Stone's Fence

January 15, 2006

Paul Wright, our teacher here at Jerusalem University College, has a habit of taking us some place where some amazing biblical event happened, and then telling us to come back "on our free days." Of course, free days get spent doing laundry, studying, writing impression reports, shopping in the old city, and almost nobody thinks "Hey let's rent a car and buzz back out to site X."

That changed today. Several off us got hooked on the story of David and Goliath, seen from the standpoint of geography. The spots where the Philistines and Israelites camped emerge very clearly when we look at the region. But the location of the actual encounter between David and Goliath is a bit trickier. First, it has to be a place where people can be on the north and south sides of the valley and yell insults at each other, assured that the verbal abuse will be heard. Second, the spot is called a gay in Hebrew. This word denotes a V-shaped valley with a narrow bottom and steep sides. But the "valley" of Elah where the armies gathered is referred to in Hebrew as an 'emeq which is a valley with a broad, flat bottom. This kind of valley predominates in the general region where David and Goliath met, but the Bible says the actual killing of Goliath took place in the V-shaped type of valley, near the town of Socoh. Paul told us that just around the bend from Socoh the creek (wadi) takes a bend, and after a while the hills on each side slope steeply upward and the space at the bottom narrows sharply. "Can we go over there?" we all asked? Of course, Paul's answer was "Sure, on your free day."

So today, we did it. One guy just went out and rented a car--more like a pregnant roller skate-- ($40 a day) and five of us packed in there and headed out to find where David slew the giant. Of course, you can't navigate modern Israel's highway system using 3000-year-old geography...some roads run on the old routes, some don't. But we tried. We navigated by ridges, directions, compass points, and fragments of memory from the trip last week. The amazing thing is, less than an hour away from Jerusalem, we stood in the Elah valley looking up at where the Philistine and Israelite armies encamped.

Now the hunt was on! We found the bend in the road, and started up it. Soon, we confronted electrified fence and razor wire. I have very strong reservations about that stuff, to say the least. So we went around. On the other side, we found the same, but with a gate...open...unwatched. Sorely tempted, we turned back. What if the gate closed while we were in there? Driving back, we looked for every little path and road, driving down each one, looking for our elusive gay. In all this driving around, we actually formed a very strong picture of the spot. One book had even described the spot tongue and cheek as "the valley of the satellite dishes" and, sure enough, a major military installation with 4 or 5 satellite dishes dominates the spot. Hence all the razor wire!

We took one last drive up a little rode, well past the fencing, and found a cut where the Israeli highway department had done some work. We parked, and left one of our group there just in case the army or police came by wondering why this car had been abandoned. (they are touchy about abandoned cars here!). We began working our way down a little service road, and soon scrambled directly down the slope of the hill. To our delight, we found a spot where on one side the hill sloped very steeply upward, and on the other side the less steep slope still came down very close to the dry creek bed. Between was a narrow valley floor with a little grove of trees. A nice little V-shaped valley, near Socoh, just off the Valley of Elah. Lyman stayed on one side, and I climbed the other, and across the valley we hurled insults at each other with ease, without even needing to shout. The valley walls made a nice natural amplifier. We could look north into the Elah valley, and easily imagined the two armies on each slope observing the encounter. We then got down to the serious business of picking up sling stones! So easily we could seen David on one side, Goliath on the other, and how easily a kid with a sling could "make the shot." Soon we climbed back up to the car and started home.

I thought on the return trip, how many Bible readers, teachers, and even scholars, have never tried to put actual ground and rock under that story. Were we in the right place? I have no idea. We matched the text and the terrain as best we could. No doubt, we missed it, perhaps by quite a bit. But what we found was a place in which the whole story made perfect sense. It could have happened there, and "there" was a spot close enough to the Biblical story to fit. Suddenly, this wasn't flannel-graph saints any more, nor was it mere Bible stories. It was a life and death struggle in which a young man took a huge chance to save his home, his family, his whole way of life.

More than that, he was a man who had heard the honor of God vilified, the people of God insulted and maligned, and the very reality of God mocked. Against the spear and sword, David came in the name of Yahweh, the living God. And in the name of God, David chose good ground for the conflict, brought to bear skills developed in hard years of protecting his flock. He was at the top of his game. He was on fire for his God. The giant fell, the enemy fled, and the name and glory of Yahweh was exalted.

Possibly, right here. Then again, maybe a quarter mile to the north. But somewhere, right about here. Not cartoon characters or cutouts on a flannel graph. Real people. Somewhere right near here...

January 16, 2006

Today we began our 4 day/3 night field trip into the north, beginning with Caesarea. While the site was interesting, New Testament sites just don't make my blood pressure rise the way Old Testament ones do. I think it's because the OT events and personalities interact with the land, the climate, the movements of armies and empires in a way not found in the New Testament. Since I find that integration of the Bible with the politics, economics, architecture, and realia of the biblical world compelling, its relative absence from most of the NT probably explains why I'm an OT scholar and not a NT scholar.

So we pass over Caesarea with a nod and small apology.

