Jericho

Jericho

In a recent survey 100% of respondents, when asked to list three Holy Land cities or towns, named Jericho first ahead of Jerusalem. I also had placed Jericho first but that was probably because I had just been listening to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing that old spiritual, "Joshua fit the battle of Jericho". Yes, "fit", and old form of the past tense of fight.

It is true that a survey of both my wife and myself nominated Jericho first. I wonder how many others would have Jericho at the top of their list?

This old town does have a certain aura about it. This something special arises out of that Old Testament story (Joshua, chapter 6) when the Israelite army lead by Joshua marched around the city seven times and "the walls came a-tumbling down".

Fast forward a millennium and a half to New Testament times and Jericho gets a few mentions there as well. In the parable of the good Samaritan (Luke 10: 25-37) Jesus had the man who was attacked and robbed going from Jerusalem to Jericho. Here Jericho is incidental to the main thrust of the story and is not often retained by the reader. Luke (19: 1-10) also relates the story of the vertically-challenged tax collector, Zacchaeus, who climbed a sycamore tree to see Jesus as he made his way to his last week in Jerusalem.

All the three synoptic gospels record how Jesus restored sight to a blind man (Luke) named Bartimaeus (Mark) or to two blind men (Matthew) as he was coming to (Luke) or leaving (Matthew & Mark) Jericho on his way to Jerusalem. Lastly Jericho also comes up in Hebrews 11;30 but here the reference is again to the walls falling down.

And this is probably the reference we all remember when Jericho comes up in conversation. It has not been placed in the forgotten annals of old biblical cities. Not only biblical scholars, but also geomorphologists, archaeologists, seismologists, historians, to mention but a few have an interest in this old town.

Talking about an old town. A few months ago, my wife and I attended a fund-raising trivia night. One question - Which is the oldest city in the world? - I thought I had nailed. Wrong! The quizmaster gave the answer as Damascus. I appealed but to no avail for he maintained that his googling had come up with Damascus. Apparently this information has not reached the good citizens of Jericho for their sign still claims they live in the oldest city. I'll leave that one to the historians for further investigation.

A claim to be the oldest city in the world but can this claim stand up?

As a student of geography I am always interested in the landscape and landforms through which I travel. Jericho lies in a particularly interesting landform - a rift valley known as the Jordan Rift valley. Features such as this lie on very unstable regions of the world where gigantic tectonic plates are either rubbing together or pulling apart. As a result they are areas where earthquakes and volcanic activity are regular occurrences. It's hard to realise as one drives through this countryside which appears so stable and solid, that throughout recorded history many devastating earthquakes have occurred here. These have been earthquakes which have completely reduced towns and cities to heaps of rubble.

Archaeologists have claimed that Jericho appears to have been reconstructed at least twenty times in its long history. Citizens have continued to resettle here for springs of water emerging from the bordering hills have created an oasis in the dry surroundings. Jericho had often been referred to as the city of palms.

As we drive into this scattered Palestinian settlement the palm trees are there to wave us welcome. But the town we see is not the town through which Jesus passed. It is not the green oasis at which the pleading blind man could marvel after being touched by Jesus' healing hand. Nor is it the town from which the wealthy tax collector extorted his ill-gotten gains. Mind you, we stopped at a sycamore tree but I am not convinced it was the one climbed by Zacchaeus.

Somewhat like Jesus we came and passed through Jericho on our way to elsewhere else. We came here for it was the bottom end station of the cable car which ran up to the Greek Orthodox Monastery on the Mount of Temptation. And that's another story.