Walking the Bible

by Bruce Feiler

  And what about his walks? What did Yair learn from them?

  “When you read the Bible in your room, it contains very nice pieces of literature,” he said. “But when you do what you’re doing now, when you read the Bible in Shechem, in Hebron, you say, ‘Here it is!’ And you feel connected to a story in a different way. You feel you belong.”

  “So do you think Avner learned that lesson?”

  “Everything Avner learned about the Bible he learned from me!” Yair boasted. “As for other subjects”—he threw up his arms in mock disgust—“I can’t be responsible for them.”

  “But he’s my teacher,” I said. “Do I have an inferior teacher?”

  Suddenly Yair grew serious. “Avner is the best teacher I have known in my life.”

  “But how can a bad student be a good teacher?”

  Now he became bombastic again. “Only bad students make good teachers!”

  Avner and I had been hiking for almost an hour when we arrived at the first of three hills we had to surmount, Abu Tour, a stately, tree-lined neighborhood mixed with Arabs and Jews. I asked if the threat of conflict had bothered him as a child. “There was always the mystery of having the division,” he said. “Particularly with the Old City in Jordanian hands. There were these grand walls, hiding this great place. I dreamed about the kotel”—the Hebrew term for the Western Wall—“and the Temple Mount.”

  “Did you ever see the kotel?”

  “My father used to take us to this place not far from the Promenade. He said if we looked real hard we could see it. As a matter of fact, I could never identify it. But I didn’t tell him.”

  We came to a stop on the far side of Abu Tour. Up above us, within the Old City, was the Dormition Abbey, a turreted German church built on the spot where Mary, in lieu of dying, is said to have fallen into eternal sleep. Looking down, I spotted a plaque at the base of an almond tree. “And the Lord said unto Abraham, ‘Lift up thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art, northward and southward and eastward and westward.’ ” I smiled at the coincidence, until Avner pointed out that the passage was not from Genesis 22, when Abraham brings Isaac to Moriah, but Genesis 13, when he’s looking at Mount Sodom, one hundred miles to the south. Like father, like son.

  Below our feet lay a steep descent into the Hinnom Valley, one of several gorges surrounding Old Jerusalem. In a story often recalled for tourists, in 1948 the Israeli Army secretly erected a cable across the valley to ferry supplies to a small garrison on Mount Zion. The army would lower the cable during the day and raise it at night. The author of the idea was Yair Goren. “He’s still upset that few people know he did it,” Avner said. In the 1980s, French aerialist Philippe Petit stretched a highwire across the same spot and walked across without a net. Pausing in the middle, he reached into his pocket and released a dove.

  We started down the mountain, passing some hollow tombs and a dead horse, before arriving in the Arab village of Silwan. The Ottoman splendor of Abu Tour gave way to tin-roofed poverty and crumbling concrete alleys. A cock crowed. From here the climb was straight up, past the Gihon Spring, to the City of David, the earliest boundaries of Jerusalem. In time our knees began to strain and we stopped to buy some orange juice and Arab bread. To the east was the Valley of Kidron, where the Bible says judgment will be rendered on resurrection day. Muslims believe that on that day, Mohammed will sit under the Dome of the Rock, Jesus will sit on the Mount of Olives, and a wire will be stretched from one to the other. All humankind will walk across the wire; the righteous will reach the other side; the rest will drop into the valley and perish. No matter what religion, it seems, the tightrope is the route to eternity.

  By nine o’clock we neared the base of the Temple, about a hundred yards higher than the City of David. The solemn white walls were visible now, with caper bushes poking out of the cracks like green icing dripping from between layers of a cake. A few palm trees waved at the sky. Our pace quickened. I could see Avner’s body come alive with a sense of direction, and purpose.

  Considering his childhood of biblical walks, it might have seemed inevitable that Avner would embrace archaeology after finishing high school. But he was more interested in math and philosophy. What changed his mind was a rare moment of peace in Israel in the early 1960s during which time the country rallied around archaeology as a way to link contemporary Jews with their forebears. While serving in the army, Avner was assigned to a tank brigade in the Negev and spent his weekend volunteering on one of the most storied digs of the century, Yigal Yadin’s excavation at Masada. “It was a wonderful time,” Avner remembered. “People came from all over the world. It was the first excavation that evoked strong patriotic feelings about Israel.” At the end of his service, a week before enrolling at Hebrew University, he changed his registration from mathematics to archaeology. Three years later he enrolled in graduate school.