For me the real fun came with Carmel and Megiddo. While it was fun to stand on Mt. Carmel and consider Elijah's encounter with the prophets of Baal, Meggido was, for me, "the day." Megiddo commanded a strategic pass over the Carmel ridge from which one had access to the whole Jezreel valley, which served as the major cross-route for trade, culture, and conquest. In 1479 BC the Thutmose III made himself famous by a bold and risk move, attacking Canaanite armies in the valley by threading his army through the narrow Arauna-Megiddo pass, taking his foes by surprise, and defeating them. Apparently T3's soldiers got too busy grabbing the booty from the battle that they let the Canaanites get away. They had to besiege the city some months before finally capturing it. The Bible also reports that Joshua captured the king of Megiddo, but Judges is pretty clear that the Israelites could not take Megiddo (Justes 1). At some point, though, the Canaanite city fell and the Israelites got it.

A lot about Megiddo we will never know, mainly because of the way it was excavated. Someone once said that every crime known to archaeology has been perpetrated in the Holy Land, and that is at least partly true of Megiddo. This site was first dug when archaeologists had first discovered the principle of stratigraphy. That is, as a place is occupied and used by humans, and is destroyed or abandoned, the debris of human occupation stacks up on the site in layers. Barring (many) interruptions, the deeper stuff is the older stuff, the higher stuff is more recent. So obviously the excavator needs to dig in a manner that discloses the layers of occupation and studies them systematically. Well, at Megiddo the early excavators decided to do this by peeling the layers off the whole mound, one layer at a time! I quote the summary in the Anchor Bible Dictionary

From its inception the project was planned on a large scale, aiming at a horizontal exposure of one layer of habitation after the other across the entire mound. The neglect of details and of vertical relationships which are essential to understand the stratigraphy, as well as the production of superficial excavation reports, characterized the work. Many of the difficulties which later arose in the interpretation of the finds stem from these deficiencies.

What had not figured into the plans was Sir Mortimer Wheeler's famous dictum: "At best, excavation is destruction." So as the UC team peeled each layer off the mound, they removed the very data that was vital to understanding the layers they were excavating. "Neglect of ...vertical relationships" in archaeology is like "neglect of...curing the patient" in medicine! Of course, they had the right concept, but their implementation in effect ruined large tracts of this site. So excavators ever since, most notably Yigael Yadin, have labored heroically to reassemble the stratigraphic information so that we can understand the site. Ironically, this uncertainty and controversy about many aspects of Megiddo mirror exactly another uncertainty, not about Megiddo's past, but about its future.

You see, Megiddo is supposed to be the place where the end of the world happens. The last great battle, the one that will usher in the second coming of Jesus, is said in Revelation to take place in a place known as "Armegeddon." Generally we take this to be a Greekified version of the Hebrew "Har Megiddo" or "mountain of Megiddo." Most have taken this to refer to this city, Megiddo, and thus to this valley, the Jezreel, as the site of the last war, the war at the very end of the world. Or is it? Paul pointed us to a journal article in which it is argued that "Armageddon" might just refer to a different Hebrew word, not "Mountain of Megiddo," but "Mountain of Gathered Assembly." The reference to Armageddon in Revelation stresses the "gathering" of the nations and armies to this place. But where is this "Mountain of the Gathered Assembly?" Isaiah uses this term to denote Jerusalem, so maybe (and I don't really know if this whole argument works), we can say of Megiddo what missionaries used to say of a region in Africa where they worked: "It's not the end of the world, but you can see it from there!" So maybe Megiddo is not the site of the world's end after all.

I guess we'll have to wait and see.

January 17, 2006

Dear Readers: from January 16-19, we will be (or have been) traveling in the northern part of Israel, away from JUC for 4 days and 3 nights. I have no idea what kind of internet access I'll have, so I will probably end up posting 2 or 3 articles all at once. So make sure you scroll down to get earlier articles if you have a fixation on things in the right order.

I have so appreciated that so many are reading these pieces, and responding, mainly via private e-mail. The Holy Land and Hermeneutics are two topics that stir a lot of emotion, and your conversation has meant a lot to me. For me, the connection between history and faith mirrors the integration of life and faith. I never made a very good dualist, separating the concrete world of time, space, politics, economics, appetites, ambitions, hopes,and dreams, from "the faith." So history and faith are possibly just facets of one reality. In an era when more and more theologians, even evangelical biblical theologians, are claiming that "theological" interpretation should break away from reading the Bible in its historical setting, this becomes a vital issue. I wish I had a definitive way of stating and resolving these hard questions. An awful lot of awfully easy answers are out there, often masquerading as the latest in epistemological and philosophical insight. But even though I can't give a quick-and-dirty, sound-bite friendly answer, I believe more than ever that to read the Bible detached from the human, flesh-and-blood, incarnational realities that gave it birth, opens up not a door of hope, but of illusion, for biblical theology. Historical work is hard work. I don't blame theologians for their loss of nerve. Many times I've wanted to give it up myself. But again and again, I remember that St. John did not say "the word became text" or "the word became story" but "the word became flesh and dwelt among us" which means...God deigned to enter history, to become history, and so if we are to be able to proclaim God's historically incarnated word across cultures, we must first listen to this word across cultures. Indeed, historical study is the first step in genuine cross-cultural communication of the biblical message.

