Jerash, Madaba, Mount Nebo

The day started with an early wake-up due to not being used to the time zone. We had breakfast of stewed tomatoes, exotic cheeses, yogurt, honey, hummus, hard boiled eggs, and various artistic and tasty tiny pastries. Then it was a long day of riding in the bus to a few sites. The first was Jerash (Gerasa, in the Bible) one of the Decapolis. Rome had built these ten cities for the protection of its trade routes and as early-warning outposts to protect the empire.

Jerash (pronounced JAIR-ash) was mostly buried under sand until it discovery a few years ago. Constant labor is bringing it back as a great ruin. Our guide explained how to tell the comparative time periods or level of wealth when various new construction happened. The city so far features two large amphitheaters, a hippodrome, a central plaza, two main streets replete with ancient speed bumps (seriously), market stalls for vendors, a Roman bath, a waterworks system, a temple to Zeus, and a pillar that was built intentionally wobbly and rigged with a bell to serve as a warning of any seismic activity. I think Pompei, the architect designed that. Not sure if he’d invented yet when the city bearing his name was suffocated by Mount Vesuvius.

Here’s Jim at the hippodrome. “Hey! Where are those hippos?!” Turns out hippo means horse, so it’s only a racetrack. The run horse and chariot races there twice a week now.

This wall decoration shows some of the intricate detail that has been preserved by the sand.

This large plaza served as a public party hotspot. Sacrifices were likely also made, but none human.

Here’s my private party hotspot. Ginger walks past some intricately carved stone.

From the very highest seats in the amphitheater I truly could hear the group talking to me. In this shot they were singing the Doxology.

Then we drove a long distance to the City of Madaba (pronounced MAD-uh-buh) which boasts the oldest map of the Holy Land. It was done in mosaic on the floor of a Byzantine Church. The Church is now Greek Orthodox, but the map is still there. Parts of it are missing, it’s all written in Greek, and it’s too big to fold up and take in your car, so the fact that it was made about 600 A.D seems a small consolation. The piece I’m showing is the section of the map showing Jerusalem.

Then it was back in the bus for a trip to Mount Nebo where Moses died after seeing the Promised Land.

The view shows how unlikely it is that eagle-eyed Moses saw much of the Promised Land without God's special revelation. Ellen White says that from that vantage point God revealed not only the entire land, but also the future including how Moses and Elijah would minister to the Christ prior to His sacrifice. It was pretty sobering standing there looking out over the rough terrain that 120-year-old Moses had climbed alone. He was one tough dude in many ways.