Stone's Fence

January 7, 2006 (See Archives for Previous Articles)

In a way, my whole life has been about what I saw today.

One of my first encounters with biblical scholarship came in reading about the excavation of Jericho, how the walls had been found “fallen down flat” and how all the details of the ancient site of Jericho confirmed the biblical account. Staring at the little black and white picture of the mound, Tel Es-Sultan, in the Haley’s Bible Handbook, I remember as a 17 year old yearning to stand on that spot and relive that biblical story. Of course, a lot has happened since then. Jericho was first dug in 1907-1909 and again in 1911 by Sellin and Watzinger. They found evidence of destruction, but claimed it was too early to be Joshua’s wall. Then Garstang came along in the 1930’s, with a more sophisticated set of tools, claiming in fact to date the destroyed, walled city to the time of Joshua, to about 1400 BC. Conflict raged between advocates of these two views, until finally Kathleen Kenyon excavated at Jericho in the 1950s. She concluded that the walled city had fallen about 1560 BC, well over 150 years too early to stand any chance of being Joshua’s city, and 350 years too early to fit with the most defensible date for the conquest of Canaan by Israel. She claimed that only a modest town existed there in the Late Bronze Age (when the conquest would have taken place), and that nothing at all survived past about 1350 BC. The city Joshua should have conquered, at the time he most likely conquered it, seemed already to have been abandoned!

I remember after learning all this in college the gnawing disappointment I felt as one of my favorite pieces of biblical apologetic seemed to collapse. I often listened with some bitterness when preachers made extravagant claims about how archaeology supported the biblical record, when I knew otherwise.

Oddly enough, I didn’t give up on archaeology, nor on the Bible, nor my faith. I learned that archaeology is a discipline, not an oracle. Archaeologists can only talk about what they dig up, and they can only dig in a very few places, and even then, they can only discover what the ravages of time and chance preserve. Plus, archaeology is only one discipline among several that make up the study of history, and history is only one discipline among several that make up biblical interpretation. So perhaps I was asking a bit much of archaeology alone to do the job for me historically.

Which is why I enjoyed today’s field work so much. We drove down the old road from Jerusalem to Jericho (the Ascent of Adumim) and stopped at the St. George Monastery in order to walk the remaining mile or so into Jericho, through the wilderness of Judea, down a steep ravine known as the Wadi Qilt. We arrived at one of three Jericho’s, the New Testament era town. From there, we traveled by bus to the site of Old Testament Jericho, known as Tel Es-Sultan.

One easily sees why Joshua wanted to take Jericho. Jericho is the eastern gateway into the heartland of Canaan. Aside from 3 springs, Jericho controls highways running north up the Jordan Valley and westward into the interior. Three main routes branch from Jericho up to the watershed ridge of Canaan, along which runs the critical north-south highway that tied together the whole country. Joshua moved up toward that ridge, stopping at a little flat-bottomed valley near Michmash, from which he moved to take the city of Ai. Once Ai fell, the road to Bethel on the ridge highway opened up before him. Once he cut that highway, breaking off contact between north and south, he hoped to capture Gibeon and thus have the key to the central Benjaminite heartland. When Gibeon fell into his hands without firing a shot, Joshua had gained the crucial objective for launching a full offensive into the southern part of Canaan.

What does this mean? It means that either the book of Joshua is historically accurate in its tactical and geographical details, or that “legend and myth,” in the midst of fabricating this story, somehow preserved tedious and technical tactical information without even knowing why it mattered. I suspect the first option is better.

Which says something about archaeology. While the archaeological evidence from Jericho is mixed, the topographical evidence points strongly to a well considered campaign that moved toward well chosen tactical objectives, preserved accurately in our text. So perhaps the historian, working with more than just archaeology, can still feel good about our text.

But what about the archaeology? Another thing I learned in my “bitterly disappointed” period was patience. Archaeologists are scholars, not high-priests or prophets. Data has to accumulate, publications have to come out, theories have to be tested. The sheer quantity of data from Kathleen Kenyon’s excavation of Jericho exceed any one person’s ability to grasp, prior to publication. Criticism of her conclusions based on her own data appeared in the late 1980’s and 1990’s, and while controversy still rages, the possibility exists for the whole question to be thrown open again. Patience is more than a virtue. In this business, it’s a survival skill!