Okay, back to the story of Lawson and Lyman in Israel!

I have to confess, platitudes about history aside, I wasn't as excited about the field trip to the north as I had been about the south. As I've said before, the NT events don't strike me as being as intimately tied to all the aspects of geography as the OT, but not being a specialist in NT History, I suppose I should leave that open. I've been refering to Wednesday and Thursday's time focusing on the life of Jesus by the slogan "This is Jesus Country!" Paul has promised me that it'll be just as illuminating and dynamic as the OT sites.

But for today, we were all about citadels and battles again. Guy stuff! While a misty fog often prevented our seeing very far, and a light rain made it a damp day, we were in great spirits. We were up far north, headed up to high country by the end of the day. But though we had our heads in the clouds, everything we saw reminded us that the Bible proclaims its message with reference the "down and dirty" issues of life in the ancient world, just as it speaks to the same realities of our world.

We started from our lodging at the En Gev resort, heading north to the point where the Jordan River empties into the Sea of Galilee. We stopped and celebrated as a young married couple in our group was baptised in the Jordan River. And this was no quickie dip either. As they shivered down in the river (It is JANUARY, people!) we sang, read scripture, they testified, and each one was immersed in the cold waters of the Jordan river as we all cheered. What a fine reminder of the real reason for our experience in Israel!

From there we drove north to the site of the ancient city of Hazor. Known not just from the Bible, but from Egyptian texts, ancient letters, and other documents, this great city was burned by Joshua, according to Josh. 11:13. Archaeologists are now restoring the excavated Late Bronze Canaanite citadel of Hazor. The Late Bronze age runs from 1550BC to 1200 BC, and many scholars see the conquest as happening around 1200 BC or so. The Canaanite citadel at Hazor shows signs of a terrific destruction by fire at the end of that period, about 1200. The palace featured impressive standing pillars of basalt, which split during the destruction from the intense heat of the burning. Today I shapped a picture of an Asbury student standing on that very basalt orthostat! Actually touching something that Joshua and the Israelites might have broken was chill bump time!

From Hazor we moved on north and east towards Tel Dan. With my love for the book of Judges, I have a particular interest in Dan, since (a) the tribe of Dan is featured in 6 of the 21 chapters of the book and (b) the actual movement of the tribe to the city of Dan, its capture and re-naming (from Laish to Dan), are all narrated in Judges. I had an even greater interest, though, because in July a group of students and faculty from Asbury Theological Seminary will be excavating at Tel Dan as volunteers.

Tel Dan is one heart-stoppingly lovely spot. A national park, the Israelis have created a nature preserve all around the site with hiking trails and nature walks. The largest of the four springs that create the Jordan River bursts out from the bottom of Tel Dan. We spent some time just enjoying the enormous flow of water out from under the rocks. We heard a number like 4000-5000 gallons per second flowing from all four springs, and this one was the biggest. The whole river seems simply to erupt from underground. The thundering of the river, the lush green, the trees meeting overhead in a canopy, all put Lyman and me in mind of "Middle Earth" or some such magical place. Had a hobbit popped out of a hole, I would have been only mildly surprised.

But the real business is the tel itself. We spent some time looking at a gate from the time of Abraham (Middle Bronze Age, 2000-1550 BC) that is likely one of the oldest arched gates in the world. A three-layer arch of mud-brick crowns a fully preserved gate. The Bible tells us Abraham walked the land from "Dan to Beer Sheba" and so there is some chance he would have passed through this gate. Unless, of course, he got there right after the ancient occupants BURIED the whole gate! Apparently the engineering of the gate was less than ideal, and the excavator found evidence that the thing had become a maintainence headache even in antiquity. Ironically, the same problem exists now: the excavated gate is falling apart just like it did 4000 years ago or so! The project to preserve it is moving ahead and can be seen on the site.

From there we moved on around to the Iron Age portion of the site--that's the era of Israel's monarchy. Walking up a cobblestone street from the era of Jeroboam, seeing a worship site that was likely the scene of Jeroboam's offensive calf-shrine (though some say it's a palace, not a sanctuary), and seeing the area where an inscription containing the only ancient reference to David outside the Bible reminded us once again that the biblical narrative is not merely "story," but history. However differently the ancients conceived of "history" writing, they clearly did not envision their work as creating mere "storied" paradigms or parables. I have to confess, I had a shiver of pure excitement thinking of our students coming to this place and having a role, however modest, in learning more about this city, and more about the scriptures as a result. The thought also struck me that we have some students who would profit so much from such an experience, but who cannot afford to come. We're seeking donors and friends who would be excited to see students participate in this and future archaeological trips, so if you or someone you know might want to make that dream come true, and thus have an impact on our growing knowledge about the Bible, drop me a line! The only wierd thing about our visit to Tel Dan was the gift shop. Yes, in Israel, archaeological sites have gift shops, if they are national parks. And yet, in the whole Tel Dan gift shop, which included many books, I could not find a single copy of the accessibly-written book on the site by the chief excavator, Avraham Biran! Go figure!

