2. Jerusalem and Beyond

1 Bethlehem and Shepherds’ Fields

2  Ein Kerem

3   Israel Museum

4  Mount of Olives

• Chapel of the Ascension (Mosque of the Ascension)
• Church of All Nations (Basilica of Agony)
• Dominus Flevit
• Mount Scopus Observation Point and First-Century Tomb
• Pater Noster Church (Eleona Church)

5  Rockefeller Museum

6  Tisch Family Zoological Gardens

Bethlehem and Shepherds’ Fields

It is always Christmastime in Bethlehem. Singing “Silent Night” in April or “O Little Town of Bethlehem” in August sounds out of place anywhere but here. In Bethlehem, we recall one of the great miracles of all time—the eternal God was born as a baby. Mary and Joseph tucked Jesus into an animal’s feedbox. And the heavenly Father dispatched angels to deliver a birth announcement like no other. Who can keep from singing Christmas songs in such a place! Now it is your turn.

The singing of Christmas music in Bethlehem, just a short drive from Jerusalem, has a very long history. The current Church of the Nativity sits on top of what remains of a cave. Ever since the second century AD, local Christians have pointed to this cave as the animal shelter in which Mary gave birth to Jesus (Luke 2:4–7). Long before the first building graced the site, Christians gathered here. This got the attention of the Roman emperor Hadrian (AD 135), whose goal was to eradicate all worship not directed to the Roman gods. He converted the site into a pagan worship complex. Ironically, this helped preserve the memory of the spot until the time of the Christian emperor Constantine. Helena, the mother of Constantine, built the first Christian church here (AD 339). From the fourth century to the present moment, the cave’s location has been marked by a Christian building.

The building you are about to visit contains a few elements of the fourth-century church but is most closely connected to its sixth-century replacement. The architecture tells its story. As you look toward the church from Manger Square, your eyes will catch the small, square doorway that is the church’s entry. Above this small entry, which dates to the sixteenth century, you will see two others that are now filled in. The middle opening with a pointed arch was built for the Crusader church, and the larger squared-off entry served the church built by the Christian emperor Justinian in AD 539. He is the one who tore down the fourth-century building and replaced it with a much larger place of worship. The footprint of the current church and its major architectural components date to this era, making it the oldest Christian church in the Holy Land. It survived when other churches did not because of a piece of artwork. The marauding Persian invaders (AD 614) destroyed all the Christian churches in the promised land except this one. Christian tradition says they spared this church because of a piece of artwork on the façade depicting the magi. Because the people in the artwork resembled them, the Persian attackers spared the building. While this piece of sixth-century art has not survived, some fourth-century mosaics have. This is something you will not want to miss. As you enter the main building, look under the large wooden doors on the floor and you will find beautiful mosaics that adorned the floor of the church built by Helena. In 2013, restoration of the church’s wall mosaics began. These extensive mosaic murals are among the best you will see on your trip to the Holy Land. They made their public debut in 2016. After you have seen these, walk to the right of the ornately decorated Greek Orthodox altar area and look for a set of semicircular stairs. These lead to the Grotto of the Nativity. This highly decorated space is what is left of the birth cave of Jesus. Tradition has marked the place of birth with a fourteen-point star and marked the location of the feeding trough in which Mary placed the infant with a facsimile manger.

Immediately adjacent to the Church of the Nativity is the Roman Catholic Church of Saint Catherine. A statue of Saint Jerome greets you in the courtyard. And lest you pass by him without a thought, realize you have something in common with this noted scholar of the past. He believed that geography was important to Bible reading. As the translator commissioned to bring the message of the Bible into the common language of his day, Jerome produced the Latin Vulgate. Knowing how much geography there was in the Bible, he moved to the Holy Land to be sure that he got that part of his translation right. His office and tomb lie beneath the Latin church. Descend by a set of stairs located on the right side of the sanctuary to visit them.

