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Rising up from the surprisingly warm waters of the River Jordan and pushing my wet hair out of my face, I suddenly sensed how closely the traditions of Holy Land are interwoven. It occurred to me that John the Baptist, who according to Christian scripture had baptized Jesus in this same river, was not only the quintessential Jewish ascetic, but also part of a sect of River Baptists, whose practice of ritual cleansing of sins was part of the fabric of Jewish culture. Immersion in water for ritual purification was established in the Jewish texts for restoration to a condition of "ritual purity" in specific circumstances, and the construction of mikvahs for this purpose, is well established in Jewish history. Yet, the total immersion that is part of that ritual is also something that many Evangelical and Pentecostal Christian sects embrace, along with adult baptism, unlike the Roman Catholic and Mainline Protestant traditions. John’s sect thereby utilized a powerful archetypal ritual of Death and Rebirth on which the soon-to-emerge “Jesus movement” would build a religion.

Without having actually visiting the sites in which these traditions overlapped, however, I might have had difficulty apprehending how viscerally they are connected. As I stumbled along the Jordan in my rented white baptismal robe and black Crocs (the same water shoes I had worn earlier while navigating King Hezekiah’s 2700-year-old underground water tunnel), I felt not at all foreign to this moment, taking place as it did in a river visually similar to the waterways of the Catskill Mountains in Upstate New York where I’ve lived for the past 20 years. Later we would wander the shores of the Galilee and bake in the hot sun of Masada, where a band of Sicarii, the terrorists of their day, held out against the Roman army. Before that, we had spent four days wandering the narrow, zigizagging streets of Jerusalem viewing the sacred places in the history of Judaism, Christianity, and (from a distance, at least) Islam. There, one of the holiest sites of all Islam, the Dome of the Rock, is built on the Temple Mount, not far from where the foundation of the Second Temple, the Western Wall, is still revered by devout Jews (and non-Jewish visitors like me).

The CMED excursion to the Holy Land of Israel this October brought into stark relief the many interconnections among the three major religious traditions that nervously share the heritage of that relatively tiny piece of land. Israel is roughly the size of Vancouver Island or New Jersey, and more than half of that is taken up by the sparsely populated Negev desert, rendering the density of sacred places all the more astonishing and, frankly, overwhelming to both brain and senses. Summarizing the multifarious linkages among these traditions would take more space than a brief newsletter allows. So, at the risk of offending any number of readers, I will condense this intimate web without, I hope, oversimplifying, meanwhile recording some of my own fleeting impressions of this voyage of discovery.

First, the briefest of prologues for anyone who may be mystified by my reference to the interrelationship of three religions that are so violently at odds with each other today. In the field of Comparative Religion (itself little more than a century old), Judaism, Christianity and Islam are referred to as the Abrahamic religions, because they each claim the patriarch Abraham as their progenitor. Because Christianity essentially subsumed the Hebrew Bible into its scripture as the Old Testament, and because Jesus was obviously Jewish, the connection between these two traditions is manifest, although much deeper than many realize, as I’ll get to in a moment. Meanwhile, according to Islamic tradition, Ishmael (Ismail in Arabic) was born to Abraham and Hagar, the Egyptian handmaid of his wife, Sarah, much as it is recorded in the Judeo-Christian scriptures. When Isaac was later born to Abraham by Sarah, she insisted that Hagar and Ishmael be banished. They settled in the Becca Valley, along the "incense road" near Mecca in what is now Saudi Arabia. (According to Genesis, Ishmael later returned to the land of Canaan to help Isaac bury their father at Hebron.)

When Hagar and her young child first arrived in this barren valley, Ishmael was taken ill and badly needed water. Tradition holds that Hagar ran back and forth seven times between two nearby promontories seeking desperately for help. She was searching for water when a spring named Zamzam miraculously appeared, sent by God when Ishmael's heel struck the ground there. Abraham later visited his son, and, according to the Quran, God showed Abraham where he and Ishmael should build a sanctuary, called in Arabic the Ka`bah ("Cube"), a square edifice whose four corners faced the four compass points. A cubical black structure that still stands in the open, the Ka`bah was rebuilt several times (the modern Ka`bah in Saudi Arabia is a direct descendent of the original).

