Israel Museum

Since Callan and Austin have been here, we have been playing the tourist pretty heavily.  And it is exhausting.

A few days ago we went to the Israel Museum.  I wasn’t really sure what to expect, especially since the entrance fee was kinda pricey.  But my expectations were sufficiently filled.

One of the highlights was the dead sea scrolls.  Upon acquiring most of the scrolls, Israel built a shrine to commemorate, honor and show them off.  It was crazy to see such old writings, right before my eyes.  Of the shrine, probably the coolest part was the Isaiah scroll.  A scroll that contains the entire book of Isaiah as we know it in our bibles today.  The scroll was dated at 100 BC and is exactly the same as we read it now.  Nothing has changed.  Perhaps even cooler is that this is book with many prophecies pertaining to Christ and it is the ONE to be found in its entirety!  Hmmmm…..

The other highlight was the model of Jerusalem.  They had built a model of Jerusalem in 66 AD.  The model is 1/50 scale.  It was incredible to be able to visualize what the bible is talking about:  Temple mount, Herod’s palace, Golgotha… really brought the story to life.  Since it was outside, we were allowed to take pictures.  I have a really cool composite picture of the whole thing, but for some reason it won’t let me post it.  So here’s a less impressive one, but impressive nonetheless. 

 

They also had this art garden that didn’t really speak to me.  I suppose abstract sculpture is beyond my scope, but we did find this fun mirror thing:

They also had a humongous art gallery/archeology museum/jewish life museum.  So huge that we kind of glazed over and were unable to absorb any more.

Israel take the museum scene pretty seriously.