Wow, I can't believe it! Today is our final day of a twelve-day journey in the Holy Land! We started our morning with a visit to the Garden Tomb for a tour and our closing communion service. Then we made another visit to the Mount of Olives and ended our tour at the Southern Steps of the Temple Mount to talk about Pentecost.
The Garden Tomb, located north of Damascus, was suggested in the 19th century as an alternative site of calvary and Jesus' Tomb. While the setting is very suggestive of what the garden would have looked like in the time of Jesus, excavations would seem to indicate that the tomb is too ancient to have been the one built by Joseph Arimathea. The details of the chiseled walls and the bench type of arrangement suggest a date during the Old Teatament. Were it not for the New Testament statement that Joseph's tomb was new, this would have been the possibility.
Southern Steps
The main public access to the Temple was from the Southern Steps. People entered and exited through a double and triple gate, together called the Huldah Gate. These gates had to handle enormous crowds during feast days; estimates as high as 500,000 people at a time. The triple arched gate was the entrance and the double arched gate served as the exit. Although the double and triple gates have been filled in, you can still see their outlines in the walls near the well- preserved steps of the monumental staircase.
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