All of which brings me to the moment that I actually stood on Tel Es-Sultan. I did not come hoping to find proof for my faith, nor did I come hoping to be convinced that scripture is God’s word. Many other considerations have long settled these issues for me. No, today, meeting Jericho was like finally meeting face-to-face a friend whom I’ve only known through correspondence for years. On the one hand, I feel like I know him. On the other hand, the first direct meeting combines eagerness with some sheepishness. Once I got over the appalling deterioration of the site, which seems essentially abandoned, I moved from tentatively peeking into pits to dashing all over, snapping pictures of “red brick” here, “remains of glacis” there, remembering cross-sections of trenches and delighting in finding connections between those memories and the dirt-and-rock realities of the site. I thoroughly enjoyed this meeting as the culmination of a long, fruitful journey both of faith and of thought.

Standing there, I realized that my faith did reach via the Bible, right down into the ground of this site, back to real men and women who fought for this land in faith that Yahweh wanted them to have it as his promised gift, back to a God who reveals himself in the intersections of space, time, and human choice.

Whatever the conclusion on Jericho, I feel as if archaeology has proven my faith after all–but in a manner far different from anything I had previously anticipated.

January 8, 2006

A persistent theme of our wanderings in Israel has been Geology. Yep, serious talk about serious rocks. And friends, that’s one thing the Holy Land has got lots of: ROCKS. No wonder stoning was such a popular means of eliminating folks. I hope I’ve got this right, because it impressed me in ways that probably deviate sharply from the usual use of this material.

Stay with me here, I’ve got a point, or at least will have one by the time I get to the end. Your basic rock formations in Israel result from three layers. Down at the bottom is Cenomanian Limestone, or “really really hard limestone.” On top of that is a layer of something called Senonian Chalk. Then on top of that is Eocene Limestone. Got it? There will be a test, in fact, tomorrow (Monday) morning at 8 AM my students take it. I don’t have to, but Lyman will take it...for fun! Yes, some teenagers today actually love learning challenging material. He’s one of those blessed ones.

Over time, these three layers folded, and erosion washed away the Eocene Limestone and Senonian Chalk, exposing the really-really hard limestone. This is the hill country in Israel. Now for the good part. This limestone-a belt about 800 meters thick--was deposited in layers about a meter or so thick, with a space in between each layer. Among other things, this layering makes it easy...uh, well, a little easier...to quarry the gigantic stones that went into the building of the temple. Ancient stonemasons already had the top and bottom cuts, and only had to do the back and side cuts to have the stone ready to move to the worksite.

But that’s not what this is about (I’m making that up as I go here, trust me). As these layers folded, sometimes the top layers cracked, and the spaces in between the limestone layers opened up. The cracks allowed water to enter the rock, and the spaces opening up under the pressure of the folds allowed the water to accumulate, maybe moving down through more cracks and settling into other spaces. Before long, you have a very real geological basis for “water from the rock.”

But think about it. Here comes the theological stretch, an allegory even St. Origen would raise his eyebrows at. You can get water from these rocks not because the rock is porous but because of the imperfectly joined layers and the cracking of the rock under enormous geologic pressure. These seams, or imperfect joins, allow for enormous stores of the water so vital to life in this land.

Speaking of imperfect joins and vital life…Lyman and I attended church this morning. We worhsiped at Christ Church in Jaffa Gate, and Anglican church whose guest house made room for Angie and me on short notice 28 years ago when we were traveling to Kenya and decided to stop over for 5 days in Israel. The church service used the Anglican Prayer book, but layered into it a strong Jewish flavor with the Shema and other prayers in Hebrew. On top of that, the prayerbook service alternated with segments of “contemporary” praise music and open ended charismatic praise experiences. None of this shocked me, abut what I noticed was how little the various dimensions of the worship really integrated with each other. Ironically, this didn’t seem to hurt the worship service at all, beyond lengthening the service to over 2 hours. The congregation clearly loved every non-integrated moment, and at the end, they didn’t want to leave. In the midst, we had a fairly long and extremely learned sermon on...angels! To cap it all off, precisely at the moment when we ended the Eucharist with the thanksgiving and blessing, the Muslim minaret blasted out the 11 AM call to prayer. The life of God, the living water, flowed strongly in that service, despite its liturgical seams hanging.

