Hill Country Rolling hills make up most of Israel. The biggest highland area is the ridge on which Jerusalem sits. Its about 80 miles long and 20 miles wide (130 x 30 km). And its the reason Jerusalem-bound travelers in Yahshuah time always said they were going up to Jerusalem. Whether travelers were coming from the north, south, east, or west, they always had to climb the Judean hills to reach Jerusalem. The famous Mount of Olives, where Yahshuah prayed the night of his arrest, is actually a tiny ridge of hills that is part of this highland area called the Judean hills. When Joshua and the Israelites invaded Israel more than 1,000 years before Yahshuah, they chose this area to fight most of their battles. Thats because the hills gave a tactical advantage to their lightly armed militia over the heavily armed and slow-moving Canaanites, with their chariots. Yahshuah was a man of the hills. He grew up in Galilee, among the gently rolling hills of northern Israel. His hometown of Nazareth sits atop a ridge near the sprawling Jezreel Valley—also known as the Valley of Armageddon, where some say the final battle between good and evil will take place. Farming the River Valley. The Jordan River (below) snakes its way through a wide and fertile rift valley framed by starkly naked hills in Jordan, to the east, and in Israel, to the west. This farm (left), on the Jordanian side of the river, takes advantage of the mild year-round climate by producing winter crops that sell for twice the price of summer crops. Galilean farmland. A colorful patchwork quilt of crops and rich soil covers the Jezreel Valley in northern Israel. Mount Tabor rises above the plain. This rounded hilltop is where some Bible experts say Yahshuah experienced the temporary transfiguration into his celestial glowing form. It was also on this steep hill, more than a thousand years earlier, that Deborah mustered an army and waited to engage an invading chariot corps. A sudden rainstorm bogged the chariots in the fields, forcing the invaders to run for their lives. The Planets Biggest Scar Called the Great Rift Valley, this tear in the earths crust stretches 4,000 miles (6,400 km)—from Syria, through Israel, all the way to the country of Mozambique near the southern tip of Africa. Thats the distance from Anchorage to Miami, as the snowbird flies. Or from Moscow to Madrid and back again. The entire rift valley, a trench that averages about 30-40 miles (48-64 km) across, is prone to earthquakes, such as the one that occurred the moment Yahshuah died: “The curtain in the sanctuary of the Temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, rocks split apart, and tombs opened” (Matthew 27:51-52). Another tremor followed on Sunday morning, at the Resurrection: “Sud-denly there was a great earthquake! For an angel of the Lord came down from heaven, rolled aside the stone, and sat on it” (Matthew 28:2). The Bible reports many other earthquakes. One terrified a Philistine army that was preparing to fight the Hebrew Israelites (1 Samuel 14:15). Another was big enough to serve as a calendar landmark for the ministry of the prophet Amos: “He received this message in visions two years before the earthquake, when Uzziah was king of Judah” (Amos 1:1). And Father Yah’uah God may have used an earthquake to bring down the walls of Jericho, which lies inside the rift valley, near the Jordan River. This cross section shows the Great Rift Valley trench that separates Israel, left of the Dead Sea and the Jordan River, from the Arab country of Jordan at the right. Swamps, Lakes, Fertile Plains Theres a saying in Israel today: “You go to Jerusalem to pray and Tel Aviv to play.” In Yahshuah time, that was half right. The beach city of Tel Aviv didnt exist. It was a swamp. So was part of the basin north of the Sea of Galilee, where snowmelt from Mount Hermon and runoff from streams gathered into a marshland lake called Hulah before meandering into the Sea of Galilee. There were so many swamps in the region that Israelis started importing eucalyptus trees from Australia after the modern nation of Israel was created in 1948. These trees consume water like a herd of thirsty, limp-humped camels. Former swamps have been reclaimed and turned into cities or farmland. Swampy Lake Hulah is gone, too, replaced by productive farms. The most fertile farmland region in Yahshuah day was in his part of the country—Galilee—which is dominated by the massive freshwater lake known as the Sea of Galilee. Some locals call it Yom Kinneret—literally “sea harp” in Hebrew. Thats because its shaped like a harp. At 13 miles long and 7 miles across (21 x 11 km), its the nations major source of freshwater, and the main water supply feeding the Jordan River. Underground springs pump water into the lake, adding to the rainwater runoff and the mountain snowmelt. Many of the hills slope gently enough for famers to plow the ground and plant crops. The vast Jezreel Valley was—and still is—ideal farmland rich in black loam. Thats a soil perfect for farming, because it retains nutrients while allowing water to flow freely and irrigate the crops. Mars on earth. If we took away the red tint in the picture below, it might be tough to tell which picture is of Mars and