Olive trees

The picture is here simply to show how little soil they need, only apparent because this tree is sitting at the top of a cutting made to allow the Hebron Road to be widened...

... which is a major part of the explanation of why such trees are ubiquitous in the stony ground round here (often on terraced slopes where the cleared stones form the edges of the terracing).

Monastery of the Cross

Within fortess-like walls in a valley in west Jerusalem.

Quite unlike the modern buildings close by which include the parliament and the Israel Museum.

The refectory's tables are stone.

Remaining in the hands of the Greek Orthodox Church although not a flouishing monastery today.

Trdaitionally the site of the tree cut down to make the cross.  Here is Lot watering it.  A long story.

In use as the Greek Seminary until 1906, which is about when this picture was taken.

Covenant at Tel Beth Sheva

A modern well and a modern tamarisk tree at Tel Beer Sheva, along with the reconstruction of an altar discovered there; reminders of the well Abraham dug, the tamarisk tree he planted, and the worship he offered when making a covenant or treaty to deal well with the people of the land in which he was then a foreigner.  ‘From Dan [in the north] to Beersheba [in the south]’ became a way to express the promised land, and is how it is described when Moses sees it from Mount Nebo shortly before he dies.  Today there are proposals to remove the remaining Bedouin villages, concentrating their residents in a small number of designated towns, thought to be opening up the way for the establishment of further Jewish settlements across the area.  Water remains the headline issue: it is not provided to the ‘unrecognised’ Bedouin villages, and there is a differential in its provision elsewhere.

Desert reflections

The pictures were taken on the edge of the new town of Arad in the Negev.  Our guide introduced us to an ancient rabbinical reflection: “The Torah was given in freedom in the public domain in a place belonging to no one because if it have been given in the land of Israel, the Jews would have said to the nations of the world, ‘You have no portion in it’, therefore, the Torah was given in the desert, and any person who wants to receive it may come and receive it.”

He was also the second person during our time here to dwell on the way the ‘still small voice’ which Elijah heard in the desert was a ‘decommissioning’; the message he heard was to commission a new prophet in his place.  Our guide had an interesting take on this as well, pointing out that Elijah’s words to God were exactly the same words he had used a little earlier, which might mean he had failed to learn anything from the desert experience and so wasn’t really much use as a prophet any more.

And, of course, it was the picture of Jesus’ temptation to thrown himself off a cliff which the site provoked in particular.  We had recently reflected on Jesus’ temptations.  Our mediaeval chapter and verse divisions and our modern section headings and use of separate stories Sunday by Sunday may be responsible for our seeing Jesus’ Baptism and his temptations as separate stories.  But Mark’s text actually reads: “... as he was coming out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him and a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my son, my beloved, with you I am well pleased’ and immediately the Spirit drove him into the wilderness...”.  It looks as if the one story is about the action of the Spirit.  It looks as if the secure knowledge of being a child of God and the experience of being deserted are two sides of one coin, and not alternative or contradictory stories for us at all.

Random 2

I can't remember exactly where this stand-off was situated.

There are a number of these postboxes left from the time of the British control of Palestine 1917-48, and the 'GR' sometimes remains, has sometimes been rubbed away, or sometimes, as in this case, is partially visible.

Acts records a crowd chanting 'Great is Artemis of the Ephesians' for hours, and this is she.

St George again, this time on a village wall, but then he was a Palestinian himself and is as much its patron saint as anyone else's.

Looking across at the wall of the Old City of Jerusalem.

'We refuse to be enemies' - one of the most important photographs of all.  The stone stands at the entrance to a farm in the West Bank a short distance south of here; the farm is surrounded by Jewish settlements and has been threatened with demolition for a long time.

Random

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre from a different angle; the larger dome covers the site of Christ's tomb, the smaller dome and the tower are part of the church.

And from a different angle again.

An enlarged version of the Roman coin which commemorates the defeat of Judea, who is personified weeping beneath a plam tree.

The head of Pan, from something in the Israel Museum as far as I can remember.

An enlarged version of the Annunciation from a tiny Byzantine pilgrim badge.

St George on a similar pilgrim badge, I think.

Nablus

An icon at the church over Jacob's Well (which we were not allowed to photograph itself) shows healing miracles there.  It was impressive how long it took from tipping water back into the well before the sound came of it hitting the water in the well.

Another icon shows the priest responsible for completing the church on the site being killed by a settler in the 1970s; I presume that the settlers did not like the idea that a site also holy to Jews was being enclosed by a church.

There is much more to the West Bank town where the well is than this, but one feature of the town is posters like these commemorating Palestinians killed in the on-going conflict.

And it is mainly not a Christian nor Jewish area but a Moslem one, which is why our hotel room had this helpful sticker showing the direction of Mecca.