Islam shares many other historical and theological facts and teachings with both Christianity and Judaism. I don’t want to bore the reader with a religion lesson, but I can’t help mentioning a couple of facts of which most non-Muslims seem to be largely unaware. According to the Quran, which is believed by Muslims to have been dictated to the Prophet Muhammad by God through the angel Gabriel (Arabic Jibril), Allah, whose name in Arabic means “the God,” identifies Himself with the Yahweh of the Jewish and Christian scriptures. The Muslim holy book also identifies Jesus as one of 124,000 prophets of Islam; of the 28 prophets mentioned by name, 18 are from the Hebrew Bible and three from the New Testament, including Adam, Noah, Abraham, Ishmael, Moses, Elijah, Solomon, Job, John the Baptist, and Jesus. Muhammad proclaimed the Virgin Mary, the Mother of Jesus, "the highest of the women of the people of Paradise," and the Quran itself affirms the doctrine of the Virgin Birth of Jesus, which even some modern Christians no longer acknowledge.

For all that, Christianty shares an even closer bond of history and belief with Judaism, by virtue of the fact that Jesus arose from the Jewish tradition and was clearly conversant with Hebrew Scripture and laws. In walking the cramped confines of the Old City of Jerusalem and the adjoining Gethsemane and Mount of Olives, it’s impossible to avoid the overlapping of significant sites. Just a short hike leads from the places where Jesus was crucified and buried to the Western Wall of the Temple Mount, the City of David and David’s Tower.

Within every religious tradition abides a wealth of differing beliefs and sects, and in this historically dense area of the world influences come from as far as Rome and its expansive empire. The Roman occupation of Judea had a profound influence on both Judaism and the emergence of Christianity, as even a passing familiarity with the Gospels makes plain. Jesus is asked whether it is right to pay taxes to Rome, provoking his classic response, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.” He was also criticized for associating with tax collectors, Jewish citizens who collected the tariffs imposed by Rome and were generally seen as collaborating with the occupiers. (Similarly strained relationships between occupiers and occupied have been prevalent in our own times, from Northern Ireland to Iraq, evoking many of the same divided loyalties and suspicions. The Zealots and Sicarii were militant Jewish groups who opposed Roman rule, leading to several revolts.)

The depth of these interconnections, racial and religious, are highlighted by a splendid cover story in the December 2008 issue of National Geographic on King Herod, the Roman-installed Jewish king of Judea, who died in 4 BCE (because of an early scribal error, this is now considered to be the year that Jesus was actually born). In the magazine’s account of recent archaeological discoveries at Herodium, one of the king’s impressive architectural creations, located just eight miles south of Jerusalem, the author points out that Herod’s mother was an ethnic Arab and his father an Edomite. (The Book of Genesis names Edomites as descendents of Esau, Abraham’s firstborn son.) Although Herod was raised as a Jew, his family had converted to Judaism under duress and, as the article explains, many of his subjects considered him “an outsider—a ‘half Jew,’ as his early biographer, the Jewish soldier and aristocrat Flavius Josephus later wrote.”

Nonetheless, Herod was a prodigious builder who was responsible for not only Herodium but also the Second Temple, the port city of Caesaria, and the grand pleasure palace known as Masada. It was Masada that was later taken over by a group of extremists called Sicarii, named for the daggers they used to assassinate collaborators. After the First Jewish-Roman War, during a siege of the fortress by Roman troops in 74 CE, the Jewish rebels committed mass suicide rather than surrender. Since our tour took us to the Western Wall of Herod’s temple, as well as the still-imposing ruins of Masada and Caesarea, I was delighted by the large-scale color photographs of all three sites that accompany the article, along with an eerie photo of the salt-encrusted edge of the Dead Sea.