From Dan we drove north to the fourth spring of the Jordan, a place called Baniass. By now, we were moving up in altitude and periodically mists and clouds obscured our vision. All this simply added to the mystique of Baniass. Originally, this fourth head-water spring of the Jordan flowed directly out of a large cave in the solid rock cliffside. As the area became more and more Hellenized, the spring became associated with the god Pan. Then Herod the Great had the idea of building a temple there to Caesar, with the spring flowing right out of the front of the temple. His son, Phillip, named the place for Caesar and himself, "Caesarea Phillipi." So this place is a hodge-podge of religious and worldviews. Nearby, the biblical site of Dan. Here, a spring associated with a Greek god. A temple to Caesar. The ego of the Herods. And to this place, Jesus brought his disciples and challenged them: "Who do you say I am?"

In a place of religious, philosophical, and political confusion and compromise, Jesus called for clarity. If we're going to live in a world of spiritual chaos, we need a point of fixed reference about which we will not be confused: Who Jesus Is! This place brought to mind something I have thought often here. On the one hand, God uses the material resources of local custom, culture, and experience to reveal himself. On the other hand, that revelation points to a God who transcends all of that. Relevant, but transcendant. I was reminded of the all important distinction between authentic contextualization and mere compromise: we are called to translate the gospel to make it accessible, not to transform the gospel to make it acceptable. When Peter articulated his faith, "You are the Christ, the son of the living God," Jesus said on this rock--possibly gesturing up at the massive cliff-face from which the spring emerges--he would build his church. The rock appears not so much to have been Peter, but the confessional clarity Peter expressed. So up here in the clouds, we were reminded to put our feet on the rock.

We then moved up to the lower slopes of Mt. Hermon, and though the summit hid in the clouds, we had a sense of the dominating presence of this peak. From there we traveled to our last stop: a "retired" Israeli outpost in the Golan Heights overlooking the Syrian border, complete with slit trenches and underground bunker. From the old gun emplacements we could look into "no man's land" and even see the UN Peacekeeping forces down below in the valley. The cloud bottoms skated just overhead, and from time to time the clouds rolled over this high outpost, making the "cut out" soldier silhouettes look eerily real in the fog. Then a loud BOOM reminded us of the realities of this place. Israeli tanks doing gunnery practice helped bring our heads out of the clouds and back to the realities of politics, economics, and history--the very same realities that shaped the biblical world and message.

Speaking of "real world" issues...when this spot was retired as an active military post, a guy thought it might just be a fun tourist spot. So he took a chance and wagered his whole life's savings on opening a COFFEE SHOP way up there on the Golan. Since it was a coffee shop in the clouds, he decided to call his place "Cloud Coffee." In Hebrew, the word "cloud" is "Anan" so his shop, overlooking the valley where the UN forces are stationed, is called "Coffe Anan!"

Only in Israel...

January 18, 2006

Today we are in serious "Jesus Country." Roaming around the Sea of Galilee, it's totallly natural of course. This has different effects on different people. Some folks become very quiet and pensive, pondering the Lord's travels and actions. As most of you know, I am likely to respond a bit differently than others. What I've been struck by is how scarey Jesus was, and many places we have visited remind me of how terrifying Jesus could be.

For example, we took the mandatory boat-ride on the Sea of Galilee, which put me in mind of the time Jesus calmed the sea. I have to confess, I have a hard time imagining a really high sea at Galilee. I recall a day on a US Navy Fast-Frigate in the North Atlantic in December, a day when I spent most of the day lying flat on my stomach heaving most of what I'd eaten in the first 34 years of my life out onto the deck. The Sea of Galilee doesn't compete with the North Atlantic in December for fearsomeness.

Still, drowning in 6 foot seas is drowning all the same, and one is just as dead as if one had drowned in 26 foot seas. And these Galileans were experienced men of the water, and as comfortable as ancient Jews could be on the water, which was never very comfortable, by the way. Their fear was real, and in between sessions of leaning over the boat and bailing water, they noticed Jesus sleeping. "Teacher," they yelled--note, btw, that "teacher" is hardly what most of us scream for when we fear for our lives! "Teacher, don't you care that we are about to die?" Flashback: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, he yells through the little square hole: "We...are going...to die!" Sorry, back to the story. Jesus wakes up, and then STANDS up. Already the fishermen are impressed. Then, he turns and talks to the storm. Now, that's wierd. But then something even creepier than that happens. The storm obeys!

