Field Study in Jordan

Hello Friends and Family! Our next adventure was to Jordan! We had been looking forward to this trip for quite some time now, and when it came, I think we received it with mixed emotions. On the one hand, we were very excited to get to see Jordan and all of its Roman and Byzantine remains (let’s face it, columns are much easier to appreciate than late bronze mud brick :0). We were especially excited to see Petra! On the other hand, this was our last trip of the semester, and it fell only a couple of weeks before finals, so it was a little scary to set aside our other projects with their deadlines swiftly approaching, to be gone for four long days. Not only that, but after a semester of traveling, we had found that the days are packed with so much that sometimes it is hard to take it all in or have time to appreciate the site fully.

After a rather uneventful border crossing at Beth Shean to Jordan, our adventure started. It is strange that this different country is only across a very sluggish river – you can see it very easily from much of Israel – but it is truly stepping into a different world…. very different with glimpses of similarities. The first thing I (Mandy) noticed about crossing the border was that all of the signs immediately changed. This may seem painfully obvious, but it still surprised me somehow. In Israel, all of the signs are in Hebrew, Arabic, and English (in that order). As soon as we crossed the river (and got off the bus and on the bus and off the bus and on the bus…all part of the border crossing), the signs eliminated Hebrew altogether, and many of them no longer even contained English. I hadn’t felt this illiterate since I went to Mexico in college!

Tour groups in Jordan are required by Jordanian law to have along a Jordanian tour guide and policeman. Our friendly tour guide, Zapher, proved to be an interesting character. He would “tag-team” with Paul, our professor, at the sites. Paul would concentrate on Old Testament sites and connections between the two lands (the main reason we were there), and Zapher would show us all of the New Testament, Late Roman and Byzantine sites, with perhaps a slightly less clear explanation, and less time to jot down the notes.

Once we were in the country, there were other features that surprised me. It is very different from the other side of the river, in Israel. To begin, the plain on this side is much more fertile than on the Israel side. There was almost constant settlement on this northern border. In addition, the houses are not predominantly Cenomanian limestone (like most are in Israel). Instead, they are cement, and many are very brightly painted in pink, green, orange, purple, red, etc. Some that weren’t painted (as we discovered further south in the country) had nice patterns of waves, leaves, etc. formed in the cement before it dried. In addition, it was interesting to observe that the beduin settlements were comfortably located within regular settlements… on the other side of the river (in Israel), which I suppose had helped to shape my impressions, the tents are usually outside of the city entirely. Yet over here, the beduins still mingled with the more settled or urban of society and dwelt among them.

On the first day, we stopped at Deir Alla (biblical Succoth), a badly preserved site, where had been found an inscription about the biblical Balaam), Pella (a Decapolis city across the river but within eye sight of Beth Shean), Geresa (with impressive black basalt columns…also a Decapolis city and within sight of the Sea of Galilee…and cheeseburgers!!!), and Ramoth Gilead (where many defining battles were fought in the Old Testament between Israel [including Saul and Ahab], trying to maintain their control of the land of the 2 ½ Transjordan tribes, and Damascus in the north…).

At the end of the first day we spent in Amman, at an amazing hotel called Amman West. We were told that each night we were here, the quality of our lodging was going to go down…we enjoyed the first night immensely. :0)

Day 2 was spent visiting the ruins in Amman, Jerash, the Jabbok River, and Tyre of Tobiah. Our first stop was Amman/OT Rabbah/NT Philadelphia, and true to a geography class, our professor opened our eyes to see the similarities between this city (the ancient capital of the Ammonites) and the geography of Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Like Bethlehem, its resource base is less, and it looks to the desert and to shepherding as a primary source of income. Like Jerusalem, however, it is located on a hill, with (slightly) higher hills almost all around, and one spur connecting it to the edge of the ridge. Being wider and flatter on top, it was easy to see how the capital, though it lacked certain resources, was better equipped and stronger than the capital at Jerusalem. We could easily see why the kingdom of Ammon constantly tried to push its borders to tap into the more fertile hills around and to their connecting international trade routes. The modern city and its ancient ruins also have a nice archaeological museum (which I think made Justin and I look like kids in a candy shop) and the site also affords a view of the largest flag in the world (see our pics :0).