Not far from Masada lie the caves of Qumran, where in 1947 a young Bedouin discovered a cache of ancient manuscripts now known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. Scholars cannot agree on much except the age of these scrolls, which date as far back as 300 BCE and contain copies of almost all the books of the Hebrew Bible in considerably older manuscripts than previously existed. The Dead Sea Scrolls, collected between 1947 and 1960 from seven sites along the northwest shore of the sea, also contain a number of writings related to a sect that lived in that area and who may or may hot have produced the biblical scrolls. Scholars cannot agree whether the scrolls are the work of one or more desert sects known loosely as Essenes. The Essenes were generally apocalyptic, and promoted asceticism as one sure way to purify and prepare oneself for the coming of the Messiah and the final judgment. The Qumran community, located on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea, made a practice of concealing leather and papyrus manuscripts in large earthen jars for safekeeping in nearby caves. They were anti-Roman, but also appear to have been antagonistic to other Jewish sects of the day, the Pharisees and Sadducees.

These beliefs, along with their practice of celibacy have led some to believe that Jesus may have lived among the Qumran community for a time. Any male coming of age in a Jewish community such as Nazareth would have had an arranged marriage, this line of thinking goes. Gospel references to Jesus found teaching in the Temple at the age of 12 may hint at this possibility. And yet, the Essenes and other ascetical communities of the region around Qumran believed in strict rituals regarding bathing and eating, which Jesus makes light of in several instances. Jesus speaks highly of John the Baptist, an ascetic who dwelled in the wilderness (the regions around Qumran and the Dead Sea) and practiced ritual baptism. Comparing himself to John, he adds, “For John came neither eating nor drinking; and they say: He has a devil. The Son of man [Jesus] came eating and drinking, and they say: Behold a man that is a glutton and a wine drinker, a friend of tax-collectors and sinners.” Still, no definitive proof linking Jesus to the Essenes or any Qumran community has ever been unearthed.

Written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, the Dead Sea Scrolls are not to be confused with the Nag Hammadi Library, which contains fascinating texts including those known generically as the Gnostic Gospels. Discovered in an earthenware jar in December 1945 in Upper Egypt, the Nag Hammadi Codices consist of papyrus manuscripts written in Coptic (a form of Egyptian using an adapted Greek alphabet). They consist of 12 leather-bound books containing 52 texts in all, most previously unknown. Among them are a number of alternative gospels, perhaps most notably the only complete version of the Gospel of Thomas, written early in the second century in a form similar to the lost "sayings gospel" that the evangelists drew upon. Indeed, the Gnostic Gospels appear to have the same source as the Synoptic Gospels, but they express a different theological viewpoint.

The Nag Hammadi texts also include sacred writings that many scholars believe are older than the canonical Gospels, and may date from as early as 50 BCE. Among these manuscripts are titles such as the Secret Book of John, the Gospel of Truth, and the Thunder, Perfect Mind. Other Gnostic documents have been found at different times and locations, such as the Gospel of Mary, which was discovered in 1896 and published in 1955. Some of the documents were duplicated in different finds, but others, such as the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, exist in only one fragmented copy. Many of the works express Gnostic beliefs that differ markedly from orthodox Christianity as it was taking shape in the fourth and fifth centuries. For that reason, the Gnostic Gospels were banned by the church as heretical, causing those who believed in them to secrete copies for safekeeping during that early era. (In this case, the hiders are believed to have been monks from the nearby monastery of St. Pachomius.)

One final thought about the Dead Sea Scrolls and Qumran. Scholars date the scrolls and the community itself to at least 300 BCE, with an interruption caused by an earthquake, until its abandonment around 68 CE. Based on the prevalence of celibacy, isolation from centers of population, and attention to prayer and ritual devotion, these communities, Essene or otherwise, are forerunners of the early Desert Fathers of Christianity, which have previously been identified with Egypt in the 4th and 5th centuries. And yet, Christian desert monastic traditions also developed in Syria and Palestine, and Qumran may have provided the model for these. According to Harper’s Bible Dictionary, edited by Paul J. Achtemier (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1985), the Dead Sea Scrolls “in agreement with Josephus’ description of the Essenes, reveal Qumran as an ascetic community, at least partially celibate, living a strict communal life, and thus, in the judgment of some, a far more intelligible matrix for early Christian monasticism than the Egyptian fathers.” Once again the links between Judaism and Christianity, especially in their core mystical practices, are more profound than many realize.