Water in the rocks, water from the rocks. What if the seams in that Cenomanian Limestone had been perfect? What if the rock hadn’t cracked under the pressure? What if there had been no pressure?

No water in the rocks.

Our afternoon exploring the New Testament era sites kept me thinking about the virtues of imperfect integration. So many of these sites have an original pagan holy site, an OT site right on top of it, followed by a NT era site, followed by a byzantine church, a muslim site, a crusader site, etc. While sorting out these different eras and cultures for historical purposes could drive an archaeologist to drink, I couldn’t help but wonder. Paul Wright, our teacher, keeps reminding us that while the religions venerating the site may be different, somehow the site itself kept attracting people’s devotion. Something about “holy ground” and “how the land works” to stimulate a response of faith and devotion, regardless of the religious tradition. Could all those layers of culture, interpenetrating and overlaying each other, point to something bigger? Water in the rocks? We ended the day at the site of the pool of Bethesda, in the custody of St. Anne’s church. Built in 1140, this church has seen a lot. A brother there warmly welcomed us and urged us to sing in the church. So one from our group led us in a series of hymns, and as the vaulted ceilings and arches of that crusader era church resounded with our hymns, we realized why the brother had urged us to sing. The church rang like a tuning fork to the sound of our music. Once again, imperfectly joined layers: 21st century people in a 12th century church over a 1st century Christian holy site at an even older pagan holy site. But as we sang, there was water in the rocks.

In the realm of spiritual and theological growth, I think often “integration” is over-rated. In our desire for closure, order, and even control, we make hasty peace with deep contrasts in the Bible and in the faith. We too quickly purchase solutions to perennial problems, we fear the cracking and the opening of the spaces in the layers. We want all the dots connected, all the questions answered. But perhaps, under God, there is grace and room for the loose end, the unanswered question, the unresolved conflict or paradox.

Perhaps there is still room for water in the rocks.

January 9, 2006

Tomorrow (Tuesday) morning we head out for 3 days and 2 nights on safari. We are going down into Abraham Country, namely, the southern part of Israel. We'll be looking at the Negev, the territory of the Philistines, and then coming around to Masada, En Gedi--reputedly one of the loveliest spots on earth--and Qumran. We'll be seeing several of the major cities of the Old Testament, such as Beer Sheba, Hebron, and Arad.

But I don't think I'll be online until Jan 12 or 13, so likely nothing will be posted until then. In the mean time, here are a couple of pics. One is your humble correspondent in front of the "Jebusite" wall of the old city in Jerusalem, a middle bronze structure (2000-1550 BC) though the bald headed structure in the foreground is slightly less antiquated.


Then here Lyman and I are standing in front of some wall, I actually forget which. Israel has no shortage of walls with very big rocks in them. I think I will not be nearly so impressed with my own humble efforts at stonework after this!

Here's a nice picture of our Prof, Paul Wright, probably explaining to me once again what that big old building with the gold top is supposed to be. Paul and I are both 50, though I'm only 50 for about another hour. January 10 I turn 51, and life gets easier because now I'll be going downhill. I have, however, been able to keep up with the youngsters on this trip, a point that gives me a certain satisfaction.


Stay Tuned!

January 12, 2006

For the last three days, our Asbury group at Jerusalem University College has been "on safari" in the southern portion of Israel. We saw so much in such a short time that I confess I am still drowning in impressions and trying to sort them out. So forgive me if this turns into a travel diary! I am also aware that while many of you might be familiar with biblical sites like Jericho, some might not be as conversant with locations like Beth Shemesh or Lachish, and even fewer will find their blood pressure rising over the mention of Arad. So perhaps some explanations along the way can be forgiven.

Of Cats, Mice, and Rats

Jan 10, 2006

Jerusalem University College has a brilliant way of integating course materials (read: MAPS), classroom instruction, and field trips that are meticulously planned but which feel amazingly laid back. Our trip through Philistia, the Negev, and the Dead Sea brought home to me what an effective classroom, textbook, and visual aid the land of Israel is in the hands of a good teacher. Lucky for us, we got one!

