OF THE MAN WITH A

DIRT BRUSH

 Dr. Bob Holt, md

Sabbath, October 7, 1989 – Jericho South

     After breakfast Ron, Randy, and I would normally be going to church after taking a shower and getting on our best clothes, since all three of us were Seventh-day Adventists, but instead we decided to take the modern equivalent of a Sabbath Day’s journey, which means more or less anywhere  you can go in a car that is relaxing, or has something to do with nature, or with the Bible.   There we were in the Holy Land where everywhere you look what you see reminds you of some Bible Story or other, so we decided to head for Jericho, and after that see what else might occur to us to do in the afternoon.   We were all aware that thieves might waylay us on the road to Jericho, as they did the unlucky traveler in Jesus’ famous parable, but decided to risk it anyway. 

       Luke 10:30 “And Jesus --- said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead.  31 And by chance there came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.  32 And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side.  32 But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him.  34 And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. 35 And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee.”

      On the left side of the modern Jericho Road, which is paved with asphalt  not dirt or gravel, there is a widened area part way down the long hill where Bedouins were selling in 1989 ball-point pens and other cheap trinkets, and posing for tourists with cameras who might cross their palms with silver.   Those in more colorful clothes and turbans who had a camel or some sheep and goats commanded a higher price for posing, while those in more modern attire with no props had to settle for trying to convince their buyers that their merchandise was more valuable than it looked.   Also at either this pull-off or one a bit farther down the road was a good place to view in the distance Saint George’s Monastery.  This would be the Saint George who slew the dragon in a Medieval story, which makes it likely that there might be some English-speaking monks there.   We settled on taking pictures from the distance, letting telephoto lenses do the work we didn’t feel like doing in the heat and dust.   The monks of Saint George’s Monastery have been doing for many years, perhaps even many centuries, what the Samaritan did for the naked wounded traveler in Jesus’ parable.   Being a “Good Neighbor”.

 Where the Walls Fell Down!  Or Didn’t?

 

    As a child I remember singing this song, and I’m sure some of my readers do also.

	Joshua fit the battle of Jericho—                                            Jericho ----                                                Jericho ---
	Joshua fit the battle of Jericho ----    And the walls came a tumbling down!”

        It is 23 miles from Jerusalem to Jericho.   23 winding and twisting miles between steep and almost barren cliffs, some of them nearly 4,000 feet high.  Alongside the road one reads signs every mile or so telling you what your elevation is now as you drive along.  But the sign that captures your attention and stimulates your imagination is the one that says “Sea Level”.    The road continues down.  And further down.  And still further down.  And you realize that if a major earthquake should occur you would now be under water!

         Once Ron and Randy and I reached the point where the road ceased descending, we turned left at the intersection that led to Jericho, and past a built-up area to the place where archaeologists have unearthed the ruins of the oldest remains of the ancient city.   It is called Tell es-Sultan and the nearby spring is called Ain es-Sultan.   We parked our car in the parking lot, paid a modest admission fee, and listened in English to a tour guide recite some of the details of the “Second Battle of Jericho” which waged on and on after these ruins were first identified.  Werner Keller’s famous book The Bible as History, of  which 10 million copies were sold, gives the history of this “Second Battle of Jericho” on pages 160 – 164.

       “The remains of Jericho have made Tell es-Sultan one of the most extraordinary scenes of discovery in the world, for it has long since been not merely a matter of investigating the fortress of Biblical times.  In this mound, under the strata of the Bronze Age, lie traces of the Stone Age, which takes us back to the earliest times of all, to the days when man first built himself settled habitations.   The oldest of Jericho’s houses are 7000 years old and, with their round walls, resemble Bedouin’s tents.  But the art of pottery was as yet unknown among their inhabitants.  In 1953 a British expedition conducted excavations here, and the director of the enterprise, Dr. Kathleen M. Kenyon declared: “Jericho can lay claim to being by far the oldest city in the world.”

