Monday, January 19, 2009

Highlights and a language lesson

After a great day at St. Andrew's church for worship in the morning, and an afternoon at the "Tower of David Museum" I was ready for today's agenda. We hit up the "Burnt House Museum" and the "Wohl Archaeological Museum". My friend Adria accompanied me on today's endeavors since she just returned back to Jerusalem yesterday. The "Burnt House Museum" is a small archaeological site of a house that has evidence of the Roman destruction of the upper city of Jerusalem in 70ad. It was a house of a high priest during the Roman occupation of Israel given it's location in the upper city and the kinds of materials they found in the house. Very cool!

The "Wohl Archaeological Museum" is a site of 4 to 6 houses from the upper city, the houses of the rich and famous, during the second temple era. Basically, they were the houses of the rich Sadducees during the time of Christ. There were great mosaics and lots of households items found at the sites that are now on display. It was interesting to see the perfume bottles given the story of the woman who broke the bottle over Jesus, using up her precious item in worship. The bottles were very, very small and refuted any ideas I ever had about the bottle mentioned in scripture. I always thought that since she spent so much money on it, there would be more to it. Not the case. Yet, given these bottles were only recovered at the rich palaces you can imagine the luxury of the item and its small size indicating the rarity of such a purchase.

Last but certainly not least, a few more highlights from interactions with people in Jerusalem:
An Arab guy, a little shady, told me that I was "in good condition" the other day...funny.
On another note, if you ever want a little ego boost, come to Jerusalem with blue eyes and blond hair. One of my friends Arab friends told me, "your eyes are like the ocean, you could just fall in, and the deeper you go, the more you find....you could just keep going deeper and deeper"....also funny.

Anyhow, that's it for today. I do love being in this land and I'm not sure why I enjoy it so much. As they would say in Hebrew:
baruk hashem - praise the name
cola kavote - all the glory

Next time I'll have pictures

No comments: