Day 10 Part 6 The Southern Wall of Temple Mount

We trudge along the western Temple Mount wall until we can turn east and walk up the broad stairs that end at the southern Temple Mount wall.  We are all tired and for the first time in the trip, I see some of the elderly people on our tour begin to struggle to keep up.  

There is so much to see no matter what direction you look. Even beneath our feet.  The area is paved with smooth pavement stones as are most places in this area.  However, for the first time, I see that the material between the pavement stones are ancient pottery shards.  In this area the shards must represent millions of broken pottery vessels.  I want to stop and pry some out from between the stones but I am flagging and I don't want to get into some kind of trouble.  

As we arrive at the broad staircase on the southern wall, it feels larger than life.  Here I am staring in real time at something I have seen depicted in photographs all my life.  It is a little overwhelming.  The broad staircase looks like one part of it has been refurbished with new stone, the other half looks quite weathered, worn and ancient.  

On the left side of the southern wall is a later addition of building that sticks out from the wall.  It forms a nice shadow providing a little shade that looks welcoming in the heat. 

Our group assembles there on the steps as we prepare to hear a lecture on the significance of this place.  I admit I am pretty beat and there is no way to sit comfortably on these stone stairs.  I attempt vainly to find a way to sit there in a position I can stay in for longer than a minute.  I am sure that I have missed much of what is being said because of this and because I am surrounded by such fascinating things to look at.  I can look south, straight ahead of me and I can oversee the slope of Mt. Zion down to the City of David.  To my left, east, I look over the Kidron Valley at the face Mt. of Olives and it's million graves where we began this longest day of discovery early in the morning.  It is hard to think that literally within just a few hours we will be on a jet heading west and back to the U.S.A.

One of the surprising things that Dr. Turnage shares with us is that this area where we are seated has a lot of evidence that points to it being the place of the "upper room" that is mentioned on the Day of Pentecost in Acts chapter 2.  I am trying to imagine what it must have looked like 2000 years ago.  I study the bricks of the southern wall and notice some bricked up gates with round tops on them.  
Obviously they are pre-byzantine gates that must date to the first century or so.  There is a set of two and then further east down the southern wall is a set of three round top gates that are also bricked up.  

Dr. Turnage speaks much about the history of Pentecost with it's initial start taking place right where we sit.  He invites us to stand and he begins to walk east to the top of the broad stairs and up against the southern wall.  We continue to walk along the southern wall until we are in front of the three round top gates that are bricked up.  These gates as well as the the two previous ones date back to the first century or the time when Jesus himself would have actually been in this very location.  These gates served as access points through the wall of Jerusalem Jews would have walked through to staircases that would have elevated them to the top of the mount where the Temple stood.

As is the case everywhere we have been, the possibility of walking on any surface that Jesus actually walked on has been pretty remote.  Things being built upon previous built layers or things destroyed and removed through the centuries has left little of what was the Israel Jesus lived in.  However, Dr. Turnage points to the paved stones we are standing on.  They are replacements of the original stones that Jesus would have walked on.  Except three.  There are three distinctly different stones directly in front of this three gate opening.  Dr. Turnage tells us that of all the places we have been in Israel and Jerusalem these three stones are the most like location of any that Jesus would have touched as he walked through these very gates.  

This final bit of Dr. Turnage's lecture serves as the punchline of the whole day.  The group surges to see these stones and grab a snapshot, touch them, kneel down on them or just stand on them.  To think Jesus himself, in the flesh standing in this very spot.  The connection to the Bible, to antiquity and Jesus himself is very real.  It makes all the Bible stories of Sunday School and the scriptures much more a reality.  It was a real high point of the day and a good way to end the tour of Israel.

It is now time to head back to our hotels, shower, eat and dress for our flights out of Tel Aviv later tonight.  We all turn to go, descend the stairs, cross the pottery paved plaza and catch our buses that wait on the edge of the road jamming up traffic in the evening rush hour. 

We pause to assist some of the elderly who are clearly played out and can barely walk back to the buses.  I feel the way they do but have enough left to help them and get myself on the bus.

It has been the longest day of the tour both in terms of time spent walking and all that we have taken in.  We could have filled days with just what we touched on in one.  

It doesn't take our buses long to pull into the Jerusalem Ramada where we have been staying since our time in Jerusalem.  We will not sleep here tonight.  We shower, change our clothes and head down to our closing banquet of the tour.