We have talked about the region in antiquity in terms of "Cats and mice." The cats are the big imperial powers like Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, and Persia. The Mice are the smaller states like Israel, Judah, Edom, Moab, Philistia, etc. I found it helpful to break the "mice" down into mice and rats: the rats being, of course, everyone except Israel and Judah! So those are the players in the game. But what about the game board itself? Here JUC again presents a splendid and workable analysis. We all know the Shephelah is the southern rolling hills in Israel, between the high ridge country and the coastal plain. But what we focused on was how this region was cut by 6 strategic wadis (valleys cut by wet-season rivers) that criss-crossed two major highways. So our tour of the Shephelah took us over the movements of the rats, cats, and mice over the grid formed by the intersections of the two highways and 6 wadis. We all recall how one often hears in 1 Samuel that the Philistines are attacking, but when you put those attacks on the grid I just described, suddenly you see the Philistine attacks as a persistent, concerted, systematic effort to neutralize Israel in the south. They fail in the Sorek wadi due to the interference and harrassment of Samson, so they shift to a different valley. Beaten there, they try another, like the wadi Elah where David defeated Goliath. In all this, the geographical concreteness of it all is stunning. From the lone hilltop of Beth Shemesh overlooking the wadi Sorek, we can see almost every location featured in the Samson story, from his home in Zorah-Eshtaol down to Timnah where he met his first Philistine wife, and in between the likely route he traveled to get there--and where he ate the honey from the lion's carcass.

Standing on the site of Azekah we can look down the wadi Elah and see Gath, the home of Goliath, and turn around to look up the wadi to Socoh, spotting the places where Saul's army camped and almost catching sight of the narrow spot in the valley where David rocked Goliath's world. But more importantly, in our classroom map study we could see how, if the Philistines succeeded in taking the upper end of the Elah valley, they had a clear shot with the cross-hairs right on...Bethlehem. No wonder David's brothers were all at the fight, and no wonder Jesse wanted to know what was happening in the battle. These people were fighting directly for their own homes. Somehow the whole flannel-graph hero aspect of the story fades and we begin to see these free-farmers and pastoralists in a desperate struggle to preserve and defend their farms, flocks, and families against a sophisticated foe bent on their destruction.

Philistines versus Israel was about rats vs. mice. We also got a look at what Cats do. The site of Lachish stood at an important junction of one of those wadis and a major highway. We walked the site of Lachish and noted both the imposing fortifications constructed first by Hezekiah in the 8th century and again by the Judean kings just before the Babylonians came in the 6th century. Sennacherib's seige ramp can still be seen, as can debris from the counter-ramp built up in desperation by the defenders to neutralize the Assyrian effort. From the tel, we could look out to a hilltop from which one could see both Lachish and its neighbor city, Azekah. Recalling the discovery of a letter written from a field commander back to Lachish, how he was frustrated at not having instructions from Lachish, nor being able to see the fire-signals from Azekah, brought human immediacy to the grim days just prior to the fall of Jerusalem in 587 BC.

Cats, mice, rats. Wadis intersecting highways. Human history intersected by God's actions. All of it somehow related to the dirt, rocks, crops, and sheep of this land. Such moments make me realize that the incarnation might not have been such a new thing after all, but only culminated the way God had been working all along. A God who will become flesh is a God who will also reveal himself through the political, military, and economic struggles of his people, played out among the cats, mice, and rats of antiquity, on the game-board of the the very land created by God and promised to this people.

On my desk here is a little pile of pottery fragments. So much of this archaeology turns on bits of pottery, a few projectile points, and miscellaneous junk left behind by the ancients. Debris. I wonder, when we are gone, if it will be possible not only to reconstruct the cat-and-mouse struggles of our lives, but also to see in them the hand of God?

January 11, 2006

I should be moving on to talking about what we saw in the Negev (the southern part of Judah) but I am still thinking about some of my "lowland lessons" from the Shephelah. Today's musings come from overhearing students trying to remember the last 5 neo-Assyrian kings. I always remember that little tidbit with the phrase "Tea and 3 Sugars" because the last kings of Assyria are: Tiglath Pileser III, Shalmaneser V, Sargon II, Sennacherib, (the 3 "S" kings are the 3 sugars) Esarhaddon, and Ashurbanipal (T.SSS.EA). That put me in mind of the 3 main attacks on the people of God that these Assyrian kings represent.