At this point, the fisherman are really afraid. After all, they note that the "wind" and "sea" obey Jesus. These are the two primal elements of creation in Genesis 1: the "deep," the near-universal symbol in the ancient Near East of chaos and death, and the "wind" reminiscent of "the spirit of God" or "a terrific wind" (רוּחַ אֱלֹהִים) churning up the face of the waters. One could see these as the forces of chaos and the force of order, or as both simply the wild raw materials organized by God's word into the creation. So Jesus, like Elohim of Genesis 1, speaks into the chaos and immediately there is order. Imagine you are Simon Peter. You have just realized that (a) the Creator of All Things, God, is actually in your boat and (b) YOU JUST YELLED AT HIM. I'd be scared too. But more seriously, we often complain that God needs to do something, answer our prayer, rescue us, "fix it." But when God really acts, even if he does rescue us and "fix it" he usuallly does so in a way that reminds us that He, and not we, are God. God saves us in a way that preserves intact his sovereignty and transcendance. It's scarey. That's what it means to be God!

Then we stopped off at Gergasa, the most likely spot where Jesus produced Deviled Ham...sending the demons that had inhabited the unfortunate man there into pigs, who forthwith tore directly into the sea. While the text might refer to two other sites, they are a bit far from the lake to work in the narrative. This site has a nice cliff that drops straight into the water. The the destruction of the pig-farmer's income naturally attracted a crowd. Since it was probably a gentile farmer, and since the decapolis was not a "kosher' district, the farmer's pigs were a legitimate source of income.

So this poses a question. How much will I sacrifice for someone else's redemption? The farmer might have seen the lunatic many times, might have felt sorry for him, might have wished he could help somehow. If Jesus had said "Will you give up your herd for this man's redemption?" I wonder what his answer would be? How much would I sacrifice to see the redemption of those near me? As it is, the man had no choice. The redemption of the demoniac cost a random farmer all or part of his income. There he goes again, this Jesus, being scarey! But what strikes me is the story noting (Mark 5;15) They *came to Jesus and *observed the man who had been demon-possessed sitting down, clothed and in his right mind, the very man who had had the “legion”; and they became frightened. " What was really scarey was not that Jesus had wiped out a herd of pigs and demolished a farmer's income. What terrified them was the degree of change they saw in the demoniac. I don't know why this scared them so, but it does send a message: if such a lost one can be transformed, then anybody can be transformed. And that, of course, means that before the transforming power of Jesus, we have no excuse, no rationalization, no real reason not likewise to be transformed. That's really scarey! This scared the locals so much that they asked Jesus to leave. Funny, I'd think they'd be grateful to have their village terror healed. Apparently they were more comfortable with him crazy and useless than sane and productive. That's scarey, too.

Several other stops have filled in the picture of Jesus for us. First, we explored an excavated and partiallly restored Galilean village from the Talmudic/Byzantine period called Qasrin. The extensive remains correlate well with much earlier remains and give us a nice picture of what homes and village life might have been like in Jesus' day. We noted repeatedly how often various features of even the most common home would require the services an expert with local building materials and techniques. Such a person was called in Greek a τεκτων, which is traditionallly translated "carpenter." But the better sense of the term is a builder or craftsman in stone, wood, or metal. Such was Jesus (see Mark 6:3) and such was his father (Matt. 13:55). Somehow, the image emerging of Jesus rattled me a bit. Despite all we say about Jesus identifying with the downtrodden, it impresses me that when God became man, he came into a two-parent home near several medium sized to large, prosperous towns: Capernaum, Sepphoris, and Tiberias. His (earthly) dad practiced a professional trade highly valued in the community. Not rich, he likely still had a solid income, and with the near continuous Roman building projects going on in Galilee, Jesus' family might have had a lot of work and a very steady income.

Looking at the 2000 year old fishing boat excavated in the Sea of Galilee also gave me pause: this is a rather large item, constructed of cedar, and over 30 feet long! I wonder how much that cost? Did fishermen own them collectively? Or were the disciples also people with a fairly reliable, even if modest, income? Or were they making payments on those boats? Capernaum also was a town with lots of possibililties. Trade routes passed through, lots of fishing docks, all the usual small town jobs, apparently a brisk industry in fabricating agricultural implements (seen in the large number of basalt grinders found in one spot), plus a spacious synagogue implying a vibrant community of rabbis, scholars, and worshipers--all point to a town with abundant opportunities for supporitng a family.

Is it just me, or does the image of Jesus as a middle class kid in a nice small town, with a dad who had a good job and both parents in the home come as a bit of surpise? I know folks whose favorite indoor sport is trashing "ordinary," what we'd call "middle class" life in small and medium sized town with general economic stability and security.But when god picked a home for his incarnate son, that seems to be precisely the kind of life he chose. Is that maybe just a little scarey? What if God thinks more of the life we often mock and parody as "Leave it To Beaver" than we think? Maybe there is a magic in ordinary small town family life that the nay-sayers have failed to see? What magic am I missing in ordinary life? Scarey?

