Israel in Pictures

I'm back from Israel. It's a place of great contrasts. I'll try to capture them with a few pictures I took along the way...

Old and New
In the foreground of the first picture is Herod's Palace in Caesarea, complete with his own private swimming pool - which now melts into the sea. The second picture, of course, shows Herod's Temple wall.












Promise and Menace
It's a place where the best and worst elements of humanity are on display - hopes and visions, alongside prejudice and fear. The first picture is from coastal Caesarea, the second from the Palestinian side of the wall that emphatically divides Israeli territory from Palestinian territory.












Achievement and Failure
The first picture includes part of Herod's Temple foundation - an astonishing achievement, being easily the size of a couple of football fields side by side. The second picture was taken in the Garden of Gethsemane.












Glory and Hiddenness
The Dome of the Rock is surely the most impressive building in Jerusalem, with its famous gold-topped roof. The second picture shows a little-known room hiding in the back of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre - a dark, tiny, largely empty room in which a couple of empty tombs dating from the Second Temple period can be found, just metres away from the location which is widely agreed to be Golgotha...











"We have seen his glory..." John 1:14