7 Holy Land Sites No Visitor Should Miss

Christ Church, Jerusalem

The Jewish Protestant Church

The oldest Protestant church in the Middle East, built in 1849, is located just inside Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem’s Old City. Historian Stephen Neil called its founding "one of the strangest episodes of modern church history."

In January 1842, a German-born rabbi named Michael Solomon Alexander became the first Bishop of the Church of England in the Holy Land. As a young man he had taught Hebrew in England and in 1825 became a follower of Jesus. He was convinced that the people of Israel would one day return to their Promised Land, and once there, that God would pour out his Holy Spirit upon them, and upon all mankind. When he arrived, Jerusalem was a dirty, decaying town in a forgotten corner of the Ottoman Empire. In response to the poverty and unsanitary conditions, Alexander established the first modern hospital in the Holy Land.

The Dead Sea

Just try to drown here!

It’s true, you can’t sink in the Dead Sea! Just north of this historic body of saltwater is ancient Jericho. Somewhere, perhaps on the southeastern shore, would been wicked Sodom and Gomorra -- and the three other "Cities of the Plain" - Admah, Zeboim and Zoar mentioned in Deuteronomy 29:23. Zoar escaped destruction when Abraham's nephew Lot took refuge there as Sodom was burning, according to Genesis 19:21-22. Young David is said to have hidden from the wicked King Saul at Ein Gedi nearby. In Ezekiel 47:8-9 there is a specific prophecy that the sea will "... be healed and made fresh," becoming a normal lake capable of supporting marine life. A similar prophecy is stated in Zechariah 14:8, which says that "Living waters will go out from Jerusalem ...”

Golgotha

Is this where it really happened?

There is significant dispute over the site of Christ’s crucifixion, “the place of the skull,” in ancient Aramaic. The traditional location was discovered through a vision experienced by Helena, the mother of the Roman Emperor Constantine in 325 a.d. A few yards nearby, she also identified the location of the Tomb of Jesus as well as the True Cross.

Her son, the Emperor, then built the Church of the Holy Sepulchre around the whole site – and it is on most popular tours.

In 1883, British amateur archeologist Major General Charles George Gordon studied the 1842 findings of German scholar Otto Thenius regarding a rocky escarpment resembling the face of a skull, near the ancient Damascus Gate – as well as the research of a British Colonel Conder in 1870 and British historian Fisher Howe in 1871. Gordon did some digging of his own and found what is today called the Garden Tomb. Which Golgotha is authentic – Helena’s or Gordon’s? Archeologists say proof for either is sketchy.

Independence Hall, Tel Aviv

Birthing place of a nation

This is where modern Israel was proclaimed a nation. Almost a half-century before, 66 families had gathered on April 11, 1909 to draw lots for land in a new Jewish neighborhood. Meir and Zina Dizengoff chose plot number 43, where they built their home. In 1910, they and their neighbors, inspired by the writings of Theodor Herzl, unanimously decided to call their neighborhood Tel Aviv.

In 1930, after the death of his wife, Dizengoff – who had become the city’s first mayor – donated the house to be turned into an art museum. It was here that the first Israeli Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion, made Israel’s proclamation of independence at 4 p.m. on May 14, 1948, in the museum’s main hall, eight hours before British authority over the region was to end by order of the United Nations. Ben-Gurion read the declaration, Rabbi Maimon Fischman, recited a blessing and those in attendance signed the document, then together sang Hatikvah, which became Israel's national anthem.

The Masada Citadel

Site of a famous defeat

In A.D. 73, a thousand Jewish men, women, and children committed suicide rather than become slaves to Rome. Masada was originally Herod’s summer palace, near the Dead Sea. According to the first century Jewish-Roman historian Josephus, in 66 a.d., a group of Jewish patriots overcame the Roman garrison and used it as a base for raiding the Romans. In 72, the Roman governor of Iudaea Lucius Flavius Silva laid siege.

A Roman legion surrounded Masada and ramp against the western face of the plateau, moving thousands of tons of stones and beaten earth to reach the top. The rampart was complete in the spring of 73, after probably two to three months of siege, allowing the Romans to finally breach the wall of the fortress with a battering ram on April 16. When Roman troops entered the fortress, they discovered that its 960 inhabitants had committed mass suicide rather than submit to Roman imprisonment.

Due to the remoteness from human habitation and its arid environment, the site has remained largely untouched during the past two millennia. The Roman ramp still stands on the western side and can be climbed on foot. Many of the ancient buildings have been restored.

Jaffa ... "Joppa" in the Bible

This is where Jonah took the wrong boat

One of the oldest seaports in the world, Jaffa – called Joppa in the Bible -- today is an artists’ colony and tourist attraction. The town is mentioned in Joshua 19:46 as one of the cities given to the tribe of Dan. It is also cited in 2 Chronicles 2:15 as the port-of-entry for the cedars of Lebanon used in Solomon's Temple. It was the port from which Jonah fled in disobedience, refusing to go to Ninevah.

In the New Testament, the Apostle Peter raised the widow Dorcas from the dead in Acts 9:36-42. Acts 10:10-23 relates that later he had a vision of a large sheet filled with "clean" and "unclean" animals being lowered from heaven, God’s sign that he was to baptize the Roman commander Cornelius and to accept non-Jews for the first time as followers of Jesus.