the place where he is mourned. This possibility does not affection the significance of the Shavuot/Pentecost connection. It is strange, though, that if the sites on Mount Zion commonly regarded in modern times as the Tomb of David and as the Upper Room are not genuine, the place where Jewish people gather to mourn David is just below the place where, traditionally for Christians, the Holy Spirit, promised by the Risen Son of David, exhibited the power of His New Covenant on the Day of Pentecost!

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