I know you all have been waiting in anxious anticipation to hear about the third day of my trip to the Negev. My favorite day of the whole trip, though there was very little learning.
We left our hotel about about 7:45 in the morning to venture down the long and winding road from modern-day Arad to the desert palace and fortress of Masada. Long and winding road it was. I don't know if I have every been that car sick in my whole life. The g-force of turning in a vehicle is too much for me to handle, and we were trekking down the side of a wilderness mountain to the area of the Dead Sea. And, of course, we left right after breakfast. Not a good way to start the day. Then we got there and had to walk up the Roman siege ramp to the top of Masada – which, I'll admit, looked a lot easier than walking up the snake path. So, for those of you who don't know about the history of Masada, let me try to briefly justify it:
We have a short biblical excerpt referring to David fleeing to “the fortress” by the Dead Sea and En-gedi when he was running from Saul and his army. Many scholars attribute the fortress to be Masada.
As you can tell from my previous posts, Herod really loved his desert palaces. Masada is one of his many. It's right next to the Dead Sea – where, obviously, there is next to no life or fresh water – and Herod, being the show off that he is, builds this huge beautiful palace with an aqueduct and plenty of fresh water. What's interesting, is that Herod likely never even visited this place. He just built the palace, supplied it with huge stores of food and water, and then never went or stayed there. It had bath houses, living quarters, store rooms, three levels, and some of the most well preserved mosaics and painted plaster that we have today.
Well, fast forward to the Jewish revolt against the Romans in 70 A.D. This is where it gets really interesting. There's this historian that we have from this time period named Josephus. Now, Josephus was a little bit of a coward, a suck-up, and greatly enjoyed exaggerating his stories, but he is still used as a great general historian for ancient times. Basically, Josephus was captured at another revolt site and, so that he wouldn't be killed, told the general of the army that he had a vision that he would one day be Caesar. So, of course, the general was like, “I like this guy”, and let him live. And Josephus was the one who recorded the events at Masada. As the story goes, a group of Jewish zealots camped out at Masada. It was the place of their last stand. Archeology shows us that they were even making plots of land to grow food, meaning that they were probably planning on holding out there for as long as possible. So the image is of all the Jewish guys on top of this mountain in an old beautiful palace with Roman soldiers camping at the bottom and building a siege ramp to the top. Josephus tells us that the Jews had so much water that they would stand on the edge of the mountain and poor water on themselves, because the Romans had to walk all the way to En-gedi for water (which I'm guessing is about 20 km.). Once the siege ramp was finished, the Romans brought their battering rams and siege chariots to the top and tried to bring down the wall, but something about how the wall was made meant that when they pressed against the wall it only hardened and became tougher. So, the Romans got smart and set the wall on fire, but the winds changed and blew back on the Romans. The Jews cheered thinking that God had saved them. Then, the winds changed again and blew back on the Jews, finally bringing down the wall. This is where the story gets a little sketchy. Josephus tells us that this event happened at night and that the Roman soldiers went back down to their camp and were to come back in the morning. That night, the leaders of the Jewish group got together and decided that they would rather die there than submit to Rome. So they wrote their names on bits of pottery and drew lots. They picked 10 men to go and kill the women and children (so that the children wouldn't be sold into slavery and so that the women wouldn't be raped by the soldiers), more men were chosen to go and kill the men who killed the families, one man would be left to kill those men, and then that last man would fall on his sword and commit suicide. Josephus says that when the Romans entered the camp in the morning, it was eerily quiet. Supposedly, then, a widowed woman and two orphaned children were found and told them the story of what happened. Here's some odd things about this story: though this wasn't your normal group of Jews, it still was unlike Jews to commit suicide; not enough skeletons were found at the site to corroborate the story; the women and children that were left behind were related to the leaders, and even though they had no immediate family to look for them to kill them it is still hard to believe that they would go unnoticed; and why would the Romans bring down the wall and then leave it there to come back in the morning when they had been trying to take down this wall for months and the whole time they were being mocked by the Jews – I would expect them to be mad! The last little piece, is that Josephus told almost the exact same story for two other sites. And, when he was captured by the Romans originally, it was because he had failed to fall on his sword and commit suicide. I'm thinking he may have been feeling guilty and so retold the story through his guilt for other sites. That being said, lots were uncovered at Masada with the names of the leaders written on them. So, who knows what really happened?
If you can't tell, Masada was my favorite site. There's still preserved original paint and mosaic there! And it's beautiful. I decided that if I was going to hide anywhere in the Negev, it would be Masada.
From Masada, we went to En-gedi. En-gedi is a desert Oasis across from the dead sea. Imagine miles of dry hot land, and along the most dry and dead part of it there is a spring of living, green, wet goodness. There's no good way to express how truly amazing it is. Waterfalls of cool fresh water and plant life surrounding it. Scholars also say that David probably stopped here when fleeing from Saul – and what a better place to flee to? Absolutely beautiful. So we stopped there, at lunch, and swam around in the springs.
Then we went to the Dead Sea. What a difference! To go from cold living water to the lowest and most dead place on Earth. I didn't really want to swim in the Dead Sea, but everyone talked me into doing it. I'm glad I did. It was worth trying once. I didn't know this previously, but when you swim in the Dead Sea, you just float. Due to all the minerals, nothing can physically sink in its waters. I can only equate the feeling of it to swimming in kerosene. It was luke warm and kind of thick and oily. If you didn't know that you had any cuts on your body before, you do as soon as you step in the water. I was suddenly acutely aware of some scratches on my legs and arms. Highly uncomfortable. I stayed in for about five or ten minutes and then took a twenty minute shower, haha. It was interesting. I think my skin is still dried out from the experience.
Our last stop was at Qumran, which I would have been much more excited about had I not still felt so uncomfortable from the Dead Sea water. It was enjoyable to walk through the little town there and see the caves.
This weekend I have another field study. We're going to Galilee to visit places like Damascus, Capernaum, and Nazareth. It'll be cold there! I'm pretty excited.
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