  The connection between archaeology and patriotism reached its zenith around this time. In June 1967, Avner, along with millions, listened on the radio as Moshe Dayan led the first Israeli troops into the Old City, finally bringing the monuments of Jewish history into the State of Israel. Two days later Avner made the trip himself, walking from the Jaffa Gate through the scarred streets, and finally arriving at the sacred site his father had always wanted him to see.

  “At first I cried a lot,” he said. “Then I went up and touched it. I knew everything about it, from years and years of studying. But now, at last, I could feel it.”

  A few months later, Avraham Biran, then the head of the Israeli Department of Antiquities, came to see Avner and asked if he would become chief archaeologist of the Sinai, which Israel had also just seized. “It took me a few seconds to catch my breath,” Avner said. “Then I told him, ‘Yes!’ ”

  It was late morning by the time we passed through the Dung Gate and joined the line of visitors waiting to climb up to the Temple Mount. Down below, at the Western Wall, worshipers genuflected in black-hatted piety, their shoulders wrapped in talit. As we neared the metal detectors, Avner began rifling through his knapsack, nodding for me to look away as he slipped something into his coat pocket. At the security station, the guard patted my bag. “Bible?” he asked gruffly. Suddenly I realized what Avner had been doing. My throat caught. Would the guard notice a translation? “No, sir,” I said. He waved me through.

  “What was that about?” I said to Avner.

  “It’s illegal to bring Bibles to the Temple Mount. They’re worried about fanatics.”

  “Seems awfully ironic,” I said. “This place is here because of Abraham. But if he showed up with a copy of his own story they wouldn’t let him in.”

  “Welcome to the Middle East.”

  We stepped through the archway and into the stone piazza. More than thirty-five acres, the park was calm this morning, with visitors wandering among trees, washing in spigots, and kneeling in shoeless prayer. Children scampered everywhere. The Temple Mount is perhaps the world’s most notorious shrine to the tension between faith and family. In Genesis 22, soon after Abraham’s encounter with Abimelech in Gerar, God suddenly decides to put Abraham “to the test.”

  “Take your son,” God says, “your favored one, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the heights which I will point out to you.” The following morning, Abraham splits wood for the offering, takes his son and two servants, and sets out. On the third day he looks up and sees the place from afar. The spot from which he views his destination is believed to correspond to the Promenade. From there, Abraham sets out alone with the boy.

  The exact location where they visit, “the land of Moriah,” is not known. When David arrived in Jerusalem in the tenth century B.C.E., almost a full millennium after Abraham would have been there, he purchased the rock atop the highest hill in the city, claiming it was Moriah. It was David’s son Solomon who built the first temple in 970 B.C.E. After Nebuchadnezzar destroyed it in 586, a second temple was erecte
d between 525 and 515. “It was so much smaller,” Avner said, “that when people who had known the First Temple saw it they burst into tears.” Herod enlarged the facility in the first century B.C.E., but the Romans burned the entire compound to the ground in 70 C.E.

  The site remained in ruins until Arab caliph Omar Ibn-Khatib conquered Jerusalem in 638. According to the Koran, Arabs also trace their roots to Abraham, through Ishmael, but the two books differ, with the Koran implying Abraham went to sacrifice Ishmael, not Isaac, and did so in Mecca. In the seventh century, Islam was still a young religion, anxious to portray itself as the heir to Judaism and Christianity. Omar asked an aide, a converted Jew, where he should build a shrine to Mohammed. The aide recommended a spot on the northern side of the mount, so that Muslims praying south toward Mecca would include the site of the Temple in their obeisance. Later, tradition arose that the shrine was built over the spot where Mohammed ascended to heaven.