In Judea, where caves are plentiful, many built their home over a natural cave. It provided a basement for storage and a shelter the family’s livestock. The upstairs was divided into a larger living area for the family and a narrow guest room, which could be offered to relatives who were traveling.

Bethlehem is a busy, noisy place. If you are in need of a quiet place to gather your thoughts, take the short drive east to the city of Beit Sahour to visit the fields tradition has linked with the Christmas shepherds (Luke 2:8–20). At the Franciscan Shepherds’ Fields, Byzantine Christians established a religious compound to remember the angelic birth announcement. And thankfully its devotional character is unchanged. A pine-scented path leads toward the modern church. Here in a lovely garden you will find natural caves like those that were pressed into service as animal shelters. Unlike the cave in the Church of the Nativity, these still look like caves! Opposite the caves, you will find a metal walkway that leads into the ruins of a Byzantine monastery. This is the best place on the grounds to get some quiet time.

As you read the Christmas story (Luke 2:1–20; Matt. 2:1–13) and sing your favorite Christmas songs, think about the relationship of these events to those in the Garden of Eden. Once Adam and Eve had fallen into sin, everything changed. For the very first time, they felt the need to hide from their Creator. The joy and peace they had known in the Lord’s presence was replaced by fear (Gen. 3:10), the fear that every sinner feels when standing in the presence of holiness. The shepherds felt it too on that first Christmas. They were terrified when a holy angel appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shown around them. But that reaction was out of place this night, and the angel addressed it before saying anything else: “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people” (Luke 2:10; emphasis added). The very first words spoken by Adam and Eve after the fall into sin were words of fear. The very first words spoken by the Lord to mortals on the first Christmas were “Stop being afraid.” That is what the birth of Jesus means for every sinner.

INFORMATION travel south on Highway 60 from Jerusalem and watch for the signs directing you to the Bethlehem checkpoint; both Bethlehem and Beit Sahour are in the West Bank outside the modern state of Israel, so you will need to bring your passport to secure entry and exit; 

Ein Kerem

The village of Ein Kerem is not mentioned by name in the New Testament, but early Christian tradition linked it with the home of Zechariah and Elizabeth, the parents of John the Baptist.

Two modern churches invite a few moments of your time. The Church of John the Baptist is a nineteenth-century church built over ruins of an earlier Byzantine church. It is distinguished by its tall tower and orange roof. This Franciscan church surrounds the cave believed to be the birthplace of John the Baptist. Across the village lies the Church of the Visitation. The façade of this twentieth-century church is adorned by a mosaic that recalls the visit Mary made to her cousin Elizabeth after she had received the news that she would be the mother of Jesus. Without language more specific than this, we read that Mary traveled to meet Elizabeth in a “town in the hill country of Judea” (Luke 1:39).

This is the place to take out your Bible, to read, and to reflect on the song of joy that came to Mary’s lips during her visit. The song is known as the Magnificat (Luke 1:46–55). It shows just how much Mary had grown since the day she struggled to understand what the angel Gabriel had announced to her in Nazareth, and it is rightly regarded as one of the most powerful pieces of inspired poetry in the Bible. Ein Kerem is also a wonderful spot to read the story of John the Baptist’s birth (Luke 1:5–25, 57–80), which includes Zechariah’s song of celebration, known as the Benedictus. This song, which takes only a minute or two to read, captures the centuries of waiting that God’s people experienced as they watched for the Messiah to be born. Both songs remind us of something critical to the well-being of the church. The Lord regularly uses the most ordinary of people from the most ordinary places to accomplish extraordinary things.

INFORMATION southwest side of modern Jerusalem near the modern Hadassah hospital; 

Israel Museum

Jerusalem hosts many museums, but leading the pack is the world-class Israel Museum. Its sprawling campus and expansive collection of art, archaeology, and Judaica will consume more than a full day for the most avid of museum visitors. Here we will focus on those elements of the museum that are of greatest interest to Bible students.

Start your visit outside at the scale model (1:50) of first-century Jerusalem. The designers have combined archaeological discoveries and ancient literary descriptions of Herodian Jerusalem to construct this three-dimensional model of the city. While walking in Jerusalem itself, you can see bits and pieces of first-century Jerusalem. But here you can see the city as Jesus would have known it with the temple complex, Palace of Herod the Great, Upper City, and Golgotha.

Your eyes will be drawn to a large white dome as you walk the museum campus. This is the Shrine of the Book, the museum dedicated to the Dead Sea Scrolls, Jewish literature dating from the second century BC to the first century AD. The roof of the building is shaped like the cover of a ceramic vessel, the kind of vessel in which the famous scrolls were discovered. Inside, you can trace the history of the scrolls (starting with their discovery in 1947), see examples of the scrolls themselves, and learn about their value. Among the scrolls are some of the earliest examples we have of the Hebrew Bible, and they help us secure more precisely the wording of the Old Testament Hebrew text that lies behind our English translations. In addition, they add to our understanding of the Jewish culture that Jesus encountered and addressed during his earthly ministry.

Reserve the bulk of your time for the archaeology wing. The deep history of this land is laid bare in this expansive collection of man-made items. These artifacts offer compelling insights into the way people lived and thought in this special land. You will find things like a four-horned altar from Beersheba; the Tel Dan Stela, which contains the earliest extrabiblical mention of David’s dynasty; the Ketef Hinnom silver scrolls, which contain the oldest written portion of the Old Testament; a seat of Moses from Capernaum; Tyrian shekels like those provided by the money changers at the temple; and the ossuary (secondary burial box) of Caiaphas. The collection is organized by historical period, so be sure to have the timeline included in this guide on hand to help you link the collection with Bible history.

INFORMATION in the western portion of modern Jerusalem in Givat Ram, off of Ruppin Road; (see www.imj.org.il).

Mount of Olives

The Mount of Olives is a two-mile-long ridge that lies east of Jerusalem’s Old City. Although it was never included within the defensive walls of Jerusalem in either the Old or New Testament era, it has always been connected to the city. The less fertile southern portions of the ridge became the city’s cemetery, and the fertile northern slopes hosted commercial olive groves. Today Christian chapels dot the ridge, recalling events from the last hours of Jesus’s life. Because it is several hundred feet higher than the Old City, the Mount of Olives offers the best panoramic views of ancient Jerusalem, which photographs best in the morning light.

Chapel of the Ascension (Mosque of the Ascension)

The ascension of Jesus took place on the Mount of Olives (Luke 24:50–51; Acts 1:6–11). Today a seventeenth-century mosque, which replaced a Byzantine church, marks the traditional spot of this dramatic event.

Early Christian pilgrims to the land mention a church associated with the ascension of Jesus. But there are no remains of this church to be seen. One seventh-century pilgrim described a round building that surrounded a stone in which the footprint of Jesus could be seen, the last footprint he left on this earth before ascending into heaven. Others added that the center of this chapel was unroofed so that its worshipers could look up into the heavens as the disciples did on the day of Jesus’s ascension. When the Crusaders arrived, they replicated the architecture of this earlier chapel. A portion of that building is evident in the central courtyard of the mosque. Approach the circular chapel in the courtyard and look closely at the columns adjacent to the filled-in arches. On top of those arches, you will see capitals making the architectural transition between the top of the pillar and the arch above. The most ornate of these capitals date to the Crusader era.

INFORMATION Rub’a el-Adawiya Street in At-Tur;  

Church of All Nations (Basilica of Agony)

Jesus led the disciples to the Garden of Gethsemane following the Passover / Lord’s Supper meal, where he struggled in prayer, faced the betrayal of Judas, and was arrested (Matt. 26:36–56). The specific location of the garden that hosted these events on the Mount of Olives is not known. But the most accessible of the traditional locations for these events is the Roman Catholic Church of All Nations.

The entry of the church compound leads directly into a beautiful garden that contains many old olive trees like those that filled the original Garden of Gethsemane. Just how old these trees are is difficult to tell because olive trees do not have a set of concentric growth rings like other trees. However, carbon dating of the oldest trees here indicates they date to the twelfth century AD.

The modern church (1924) beyond the garden is built above the foundation of its fourth-century predecessor. The design of the modern church re-creates the atmosphere of the fateful evening of Jesus’s struggle in prayer with its dark-purple windows and a black ceiling adorned with painted stars. The ceiling also contains twelve seals commemorating donations from the twelve nations that contributed to the modern church’s construction (hence its modern name, Church of All Nations). Three mosaics dominate the interior and direct our attention to the front of the church. In the center and just above the large rock that tradition defines as the rock on which Jesus struggled in prayer is a depiction of Jesus on that rock. To the left and right are mosaics depicting Jesus’s betrayal and arrest.

The church is meant for quiet reflection and worship. Its atmosphere creates the opportunity for you to think about the stunning decision Jesus made that evening in the Garden of Gethsemane, a decision he made only after pursuing his options with the heavenly Father in prayer. Read Matthew 26:36–56. Do we hear Jesus speak like this at other times in his life? Faced with his death and the thoughts of bearing the penalty for the sin of all sinners of all time, Jesus was looking for an alternative. And what is more, his location on the Mount of Olives presented him with an escape option. He could have dashed into the Judean Wilderness that lies just east of the Mount of Olives. Within a mere forty minutes, he could have been in the same trackless wilderness that offered David isolation from Saul. This walk was in Jesus’s own best interests. But thankfully it is a walk he did not take. Instead, he turned back to the disciples and walked down the path toward the arresting party, only to be led back into Jerusalem and to the cross. Only when Jesus makes this turn away from the wilderness can sinners breathe a sigh of relief. It is literally the difference between eternal life and death. Let that inform your time in prayer here where Jesus prayed.

INFORMATION east of the Temple Mount on the lower flanks of the Mount of Olives; it is distinguished from other churches near it by the large and brightly colored mosaic on the façade that depicts Jesus accepting the punishment for sinners; entry to the compound is on El-Mansuriya Street  

Dominus Flevit

Dominus Flevit (a Latin phrase meaning “the Lord wept”) is the traditional location recalling the moment Jesus wept over Jerusalem as he approached the city on the first Palm Sunday (Luke 19:41).

The church compound contains a first-century cemetery and highly decorated ossuaries. Look for them just after entering the gate to the compound under a stone shelter to your right. The architecture of the first-century tomb is hard to make out, but the ossuaries are not. An ossuary is a limestone box that Jews of the first century used to collect the bones of family members who had been previously buried.

The architecture of the main building recalls the tear-filled experience of Jesus. Its modern Roman Catholic chapel was completed in 1955 and built over the footprint of a fifth-century-AD Christian monastery chapel and its mosaics. The modern building is shaped like a tear drop. It has four tear vases located on the four corners of the roof, replicating vessels that first-century families used to capture their tears of grief upon losing a loved one to death.

This location, although slightly south of the route Jesus used to enter Jerusalem on Palm Sunday (Matt. 21:8–11), is the best place to reflect on the relationship between the language of those who welcomed Jesus that day and the place where that welcome was given. Those who cheered Jesus’s arrival were ready for a coronation. Their language recorded in the Gospels makes that clear: “Hosanna to the Son of David!” “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!” “Blessed is the king!” (Matt. 21:9; Mark 11:10; Luke 19:38). The motivation for this coronation language was geographical. Those welcoming Jesus that day observed him descending into the Kidron Valley on the back of an animal headed in the direction of an ancient spring. They saw a repeat of Solomon’s coronation. This son of David had ridden an animal provided by his father down into the Kidron Valley to be crowned king of Israel at the Gihon Spring (1 Kings 1:32–35). Now they saw Jesus, the son of David, riding an animal provided by his Father into the bottom of the Kidron Valley in the direction of that same spring. The geographical symmetry naturally led them to use coronation language.

