The Arbel Pass - A narrow point next to the Sea of Galilee on the major route from Egypt and the Mediterranean coast of Israel to the lands in the north including Damascus and Assyria.

Your thwarts in pieces, Your mooring rope cut


Ancient Assyrian Poetry


Translated by Erica Reiner

Why are you adrift, like a boat, in the midst of the river,


Your thwarts in pieces, your mooring rope cut?


Your face covered, you cross the river of the Inner City.


How could I not be adrift, how could my mooring rope not be cut?


The day I bore the fruit, how happy I was,


Happy was I, happy my husband.


The day of my going into labor, my face became darkened,


The day of my giving birth, my eyes became clouded.


With open hands I prayed to Beletili:


You too have borne a child, save my life!


Hearing this Beletili veiled her face.


‘Why do you keep praying to me?’


My husband who loved me uttered a cry,


Why do you take from me the wife in whom I rejoice?


I loved her for years on end.


All those many days I was with my husband,


I lived with him who was my lover.


Death came creeping into my bedroom:


It drove me from my house,


It tore me from my husband,


It set my feet into a land of darkness.

It is very difficult to date this text closer than about 2000-1000 BC. This is roughly the age of the patriarchs, Abraham and the stories of Genesis. It is written in Cuneiform script on a clay tablet that has survived to this day. I have taken the liberty to smooth out several of the textual problems that were left un-translated in the original publication. Unlike much Babylonian literature that was copied over and over in an anthology of sorts there is only one known copy of this work. Therefore this poem is particularly interesting as the honest plea of one who has known one of the most painful of all life experiences.

In the Assyrian/Babylonian culture a ship coming to port was a common metaphor for a child that was about to be born. Hence the thwarts and mooring rope language of the initial lines would have been a clear indication of the subject and tragedy of the poem.

The gripping nature of this elegy gives us a window into the minds of those that came before us. People familiar with death and tragedy, love and joy. There is something in the human soul that transcends time and culture. We are a people seeking for the answers to life’s hard questions wondering in our most painful hour why we have been treated as we are. The woman in this writing prays to Beletili a god of childbirth. It is stunning when the goddess who has borne children herself turns her back on her and allows her to fade into the darkness. I praise the Living God that he has revealed himself to us and that he never turns his back on us. Though in this world we will face trouble, perhaps the same exact fate of this woman, we know that Christ never turns his back on us and that he listens and cares for us in the midst of trouble. He is always faithful and always just. When we eventually fall victim to the struggles of this world we will rest in Him forever. How wrenching it is to know that many people in our world today still do not know the hope and the peace that comes through faith in Jesus Christ. What must we do to reach them so that they do not go to the earth grasping at what is false?

~Though you have not seen him you love him; and even though you do not see him now you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls. I Peter 1:8-9

Hey everyone! I figured that I should make one last post from Israel. I have had a great experience and have been extremely blessed by the program and how so many people continue to encourage and support me as I prepare for ministry. Here is a picture from a while back when we were in Petra. Here is what I am up to for the next few weeks. Tomorrow morning I will take my last final exam and on Friday morning I leave on a bus for Egypt where I will spend a week seeing Mt. Sinai, Cairo and the temples in Luxor. When I return I will spend a week volunteering at a Christian ministry in Nazareth called Nazareth Village. It is a reenactment village that allows tourists to see and experience what life in the first century would have been like. I am not exactly sure what I will be doing but it will probably involve some type of maintenance on the buildings and grounds. After a week in Nazareth I will return to the States and begin work as a Chaplain at Cook Forest and Clear Creek State Parks in Pennsylvania. I will also be taking a few classes over the summer and doing a lot of studying and sermon preparation as I will be giving a message each Sunday in the two different parks. Thank you all for reading along with me. I will probably still post thoughts and pictures here from time to time so you may want to stop back in a month or so.

Grace and Peace to all of you!

