Our day started with a visit to the Church of All Nations (also known as Gethsemane Church) and views of the walled city of Jerusalem.
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Kidron Valley -
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Temple Mount -
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Golden Gate
This is believed to be the spot in the Kidron valley where Judas betrayed Jesus and Jesus prayed among the olive trees.
The garden of Gethsemane, near the foot of the Mount of Olives is named as the place where Jesus went after Passover to pray with his disciples.
The name, Gethsemane, in Hebrew means “oil press”. Oil is still pressed from the fruit of eight ancient and gnarled olive trees that give the garden a timeless character.
Beside the garden is the Church of All Nations built over the rock on which Jesus is believed to have prayed in agony before he was betrayed by Judas Iscariot and arrested.
Into the Judean desert we stopped at a beautiful Greek Orthodox monastery dedicated to St. Gerasimus.
The Monastery of St Gerasimus, one of the earliest of the many monasteries in the Judean desert, is named in honour of a monk who is usually shown with a pet lion.
The lion depicted in icons of Gerasimus comes from a story that he found the animal wandering in the desert. It had a thorn stuck in its paw. Gerasimus gently removed the thorn and tended to the wound.
The lion became devoted to Gerasimus, serving him and the monastery and retrieving the monastery’s donkey when it was stolen by thieves.
The story has it that when Gerasimus died in 475 the lion lay on his grave and died of grief.
Qumran is an archaeological site in the West Bank where the Dead Sea scrolls were written, hidden and first discovered in 1947 by a Bedouin searching for a lost sheep.
The Dead Sea Scrolls comprise more than 800 documents made of animal skin, papyrus and even forged copper. They were written by ascetics who moved into this barren wilderness to pray and preserve ancient texts. Most were written between 200 B.C. and A.D. 68. They stored the scrolls in clay pots in 11 caves before Romans destroyed their settlement in A.D. 68.
Their content has deepened scholars understanding of the Bible and shed light on the histories of Judaism and Christianity.
Our last stop was at the Dead Sea for a dip and float in the briny water.