As a builder, Jesus would have a craft that made it easy for him to enter a community and get to know people--he was useful! I fantasize about some woman saying to her husband, "Honey, could you see Jesus about that crooked door? And also, ask him to fix that stonework that fell when Junior drove the donkey through the garage wall..." Jesus as one who builds homes, fixes things...I don't know why I've always assumed Jesus stopped "working" when his ministry commenced. There is nothing in the text to suggest it. The idea of Jesus periodically working in various places, helping frame a door, helping set a special stone, helping to fix the roof after the "high flying paralytic whose friends let him down" in Mark 2 broke through--all came as a bit of a surprise, but I must say, a rather pleasant one. Having done some minor--very minor stone work myself, I felt somehow closer to Jesus. And yet, this is a bit scarey too. I wonder how Jesus viewed his own work? Doors he had hung? Fancy stonework he had completed? Did he visit in homes where he'd done the work? It's hard to imagine Jesus doing mediocre work, somehow. Was the artisanship of the creator evident in how he laid stone? Shaped metals? It makes me wonder if my own "trade," my own work habits and standards, would make him proud? Scarey indeed.

The cliffs of Arbela, overlooking the Sea of Galilee, provided us our final "scare" of the day. We closed out our day by clambering down the steep, narrow path leading downward toward the floor of the Arbela Pass, Some sections required cable and hand-holds to negotiate.Since Jesus passed that clif every time he traveled from Nazereth to Capernaum, I wonder if he ever turned aside to climb the cliff? Jesus might have been a bit of rock climber. It's hard to imagine he would not enjoy the vista over creation that we enjoyed today. We actually don't know if he ever made it to the top of these cliffs, but somehow, I would not have been surprised.

All day, I have pondered a talmudic tale we heard while in Qasrin. The story involved a great rabbi who "became a heretic" and was ostracized. His student, Rabbi Meir, continued teaching but no longer referred to his great teacher by name. One sabbath, as he was giving his sermon to his students, the sound of a horse's steps rang into the beth midrash where he was teaching. His heretical former teacher had interrupted the sabbath sermon, broken the sabbath (by riding a horse) and posed his student with a crisis: send a message of dismissal and rejection? Ignore him? In the end, Rabbi Meir simply went out to meet his former teacher, and walked along the shore while his teacher rode, talking about the Torah, with Rabbi Meir still the student, the heretical rabbi, still the insightful teacher. Finally, the teacher reminded his student that they had reached the limit that Rabbi Meir could travel on the sabbath. The lapsed rabbi had counted his horse's steps. Then the teacher rode out of sight alone. Rabbi Meir returned to find his students still waiting for him to finish his sabbath sermon.

The moral? The rabbis say that the story teaches us how one can possibly learn a great deal about the Torah from one who does not believe it. For modern Jews, the story suggests that both the "religious" Jew and the "secular" Jew can still meet over the Torah. It also warns us that one can possess great insight into the Torah, but still not be right with God. The Torah is truth to all who read it, believer and unbeliever, religious or secular. But such a talmudic tale actually does not "have a meaning" that we can tease out into a sound bite or platitude. They simply "mean" in the sense of "conveying meaningfulness." They shape our outlook and character, reminding us of things like the primacy of human relatedness over mere ideology, even while affirming the final authority of Torah and right doctrine. Unsettling, somehow. One member of our larger group (not an Asburian) was enraged by the story, a good many of us simply found it searching.

I wonder if that's a bit what Jesus' teaching in this same Galilean region was like? Some enraged, some mystified, some enlightened, all wondering who this man is, who teaches with such insight and power? What sort of relationship with God must he have to speak with such unsettling authority? Which brings us back to the beginning of the day.

"They became very much afraid and said to one another, 'Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey Him?'" (Mark 4:41)

January 19, 2006

I have a colleague who is fond of urging students and colleagues, when it comes to preaching the word, to "Tell the Story, and Tell it Well!" I have thought of that advice a lot in the last 19 days, and how much our ability to tell the story well depends on being able to set the stage, paint in the backdrop, define the themes and conflicts, all before introducing the characters and their actions. So much of being here has not been for me about learning things I didn't know before (though a good bit has been fresh) but rather, seeing it in three dimensions.

For example, I have always taught the story of Deborah and Barak in Judges 4-5 with a view to the strategic positions and movements of the forces involved. At a critical moment in the battle, the wadi Qishon flooded as a freak thunderstorm hit, and the Canaanite chariotry was bogged down in the mud. Chariot drivers, ancient and modern, typically wait way too long to shift from armor to infantry styles of battle, and while the Canaanite forces struggled with their chariots, the Israelite foot soldiers, more accustomed to close-order battle, masacred them. But all that for me was words in books---accurate words in very good books. But today, I stood on a high precipice and could see the whole field of battle. I understood how chariotry can only cross the plain in dry weather, or on a slightly raised section that remains passable, though probably not battle worthy, in the rain. More importantly, I have scraped the thick, heavy, red-brown terra rosa mud off my hiking boots and imagined that junk clogging up the works of a chariot. I could see Mt. Tabor looming in the distance. I could appreciate how the junction of three tribes occurred right at the point of the battle. I saw how far away from all this Deborah had been, and how she called her people to a crisis that was out of their area and might have seemed far from home, knowing how quickly a Canaanite choke-hold on that area would soon affect the Ephraimites. I stood there and smelled the air and felt the wind. I saw it. I suspect that while I hadn't done a bad job telling this story in the past, I will certainly be able to tell it better.

