Day 7 - October 3, 2026
A beautiful breezy comfortable day - at least to start with!! Jim, our instructor, took us to a vineyard to illustrate John 15. Some of the plants here are managed in the ancient manner, which is not on a trellis. The main vine comes up from the ground and is rested on a large rock to that grapes from the branches have room to hang down. We then drove through the hills of the Shephela toward the Philistine Plain.
At the edge of Philistine Plain we stopped at Beit Guvrin National Park. We walked through a Roman amphitheater where gladiator games and wild animal hunts were held. The city of Maresha is part of the park and was the hometown of Herod the Great. Much of what we saw here was a part of Greek culture in the 2nd century BC. There are carved and painted tombs - depictions of wild animals and greek mythological beings. The bedrock in this area is chalk limestone - much softer and easier to carve that the hard limestone we’ve seen so far. The rock was quarried here and it left massive dome shaped caves, now called the bell caves. Two of the “alcoves” in a bell cave have a cross carved above them and were perhaps used for Christian worship before it was legal.
We stopped at the ancient roman road that we passed a few days ago, where Philip explained the scriptures to the Ethiopian Eunuch and baptized him.
Craig had arranged with one of the Armenian priests at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher to tour St Vartan’s chapel at the end of the day today.This chapel is not usually open. It is below the St Helena’s chapel. While going down the steps you see remains of some 1st c homes. The chapel ceiling is bed rock that the guide says was a part of Golgotha. At the front R corner near the altar is piece of Christian graffiti dating to the building of the church circa 330 AD. It is a ship with an inscription that says Lord we will go and is thought to be from some of the very earliest Christian pilgrims.
Going down even further another set of steps takes you below this chapel to where you can see part of an ancient wall of the temple to Aphrodite that Hadrian placed over this site trying to obliterate Christian memory of the location.
On the walk back to the hotel we tracked the traditional Via Dolorosa and stopped into an antiquities shop run by a Christian family for generations. Their back wall is essentially the north wall of Temple Mount and was part of the Antonia Fortress.
Tonight we pack up and prepare to move north to the Sea of Galilee tomorrow! Good night and God Bless, PB and Margery
Discussion of John 15 while in a vineyard. This Vine (the trunk looking part) is being managed in the Biblical era agricultural method - supported by a rock rather than a trellis.