Now, then, where were we? Oh, yes, heading to the Sea of Galilee, which, in my 1956 edition of the Rand McNally Bible Atlas, is called the Lake of Galilee, a more apt description. Crossing this elegant body of water, visiting the town of Capernaum on its northern shore, where Jesus based much of his ministry, and viewing the area where the Sermon on the Mount is said to have taken place, you get a more graphic understanding of the local scale of the ministry. Jesus traveled relatively short distances, especially compared to Paul and the other disciples who carried the Christian message abroad. It isn’t hard to imagine word of a wise wonder-worker spreading around the Galilee, and thousands gathering to hear him speak and seek healings. It’s an appealing countryside, unlike the areas surrounding the Dead Sea and the Qumran caves that the Gospel authors were no doubt referring to when they said that John the Baptist or Jesus had been in the wilderness.

From the Sea of Galilee, the River Jordan flows due south into the Dead Sea, its elevation dropping about 2,368 feet from its source during the journey. The Dead Sea has also had other names, like the Salt Sea, the Sea of Sodom, and the Stinking Lake, primarily because its high mineral content and salinity is so great (nearly ten times that of the oceans and twice the Great Salt Lake of Utah) that no plant or animal life can exist. Nonetheless, its low level and density of minerals lend its waters extraordinary healing powers. The waters of the Dead Sea are especially rich in chloride salts of magnesium, sodium, potassium, calcium, and bromine. But also, because it is the lowest spot on earth, the area enjoys peculiar sun radiation and climatic conditions, and an enriched oxygen atmosphere. Historically, Ein Gedi, near where our tour stayed, is not only the place where King David found refuge from Saul, but also the site of the first monasteries of Christian monks in the Judean Desert. The atmosphere has been known to heal dermatological, rheumatic, and pulmonary diseases, especially psoriasis, atopic dermatitis, vitiligo, psoriatic arthritis, rheumatoid and osteoarthritis, and asthma. If I had known all this before arriving, I would have spent more time floating in its beguiling waters. Even after 15 or 20 minutes, my skin felt as if it had been massaged with the finest penetrating oils.

The world’s lowest inland sea felt like the perfect place to lie back (with no need to tread water) and meditate on the astonishing richness of the journey that had landed me here. A few days earlier, for instance, when I learned that we would have an opportunity to be baptized in the River Jordan the next day, my first reaction was to say, not me. Having been raised Roman Catholic, I’d been there and done that, even if I had been too young to remember it. And the idea of being submerged in a river wearing a rented sheet while hundreds of people looked on wasn’t appealing either. In contrast, my wife, Louanne, had immediately responded with irrepressible glee at the idea. I told her I’d be happy to watch and take pictures. But that night I had a dream, two dreams really. The content isn’t important, although it involved a State Trooper and so probably had to do with my inner critic. But the net result was that I woke up thinking, “What could I have been thinking? Of course I’m going to get baptized. Or re-baptized. And this time, I’ll remember it.” I’ve rarely had a dream message come through so unambiguously before I even set out to interpret the dream. The next morning I was eager for the experience and never looked back—another oddity for someone who typically spends far too much time carefully weighing his options and then second-guessing even the most trivial decision.

After making our tour of the Qumran settlement and its on-site museum, someone on the bus remarked that she was convinced that I had been a member of the community in a previous life (if you believe in such things). Although I’ve never thought highly of celibacy, I have often felt a connection to the monkish way of life. Writing, copying books, singing, praying, hanging out in caves, drinking wine, I mean, what’s not to like? But that’s what I found so compelling and memorable about the Holy Land: It is an amalgam of places of profoundly mystical depth, archaeological fascination, and materialistic tourist trappings. And I’ve left out some of the most intriguing historical and infuriating sites, not to mention an extreme dining experience in the town of Metulla, near the northernmost tip of Israel’s border with Lebanon. I guess I’ll just have to write a sequel.

Peter Occhiogrosso
34 Whitney Dr.
Woodstock, NY 12498
tel/fax 845-679-8676
www.joyofsects.com
peter@myss.com