We also came to the site from which we could see the scene of Gideon's battle with the Midianites. We stood about where Gideon's forces gathered. I can find it on a map, and I can point to the dot where the Midianite forces massed. But today, I looked across the valley. I imagined Gideon and his side-kick sneaking over to the Midianite camp and over-hearing the infamous "Attack of the Killer Matzah" dream related by the Midianite. I saw the place where the spring of Harod flows out, where Gideon weeded out his men. Most the story can be viewed from a single spot, and the line of flight taken by the Midianites appears clearly. Again, I can't say I will change my lectures or sermon on this story, but somehow, having been there and felt the realities of the setting where the events took place, I know that I will be much more able to "tell it well."

So much of what we know depends on archaeology. The high points of this time for me have come when we explored a tel the artificial mound formed by the successive layers of human occupational debris. Today's final stop brought us to the site of Tel Beth Shean. The city stood athwart the junction of the Jordan and Jezreel valleys, looking over onto a vital trade route. The city appears in a list of administrative cities from the time of David and Solomon, and has been occupied since the Chalcolithic period. So imagine my excitement climbing up to the massive mound, wondering what it would tell me. And on first site, the excavation is impressive. In fact, it's too impressive. Walking around, it becomes clear that far too much surface area was exposed, far too much was dug to be interpreted well, and in fact, vital data about the site will remain practically impossible to obtain because the early excavators simply did the whole site wrong. That's the problem with archaeology. The process of getting the knowledge can actually destroy the sources of that knowledge. And when over-enthusiastic excavators, such as here and at Megiddo, dig such a broad area, they ruin the chances of later archaeologists to correct and improve their work. So Beth Shean has a story to tell us, but unfortunately, it cannot "tel it well" until meticulous reconstructive excavation of small, undamaged areas can provide the connecting linkages that will impart meaning to otherwise mute artifacts.

Even archaeologists have to "Tel it well" as it were. Which brings me to a thought. These tels have in them more than enough data to inform us about the history of this region, and to illuminate the Bible. But many have been ripped into, dug carelessly, wrongly--maybe innocently and ignorantly--but the damage is done. I have begun to wonder how much damage our inept, careless, and downright wrong interpretation of the Bible has done? How many people's faith has been lamed by an approach to the Bible that cannot release the full dimensions of it's message? How many over-simplistic, one-dimensional interpretations have deprived people of the "whole counsel of God?" Just as there are layers in a tel, there are layers in texts. When we blow through the Bible without respecting its layers of nuance, its themes and counter-themes, its settings, assumptions, conflicts, and genres, we are like early archaeologists who just trenched the mounds to bedrock and stripped off the layers. Maybe they got a treasure or two out of it, but how can they ever know?

Fortunately, the Bible, unlike a tel, is not destroyed by our study of it. That's my hope. We can always go back to the text, start over, rethink our approach, and let God's word transform us afresh. We can improve our craft as interpreters, we can enrich our knowledge, deepen our sensibilities to scripture's many facets and dimensions, and find the often elusive linkages that impart powerful meaning to texts that might seem unconnected. Most importantly, we can trace the linkages between the texts and the real-life persons, places, and situations that gave them birth, and in that insight, gain a deeper appreciate for the linkage between the Bible and our lives.

Somehow, all of this came together in one spectacular, magic, almost accidental moment. We stood atop a high cliff near Nazareth, and as Paul presented several fine readings of biblical stories from the vantage point of what we could see, several of us noticed a falcon hovering motionless in the wind, right at our level. I moved my camera up for the picture, and just as I snapped it, the falcon wheeled over and dove for the valley floor far below. Certain I'd lost the picture, I looked at it on my camera's view screen. To my delight, I had captured the exact moment of the falcon's dive. What a magnificant creature, at a dramatic moment. I think I will never again read biblical passages talking about birds of prey the same way. "They who wait upon the Lord...shall mount up with wings as eagles." No textbook or lecture could have arranged that moment, but now that falcon is a part of my quest to "Tell it well."

My hope is that I, and the students whom I teach, can find a fresh renewal in our quest to "tel" it well in study, and "Tell" it well in proclamation.

January 20, 20006

This will be my last blog article from Israel, unless I have further thoughts when I get home. I still have not talked about one of the field trips, when we visited Masada, the Dead Sea, En Gedi, and Qumran. I will try to get back to that day at some point. So I'll just put up some random pictures while I talk about what is on my mind right now. As I sit in my room, having finished the whole experience, waht is on my mind is this institution, Jerusalem University College. So far, I have not said much about our them. After all, we came over here to see Israel, and JUC exists to show people Israel, so why would we want to talk about JUC? ON top of that, JUC strives to be very transparent. They serve other schools--colleges and seminaries who receive course work from JUC for credit, pass tuition money back and forth transparently, and serve simply as a conduit to bring students to Israel. In many ways, they embody the Christian ideal of "More of Jesus, Less of Me." When you're here, you just don't hear a lot about JUC. Instead, you hear a lot about the Bible and the Lands of the Bible.