INFORMATION midway down the west side of the Mount of Olives; you can choose to either climb or descend the steep street that extends from the Mount of Olives observation point (above the large Jewish cemetery) to the Church of All Nations;  

Mount Scopus Observation Point and First-Century Tomb

The Mount Scopus Observation Point offers striking views of the greater Jerusalem area, and the first-century tomb located below the observation platform provides an opportunity to readjust your image of the tomb in which Jesus was buried and from which he rose on Easter Sunday.

This portion of the Mount of Olives goes by the name Mount Scopus. As the name suggests, it is a mountain with a view. The higher elevation of this plaza and its unobstructed view make it one of the best viewpoints for capturing the larger geographical context of Jerusalem and for photographing the Old City.

Just below the plaza you will find the ruins of a first-century Jewish tomb. This is the style of tomb built by well-to-do Jewish families of Jerusalem from 20 BC to AD 70. That makes it the type of tomb that Joseph of Arimathea would have built for his family. And that makes it the kind of tomb in which Jesus was buried. Although both the roof and original entrance of the tomb are missing, enough of the architecture survives to illustrate the nature of the tomb that provided the setting for the Easter Sunday story (Matt. 27:57–28:15; Mark 15:42–16:8; Luke 23:50–24:8; John 19:38–20:18).

When Joseph of Arimathea offered his tomb for the burial of Jesus, it was likely a kokhim-style tomb. The main room of the tomb had a bench around its perimeter, which was to prepare the body before placing it in one of the smaller kokhim (niches). In twelve to eighteen months, the family would return to the tomb, gather the remains from the kokh, and place them in a limestone box called an ossuary.

The story of Jesus’s burial sounds just like you would expect a Jerusalem story of the first century to sound except for the wonderful interruption caused by Jesus’s resurrection. Following Jesus’s death, Joseph of Arimathea gained custody of Jesus’s body so that he and others could respectfully bury it, thus fulfilling Isaiah 53:9. They took Jesus’s remains to Joseph’s new tomb and laid it on the preparation bench, one like the large three-surface bench that lies in the middle of the tomb before you. Here they washed and then lovingly wrapped Jesus’s body with linen strips, inserting aromatics between the layers. The setting of the sun marking the start of Sabbath interrupted this process, so they left Jesus’s body on the preparation bench. They intended to return after Sabbath to complete this process of preparing Jesus’s body for burial and then place his body into one of the small chambers inset into the walls on the perimeter of the tomb. The Hebrew name of the chamber is kokh. (There are multiple chambers like this hewn in the tomb because it was designed for the burial of multiple family members.) According to expected Jewish practice, the body would have remained in the kokh for twelve to eighteen months until the tissue decayed, leaving only the bones. The family then would return to the tomb, remove the bones of their loved one from the kokh, and place them in a limestone box called an ossuary. The bones would remain in the box, and the box would remain in the tomb awaiting the great resurrection.

When Jesus’s disciples and friends began to arrive on Easter Sunday morning, nothing was as they had left it on Friday. Jesus’s body was no longer on the preparation bench, only the linens in which they had wrapped it. The kokh awaiting the body lay empty. The unnatural appearance of things demanded a supernatural explanation, one that the Lord provided when he sent his angels with this message: “He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay” (Matt. 28:6).

