Let me tell you a little about the Dead Sea Scrolls. Go back to 160 years before the birth of Christ. Greeks rule Jerusalem and one of the rulers has a god complex. He takes over the temple and sacrifices pigs on the alter. Everyone gets mad so their is a revolt in which the Jews establish an independent kingdom that lasts for 100 years or so. This is the story of the Maccabees and where Hanukkah comes from. Well, when the Macabees take over Simon declares himself King (even though he isn’t of the house of David) and High Priest (even though he isn’t a Levite or of the house of Zadok.) As a result the orthodox Jews break off of the now apostate church and create a group called the Essenes. They form private communities where they plan out the battle of the last days and write lots of Scriptures. One of these communities is Qumran on the banks of the dead sea. They Essenes eventually are eliminated in the revolt against Rome in 70 AD. Anyway, they left a bunch of their scrolls buried in caves for some reason which were found by a poor shepherd throwing rocks into caves. As you can see from the picture the hot dry climate allowed the scrolls to last a very long time in good condition.
Now the scrolls are in this interesting museum called the shrine of the book in Jerusalem. The top is meant to look like the jars that the scrolls where hidden in. The Dead Sea Scrolls have a bunch of biblical texts plus other random books of the Essenes.
The Essenes essentially had to live off one or two rain storms a year. They had some intense water systems to collect and save the water through the hot summer. To give you an idea of how hot it is here at the lowest point on earth it was 44 C. That comes out to around 112 F. It was pretty miserable.
I suppose when it got really hot the priest could run over to this cool waterfall at En Gedi. Its pretty small but it is flowing water that is relatively close. Lots of Jews were swimming there but we couldn’t get wet at that moment so we skipped the swimming part. This wadi is where David hid out when Saul was hunting him.
I’m pretty sure David looked something like this
This is the Dead Sea. It is pretty nasty. My GPS (show in my right hand) clocks the altitude at -1350 ft. The Dead Sea is 35 parts salt compared to the Ocean at 10 parts and the Salt Lake at 25 parts. It was painful to swim in but the rumors are true: it is impossible to sink. You can see the person in the background with all four limbs out of the water. Swimming is very different when you can’t keep your legs under water. If you point yourself up and down I think I floated about 5 inches higher then I would in a pool. You do leave with your skin feeling very soft. And perhaps a little dehydrated.
Speaking of water I have to mention the other cool thing in this part of the world. A little hilltop fortress known as Masada. It is famous for being the last hold out from the revolt that resulted in the destruction of the temple. 3 years after Jerusalem was sacked this hill top fortress in the hills about the Dead Sea held strong. They had plenty of food and water as you can see by the cistern above which is one of many that they had.
This is one of some 15 storehouses where they kept grain. Masada was suppose to be able to support and equip an army of 10,000. Since there were much less then that here they did very well. Their problem was when their wall was finally breached. (no small task considering the walls plus the cliff was some 1400 feet high.) Its hard to build a siege tower that tall.
Here you can see the camps of the roman way down below. (They are still there because the land out here is pretty useless. The Romans took their time and eventually brought in Jewish slaves to build a ramp up one side of the fortress. Then when the defended dropped rocks and stuff it was only Jews that they killed. Once the ramp was large enough they broke down the wall. The Zealots had constructed another wall behind it but it was wooden so the Romans set it on fire and waited. That night the defenders committed mass suicide by picking ten men to kill everyone else. Then those 10 picked one person to kill them. The final person finally killed himself. Only 5 or 7 women and children survived to see the Romans march in the next day. Its a tragic story. I can’t imagine what I would do in such a situation. I dearly hope I am never called upon to face it. Those men determined that it was better to murder their own women and children with their own hands then to allow them to fall into the hands of the Romans. I wonder if they had heard of the fall of Jerusalem and the tragedy that occurred there and if that influenced their choice. Its also interesting to note that this story comes to us from the ages due to the work of Josephus, a Jewish Historian. Josephus was a general for the Jews in Galilee during the same war. He got in a tight spot and his group did something very similar. They all selected lots and killed each other rather than be captive. Josephus worked it so he would be the last person at which point instead of suicide he joined the Romans. He was thus around to watch all these destructions and record them for us. Even so, writing about the sacrifice of the Masada group I’m sure he had to reflect on his own choice that allowed him to be alive. I wonder if it made him second guess his own courage to see his fellow Jews die rather than submit. That would be a hard thing to live with.
We have only one short week left. Today we held our last class. We have finals this week and two more field trips. We will do the final moments of the life of Christ which all happened right here. We have already been to most of those places but it will be wonderful to put them all in context. Very soon I will return to beautiful Utah and the life I left behind.
Cheerio.
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