Our next stop was Jerash, the “City of a Thousand Columns.” These ruins were vast, with columns stretching before us for a great distance! We arrived just as it started to rain, and when it stopped shortly after, we were given an opportunity to photograph this site complete with fresh green hills and imposing clouds. It was breathtaking! The green of the site looked more like Ireland, and the columns and temples all around resembled more of what you can see in Greece. It was truly a remarkable site! The only oddity is that, within the theater, there were some men playing bagpipes for the tourists, to demonstrate the acoustics of the place. Their music was impressive, though it was odd to walk around ancient ruins in Jordan listening to the ditty of Yankee Doodle.

After a few more stops (including one mystery site in the boonies outside Amman, called Tyre of Tobias…impressive ruins with building blocks similar to that of Herod’s temple in Jerusalem!), we headed south for Petra. The drive was 3-4 hours, and we arrived around 10pm to our hotel, with enough time to drop our bags and run to dinner (yes, dinner) before the kitchen closed for the evening. We stayed at a place called Petra Palace which, despite its fancy name, was a step below the location of the evening before. It was still decent, of course, but it took us at least 10 minutes for Justin and I to find our room, since the room guides on the walls didn’t have our room number listed…anywhere! Being tired and hungry and lugging our bags all over the hotel, needless to say, wasn’t a fun experience. After dinner and a restored sense of humor, we headed to bed, excited about the next day and seeing Petra!

It is hard to describe in words what we experienced in Petra. Upon arriving at the gate, the visitor is first accosted with vendors speaking English and offering clothing, donkey rides, and every other item you could possibly imagine. Passing this up, the visitor then arrives at the Siq. This is a narrow, natural passageway carved into the colorful sandstone which rises easily 50 feet or so above your head. It takes easily at least 30 minutes to walk through, and longer if you are with Zapher and/or have a camera. Along the way the visitor with keen eyes can pick out various mementos that were left by the ancients… a most impressive water system to channel the little desert water into a central location to make the land fertile, as well as symbols of their religion in the form of decorated niches carved into the rock. Even as far as the entrance we could see crude carvings of tombs with Egyptian and Mesopotamian artwork. Finally, the Siq narrows, the visitor walks around the corner, and through the crack in the rock you can see the bright and stunning façade of the Treasury, the most famous of the Petra carvings. It really is a shame that more of Petra was not featured in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, for it is a magnificent location!

We were thankful that we had the better part of the day to explore the ancient ruins, and we also had much of that time when we didn’t have to stay with the group and our tour guide, so Justin and I broke away from the group and went exploring on our own. Since Petra cannot all be seen in one day, we picked one or two sites to see, with the hopes of perhaps returning again someday. Within the main part of the city (maybe 15 minutes past the Treasury) there were many, many people offering rides, drinks, or any other commodity you could think of. There was even one girl selling little rocks she had found, and while we watched, she got a customer in a little boy. I hope she gave him a good deal. :0)

We decided to climb up to one of the high places (in this case a Nabatean worship site), and from there, we could look down at most of the ruins. Along the way, we walked through patches of sand of every color you could think of. The sandstone is really breathtaking (especially after 3 months of seeing nothing but cenomanian limestone :0), and I think I was most impressed with the pink sand (yes, naturally bright pink) we passed. We’ve seen many high places now, and though the ancients always built them on a raised platform or the highest spot of the mound, many of these sites don’t evoke the true imagery of a very high place. This spot, on the other hand, was incredible… Cut into the rock, the high place stood on the very top of a rock outcropping. This rock was so high that it offered us magnificent views of the city below and the canyons behind, and the sky seemed much closer than the previous places we have been to. It was not only a fitting location in height, but it was also a fitting location in that it evoked feelings of awe just to be there. (Paul, you were on my mind a lot at Petra…it reminded me of some of the pictures you have taken in Utah. :0) The people who were selling their wares were very friendly, and I got to chat with a couple of girls about some of the plants growing up there, as well as some words in Arabic we were trying to learn. It was an amazingly fun experience, and the people there are very friendly. I think they were interested that we cared about them, and not just their wares….

