Jericho

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.

Trip to Israel

I said I was going to Israel. It's a trip with a group from church, about 25 people. My wife convinced me to go several months ago when the opportunity first came up, because this year has a couple of significant events already happening: she's turning 50, and we'll celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary. We happened to have the money, so she had very little convincing to do, especially since I love to travel. This is probably a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and I'd be a fool not to take it.

But the significance of this trip is beginning to sink in as the time gets closer. Partly because I'm a student of the Bible, and Israel is where most of the Bible was written and where most of the history of the Bible took place. It's the Holy Land. It's where Jesus walked. It's where He was born (Bethlehem), where He lived and did His ministry, and where He was crucified and rose again (Jerusalem, the Holy City). We will walk where He walked, and go to many of the sites where history was made.