First was Tiglath Pileser III in 734-732 BC. His arrival resulted from an alliance between the Northern Kingdom (Ephraim) and the Syrians. They hoped to throw off Assyria's yoke and wanted Judah to join in to cover the "back door" and keep an eye on Egypt. But Judah, under king Ahaz, didn't want any part of that suicidal venture. Right choice, but when the Ephraimites and Syrians beseiged Jerusalem (2 Kings 16, Isaiah 7-12) and Jerusalem teetered on the brink of catastrophe, Ahaz made the wrong choice. Rather than trust God per Isaiah's advice (Isa 7:3-9), Ahaz voluntarily submitted to Assyria placing his nation under obligation to that pagan empire. The Assyrian king, Tiglath Pileser III, immediately swept north and west, campaigning against Syria, and then turned south and bit off northern Galilee before sweeping down the coastal highway to Gaza. We have part of his actual route of march noted in Isaiah 9:1. So here Judah had its first "pitch" from Yahweh, a call to trust His power over alliances with the enemy. The first pitch is a swing and a miss, stirke one.

The second pitch came a bit over a decade later. The northern kingdom rebelled against Assyria under a king named Hoshea, and in 722 Shalmaneser V reduced the northern state and beseiged Samaria. The chronology and details get a bit confused, but it looks like Shalmaneser V died during the seige and Sargon II assumed control, finishing the job on Samaria and deporting the northern tribes to points all over the Assyrian empire, and in turn, "importing" peoples from all over the empire into the north in order to destroy the ethnic identity and culture of the Israelites. Sargon seems to have campaigned down toward Ashdod on the coast, and even as far as Gaza, so the Judeans got a good close look at him from their strongholds up in the Shephelah like Azekah and Lachish. (I hope my scholarly colleagues will forgive my simplifications here, since questions abound in the matter of these two Assyrian kings!) The point, of course, is that Judah in the south had seats right behind home plate for this event, and had prophets to explain why the north experienced such destruction. They didn't serve Yahweh with all their hearts, but betrayed the covenant and turned to other gods: gods of passion and desire, gods of gold, gods of power. For Judah, this was a slow pitch, right over the plate, one they could have knocked out of the park. But did they?

Apparently Judah did get some wood on the ball, as it were. The southern King, Hezekiah, came to the throne in the years following the fall of Samaria, and during which the ongoing deportation of the Northerners and various punitive campaigns by Sargon II were going on, launched a major religious reform. Of course, renewing the exclusive covenant with Yahweh meant breaking off the covenant with Assyria made by Ahaz, which meant the Assyrians would soon come calling, right after the tribute check failed to appear.

So Hezekiah prepared. He improved the fortifications of Jerusalem, constructing a new wall enclosing the western hill of Jerusalem (pictured here). He also beefed up the water system, digging a tunnel from the spring Gihon to the pool of Siloam--despite the fact that four strong towers and a wall enclosed the Gihon and protected it. Hezekiah also beefed up the fortifications of outlying towns like Azekah and Lachish. In the picture some Asbury students are standing on elements of the massive gate at Lachish.

Right on schedule, the newly crowned Sennacherib and his army campaigned against Judah around 701 BC. Again, historians wrestle with complex chronlogical problems surrounding all that Sennacherib did both here, and over the next 20 years or so. With his ultimate goal of Egypt in mind, Sennacherib campaigned first down the coastal highway just like his predecessors. He then turned back and beseiged the Judean fortress of Lachish. Lachish was a finely situated and fortified site. Sennacherib constructed a gigantic seige ramp against the wall, using captured Judeans, figuring the defenders would not want to shoot at their own people. I stood on this ramp last Wednesday! The desperate defenders on the inside constructed a counter-ramp to reinforce the wall, the remains of which exist to this day. Eventually, Sennacherib brought his equipment and men over the breeched wall, took and destroyed the city. Now he had a clear shot at Jerusalem, and Hezekiah faced the same choice as that confronting Ahaz 20 years earlier: trust God?