After lunch, Justin and I worked our way back through the Siq to the hotel, where we met the group and left for Bozrah, the ancient capital of the Edomites. The location was one that told us about the modern culture as well as the ancient one, and it gave us a glimpse into the recent past as well as the ancient past. The people who live in modern Busayrah are a very traditional, conservative society and are not used to having outsiders come through, let alone a gigantic bus filled with 50 people. Needless to say, we attracted quite a bit of attention, and we were grateful to our in-house policeman to stay off the curious young boys who weren’t so concerned about our serious lesson of geography and the Bible.

As the sun set over the horizon, one of our students read/recited the book of Obadiah, the prophecy against Edom. From our studies at JUC and those before Israel, we have learned to value all cultures of the Near East, not just the ones the prophets of Judah liked and wrote favorably about. Edom was not one of these. In light of both this and the modern tension between Arabs and Jews, it was a surreal experience to hear Obadiah being recited as regular Arab life went on around us…the Muslim call to prayer, men rushing home to eat dinner with their families, shop owners visiting with their neighbors, and of course the school boys observing this mob of foreign people in the back yard of their high school. The ideals of the Judaite prophets contrasted with the reality of a people who have their own beliefs and traditions and, whether they are Muslim, Christian, or otherwise, are a people God loves. It makes you see the prophecy of Obadiah not as an absolute reality, but as something written that is set within its own cultural context with its own biases. We can appreciate the viewpoint of the prophet – because it was his own perception of a situation – but we do not have to agree with it as the absolute truth of the situation. History is so much more complex than we would like to think, and it is the quieter time periods in between the fighting that demonstrate that the people groups did in fact, at times, get along. Edom was seen as a brother to Israel, and Edom is the place that the religion of Yahweh first came from. It would seem a pity to simply sum it up through Obadiah’s perspective, as being a nation worthy of complete annihilation and judgment. The people we drove past on our way into and out of the city gave the ancient people who lived there a couple thousand years ago a real face. For good or bad, they were still people. People with cares and hopes and families, who, just like the people of Israel, tried to do what they thought was best for their own.

We finished our time at Bozrah and headed to our final night of Jordan lodging, the one we had been warned about from the beginning. As I mentioned at the beginning of this entry, we had been told that the quality of each night’s lodging would become steadily lower as the days progressed, and this was our final night. I didn’t fear dirt, but I did prepare for bugs, just in case. The town we stayed at was called Kerak, and was known for its amazing Crusader castle…and nothing else. In our professor’s words, no one stays overnight in Kerak…except us…and when we got there, he told us that “the adventures of the day have just begun.” Not very comforting…

The exciting part of our lodging was that it was right next to the castle. Well… it was the positive exciting part. :0) We stayed at a location called the Kerak Rest House, and the inside hall we stayed in looked remarkably like the hallways inside the Disney Haunted Mansion ride. The one main hallway in either direction behind the reception area was lined in green carpet, had tall doors on either side with ancient knobs (complete with an old fashioned key you had to jiggle to get the door to unlock), and spaces for pictures, though each space did not possess its accompanying decoration (almost as through it would mysteriously appear later?). Inside the rooms had tall ceilings with green curtains and twin beds (our curtains were pinned shut with a safety pin). Overall, the rooms were more comical than dirty on first glance. On second glance, the questionable blankets and the interesting smells from the bathrooms began to register a little better…