        “Shortly after the turn of the century archaeologists directed their attention to this lonely mound of Tell es-Sultan.  From 1907 to 1909 picks and spades carefully felt their way through layer after layer of this massive mound of ruins.   When the two leaders of the German-Austrian expedition, Professor Ernst Sellin and Professor Karl Watzinger, made known what they had discovered, they caused genuine amazement.   Two concentric rings of fortifications were exposed, the inner ring surrounding the ridge of the hill.   It is a masterpiece of military defense made of sun-dried bricks in the form of two parallel walls about 10 or 12 feet apart.   The inner wall, which is particularly massive, is about 12 feet thick throughout.  The outer ring of fortification runs along the foot of the hill and consists of a 6 foot thick wall, about 25-30 foot high, with strong foundations.   These are the famous walls of Jericho.   The two lines of fortification, their exact historical placing, the dates of their erection and destruction have given rise to a vehement dispute among the experts who advance the pros and cons in a welter of opinions, hypotheses and arguments.  It began with the first announcement by Sellin and Watzinger and has continued ever since.”

        “Both discoverers arrived themselves at what they called a ‘considerable modification’ of their first conclusion.   They issued a joint statement in which they maintained that the outer wall ‘fell about 1200 BC, and therefore must be the city wall that Joshua destroyed’.   To shed light on the whole business a British expedition set out for Tell es-Sultan in 1930.  After six years’ digging further portions of the fortifications were exposed.  Professor John Garstang as leader of the expedition noted every detail with the utmost precision.  He described graphically the violence with which the inner cirgle of parallel fortifications had been destroyed.  ‘The space between the two walls is filled with fragments and rubble.  There are clear traces of a tremendous fire, compact masses of blackened bricks, cracked stones, charred wood and ashes.   Along the walls the houses have been burned to the ground and their roofs have crashed on top of them.’”

        After Garstang had consulted the most knowledgeable experts, the outcome of the second archaelogical battle was that the inner ring was the most recent, therefore the one which must have been destroyed by the Israelites.  But that did not settle the matter.  The wrangle about the Walls of Jericho continues.  Gerstang dates the destruction of the inner ring about 1400 BC.   Father Hugues Vincent, a leading archaeologist and one of the most successful investigators into Jerusalem’s ancient past, also studied the evidence and dated the destruction of the walls between 1250 and 1200 BC.”

    As we listened to the outline of details of these earlier excavations, Randy Osborne, Ron Wyatt, and I didn’t see much to worry about.  We already know there was a great amount of controversy about the accuracy of Bishop Ussher’s “Chronology” found in the margin of King James’ Bibles, and whether the walls of Jericho “fell down” in 1400 BC or perhaps 200 years later in 1200 BC seemed to be of relatively minor consequences, so long as they did “fall down” while Israel was watching, and Israel could credit this as being an “Act of God” in their behalf.

       “Scanty vestiges of late Bronze Age dwellings have been found only on the lower eastern slopes of the hill.   We owe all this information to the great British  archaeologist Kathleen  M. Kenyon who by her extensive and successful excavations in Jericho during the fifties of the present century laid the foundations of our present-day knowledge.  It was Kathleen M. Kenyon, too, who convincingly interpreted the very small amount of pottery found at Jericho.  She was also able to interpret the information provided by the graves which constitute the only evidence concerning the late period of ancient Jericho.”

       “According to her findings the walls of Jericho had to be rebuilt during the Bronze Age no less than seventeen times.   The walls were repeatedly destroyed either by earthquakes or by erosion.  Perhaps this weakness of the walls of Jericho found expression in the Bible account of how the Children of Israel, in order to conquer Jericho, merely had to shout their war cry when the priests blew the trumpets.”  

       “The middle Bronze Age city dated from the time of the Hyksos and came to an end at the same time as they, around 1550 BC.   Thereafter Jericho remained uninhabited for about a century and a half.   It was only about the year 1400 BC, as shown by pottery, objects found in graves and the few late Bronze Age remains of  dwellings on the eastern slope of the hill, that people began to settle there once more.  This late Bronze Age town, of whose existence we have only such sparse evidence, was again deserted by its inhabitants, however, around 1325 AD.  Did they become the victims of conquerors of some kind who were subsequently absorbed in the melting-pot of ‘Israel’ and whose conquests were ultimately incorporated in the Biblical account of the settlement of the land?   For if it is the case that Israelites did not come to Jericho until the time of the occupation, i.e., about the middle or towards the end of the 13^th century BC, they did not need to conquer the city for they found it uninhabited!  Jericho was not rebuilt until the 9^th century before Christ, in the days of King Ahab (1 Kings 16:34).  As the Bible tells us (Joshua 6:26), it is as though a curse had lain on the place for centuries.”