Jordan Bedouin Experience

This past weekend I was in Jordan learning about the desert Bedouin way of life that was lived by the patriarchs. The place is a gorgeous desert environment that is a nature reserve called Wadi Rum. This picture was taken from the visitor's center before we really got started. The mountain is called the Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

Although sometimes stubborn the camels can be a lot of fun.

We rode little Toyota trucks back to the site.

When we first arrived we found out that a baby goat had been born just ten minutes before. This is her first attempt at standing up.

The next order of business was dinner. This poor fella was the chosen beast.

Here is the same sheep about twenty minutes later. I will spare you the pictures in between. I have to admit the slaughter was pretty dramatic with a knife to the throat.

Dinner was cooked in a below ground steel drum. A wood fire was built in the bottom with lots of coals the food was loaded in and in two and a half hours it was all done.

After the rice goes the sheep.

A blanket keeps the sand out.

The sand keeps the heat in. In the desert wood is often hard to come by so fuel conserving cooking methods like this are important.

Some women making flat bread in the traditional way. They stretch out the dough like a pizza crust and then throw it on this hot steel dome. They are really good at the whole process, turning the dough with their bare hands and not burning themselves.

A view of the desert from high in the cliffs.

Sunset at Wadi Rum.

A Bedouin breakfast of olives, goat cheese and flat bread.

Galilee and Beyond

Hello everyone! I apologize that it has been so long since I have posted. The end of the semester has brought many multi day field studies and lots of papers and assignments to keep up with. As an added bonus my computer locked up and I was afraid I had lost all of my data but a computer company here in Israel was able to recover my files and reformatted the hard drive. Crisis averted but I still am out a bit of cash for the whole ordeal and now am the proud owner of an external hard drive which is busily copying all of my files and pictures as I am typing to you. The semester is drawing to a close and I think that I will be ready to come home when the day arrives. I have had a great experience and look forward to sharing more of it with all of you when I get back. In the above photo I am standing on an extinct volcano called the Horns of Hittin. You can't see the mountain from this picture but the crater of the volcano has eroded to the point where there are now two peaks giving it the appearance of having "horns." In the background you can see the sea of Galilee at dusk.

This is the waterfall at a place called Banias. It is just downstream a bit from the site of Biblical Dan. Dan is in the very north of the land and is used by the biblical writers as the northern most point of the kingdom in the phrase "From Dan to Beer-Sheba" with Beer-Sheba being the southern most point of the idyllic kingdom in the Negev. The spring at Dan is the source of the water for the waterfall. It is an impressive spring, the largest in the Middle East; it is surrounded by a beautiful park with the headwaters area nicknamed the Garden of Eden. These are Eucalyptus trees at the site of Biblical Dan. They are not native to the area and were not present in biblical times but are very common throughout the north today.
In the north Israel has land East of the Jordan and it was laced with landmines by its various enemies I think prior to the 1967 war. Obviously from the sign they are still in place and most of the open land in transjordan in fenced and marked for mines.
This is a typical look at class in action. On the left is Dr. Wright teaching and from left to right is Dan, Jeff and Christina hard at work. The stones on the maps represent Joshua's attack against the northern kings upon Isreal's entrance into the promised land. The northern kings were unified under the king of Hazor which is the city we were sitting on top of. (See Joshua Chapter 11)
The Jordan River north of the Sea of Galilee at its spring high.
This is a look into the Jezreel Valley from Nazareth Ridge, the site of Biblical Nazareth, the home of Jesus.


One of the Herodian Aqueducts at Caeserea by the Mediterranean Sea.
A flower that was in bloom when I was hiking on Mount Carmel over reading week. The southern part of the Dead Sea. This is also over reading week. We climbed to this ridge from the road below. The mountain is completely made of salt from the base up to about one third of the way from the top. Today the southern half of the Dead Sea is used for recovering salt by letting it into shallow pools and then harvesting the salt and minerals once the water evaporated. The pools are visible in the distance.