  On our way toward the Dome of the Rock, we ran into a friend of Avner’s, a Muslim guide. “The main reason this building is here is Prophet Mohammed,” he said. “But Muslims believe that Jesus, Moses, Solomon, even Abraham were all prophets of Allah. So there is a continuation. This is a spot where people come to meet God.” He excused himself and we went inside the mosque.

  The Dome of the Rock is the jewel of Islamic architecture, “one of the most fantastic buildings on earth,” as Avner put it. The mosque’s eight-sided base is covered in blue Persian tiles the color of sapphires; its round top is coated in 24-karat gold. Inside, carpets line the floor, where worshipers kneel in prayer; at the center is a giant rock, the peak of the mountain. Tradition holds that when Mohammed rose from this spot, the rock tried to follow. It failed, but created an underground cave. Today the cave is lined with Plexiglas to prevent pilgrims from chipping off a piece of history.

  Outside we walked to the edge of the plaza, where two women in orange Eisenegger windbreakers asked me to take their picture. Rosemarie and Sandy, both in their forties, were visiting from Norfolk, England, volunteering at an orphanage. This was their fifth trip in fifteen months. “We just come when the Lord tells us to come,” Rosemarie said.

  “And why come to the Temple Mount?”

  “This belongs to Jesus,” she said. “And they’ve got this abomination standing here. We came to claim this back for the Lord.”

  Rosemarie began pointing out all the spots where Jesus walked during his last days on earth, including the garden of Gethsemane, where he prayed; a spot on the Temple Mount where he met Pontius Pilate; and the Mount of Olives, where he ascended to heaven.

  “So what’s it like to visit these places?”

  “Ooooh, it’s wonderful,” she said. “You know, it’s my Jesus! It’s not the sites, it’s the spiritual dimension. It’s like reading Scripture. You can read the same Bible twenty thousand times and every time the spirit will come talk to you and give you something new.”

  “So you think others should come.”

  “Absolutely. We come to visit the dead stones—the tombs, the shrines. They’re wonderful, and God will speak to you through those, but it’s the living stones that matter, the people. We’re all living stones. We worship a living God. If you come here and say, ‘Lord, what do you want me to see?’ he’ll show you. You can see it from his eyes. And if we have him in us, then he never dies.”

  We said good-bye, and Avner and I made our way to a partially hidden bench and pulled out our Bibles. When Abraham and Isaac set out for the site, the boy carries the wood, while Abraham carries the knife and the fire. “It was so difficult to make fire,” Avner explained, “that they carried a charcoal ember.” Bedouin do it even now, he said. “They have a special plant, like cane. They put the charcoal inside the husk, wrap it in cotton, and it burns slowly all day. At night they break the cane, blow on the charcoal, and start the fire.”

  While Abraham and Isaac are walking, the boy turns to his father and says, “Father! Here are the fire and the wood; but where is the sheep for the burnt offering?” Abraham replies, “God will see to the sheep for His burnt offering, my son.” Once they arrive, Abraham binds his son to the wood and raises a knife to slay him. At that moment God interrupts, crying, “Abraham! Abraham! Do not raise your hand against the boy, or do anything to him. For now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your favored one, from Me.” Abraham spots a lamb, which he burns instead, naming the spot adonai yireh, “the Lord will see.”

  Because of this story’s drama and its potential chilling consequences for history, the akedah has been one of the most discussed chapters of the Bible. Some Jewish thinkers said God tested Abraham precisely because he knew that Abraham would pass the test. Some Christian thinkers see in the event a prefiguration of the sacrifice of Jesus: Just as Abraham did not withhold his son Isaac, so God did not withhold his son, Jesus. Søren Kierkegaard, the nineteenth-century philosopher, said Abraham agreed to sacrifice his son because God required proof of his faith. “Therefore,” Kierkegaard wrote, “though Abraham arouses my admiration, he at the same time appalls me. He who has explained this riddle has explained my life.”