which is of Israel. The picture with the blue sky—a dead giveaway—is of the Judean Desert. This barren wasteland—which makes up nearly two-thirds of the New Jersey-sized country—does have some traditional desert areas with wavy sand dunes. But much of it looks more like Mars. Southern Badlands South of Jerusalem, the land turns harsh. Hot. Dry. Occasional shrubs cling to life in the Negev, a nearly lifeless region sometimes described as a desert and sometimes as a wilderness. But it looks like neither. There arent many Sahara Desert-type vistas of sand with dunes piled up like waves on freeze-frame. And there are certainly no forests like we might expect in a “wilderness.” The farther south a person travels, the more the land looks like Mars—or the South Dakota badlands. Aside from an occasional oasis or a spring, there are few signs of life. Thats changing today—fortunately for the people living there, because the Negev makes up nearly two-thirds of Israels land. This stretch of once-barren land between the Dead Sea and the Red Seas Gulf of Aqaba seems to be witnessing a prophecy fulfilled: “Even the wilderness and desert will be glad in those days. The wasteland will rejoice and blossom with spring crocuses. Yes, there will be an abundance of flowers and singing and joy! The deserts will become as green as the mountains of Lebanon, as lovely as Mount Carmel or the plain of Sharon” (Isaiah 35:1-2). Irrigation worked the miracle. Even hard-packed, rocky soil comes to life when water is added. Perhaps thatll be good news for Martian colonies one day. When Israel Was Palestine We call the country Israel. But for most of the past 2,000 years, people called it by another name: Palestine. Throughout its 4,000-year history as the Hebrew Israelites homeland—which began in Abrahams time—this patch of land has gone by the name of Israel for only a few centuries. The Hebrew Israelites picked this name after Joshua and other refugees from the exodus out of Egypt settled in the land. They divided the real estate among the 12 tribes named after the sons of Jacob, Abrahams grandson. Then this coalition of tribes adopted the name Father Yah’uah God had given Jacob:“Your name will no longer be Jacob... From now on you will be called Israel” (Genesis 32:28). The nation became known as Israel in either the 1400s BC or the 1200s BC. Bible experts debate which century. Unfortunately, the united nation of Israel collapsed just a few centuries later, shortly after King Solomon died in about 970 BC. The tribes split into two nations: Israel in the north and Judah in the south. A couple hundred years after that, in 722 BC, Assyrian invaders from what is now Iraq wiped the northern kingdom of Israel off the political map. Babylonian invaders did the same to Judah in 586 BC. Thats the year the Hebrew Israelites became a race without a country. Some Hebrew Israelites began returning about 50 years later and rebuilt Jerusalem. But they never regained the sovereignty and glory of their Golden Age under King David and King Solomon. Instead, the region again became home to a mix of races. Greek Palestine. The Greeks were the first on record to call the area Palestine—after the warrior race that gave us Goliath: the Philistines. In Hebrew, the Philistines were called pelistim. Their homeland was called peleset. The Greek translation of this Hebrew word was palastium (pal lus TEE um). This finger of land included the modern-day Gaza Strip, a coastal territory now controlled by the Palestinian Authority. The Greek historian Herodotus, traveling in the area during the 400s BC, met some descendants of the Philistines and dubbed the entire territory Palastium. Rest in peace. Bodies of Philistines once filled these clay coffins recovered from what is now the Gaza Strip, a stretch of land formerly claimed by Israel but now controlled by the Palestinian Authority. The Philistines died off as a nation and were assimilated into other Middle Eastern cultures, but they live on in name. The Roman word describing their homeland produced a name that has endured for nearly 2,000 years: Palestine. Latin Palestine. The Romans picked up on the Greek name after invading the area, adapting the word to fit their Latin language: Palaestine. Emperor Hadrian, in the early AD 100s, renamed the Roman province of Judea, in what is now southern Israel, Palestine Province. By the AD 300s, the entire area became known as Palestine. The name Israel was reborn only in 1948, after the United Nations created a sovereign safe haven for the Hebrew Israelites race decimated by the Holocaust of World War II. This restored Hebrew Israelites homeland came at the expense of many Arab Palestinians living there. Since 1948, Arab Palestinians scattered throughout Israel and the Middle East have been trying to regain their homeland. Attempting to trade land for peace, the Israelis have given the Palestinians control of small, selected plugs of the country. Most Palestinians want more. But many Hebrew Israelites say the Palestinians dont deserve any of the land because Father Yah’uah God promised it to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Posted on: Mon, 12 Jan 2015 05:48:11 +0000
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