Garden Tomb

A couple Thursdays ago with young adults we went to the Garden Tomb and had a private tour. The young adults pastor's wife is a tour guide there. When we arrived there, we walked as a group because it is Arab territory and the girls did not want to walk alone to there, we had a chance wonder around be ourselves. It was fun to walk around. It felt like a very big playground. I told the friends I was with that I wanted to play and one of the guys Michael said well why not there are no adults here. So we all had a good laugh.

Then we had the tour. I really liked that when we started the tour the first thing said was that this may not be the actual place but we can remember what happened. So we started at the of the skull.A guy found it about 120 years ago and thought it looked like a skull as the excavated they found skulls that had been crush by rocks and feet and ankles with nails still through them. The bones were found at bottom of the hill. The other reasons that it could be is that it is right on the main road between Jericho and Bethlehem, so people could have walked by and scoffed at Him.

Then we went to the garden area. We were told that the garden would not have looked like this, but it was most likely a vineyard. Under the ground in that area was found a large cistern for watering a garden. I believe that it has been dated back to the time of Jesus. Also in that area was found the biggest wine press in Jerusalem or Israel, I forgot. But that shows that a man of great wealth owned the land at the time of Christ.Then we moved to the tomb. there were many earthquakes so the stone probably jumped out and was broken. The tomb itself dates back to the time of Jesus. It has a soul window, for ventilation, and for the soul to escape from heaven. The tomb itself is a tomb rather than a cave so it was dug out of the wall, which again points to wealth. A tomb is made from to part the places where the body is laid and a weeping area. The weeping area in this place is twice as big as in other tombs of the time which also points Outside the tomb is the ruins of an old byzantine church. By the what is left they can tell that there were areas for baptizing people there. Right outside the tomb is a track for the stone to have run on. The stone was never found but it is believed that at the time of the crucifixion of great wealth. Most tombs you walk in and you can see into the tomb side and this one you do not. Here you walk in and then have to look to your right. In the place where they lay the bodies, they would already have places prepared and once they knew how tall the person was they would carve out a place for the feet. In this tomb only one place had been used.

It was a very interesting visit. It was neat to have all the background to the Bible as well as the history of the place.