Sunday, February 21, 2010

First full day





Yesterday we woke up and went to some Arabic restaurant to grab breakfast and then met up with Ernest to go to the church of Cepulchre, the oldest standing church and walked around looking at one of the three places people think Jesus was taken before being put on the cross and then laid after taken off the cross. After we went to go meet a few of Ernest's friends from the shops and they treated us to coffee and tea. One of the shops the man, Zach, had coins that he showed us that Judas Iscariot used to betray Jesus from Matthew 26:14-16 (costing $1,200) and then also mites that the Bible talks about when Jesus saw a poor widow put two mites into the offering box from Matthew 21:1-4. Zach actually gave us each a mite to have!! :) Then we were on our way to more sight-seeing to the Shuk where there is an open market, and a down town area where people all go to hang out. It was still the Sabbath for the Jews as we were walking around so the streets were pretty dead. The weirdest thing to me was as we walked we read Psalm 120-134 over Jerusalem and asked one of the Jews when they would have read these Hallel Psalms and they didn't know. I guess I had imagined that the Jewish people would know the scriptures front to back and was shocked to find out later from Ernest that most don't and those that do don't study the books of Moses but read commentaries of commentaries. I still am doing a lot of people watching and trying to learn how women interact and what to do and not do while I'm here!

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