I think Hezekiah hit a hard shot that went over the fence, except that the ball flew just outside the foul line. Yes, he trusted God. Yes, the Assyrians left. Yes, this became a great example of God's salvation. That's all true. But Isaiah castigates Hezekiah for having made alliances with the smaller "rats" in the area. From Sennacherib's own report, we know Hezekiah actually imprisoned the Assyrian governor, Padi, in Jerusalem. Isaiah criticises Hezekiah for trusting in his fortifications, and for building his walls by dozing over the homes of the very Judeans he hoped to protect. In the end, Hezekiah proudly showed off his treasures to the Babylonian king Merodach Baladan, apparently feeling his oats after his narrow escape. Isaiah rebukes him for this and prophesies that these same treasures will in fact end up in Babylon. Finally, when told his days were over, Hezekiah whined and pouted, and Yahweh extended his life 15 years. But during that time, Hezekiah fathered a child, a boy named Manasseh. This boy grew up to become both the most evil,and the most long-lived, king in all of Judah. His sins would confirm Yahweh's judgment to destroy Jerusalem and the Temple and to send the Judeans into exile. So while Hezekiah heroically trusted God, his solid contact with the ball sent it just over the foul line.

The next pitch came in the form of Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon, the new empire on the block after Assyria fell in the final decade of the 7th century BC. Judah rebelled against Babylon, and 3 campaigns of Nebuchadrezzar resulted in massive deportations of the Judeans to Babylon and ultimately, the destruction of the city and temple in 587 BC. In the midst of the final seige, the Judean king Zedekiah approached Jeremiah with the question whether God would deliver Judah, probably thinking of the escape from death experienced by Jerusalem in the days of Hezekiah (See Jeremiah 21).

Clearly, the Judean king has learned nothing from the preceding 35 years of near continuous invasions. Three times the Assyrian armies had rolled through the land of Israel and Judah. Three times the lessons of faith versus unbelief had been impressed on the Judeans. But here at last, on the final pitch, Zedekiah struck out. He did not turn his nation back to Yahweh, and the Babylonians ruthlessly destroyed the city.

I wonder how many events going on around us are teaching us something of God's ways? I wonder how many times God has lofted a really slow pitch at us, right across the plate, hoping we would swing and connect in real faith and obedience? How many times have we missed the point? How many times have we turned to our own devices, kept to our own ways, tried to run our own lives?

Someone has described insanity as simply continuing in the same behavior but expecting a change in the outcome. Judah seems not to have learned a thing from its brother nation to the north.

I wonder how costly our failure to learn the lessons God is trying to teach us will be?

January 12, 2006

I have to confess that I don't much enjoy visiting "holy sites." Whether the Church of the Holy Sepulchre or the Garden Tomb is the "real" site of the resurrection, I find I only care that whichever tomb it is, that tomb is empty. Somehow, obliterating a holy site by plopping a gigantic church on top of it sort of ruins it for me.

On the other hand, I love historical sites, and today's segment of the "Southern Exposure Tour" took us through the biblical Negeb (often spelled and pronounced Negev) to some juicy historical and archaeological sites after giving us a brief glimpse of "modern" Israel. We spent the night at the Beth Yatzid Hostel in modern Beer Sheva, and took a brief "field trip" to the local mall. Yes, I said mall. Somehow to be in an Israeli town and not have the costumes, cacophany, and chaos of the Old City of Jerusalem going on around us was surprising. I even found a Burger King and scored an hamburger, the first beef I'd eaten since January 1. But since I didn't come to Israel for the food or the malls, that's hardly a problem. Walking with some of the Asbury group that night, we were saying how we felt safe in the neighborhood, only to see a home surrounded by a concrete block fence with razor-wire on the top. Okay, maybe "pretty" safe. But modern Beer Sheva altered my perception of Israel, which I had always seen through the lens of the Old City of Jerusalem.

Altered perceptions makes a good theme for this day. Or, as the title suggests, "altar-ed" perceptions. On our first stop, the ancient site of Beer Sheba, we saw a reconstruction of the famous altar found there, complete with "horns" used apparently for tying down the animals for slaughter on the altar, though I actually have doubts about this. This replica altar (we saw the original in the Israel Museum) provided a great photo-op for several of us, which should be a relief to those of you who thought this picture indicated a mutiny or other problem on this trip. The odd thing is, nobody has yet found a temple at Beer Sheba. They have a good guess where it is, but still nobody has really found it. An altar, but no temple (yet) makes one wonder just what the altar was actually used for. Was it an altar to Yahweh? It's the right size, but it's hard to know in the end.