        Ron Wyatt, who by then had been to Jericho many times before was not at all shocked or perturbed by what his fellow archaeologists were saying about the “walls falling down” story but it was news to me, with my parochial school education which had not exposed me to the harsh realities of Biblical criticism of this type.   I made a mental note that perhaps I needed to do a bit more reading outside the Bible before I made any future trips to this area.

       We found a place in Jericho that made falafels for our lunch, and also purchased some bottled water because the temperature was now hovering at about 100 degrees.   Not far from Tell es-Sultan was Ain es-Sultan and an Arab youth there was happy to tell us that Yes, this was where the Prophet Elisha had cured this spring, which before only put out brackish water hardly fit to drink, and since that day it produces the finest and purest water that can be found anywhere.    Here’s my diary not for October 7, middle of the page.  “7000 gallons of water per hour from Elisha’s spring---“

       2 Kings 2:19 “And the men of the city said unto Elisha, Behold, I pray thee, the situation of this city is pleasant, as my lord seeth: but the water is naught, and the ground barren.  20 And he said, bring me a new cruze, and put salt therein.  And they brought it to him.  And they brought it to him.  21 And he went forth unto the spring of water, and cast the salt in there, and said, Thus saith the Lord, I have healed these waters; there shall not be from thence any more death or barren land.  22 So the waters were healed unto this day, according to the saying of Elisha which he spake.”

       Note that Elisha lived and prophesied and did his 14 famous miracles (twice those of Elijah) in the days of Ahab, at which time there were people rebuilding Jericho, after the area had been abandoned for many centuries.

       1 Kings 16:33 “And Ahab made a grove;  and Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel that were before him. 34 In his days did Hiel the Bethelite build Jericho:  he laid the foundation thereof in Abiram his firstborn, and set up the gates thereof in his youngest son Segub, according to the word of the Lord, which he spoke by Joshua the son of Nun.”

       Luke 19:1 “And Jesus entered and passed through Jericho. 2 and, behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus, which was the chief among the publicans, and he was rich.  3 And he sought to see Jesus who he was; and could not for the press, because he was little of stature. 4 And he ran before, and climbed up into a sycomore tree to see him: for he was to pass that way. 5 And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up, and saw him, and said unto him, Zacchaeus, make haste, and come down; for to day I must abide at thy house.”

       The modern Palestinian village that has replaced the ancient city of Jericho is called Eriha, but answers to the name of Jericho also still, for the sake of us tourists.  Ron also pointed out to me one of the many mountain peaks visible not far in the distance that has the tradition of being that on which Jesus was tempted by Satan with the offer of all the kingdoms of the world.   All this was new and strange to me in 1989, because, like most others who rely on only their ministers and Bible school classes for information, I then thought Jesus spent almost all his time in the gospel years in Galilee, about as far away from Jericho as one can be, and still be in Israel.

        After our lunch, we got into our car and drove south to Qumran, only a few miles away from Jericho, where we stopped momentarily to look at the white cliffs and mounds where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, then many miles further south, where we stopped and took many pictures in the Masada area.

       My diary notation for Sabbath afternoon, October 7, 1989 next reads – “To Kedesh through phospate mine and past Har Zin (mountain) to Moses’ water rock—“

          I don’t remember that we stopped very long here at this time, because by now Ron had decided after looking at his watch and the map that we had time to drive all the way to Elat, at the far southern end of the Negev desert and stay there for the night.   But we did stop out there in the desert long enough to look at from a distance, and perhaps photograph or videotape the large split rock on top of a ridge that Ron Wyatt has designated as the rock Moses hit with his rod instead of speaking to as God had commanded him to do.    The story is found in Numbers chapter 20.

         Numbers 20:1 “Then came the children of Israel, even the whole congregation, into the desert of Zin in the first month: and the people abode in Kedesh: and Miriam died there, and was buried there.  2 And there was no water for the congregation: and they gathered themselves together against Moses and against Aaron.”

         Numbers 20:7 “And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, 8 Take the rod, and gather thou the assembly together, thou, and Aaron thy brother, and speak ye unto the rock before their eyes; and it shall give forth his water, and thou shalt bring forth to them water out of the rock: so thou shalt give the congregation and their beasts drink.”

         Numbers 20:9  “And Moses took the rod from before the Lord, as he commanded him. 10 And Moses and Aaron gathered the congregation together before the rock, and he said unto them, Hear now, ye rebels; must we fetch you water out of this rock? 11 And Moses lifted up his hand, and with his rod he smote the rock twice; and the water came out abundantly, and the congregation drank, and their beasts also.”