  Given our recent travels, one meaning intrigued me. The akedah comes at the midpoint of the patriarchal narratives, in the midst of a stretch of chapters that clearly indicate a struggle over the issue of succession. First come the barrenness of Sarah, the birth of Ishmael, the arrival of Isaac, and the banishing of Ishmael. These events are followed by the marriage of Isaac, the barrenness of Rebekah, and the struggle between Jacob and Esau in the womb. If nothing else, God, who puts so much emphasis on Abraham and his descendants inheriting the Promised Land, seems to want that process of inheritance to involve testing and perseverance. God insists on testing the patriarchs, but he requires something akin to total devotion in return.

  In that way, the binding of Isaac is the perfect paradigm for God’s ideal of a father-son relationship. Just as God is the father figure who requires the total submission of his favored son Abraham, so Abraham is the father figure who requires the same from his favored son Isaac. In the end, of course, God intervenes and saves Abraham from the ultimate submission, which in turn saves Isaac as well. The biblical story thus becomes a perfect looking glass: Look at it from Isaac’s point of view, and one soon sees Abraham’s point of view, for both are children in the story. Look at it from Abraham’s point of view, and one soon sees God’s point of view, for both are fathers in the story. This may be the story’s greatest gift. Abraham, by binding his son on God’s orders, binds himself forever to God. Both are creators who almost destroy.

  But as I sat on the Temple Mount, I realized that the akedah also accomplishes something else. It’s the first time that God explicitly challenges Abraham, or anyone else in the Bible. Up to now, God has created the world; he has formed the Garden of Eden, then banished Adam and Eve; he has flooded the world, then salvaged Noah; he has commanded Abraham to “go forth.” But here he openly tests Abraham’s faith, and, by extension, the faith of the readers. The akedah is the first truly interactive moment in the Bible, the first time the reader is forced to ask:“What would I do in this situation?”

  In asking that question, I realized how removed I had been keeping myself from the text, how distant I still was from the human emotion at the heart of the stories. I also realized, in forcing myself to consider an answer, that the places, the atmosphere, even the archaeology of our trip—however impersonal at times—had been getting to me. Before starting this journey, I probably would have doubted Abraham’s resolve. I would have questioned whether he truly would have killed his son on orders from an invisible god. Now, at a minimum, I believe he might have done it. In the context of his life (God, after all, had allowed his wife to give birth to Isaac after she stopped menstruating)—and his time—I believe he might have done it. As for me, I doubt whether I would have shown such resolve. I doubt—in the context of my life—whether I could have taken the horrifically real step of sacrificing a
child in deference to an order I couldn’t verify was real, from a source I couldn’t prove existed. Still, far more significant to me at the moment was how seriously I was prepared to consider the question. If anything, part of me wanted such resolve, craved such faith.

  As for Avner, a father of two? I turned to him. We were sitting on a stone bench overlooking the Mount of Olives. The sun was directly overhead now. The tree above us provided little shade. “So would you have done it?”

  He thought for a second. “Many times I have imagined how awful it would be to be a father in this situation. But I don’t know. I don’t know if Abraham would have done it either. That’s one of the mysteries of the story.”

  It’s the same with the mountain, he said. “We don’t know where it happened. But I don’t think it matters. I think there’s an attempt here, like with Mount Sinai, not to point to the actual place, not to create a place that people can worship. The point is to create the message of being devoted so deeply to God.”

  “And it works,” I said. “This is one of the great stories in the Bible.”

  “It’s like a crystal. You can look through it and see a hundred different angles, but none is more beautiful than the stone itself.”

  3. A Pillow of Stones

  We were lost.theIt was several days after our trip to the Temple Mount and Avner was driving his clankety blue Subaru through labyrinthine streets of Rehavia, Jerusalem’s toniest neighborhood. Compared with the Escher-like madness of the Old City, the more elegant sections of “New” Jerusalem are posh with citrus trees and bougainvilleas, stately 1930s stone apartment buildings, and arched mansions with vine-covered walls housing foreign consulates. Rehavia, in particular, contains the prime minister’s residence, the president’s residence, and many of the city’s intellectuals—the Bloomsbury of Zion. “Martin Buber lived in that house,” Avner said. “Einstein stayed around the corner.” It’s also a place where the roads are rarely contiguous and even an experienced desert tracker like Avner can easily get lost. “Excuse me, could you tell me where the other road with this name is?”