What we did see was a lot of evidence of plain old ordinary life. A well, a very DEEP well. Row houses. Variants of the Israelite pillared farm house, adapted to life in the city. Signs that they just hurled their trash and refuse out the door and into the street, not unlike what happens in many villages here today (Environmentally helpful treatment of garbage hasn't caught on in Israel, past or present). Except of course, that altar. Archaeologists didn't find it all nicely put together. Rather, the thing had been disassembled and the stones recycled in another structure. Why? Maybe during one of the reforms of Hezekiah or Josiah, when royal centralization of worship in Jerusalem meant closing down altars all over the country, this altar was "de-commissioned" and its pieces used for some other project. Somehow I had another thought--the kind of thought that some of you like, and others find irritating. But think of this: the altar ultimately did not stand in a place of worship, but became incorporated in a structure of ordinary life. I know, its a reach: but how many of our problems are the result of too sharp a contrast between our worship and our lives? What would happen if we constructed our lives out of the very same things that we used to construct our worship? Would it "altar" our perceptions?

Then we moved on to Arad, and yes, altars again: three different sanctuaries served the communities that successively occupied this wonderful and facinating site. A dual temple served the pre-Israelite occupants, and later in the Judean fortress, a bona-fide "house of Yahweh" existed there, with a holy place, holy-of-holies, burnt offering altar, incense altars, the works. Except for...a few variants. First, in the holy of holies stand two "standing stones" or mazzeboth. Normally these represented deity, but they are forbidden in Israelite worship. Plus, there are two, not one. My guess is that maybe they could have reminded the worshipers of the cherubim who stand over the ark in the Jerusalem temple. But that doesn't explain why there are two incense altars, a big one and a little one. Why have two if you only worship one god? Arad is in the same general vicinity as Hebron, where a tomb inscription has been found referring to "Yahweh and his Asherah (consort)." Likewise, a bit farther south, at Kuntillet Ajrud archaeologists found a similar expression of deviance from Israelite monotheism. Maybe the Arad sanctuary fell somewhat short of pure orthodoxy?

Maybe this sanctuary reflected an "altar-ed perception" of Yahweh? I wonder if the Arad worshipers had not deviated from the standard of truth about Yahweh represented at Jerusalem, and moved toward a corrupted vision as seen in the Hebron and Kuntillet Ajrud inscriptions? Perhaps that explains also why it was "retired?" Of course, when Hezekiah shut down Yahweh altars everywhere except Jerusalem, Arad's altar was retired. But perhaps here we see why that was necessary? Somehow perhaps the purity of the faith was tied to the unity of the faith. Hence, the need for centralization. Under Josiah, the whole sanctuary was retired, completing the process.

Which raises, or at least illustrates, the question: how far wrong can we go in our view and worship of God before we are "over the line?" I suspect my own faith and worship to be riddled with all kinds of mistakes, errors, misapprehensions, and ignorance. But how wrong do we have to be about God before we are no longer worshiping the right god? When does error become heresy? When do our "altar-arations" become downright revisionism and unfaithfulness?

Which brings me to the largest hole I have ever seen in my life. It's called the Maktesh Rimmon. It's an erosion crater, and it's breathtaking in depth and breadth. All I could think was "Here's what happens when people don't re-forest." Erosion. Maybe that's what happened at Arad. A little wind, a little rain, a deficiency in...preservative forces...and soon you have a hole. Left to itself, nature makes the hole bigger. Soon you have a crater. Impressive enough to see, but not very useful for anything.

I wonder if that might be a partial answer to "How wrong...?"

January 12, 2006-Recollected on Feb. 18, 2006

One day from Israel still haunts me, a day that so far I have not described. It's "the one that got away," a day that started with Masada, moved through the Dead Sea, on to En Gedi, ending at Qumran. When I'm in the moments of fading into sleep, or just waking up, images of this day hang on the edges of my awareness. In unguarded moments this day worms it's sights, smells, and sounds into my recollection.

One thought has dominated my experience in Israel, a thought expressed by Joshua to the invading Israelites in Joshua 3:4 "You have not passed this way before!" Most of the time, when I travel, I can compare what I see with similar places elsewhere. But Israel has defied comparison. It's not like any place I've ever been. Paul Wright likes to say Israel crams the landscape variation of California into a space the size of New Jersey. Lots of jolting difference, really close. It's not like any place I've seen before.

