William's Journey to the Holy Land Pt. 3

UNIGLOBE Geo Travel's Managing Partner & CEO William Hsu recently returned home from a Pilgrimage to the Holy Land. William shares his experience with us in Part 3 of this entry:




We started off by celebrating Mass at the Chapel at the Convent of Ecce Homo (from Pilate’s words to the crowd “Behold the Man” after he had had him scourged). We then walked along the Via Dolorosa to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which is built over the site of both the place of the crucifixion (Golgotha, or Calvary) and the place of his burial and resurrection. (Note: The archaeological evidence indicating that the Church was indeed built over the right spots is VERY strong.) We waited in line quite a while to actually touch the spot where they are pretty sure that Jesus was crucified.

BY the time we finished that, the line-up to enter the tomb had gotten WAY too long, so we headed out of the Church and left the Old City by the so-called “New Gate.” We had lunch at Notre Dame (where Tim lived for 8 months while studying in Jerusalem back in the late 1980s) and then took a bus across town to the Israel Museum (which contains a scale model of Jerusalem in AD 66, right before the attempted Jewish revolt that led to the destruction of the Temple and much of the city by the Romans in AD 70) and the Shrine of the Book (which is where the Dead Sea Scrolls are being studied and preserved — many of them are on display, including the Isaiah scroll, the oldest known copy of the Book of Isaiah in Hebrew).

- William