The Oldest City in the World
Jericho may be known as the oldest city in the world (Damascus also claims this distinction), but it is also known as the city where the walls came a' tumblin' down. Read Joshua chapter 2 and chapter 6 for the original story of how this happened.
Well, by the time we got there, there really wasn't that much to see. Maybe because the walls fell down over four thousand years ago has something to do with that. Actually, Jericho is a small but fairly modern city today, which happens to contain the ruins of the ancient city of Jericho written about in Joshua. It's more or less on the way from the Dead Sea to Jerusalem, and it's worth going there, just to see the place.
Jericho falls under the jurisdiction of the Palenstinian Authority today (or at least it did in May 2008), and as such, our Jewish guide Mickey could not accompany us. He got off the bus at a roadside stop, and we crossed through a border checkpoint where a Palestinian soldier boarded our bus holding a submachine gun and checked us all over to make sure we weren't going to cause any trouble.
After a short drive into the center of Jericho, which is actually a fairly nice-looking small city, we came to the archaeological site and got off the bus. A brief walk up the hill brought us to the ruins, but there really isn't that much to see. Nonetheless, the sense of history and the connection to the land where the biblical story took place is profound.
After shopping in a nearby Palestinian-style mall, we boarded the bus for Jerusalem, went back through the border checkpoint, and picked up Mickey.
Soon we would be in Jerusalem, the holy city of three major world religions.
