Ready, Set, Rewind

        It's a cold, snowy morning and as we load onto the bus, we can't help but notice someone trying to clear a patch of snow with a wooden sign for a shovel! Who would have thought that we would escape Chicago and head to a semi-desert region only to be caught in our hideout by winter.


        Anyway, as we focus more and more on the life of Christ and of the people that he taught, lived with, and loved, we are continually encouraged by our guides to place ourselves in the context of the times that Jesus lived in so that we can gain a deeper understanding of the Sacred Scriptures. What was life like for them? What did their fishing boats look like? How big were their homes?

        Today, we stepped back even farther in time, rewinding all the way back to the Stone Age and the beginning of human activity in the land that Jesus grew up in. In order to do this we visited the Israeli Museum, which took us on a tour of life thousands of years before Jesus' birth all the way up to the rise of Islam in the Middle East. Starting with a female figurine which, estimated to be a quarter of a million years old, is the oldest example of artwork in the world, we soon found ourselves in front of one of the earlier statues of what was considered to be a god (9000 years old). 

        Many of us have wondered at one point or another what Baal looked like as we hear about this god of the Canaanites that so often tempted the Israelites into false worship. Well, now we have a visual image of the culprit and while we might find it amazing that God's chosen people would worship something so seemingly pathetic, we remember in this season of Lent that we are all guilty at times of worshiping slightly more modern gods of our own making (movies, drinks, games etc).

Other highlights included seeing the ossuaries of Joseph, the son of the high priest Caiaphas, seeing an example of how some crucifixions were carried out (the feet were nailed to the sides of the cross) and catching a glimpse of fragments of the oldest copy of a New Testament text (“'I am the Alpha and the Omega,' says the Lord God.”).

 

        In addition to visiting the Israeli Museum, we also had the opportunity to visit the Shrine of the Book, which is the place where the Dead Sea Scrolls (Qumran Scrolls) and the Aleppo codex are kept on display. For those who aren't familiar with the Dead Sea Scrolls, they are an incredibly important discovery in the 1940s of some 981 texts which are valued for their religious and historical significance. Among these texts, which date from the third century BC, we have the complete text of the book of Isaiah, which is by far the earliest record we have of this and other Biblical texts. Not only is this the earliest record, but it also almost perfectly matched newer texts, such as the Aleppo Codex (10th century AD), which is one of the oldest medieval manuscript of the Hebrew Bible. What's the big deal, you still might be wondering. What the Dead Sea Scrolls show us is that the Bible has been accurately transmitted over two thousand years and that God in his providence allowed the same truth from hundreds of years ago to find its way into our hands and hearts.