Christian Hajj

I took another day trip with Susan today, to the nearby town of Madaba. The town itself has a large, healthy Christian minority, but we took two side excursions in addition: to Mount Nebo, the site of Moses's death, and to Bethany-upon-the-Jordan, the site of Christ's baptism. Susan joked that, because of the religious significance of these two places, we were embarking on Christian Hajj.

I'm not particularly religious, so I of course came to the sites with a very different perspective from the many tourists at the sites who were no doubt devout Christians. I mentioned afterwards to Susan that neither place was particularly impressive (especially compared to our trip last week), but both were very interesting to see. 

The view from Mount Nebo

Mount Nebo was the first stop. Mentioned in the Bible, it is reputed to be the place from where Moses glimpsed the Promised Land, and also where he died. There are ruins of a church dating from the 4th century, but they were under restoration and so were off limits. The view of the Promised Land was also a disappointment - haze blocked all but the closest sites, marking my third haze-obscured panoramic view in Jordan. Bethany-Beyond-the-Jordan was also sad. The area has only been open since the late 1990s, after the Jordanian-Israeli peace agreement allowed the land mines to be cleared from the area. We took a guided tour of the area, saw the ruins of a church marking the reputed exact spot of the baptism, and had an opportunity to head down to the river's edge. But decades of environmental degradation and poor management of water resources had taken their toll. The once-mighty Jordan was reduced to a stagnant green trickle of a river, and the baptism site itself was bone dry. I warily stuck a finger into the river, and watched in horror as those in my group washed their hair and faces with the putrid water. 

So while neither site was impressive or awe-inspiring, both were quite thought-provoking. I'm always skeptical of archaeological sites that claim direct ties with biblical history - and the more certain the claimed connection, the greater my suspicion. I simply don't believe that modern archaeology can to discover with any certainty the locations of events that, even if they happened, wouldn't have left any archaeological evidence. Can we pinpoint with certainty the location where Jesus removed his robe before baptism? Our guide certainly thought he could, based on the ruins of the church that post-dated the baptism by centuries. Mount Nebo's claim to be the place where Moses stood, looked, and died rests on the ruins of the 4th century church - itself built hundreds of years after the event would have taken place. I'm not convinced that 4th century Christian clergy did the proper due diligence to make sure they were building on the right mountain. Mount Nebo is surrounded by other peaks, a few of them higher - might they have been wrong?

What I saw at these sites was similar to other biblical/archaeological sites I've seen across the Middle East. These sites are advertised as the "exact spots" of biblical events with great certainty, while the evidence supporting these claims is rarely elaborated. I climbed Mount Sinai in Egypt, which possesses deep religious significance for all Abrahamic faiths. Yet this mountain's claim to be "the" Mount Sinai is tentative at best. The location has moved throughout the centuries, different religious sects disagree on which mountain is the biblical Sinai, and modern scholars dispute the mountain's claim for many reasons.  Yet this didnt stop the Egyptian tourism industry from hyping the peak's religious significance - I even saw a bush that was supposedly descended from the famous Burning Bush of the Bible.  In Israel, there are many sites that claim to be the ruins of biblical places or of the ancient Jewish kingdoms. The certainty with which these claims were made just made me more suspicious of their authenticity. 

The (once) Mighty Jordan River

In both places, archaeology was being exploited for different goals. In Egypt, the government valued the tourist revenue from pilgrims flocking to see "the" place where Moses received the Ten Commandments. In Israel, much archaeology is undertaken with the clearly political goal of emphasizing the ancient Jewish presence in the region, and thus the Israeli claim to the land today. 

I think this is sad. It cheapens archaeology, by requiring that its findings fit into pre-prescribed conclusions, and harms its credibility by forcing archaeologists, like my guide today, to make unsupportable claims about a site's significance. In my view, it also cheapens, rather than strengthens, Israel's right to exist; Israel should exist for many compelling, important, and currently relevant reasons, not simply because there was an ancient Jewish civilization on the same site. And, I believe, this type of biblical archaeology cheapens faith. Religious people don't need their faith buttressed by dubious archaeological evidence - their reasons for belief go far deeper than stones, pillars, and ruins. But when archaeologists come forward with weak claims of direct biblical significance for their finds, it creates the impression that religious belief is resting on these unimpressive foundations. 

Ignoring my skepticism and the lackluster beauty of the two sites, I still had a nice time. We saw some nice countryside, as well as cool mosaics in Madaba, which was a neat little town. I managed to haggle our taxi ride down to 20JD from a start of 50JD, a minor personal triumph. And, to celebrate her last night in Amman, Susan agreed to take me out for margaritas and Mexican food at the Intercontinental Hotel. Hard to argue that any day that ends like that is a bad one.