Jesus and His Times: Day One

Today was the first day of my second class, Jesus and His Times. This class is going to be even busier than my last one, which is kind of unbelievable! This school doesn't have a very good sense of down time! But I guess if you come all the way out here its good to pack in as much as you can! The teacher is the director of the school, and so far I connect with his teaching more than the last professor. We're relating everything to scripture, and its based in the New Testament. Today we went to the Old City in Jerusalem and visited an archaeological museum then took a tour of the Temple Wall.

The archaeological museum had ruins of a Herodian mansion. It gave an idea of what a house could have looked like during Jesus' time. The scripture Dr. Wright related to it was of Peter denying Christ in the gospels. Peter is in the courtyard of the High Priest, waiting outside the door where Jesus is being questioned. He is speaking to one of the servant girls who is on duty when he denies being one of Jesus' disciples. The archaeological findings show that the courtyard would have been surrounded by rooms, and Peter would have been able to see through the door to where Jesus was being held. It was interesting to see how close together everything was.

We also looked at some vessels from this period that were made out of pottery and stone. The pottery ones were considered ritually impure because they would absorb the water, while the stone ones were pure because they could be wiped clean. In John 2 Jesus changes the water from six stone water jars into wine. The water was used for ceremonial washing. Dr. Wright questioned whether this was Jesus' way of taking the human capacity for purification and making it even better, or whether it was a way of saying ritual purification has to give way to everyday life. He has also pointed out the way a number of Jesus' miracles correlate with Elijah's miracles, but Jesus' are even better. Something to think about.

The tour of the Temple Wall was really interesting. The Temple Wall was built by Herod during the second temple period (so Solomon built the first temple, it was destroyed in 586 BC, Zerubbabel built the second temple then Herod renovated it, which was destroyed in 70 AD, then since the 7th century the Dome of the Rock has been there). Houses were built in front of the wall, then over centuries the ruins and rebuilding of houses built up over it, so the wall is now underground except for the small portion that we call the Western Wall, or Wailing Wall. We walked along the Wall through a tunnel. At one section of it Jewish women come to pray on the eve of their wedding and when they are praying to be able to have children. There were women there today who were praying at the wall.

Tomorrow we are going to be learning about parables by a Rabbi so I should have good stories from that!