Jerusalem Day 3, Continued: Mount of Olives tour

We took a second tour with Erez, who led us up to the site of many scenes in the bible, the Mount of Olives.  It was apparently an olive orchard around Jesus' time; hence the name.

The way Erez, a Jew, described it, it sounded very different to my ears.  Jesus was "found" and "caught" on the Mount of Olives, before he could enter the city and start "riots."  Suddenly, I was able to see Jesus in a whole different light; he sounded an awful lot like a terrorist.  His zealous anti-establishment stances, his careful planning of his demonstration on one of the highest holy days in Jerusalem... it's such a different image.  And he did, eventually, topple governments -- or at least, governments were toppled in his name.  In this city where, even today, there are soldiers on every other corner slinging around machine guns, checkpoints at every border, and regular mortar attacks in border towns, I can imagine how the authorities might be ready to arrest a political dissident rather quickly.

The mountain contains as many shrines as it has mentions in the Bible.  Here, it seems that, every time there is a mention of something on the Mount, a group builds a church in honor of it.  So, we toured many, many churches today.  They were all really neat, but I'm getting them a bit mixed up in my head.  Here's what I can remember...

Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives.  You can see the Southern Wall (on the left) and the Eastern Wall (facing you) of the Temple Mount.  Most worshipers would have entered by the southern wall, up the stairs that are currently being excavated there. Apparently, King Herod built these walls AROUND Mount Moriah, on which the temple stood, in order to level out the ground and make more room for worshipers.  The original mountain can no longer be seen, because it's surrounded by these walls.

This is a cave on top of the mountain in which tradition says Jesus taught his disciples all the wisdom of the world before he went to his death.

This is the chapel of the ascension, where Jesus rose into the clouds after Pentecost.  This chapel replaces a former huge chapel that the Byzantines built.  It was razed by the Ottomans, and then this one was built by the Crusaders.  It was originally an open-air octagon with just the arches you see.  The Muslims added the top two layers after they conquered the Crusaders.  It is now still a functioning mosque, but they let Christian visitors come.

Inside the Chapel of the Ascension is JESUS' ACTUAL FOOTPRINT, left when we took off into heaven.  It has been preserved from the original floor.  Too bad there's no actual footprint there...  Our guide tried to point it out for us, but the area he described looked like a modern-day man's shoeprint (on the right side, you might be able to make it out), and was about three times the size of a human foot.  Details...

This is the view of the inside of the chapel that honors Jesus' Weeping over Jerusalem.  The chapel is  gothic version of a teardrop.  Inside, the altar faces west toward the city.  If you look very closely, you might be able to see the Golden Dome of the Rock through the window.  (Bonnie, I took this shot of the altar for you!)

The bible says that the Messiah will come to the Mount of Olives.  That's part of why it was so important for Jesus to be placed there, but it's also why so many Jews want to be buried there.  This is a Jewish cemetary, with all those box-like monuments over the graves.  According to our guide, there are three things you must be before you can be buried there: 1) Jewish.  2) Very rich.  3) Dead.  (That last one is especially key...)

From the top of the hill, we descended down Palm Sunday Road.  I couldn't get over how steep it was!!  Totally different from the pictures I grew up seeing.  Putting coats down on that road might have made things very slippery for a donkey!  Not sure that was a great plan...

This is the best shot I got of the Garden of Gethsemene.  It's a lovely garden of about 12 giant olive trees.  Our guide didn't know how old the trees were.  He said it's hard to tell, because as a stump dies, a new shoot comes out of it (Jesse's stump, perhaps?).

Inside the Chapel of the Garden of Gethsemene, also known as the Church of All Nations, since so many countries helped fund it.  It was designed in the 1920s to represent grief.  Thus, they don't have stained glass windows, but thin purple alabaster to make a dark, grief-like feeling.  I think it's gorgeous.

Here is THE rock on which Jesus prayed in Gethsemene, according to tradition.  There's some great symbolism around it, including the fence made of crowns of thorns.  There are two birds drinking out of a cup of grief in the front, and the mosaic behind shows the scene in the garden.

An evangelist has carved a message in a century plant.  Take heed.

Near the garden was a building containing ossuaries, small clay boxes that contain the bones of Jewish ancestors.  Bodies are laid out in a tomb fora  year, and then their bones are collected and put in an ossuary.  It's just as long as a thigh bone and as wide as a hip bone, to save space.  Some have said that they have found Jesus's ossuary, but his name was rather common at the time, so it really could have been anyone.

The church of Pater Noster (Our Father) is dedicated to the Lord's Prayer.  They had tile plaques with it written in 137 languages.  The chapel was open-air with a long cloister and an indoor chapel.  Very peaceful and beautiful.

The English prayer.  This chapel is run by the French Carmelite sisters, which is why "Anglais" is labeled as such.  It was also very hard to find the English pane.  It was much easier to find some rarer ones, like Tagalog and Ojibwe.  Very cool that they had those!