         The story continues with God upset with Moses because Moses had not performed this ritual exactly as God had instructed him to do it.  For this moment of indiscretion on Moses’ part, he was forbidden to lead Israel the rest of the way into the “Promised Land” (Numbers 20:12, 13).   I had to admit, however, as Ron and Randy and I stood by our rental car that hot Sabbath afternoon in October, 1989, that we were, as far as we could tell, in the Wilderness of Zin, looking up at a giant split rock on the ridge in the distance with what appeared to be a waterway leading almost to our car made up of jumbled rocks with sandy depressions between the rocks that appeared to have once held rushing water.

         This was the first of four times that we drove down this road and back on our Ark of the Covenant excavation trip.  Every time we passed trough the Oasis of Engedi, where David hid in a cave and met King Saul in an episode made famous in 1 Samuel Chapter 24.

        1 Samuel 1:1 “And it came to pass, when Saul was returned from following the Philistines, that it was told him, saying, Behold, David is in the Wilderness of En-ged-i.

2 And Saul took three thousand chosen men out of all Israel, and went to seek David and his men upon the rocks of the wild goats.  3 And he came to the sheepcotes by the way, where there was a cave; and Saul went in to cover his feet: and David and his men remained in the sides of the cave.  4. ---Then David arose, and cut off the skirt of Saul’s robe privily.”

      By the time, 3000 years later, that Ron Wyatt, Randy Osborne, and I drove past this cave, with its rushing brook, waterfalls, and yes, wild goats, it was popular as a campsite for tourists from all over the world and a “must see” for tours of the Holy Land.  I don’t remember that we stopped at the En Gedi cave at this time, because Ron was in a hurry to show me the other sites much farther in the Negev desert.   But I was already familiar  with the En Gedi cave, having been inside on a previous trip to Israel in 1983, six years before.  So we drove on past the Engedi Oasis and past the turn-off to go to Masada, and finally reached the southern tip of the Dead Sea, which by now is a salt flat of chunks of salt.  As hard as rock, and white as snow, gleaming brilliantly in the sun.  We kept on driving, taking turns at the wheel, headed due south.  Soon we had left the Wilderness of Judea and were in the large triangular desert area known as “the Negev”.  

  OASIS of EN GEDI : Wild Goat, Waterfall, and the famous Cave

  South to Elat

     We got back into our car and drove perhaps several miles back past the mountain identified by the official Israeli sign as “Har Zin” and turned right (south) on the road to Elat.  The next entry on my diary reads: “After dark drove to Elat to nice hotel, supper  at Italian restaurant.”

     The Red Sea is shaped like a Y as you examine a map of the Middle East, and the left leg of that Y goes up in a broad expanse of water northward towards Egypt, where the southern end of the Suez canal begins that allows ships to travel northward and enter the Mediterranean Sea.   The other leg of the Y travels northward also, but towards Israel and Jordan, not Egypt.   The expanse of water is narrower than the Gulf of Suez, and deeper.

      This is the Gulf of Aquaba, still technically a part of the Red Sea.   At the extreme northern tip of the Gulf of Aguaba is the Israeli port now called Elat, but in Bible times named Ezion-geber.   Elat runs seamlessly into the Jordanian port of Aquaba, with the border between Israel and Jordan going right through the middle of the twin cities.   This was of no concern to Randy and Ron and I on our overnight stay at Elat, because we had American passports, and could have easily gone over into Jordan if we had reason to do so.   A few miles south of Elat is the Egyptian border check-point, but we had no reason to go there either. 

       The next morning, Sunday morning, October 8, we decided to visit a local aquarium, where we enjoyed looking at many of the colorful fish that can be found in the Gulf of Aquaba.    Ron Wyatt, a scuba diver, has seen many of these fish outside of an aquarium environment up close and personal.   Particularly to be avoided are the lion fish, whose pointed appendages all over are extremely poisonous.   Also it’s wise to avoid anything that looks like a snake in the Gulf of Aquaba, because they all are poisonous also.   We left the aquarium and headed north up the very same road we had traveled to reach Elat late on the evening before. But before we left Elat there was one other little item to attend to.  One or several of us had “travelers diarrhea” from eating the falafels, either in Jerusalem or at Jericho, so we bought some “Lomotil” at an Elat pharmacy, and took some before continuing our travels.

ANGEL on a PARK BENCH

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