INFORMATION parking area and plaza southwest of the Hebrew University campus on Binyamim Mazar Street; 

Pater Noster Church (Eleona Church)

The Pater Noster Church has enjoyed a steady stream of Christian visitors since the third century AD, but not all of them came for the same reason. A third-century document, the Acts of John, spoke of a cave located on the Mount of Olives in which Jesus taught the disciples. The first visitors thought the cave located in the church courtyard was that cave. Early in the fourth century AD, Helena (mother of the Christian emperor Constantine) constructed her Eleona Church here. She did so believing that the area of the cave was also the setting for Jesus’s ascension. (Later that same century, Christian pilgrims reported worshiping at another chapel closer to the highpoint of the ridge that was associated with Jesus’s ascension. This became the Chapel of the Ascension mentioned above.) By the twelfth century AD, the focus of attention again shifted to the cave. In particular, Christians recalled this as the spot Jesus taught the disciples the Lord’s Prayer (Matt. 6:9–13; Luke 11:2–4). This is the Crusader tradition that has persisted to the present time and that led to the building of the current Pater Noster Church. (Pater noster are the first two words of the Lord’s Prayer in Latin.)

You can do a number of things in this compound. You can visit the cave that tradition has linked to Jesus’s teaching of his disciples. You can visit the 1920s church that is a partial reconstruction of the fourth-century church built here by Helena. But the most striking feature in the compound is the presentation of the Lord’s Prayer in dozens of languages on ceramic plaques throughout the cloister (covered walkways). Here we feel the broad sweep of the Christian faith shared by people from all corners of the world as reflected in the languages they use to worship in their home churches. You can do here what believers in Jesus have done for thousands of years: find a quiet place and give voice to the prayer Jesus gave as a model to use in shaping our prayers.

INFORMATION E-Sheikh Street on top of the Mount of Olives, just south of the Chapel of the Ascension;  

Rockefeller Museum

John D. Rockefeller Jr. provided significant funding for the construction of the museum that bears the Rockefeller name. The growing number of artifacts unearthed in the region during the early part of the twentieth century needed a home, and this museum provided it. In the 1930s it quickly became the premier museum of Jerusalem. Beyond the artifacts, the architecture of this museum is something of a historic curiosity worth seeing in its own right. Compared to other modern museums, the Rockefeller represents a step back in time with its distinctive white, octagonal tower and its tall, echo-prone galleries that host wooden display cases.

The antiquities within date from the prehistoric era to about AD 1700. The curators have arranged the collection chronologically, allowing visitors to move to the galleries of greatest interest to them. While the Rockefeller sports a more modest collection of artifacts than the sprawling Israel Museum, it does contain several unique treasures: intricately carved ivory pieces from Late Bronze Canaanite Megiddo, a number of the Lachish letters written in the sixth century BC just prior to the Babylonian captivity, eighth-century-AD decorative wooden panels from the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and the elaborately carved lintels that hung above the entry of the Crusader-era Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

INFORMATION in East Jerusalem outside the Old City walls just northeast of Herod’s Gate; 

Tisch Family Zoological Gardens

The Tisch Family Zoological Gardens (also known as the Jerusalem Zoo) provides a very different experience from the museums and archaeological parks of Jerusalem. Animals both large and small surrounded those living in this land in Bible times—from the powerful Syrian bear to the graceful Persian fallow deer to the soaring short-toed eagle. The biblical authors, like everyone else in Bible times, spent most of their lives outdoors. As they walked from place to place, they came into contact with animals like these. They observed them, came to know their habitats, and learned their habits of living. So it is not surprising that the biblical authors mention these animals and presume that their readers will have an understanding of their habitat and habits as well. This experience is hard to recover today because habitat loss and a growing human population have driven these animals from the land or forced them to find refuge in places most visitors will not travel. Aside from the ubiquitous hooded crows and laughing doves of Jerusalem, many visitors will leave Israel without meeting most of the animals mentioned in the Bible. For those who would like to learn more about these wonderful creatures, there is no better place to begin than with the Tisch Family Zoological Gardens. This zoo, which sprawls over sixty-two acres of hillside, wishes not only to preserve the species that had been part of this land but also to educate its visitors about their habitat preferences and habits. Signs provide the basic information and include Bible connections.

INFORMATION southwest of the Old City of Jerusalem near the Jerusalem (Malcha) Mall on Derech Aharon Shulov Street;