Gladiators, wild animals, and a fortress, oh my!

Like I said last week, Bet Guvrin is HUGE. There's so much to it! I think you could spend all day in this park and still not see everything. from the caves running under the lush (in winter) Judean hills to what we're going to explore this week: the Roman, Byzantine, and Crusader era ruins!

WOW!

So, let's start with the Roman amphitheater. 

This elipitcal amphitheater is amazing to explore. You can walk through the stands (complete with cut-outs of 'audience members'), stroll through the area, and then walk through the gladiator sections. It's actually the only Roman amphitheater in Israel that is completely open to the public, and walking through it gives you a good idea what it was actually like. 

Built in the 2nd century, during the Bar Kochba revolt, its purpose was to keep the bloodthirsty Roman garrison happy and entertained, holding up to 3,500 people. There are even places next to the walls with openings for the wild animals to emerge from their cages (below).

Get this, it wasn't uncovered until the mid-1990s! I was maybe 10-11 years old. That's how long it laid under the surface! Incredible!

Close to the amphitheater is the Crusader Fortress. This area fascinating as well!

Like its BC story, Bet Guvrin's AD story is fascinating as well. The city was granted 'free status' by Emperor Septimus Severus in 200 AD, and it controlled the area between the coastal plain and the Dead Sea in that region. It became an important junction, and the city build up despite the lack of springs there, as the city benefited from Roman-era aqueducts.

The Jewish population in the area grew, and then in the Byzantine era, Bet Guvrin became an important Christian center. Then it was conquered by the Mamluks in the 6th century, then the Crusaders came and built a church (as well as the fortress), and then it was conquered by the Ottomans, who turned the church into a mosque.

Because of that, you can see the mix of materials everywhere in this fortress- and it cracked me up! You can even see it in the photo above: see how the rocks change? But I'm going to take you on a closer tour so you can see it all:

Can you see the random columns stuck in the walls? And closed entrances/arches?

There's another one! The arch below is intentional- to fortify the wall. 

But see how stones, column bases, etc. don't match each other as far as time period?

Below, right, is the church-turned-mosque:

The view from above!

Now, down into the fortress.... Only a few pictures here because we ran through it quickly.

The mix of materials cracks me up. It's like the builders were like, "Hey, this fits!" Which, honestly, is what I would do. And it matches the history of using found materials and building on former foundations.

There's such a wide mix that throughout the park are stations with flip books where you can find what you are seeing and see what era it was from, what kind of stone, etc. My friend, who was in the middle of furnishing her apartment was looking through it, and I teased her that she was looking for ideas. I mean, it was basically a giant HGTV warehouse, haha.

Can you see the base of the arch starting to curve out from the wall on the left?

That's it for this portion of Bet Guvrin. Next week is my favorite part: Maresha!

Oh yeah, one final photo. This is a simulation of a dig as you walk onto this part of Bet Guvrin, and it was awesome! One of my friend said that 'models' were the same from our Hebrew textbook, haha.

This street is 1,400 years old!

Like I've said before, you never know what you'll find walking through the Old City of Jerusalem, especially in the Jewish Quarter!

This time it was the Cardo, the 40-ft wide, colonnaded main street dating back to the Roman Era. It's called this because it was the main street, or the heart of the city. This is where we get words in English like, "cardio" or "cardiologist", and other words referring to heart. All ancient Roman cities had a cardo, and this was Jerusalem's (once it was rebuilt under the Romans). According to BiblePlaces, this was the main thoroughfare for Byzantine (Talmudic Era) Jerusalem. ItravelJerusalem.com says it would have stretched from the Damascus Gate to the Zion Gate, and its existence is proven by the Midba map in Jordan. In addition to shops, large churches lined the street.

Today, the street is about 6 meters (20 feet) below the current street level, showing how much the level of the Land has changed in the past 1400 years. 

The north side of the Cardo is from the Roman Era, dating back to Constantine. It has not been excavated. The south side, where we walked, is from the time of Emperor Justinian is Byzantine Era.

Part of it has been rebuilt to include shops. There's so much art lining this part of the Cardo, and it was all so beautiful! I wanted to get a piece of my own!

Along the sides of the Cardo are older remains form earlier eras... 

The older looking ruins (above) are from the 1st Temple period!

The newer ones (above right) are Hasmonian (the 400 -100 BC)

There are also places to look down and see what is directly below the cardo:

1st Temple period!

This is from the 2nd Temple Era... can you see difference in craftsmanship?

Farther down were murals on the walls lining the cardo:

And, let's not forget the areas with the original stones!

Amazing!

It was so cool, I decided to join the crowd:

*information from BiblePlaces and itraveljerusalem.com.

Pool of Bethesda: Where Jesus healed the lame man!

When I first went to the Pool of Bethesda on my trip in 2017, we weren't there very long. It was like a pit stop on a cloudy day, and we didn't walk around it. I don't even know if I got pictures! Wow, that's unthinkable.

Since then, I've tried to go twice, but because of covid, the hours changed and it was always closed when I went (it was hard to find the hours online). 

But finally, in the spring I got to go!

As I've learned since being back in Israel, there is SO MUCH MORE to every place we went to on the tour. There just wasn't enough time to do it all.

And, just like every place associated with Jesus, there's a church.

But that wasn't the first church built there, because the brochure the place gave me says that in 422-458 AD, a church was built to commemorate the healing of the paralytic. It extended over the medicinal baths and part of the pools. Some of that basilica still remains today.

So all these ruins inside the pool weren't there in Jesus' day. Last night I watched this message from Gary Hamrick of Cornerstone Chapel in Leesburg, Virginia, and it was SO GOOD! I 100% recommend watching it. 

In it, he says that the pool was bigger than an Olympic pool and at places was 42 feet deep! He also pointed out that John 5 uses the word "multitude" to describe the amount of the people around it, and while that isn't a definite number, the world "multitude" was also used in Mark and Luke to describe the 4,000+ and 5,000+ (respectively) that Jesus fed by multiplying bread and fish. So, it's fair to picture this GIGANTIC pool with thousands lying beside it, waiting for the water to stir so they can be healed. 

Which brings up the idea of Jesus walking through the multitude to find that one man and heal him. Seriously, if you like watching theologically-sound messages, please take the time to watch this one!

By the time of the Persian invasion, around 614, everything was destroyed and left mostly abandoned through the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphs. It wasn't until the Crusades in 1140 that a small monastery was built on the ruins of the 7th century chapel.

Then, the property changed hands again in 1192 after the conquest of Saladin. It became a school for Islamic law until it was abandoned under Ottoman rule and then given as a gift to France after the Crimean War (as Napoleon III helped the Ottomans). And it was given to the Missionaries of Africa (White Fathers) founded in 1878... and has remained in that ownership until this day. 

So that's a lot of history, and most of it, I don't care about a lot... but I do care about 1 thing: Jesus was here, and He healed here! There is where He healed the paralytic in John 5!!!

As I've talked about before, I am a BIG fan of The Chosen, and I love that this show featured this story in Season 2! It's extra cool watching the episode after having been here... you can literally 'see' it! If you haven't watched the episode, go do it now! And the rest of the show because it is AWESOME!