Clearly many stories in the Bible passed muster when the translations were first made about 8-900 years ago? – But don’t when faced with the modern understanding. However is it bogus? - It ain't necessarily so..
I was working in Herzlia, Israel, early 2002 and I had a couple of days off, so took a trip to Jerusalem, up into the mountains. Past the hulks of Ben Ghurions armoured vehicles from the Israeli break out to Jerusalem in 1948 (or so).
Upon arriving there, I was dropped off at the Mountain of Olives and the garden of Gethsemane overlooking the city. Shock number one. These places exist, I wasn’t expecting that. At this point I went very quiet and felt close to tears. I called my wife on the mobile, and told her where I was. From there, we visited the vast gold dome of the rock. Actually a mosque. We looked at the old city walls, and the church of Mary Magdalene. Bullet holes pockmarked the walls. – This was also a mosque and then a church, and then a mosque as the front line moved over the past 60 or so years. It struck me then, that we as a Christian country (irrespective of your views and faith) have a view of west and east. But in Jerusalem, west meets east. ALL the major faiths in the world emanate from this point (OK there's a couple that don't). It’s the epicentre of religion as we know it, and as we know religions which we war against, Jesus is of course a prophet, King David and the Jews originate from old Jerusalem (City of David). – A thought of that magnitude, shakes the foundations of your life.
We then walked Via Della Rosa, and to the church of the holy sepulchre. A small mound inside a huge church on the hillside (Golgotha), which also encompasses an ancient cemetery. Here,, 2000 years ago, Jesus was crucified for his beliefs.
Imagine, all those teachings, and then standing in the places – you realize, It’s not a book at all. It’s real. – I’m 100% certain, that the current faiths of the world are truly based on happenings in that country 2000 years ago. We in the east and west are worshipping the happenings in our own ways, and the overwhelming majority of practising religions just don’t realize it.
I went and overlooked Bethlehem, under Arab control I wasn’t allowed in, or at least it wasn’t safe for my guide and I to enter. We had late lunch at a Kibbutz on a nearby hillside, before visiting the Holocaust museum, and there was another discovery for me. My uncle Tom (or rather my Grandmothers Brother) served In the Army, and escaped from a POW camp in Germany. We have his postcards. We also have one from Cyprus in the late 40’s, and he’s taken a photo and there's barbed wire all around a compound.
In the museum, we were shown the prison camps the British set up in Cyprus when they gathered all the Jews from Europe and sent them to their own state! Yes that right. All those people who lived and worked in Europe, and were imprisoned by the Nazis, where then rounded up by the allies, and put in a prison camp, before being taken by ship and dumped in Palestine and given their own territory! – And my Nans brother was one of the guards. That's adding insult to injury for you.
Oh and the one other chap on the trip, was ‘staying in a hotel down the road from me’ – never took his coat off, despite the warmth, flitted around the museum like he’d seen it a hundred times before and afterwards, said he was visiting a friend in a nearby town. – He was and Agent and an armed guard, I could see straight through it!
