Floating in the Dead Sea

The Dead Sea, the lowest place on earth, at 1200 feet below sea level.

At 28% mineral, nothing can live in it. And it's impossible to do anything but float. The only way to drown is by swallowing the water, which will then go straight to your lungs.

Shrinking by 1 foot a year, it is 40 miles long, 8 miles wide, and 900 feet deep at the deepest part. Sodom and Gomorrah was somewhere near the southern end, but it has never been found... because when God wants to destroy something, He does.

When it rains in Jerusalem, half of the water runs out to the Dead Sea. During rainy season, there are literally waterfalls in the desert.

Swimming in it is really fun... and kinda trippy... and afterwards your skin feels AMAZING. #apictureadayofIsrael #israel 

Old and New

There are so many old buildings in Israel that have been torn down or fallen down, whether from natural disasters like earthquakes, decay over time, or destruction from war.

There's a law in Israel that says the old places can't be torn down. So what they do instead is they continue building with new material where the old building still stand.

The lines in the walls of Masada below clearly show where the original walls of Masada end and the recent additions begin. This way, visitors still get a feel for what it could have been like in their original state, without compromising the integrity of the structure and damaging valuable historical landmarks.

Fun fact- the above room had a mural, and you can still see some of the original colors!

Inside the church of the Annunciation in Nazareth, where you can clearly see the old and the new:

below - from an early church near where Jesus fed the 5000

Masada: Never Again

The view from Masada, a fort built by Herod next to the Dead Sea. Herod never actually went there after it was finished, though.

It became famous after a group of Zealots took up residence there. After hearing of the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, they wanted to hurt Rome. So they attacked 3 salt mines (Roman soldiers were paid in salt, as it was so valuable... which is where "worth his salt" and even the word "salary" come from). In retaliation, General Silva sent 10 Roman legions (12,000 soldiers) to the wilderness. On the way, they killed all the Essenes of Qumran.

When the soldiers arrived, they surrounded Masada and cut off the water supply, expecting the Zealots to surrender. What they didnt know is that Masada had full storage rooms and its own internal water supply, thanks to King Herod. They held out for 3 years.

Then, one day, a soldier saw a Zealot on top of Masada getting out of a bathhouse and reported another water supply. The soldiers began to build a ramp to scale the mountain. They used Jewish slaves to carry bucketfulls of sand to build the ramp, so the Zealots wouldn't theow down rocks and boulders - they couldn't kills their own countrymen.

The night before the Roman siege, the Zealots said, "our choice is slavery or death. We choose death."

The men killed their wives and children (leaving 2 women and their kids who had ties to Rome who could tell the story to Josephus) and then cast lots, killing each other until the final "loser" had to kill the other guy... and then himself. When the Romans scaled the walls, they found hundreds of dead bodies and a fort with full storage rooms (they wanted the Romans to know they chose death and it wasn't because they ran out of food).

Today, in Israel there is a saying: "Masada, never again." #israel #apictureadayofIsrael

Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls

The caves of Qumran (there are so many!), where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found.

A group called the Essenes lived here and copied both Scripture and other writings. When General Silva sent 10 legions (12,000) soldiers to Masada in AD 70-ish, they stopped in Qumran on the way. The Essenes had hid their scrolls in jars in caves, planning to come back to them. Instead, they were all killed.

In the 1940's, a shepherd was looking for his sheep in an area, and threw a rock into a cave... and heard something breaking. Finally, the scrolls were found.

On our last day in Israel, my friend and I went to the Israel Museum and saw the Isaiah scroll, the oldest copy in existence. SO COOL!!! #israel #apictureadayofIsrael

Also, fun fact- if you stand at Qumran and turn around, the mountain directly behind you (the last "green" one in the distance in the picture below) is Mount Nebo in Jordan, where Moses died.