We survived the night with little excitement, and the next morning, we set off to explore Kerak Castle (with its many dimly-lit passageways that begged a photographer to linger longer than the amount of time allotted to us). Kerak, or Kir-hareseth, was the long-standing capital of the Moabites. From this lofty hill, inhabitants could look out across the valley to see the Dead Sea and the area of Ein Gedi on the other side (we had come full-circle from our Negev trip :0). For some reason, it was actually surprising to see the Dead Sea from this vantage point – I had thought we were too far away. Being on this side of the Jordan River, we could really see how connected all of these ancient nations had been to each other.

After descending and ascending the Arnon Canyon, which was amazing and pressed an indelible memory on our minds, we reached Dibon, the ninth century BCE capital of Mesha, king of Moab (Mesha is mentioned in the Bible as having rebelled against King Ahab of Israel. There was also discovered here a basalt stele with an inscription of Mesha’s account of the rebellion, an interesting comparison with the biblical account). Actually getting to see the area on this side of the Transjordan was remarkable, since it really clearly showed us the difference between either side of the Dead Sea. It was extremely fertile up here (as opposed to the barren wilderness on the other side), and the farmers were preparing the ground for their grain crops. It was obvious that this place had the resources to be a strong kingdom during the time of ancient Israel, and a location that Israel would attempt to control during its times of power.

For lunch, we headed to Medeba for a feast for our eyes and our stomachs. From our notes, we learned that, during the Byzantine Era (4th-7th centuries BCE), many churches thrived in the city of Medeba. In 1884, a Greek Orthodox community was clearing the debris from the still visible foundations of an ancient church and revealed a colorful mosaic, which had been a part of the floor of an ancient Byzantine cathedral. The map is dated between 542-565 AD and includes most of the Near Eastern world at that time, including present day Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, and the Nile delta in Egypt. It is the only map we have during this time period that shows the geography and topography of the land. It contains details of buildings that existed during that time, boats that fished along the Jordan river, and the sites that were important to Christendom in the 6th century. The focal point of the entire map is Jerusalem, complete with the cardo (main street), the Holy Sepulchre, and Damascus Gate. Unfortunately, only 1/3 of the floor is preserved today (about 700,000 to 800,000 tiny cubes of tile).

After our stop to St. George’s, we ate our phenomenal lunch (so yummy…kind of like Middle Eastern Fajitas… truly the best thing we have eaten since we arrived in Israel!)

Our final stop for the day, before heading for the border and the joys of Passport Control, was Mt. Nebo, Moses’ final stop before his death. For some reason, this stop evoked more emotion than I had anticipated. It was our last stop of the last day of our last field study of the semester, but it was also the realization that, in contrast to the semester-only students who were about to be homeward-bound, the journey was just beginning for us. For Moses, this was his last stop, but it was also the realization that, for his people, the journey into the unknown was just beginning. I guess for us, the lessons of the semester came full circle on top of Nebo. When we stood on the opposite set of mountains at the beginning of the semester, we were struck with the realization that God had brought us out to the wilderness to learn to trust him, and to teach us things that could not be taught inside the comfort of the United States, with steady jobs and living situations we were familiar with. He had to bring us here. Not only that, he brought us here with absolutely nothing, forcing us to rely on him. We’ve already seen him working in our lives… every time we have had an unexpected expense, he has provided the extra finances. Do we have more than we need? No… I’m already nervous about next semester. But, I have learned to trust the fact that, just like God sustained the Israelites, his provision will come for us as well. We look for it, we do what we can to bring it in, but in the end, he forces to trust him step by step. Being on top of Mt. Nebo, I was reminded of that. God prepares and equips his people for what they do not know and what they cannot see. Our future is very hazy, like the haze over the land opposite us while standing on Nebo, but we trust that he is already there, and he is providing for each step we take to reach our destination.