The Shrine of the Book

Yesterday was just too darn adventurous so I went for an hour's walk. I spent ages staring at a map trying to work out why this street was called King David st according to the road sign but David Hamelech on the map. Of course you know that Melech means king. It came to me, eventually. I took another wrong turn but quickly realised there were too many consonants in the name and so got myself back on track.

The security guard here used to live in Rhodesia and for a time was in the army. I think he was bonding with me as a (ex)fellow member of the commonwealth. A tour of a model of 1st Century Jerusalem (really good but too dull to type about, you'll have to wait for the talk).

The museum here is the Thinking Man's Qumran (a great place to buy beauty products and get very hot and sandy and see the caves where the shepherd boy threw his stone). But here are the Scrolls themselves and its right to call it a shrine. This is as close as it gets to what Isaiah really did write. The Essenes might have been wacky taking all the fun out of fundamentalism but you have to hand it to them they were good at copying and burying. Its awe inspiring to stand this close to the Real Text. Some of you might get this kind of goose pimple with some nice Church architecture or others seeing a real bit of archaeological veracity, well its like that.

Weirdest bit of religious tat (yesterday it was a blue David star tambourine, I've got a photo). Today it was sale at this place of a Canaanite goddess, possibly an ashtorah, frankly its just ancient pawn.

This is the view from Mike & Bettina's roof. Gorgeous.