Wow. It's called the Ascent of Adummim, and this road boggled my mind. Folks, this is wasteland. There is not one drop of shade anywhere. The route isn't in the valleys at all but up on the ridge-tops. The views are incredible--by the way, that is Jericho you can actually see at the valley floor just inside the top left of the picture. The breeze is decent at least up on this road. But it's desolate. This is the land of the bedouin, the semi-nomadic shepherds -- yes, incredibly, there is barely enough vegetation out here to graze sheep and goats. Sometimes. Not what I was expecting at all. Jesus walked this road many times with his disciples. This is what he saw and experienced as he approached Jerusalem that last time as Passover week approached, scorched under the hot sun the entire time as he pondered what would take place over the next week. Unbelievable.
By the way, we met some local Bedouin who learned a long time ago that they can sell cheap trinkets and camel rides to tourists, just like us. The short camel rides only cost around $3, quite a good price actually. I'm not quite sure why, but I didn't take one. Probably my last chance to get one from a real Bedouin.
We next headed all the way down into the Rift Valley to Jericho, which is deep inside Palestinian West Bank territory -- however, the tensions aren't as high here, since Jewish settlers have never encroached too much on the Jericho. The reason, we were told, is that in the Old Testament Joshua announces a curse on the site and on anyone who would rebuild the city. Thus no Jewish settler in the West Bank (who are mostly religious in outlook) wants to encroach on Jericho, so the place is kind of left to its own. It was a pretty laid back town -- not much in the way of tourism going on, or at least it seemed that way mid-day. We visited both the site of Jericho in the New Testament, where Herod had built a nice summer villa, and the Old Testament site, which is a little ways to the NE. The OT site was famously excavated by Kathleen Kenyon back in the 1960s (and others before and since), and the best dating methods tell us that a brick wall section they found is ~8,000 years old. That makes Jericho the oldest city in the world. A gratifying moment.
Jericho, as indeed the whole of the Jordan River / Dead Sea valley, is below sea level, which was an only-slightly odd feeling to walk around on dry ground knowing that the raging waves of the world's oceans are actually above you somewhere. After Jericho, we climbed back up out of the Rift Valley, above sea level, and continued on into the center of the "Central Benjamin Plateau." Our stopping place was Nebi Samuel, the high point of the region which also hosts a structure and tower that commemorates the burial place of the prophet Samuel. Everybody agrees that it does no such thing, since the OT clearly says Samuel was buried in his home town of Rama, but at some point somebody erected a structure and people have been using the place ever since, so there you have it. :-) What I do know is that from the top of the tower, you can see for miles in every direction all over the land of Benjamin, that region just to the north of Jerusalem (which you can see from the top of Nebi Samuel off in the distance). This is a deeply strategic area, both in ancient and modern times, as this is where the main E-W and N-S roads for the region meet.
What is so interesting to me is how everything in the Hill Country of Israel can be so close and compact together and yet so discrete and separate. As you drive through the countryside, virtually every hilltop or hillside can be its own town (and this works whether we are talking about ancient or modern day). Here's an historic example:
Here I'm looking straight north from Nebi Samuel at the ancient hill-site of Gibeon, of Joshua 9 fame. Gibeon is just that hill in the foreground, right of center. All the other hilltops are their own separate places, and from the high point I'm standing you can see something like 7 or 8 different Biblical cities. Gibeah, home town of Saul, is just off to the NE, and then Jerusalem is off to the SE. I tell you, the sightlines of the land of Israel have to be seen to be understood. This is NOT the Midwest. Or any other place in America.
Last stop for the day was the ancient site of Gezer, a partially-excavated city perched on a strategic high point of land at the far western end of the Benjamin Plateau, with commanding views E back into the hill country and N to Tel Avivm, and W straight into the mists covering the Mediterranean coast! We could actually glimpse the sun glinting off the water when the winds were right. What made this visit extra interesting is that we accidentally bumped into none other than Bill Dever the world-famous archaeologist on site giving a tour for some of his relatives visiting him. What was wild about this for me is that it was a moment of coming full circle: The last time I met Bill Dever he was the keynote speaker at the Midwest Regional ASOR meeting in, oh, 1998 I think in Springfield, MO (home of Missouri State, my fine undergrad institution). As an aspiring undergrad, I nervously approached him and asked his advice about what it took to become a college professor, and he basically told me that it was really stinking hard and only the best make it and even then it's really hard and there aren't that many positions, etc. Well, here I am now a Professor of Classical Languages and helping to lead a group of good students on a study trip to the Holy Lands.
After some exploration of fun Solomon-era (maybe?) case-mate walls, we had an impromptu dance party (filmed for posterity...). There was even some heroic posing on ancient stones, with face firmly set toward sunset's glow:
We headed back for the bus and the trip home to JUC...but soon found another adventure! Our bus had somehow managed to get a big nasty rock wedged firmly between the back two tires on the right side, and there was some danger of puncture if we drove on it too much. We all found a place on the side of the road to pull off, and as a few guys started helping the driver try to get the rock out, the rest of us decided to seek some higher assistance.
After a fun 45-min social time on the edge of a highway in view of a glorious sunset over waving rows of grain and a flying wheeled car-contraption (not even kidding) and which even saw me get into a game of MASH (65 children in a chalk-colored shack, not a good sign), due in no small part to the manly efforts of the bus driver and Andrew Hershey (with a giant scratch on his back to prove it), the rock was worked loose enough so that it fell out once underway again. Hooray! A fine way to end a full day of memorable experiences.
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