That jarring proximity of opposites, life in sight of death, death a stones throw from life, captures our journey up the western coast of the Dead Sea. First, Masada. Initially, a place of life--the original "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" pad. Herod's crib. Perched up on an impregnible battleship of stone, Masada offered Herod and his privileged, upper-class guests, every imaginable comfort. Soldiers made sure the half-million gallon cistern stayed full of fresh water. A swimming pool deep enough for diving provided a chance for a quick dip after the hot desert journey. The palace had three levels on the nose of the cliffside, taking the breath away from the observer and visitor. Tiled or mosaic finished floors adorned the palatial rooms. This was the life!

Or was it? Hated by his people, Herod had to build this fortress, and others like Herodian and the summer palace in Jericho, because he knew he might need to make a quick exit, jumping from safe-house to safe-house to elude his enemies if things "went south." And of course, if he failed in Judea, he had the wrath of Rome to face as well. So Masada, the pleasure palace, the place of security and luxury, must have reminded him of the precariousness of his position, the unreality of his actual power. I doubt he enjoyed it much.

And things did go south. The supreme irony of Masada is that almost nobody remembers it as Herod's pleasure palace, but as the place of martyrdom for 960 Jewish zealots in their last stand against Rome, or so Josephus tells us. His narrative, tailor-made for Hollywood, has the leader giving a speech spiced with platonic metaphysical speculation, followed by heads of households killing their families, then each other, rather than surrender to Rome. That story, however romantic, likely suffers from Josephus' tendency to embellish. Signs of fighting, even seige work, inside the walls suggest a different story, more realistic, but heroic all the same. Maybe...the men took the chance that their wives and children could escape down the "Snake Path" if the fighting on top was fierce enough to pull most of the Roman man-power to the battlefront. To give their families time to escape, the men put up a fierce resistance, falling back time and again until their last stand, where perhaps the final defenders did kill themselves.

Who knows? But this place of "high life" became a scene of death.

Perched on a cliff-side at the other end of the Dead Sea, we have Qumran. In some ways, a similar place. Qumran housed a group of Jews just as extreme and fanatical as the zealots at Masada. But instead of their freedom, these Jews sought radical purity. Seeing the temple of Herod as bankrupt and compromised, they withdrew to the desert in a radical quest for purity and obedience to the Torah. Prepared to fight, they awaited the signs that the great war between the sons of light and the sons of darkness had begun. In the mean time, they copied religious manuscripts, biblical materials, commentaries, and pursued their obsession with purity. Surely these folks posed no threat to imperial Rome!

But the Romans got them, too, in the 3rd year of the First Jewish Revolt (AD 68). All through history, the pogromists and killers of Jews have not cared whether the Jews they assaulted were political radicals or spiritual ascetics, orthodox or liberal. All that mattered was that they were Jews, so they had to die. Speaking of the Jewish children who died in the holocaust, George Steiner in his essay "A Kind of Survivor" recalls

…they went, of course, not for anything they had done or said. But because their parents existed before them. The crime of being one's children. Somewhere, the determination to kill Jews, to harass them from the earth simply because they are, is always alive…the Nazis made of the mere name necessary and sufficient cause. They did not ask whether one had ever been to synagogue, whether one's children knew any Hebrew. The anti-Semite is no theologian; but his defintion is inclusive. So we would have all gone together, the Orthodox and I. And the gold teeth would have come out of our dead mouths, song or no song…this is [our] inheritance. More ancient, more inalienable than any patent of nobility. (Language and Silence, 140-154)

So the two sites put me in mind of two very different species of radical devotion: one to fight for freedom, one obsessed with purity. Neither, in the end, could avoid paying the ultimate price for a transcendant loyalty.

Which brings me to En Gedi. Between these two monuments to extreme devotion one turns aside into a world of restorative magic. Just across the highway from the salt-death of the Dead Sea, one winds one's way up a narrow canyon and discovers a secret of verdant life. Created by a stream cascading down a staircase of waterfalls, this capillary of green offers a step out of time, a place from which one can clearly see a world of extremes, a world of death, from a small niche of life. A friend had warned me of En Gedi's seductive magic, but I confess myself still unprepared. This place of life is a place of power, where elemental spirits were venerated, gods of nature celebrated, Yahweh praised, and David pursued. How does it differ from other arroyos and oases, many bigger, greener, more lush? I don't know. But this place possesses a deep magic, a mana older than the history of sin and grace by which we typically name the sacred, the holy. This place seems somehow before the sacred, prior to the holy. It merely lives, is.

Somehow, I don't think I will live fully unless I can go back.