So why would I want to interrupt that transparency and talk about Jerusalem University College? Simply because somebody needs to talk about this place!

The school has been here for almost 50 years. It is located on "Mt. Zion" which, even though it's not the original Mt. Zion, is still a very ancient spot. Even though the school stands outside the current Turkish era "Old City" wall, the school's buildings stand exactly where the "broad wall" built by King Hezekiah would have passed back around 710 BC. Stones in the structures of the school might come from that era. Likewise, in Jesus' day the south-western corner of the city wall passed through the site of JUC, and archaeologists have excavated gate remains on the property, remains some suggest are the "Essene Gate" mentioned by the Jewish Historian Josephus. We are a but a 5-10 minute walk from the traditional site of the last supper and only moments from the old city of Jerusalem. In about a half-hour walk, you can be wading Hezekiah's tunnel, looking at the Jebusite era remains of Jersalem, shopping in the Old City, eating falafel and fresh bread in the markets.

The buildings themselves are 150 years old and the adjacent Protestant cemetary has some notable stories and figures associated with it, such as the grave of Sir Flinders Petrie, the famous archaeologist, minus his head! The facility only got fully installed heating recently, and staying here is not like staying in the King David! Shared bathrooms, lots of steps, and the usual breakdowns of old buildings add to the character of the experience.

One of the great things about the JUC program is that, while we are doing an accredited academic program, working hard, studying, writing daily impressions/analyses of what we've seen, and taking tests, it is also an evangelical ministry. On one of our field trips, a young couple was baptized in the Jordan, and a baptism fits in perfectly with the rest of the things we do. Paul's lectures on each site integrate the historical and topographical data that we've studied with understanding how the message of the Bible took took on the colors and contours of the environment in which it emerged. By the time we're done, we know everything from the geology of the scene of a biblical account to its potential theological application. Some of his lectures very appropriately and seamlessly become "messages" that give the students significant theological and spiritual challenges.

All the while, JUC maintains a strongly "essentialist" evangelical identity. No extreme positions taken on "end-times" theories, no pseudo-scientific approaches to creation, and a careful respect of both Calvinist and Arminian theological positions. The focus stays on the central points of Jesus Christ, the Bible and its historical reality, and the land. I can't imagine anyone of an evangelical persuasion who would not be enriched by the JUC experience, which includes not just the 3 week course we took, but semester courses, MA degrees, and a non-credit pastor/member course. Operating with very low overhead, JUC has a "Mom and Pop" feeling that puts students at ease. In addition, JUC maintains very good relationships with the local and regional population and officials, making it easier for them to monitor security in the various regions of the country and plan field trips into areas that are secure. They have the often complex business of traveling to, in, and from Israel and Jordan down to as much of a science as it can be. Without controlling or coralling us, they've helped us figure out safe places to go that still showed us the full reality of modern Israeli life.

The only thing more amazing than the transparency of JUC is the invisibility of its financial support community.

In its nearly 50 years of existence, this school has NO capital donors and NO significant endowment. They operate almost entirely on the basis of tuition income. During the troubled years around 2000-2004 enrollment dropped steeply, causing dire financial distress. But as conditions improve, more students are coming. Still, it is incredibly difficult to maintain a program as excellent as this one without capital funds to plan around. I find it almost inconceivable that no evangelical Christian with the means to give on a major level has ever found out about JUC! One of the reasons is that their students come from other schools, and JUC does not wish to encroach on the donor base of other schools. That's why I'm writing this. I think somewhere, somebody would love to give a large gift or bequest to this institution. Someone who wanted to see the Bible compellingly taught in all its historical reality and theological relevance by a soundly evangelical institution in the context of the physical and social reality of Israel, would find here as ideal a situation as they could ever want. If ever a school could put a million or so dollars to very good use, this one is it.

I suspect their strong academic focus, which means a refusal to play on the "end times" fervor might cool some donors' jets. They don't follow the fads and fashions, and they don't take the cheap, sentimental way out when it comes to "holy" sites. They hew to the one thing they do better than anyone else. They also are very balanced and responsible about their historical approach. Conservative, yes, but conversant with the best and most reasonable scholarly approaches. Sanity sometimes doesn't seem very "sexy."

I hope perhaps some who read these musings and have followed my experiences and exploits here might pray for God to raise up some capital donors for JUC so that they can think much farther ahead than the next couple of classes. They face a range of challenges, all the way from maintaining, and even retaining, their property rights on "Mt. Zion," all the way to financing their work during times when fear about safety keeps students away. And of course, associated schools like Asbury Theological Seminary are always trying to secure scholarship money to enable more students to come to JUC for the experience of studying the text of the Bible in the land of the Bible. (You can write me about that!) Since currently JUC's main support is from tuition, anything that helps more students study here, helps the school. But there is no substitute for a decent endowment to provide continuity, resources for future planning, and a hedge against hard times.

Surely God could raise up friends and funds for this good work and these good people. Would you commit that to prayer?