One of my travel guides lists hundreds of sites worth visiting in Israel, but awards a one star “highly recommended” rating to only twenty-five, and you guessed it. Megiddo made the cut, and for good reason! A stunning location astride the beautiful Carmel mountain range. Westerly winds of the Mediterranean Sea whipping through your hair. The fruitful Jezreel Valley sprawling out below you to the north and east. The heartland of Israel to the south.

As you leave the visitor center to enter the 125-acre ruins of the tel, you first come to an ancient four-chambered Canaanite gate, then to a later six-chambered Israelite gate complex. Now before you nod off at all this talk about long ago gates, don’t miss this. Yigael Yadin, the Israeli archaeologist who excavated the site in the 1950s (a former Israel Defense Force Chief of Staff and the son of professor Eleazar Sukenik, prominent in the recovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the 1940s), observed that the six-chambered gate structure looked strikingly similar to the gates at Gezer and Hazor, and after compiling and comparing the measurements of all three gates, it was almost as if they were built from the same blueprints. But this is just what he should have expected, for 1 Kings 9:15 notes in one of those easy-to-fly-right-by verses that King Solomon built all three cities. Yadin would later write in an article for Biblical Archaeology Reader that “This fact … confirms quite clearly the Biblical narrative.” Hooray! Once again the Bible shines bright!

There’s no time for a thorough tour of the site unless you come with me next time we tour the Holy Land, but let’s take a quick lap of the site even so and take in the highlights. After you leave the gate complex, follow the path clockwise to reach the northern “stable” (there is also a southern stable) which housed perhaps as many as 150 chariot-horses, referenced or suggested by later biblical and Assyrian sources (though admittedly some argue that they are storerooms rather than stables). Then to a palace of Solomon, so identified by Yadin, and past a large Canaanite altar, perhaps used for both animal and human sacrifice. Next you’ll come to a massive grain silo with several dozen descending steps, past another palace, dating perhaps to the time of Solomon, and past the aforementioned southern stable until finally you come to one of the crowning achievements of the inhabitants of Megiddo, an underground water tunnel that brought water from a nearby spring into the city, enabling them to withstand any siege.

What do you think? Worthy of one star or would you give it two?

-Daniel McCabe

Trivia (The answer is at the bottom of the page)

On Location: The Cardo in Jerusalem

Although it might sound to you like a hallway lined with the offices of heart doctors or perhaps even an Italian magician who made your card miraculously appear at the top of the deck, it’s something quite different. The Cardo is actually a Roman-period street, approximately 75-feet wide, flanked by rows of stone columns and by compartments that once brimmed with merchants. Wooden beams supported the roofing of the side stalls that were likely covered by ceramic tiles. Topped with dazzling Corinthian capitals, the 16-foot high, limestone columns were discovered by archaeologists in fragments that had been incorporated into later structures.

Today you can visit the Cardo and actually walk on the original Roman-period paving stones of this ancient street found inside the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. Historically the Cardo ran past two spectacular churches: the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the traditional location of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus, and the even larger New Church, built three hundred years later in the sixth century by Emperor Justinian. Known both then and today as the Cardo Maximus, it runs north-south through the city. Many think that the word “cardo” is related to the word “heart,” perhaps symbolic of its route through the heart of the city, but the word cardo actually means “hinge” or “axis,” and “cardo maximus” means “the main axis,” for it originally intersected with a major east-west city street.

Inside the Cardo are pictures and maps for those interested in its history as well as modern shops for those wanting to buy art, clothes, spices, jewelry or t-shirts. You’ll also notice signs of past archaeological work. Today the Cardo is completely covered, so if you ever get caught by a storm or even a latter rain, just drop into the Cardo and do some shopping until it passes.

-Daniel McCabe

Pneumatology: the Personhood of the Holy Spirit, part 2

The Holy Spirit is God, which means that He is a person. He is spirit, yes, but He’s also a person. The Holy Spirit is not just a force. He has personality. He intercedes for the believer. He does things that only beings with personhood do. He testifies with His spirit. He can be insulted (Hebrews 10:29). He can be grieved (Ephesians 4:30). He can be lied to—Ananias and Sapphira did that (Acts 5:3-4). He can be spoken against.

He is indivisible and He has a will. He does things. He strives with us. He teaches us. He speaks. He forbids. Thankfully the Holy Spirit is our helper, guide and revealer to the believer. So in every way that God has personhood—He loves, even hates, can be angered or pleased—the Holy Spirit has personhood.

-Adam Keim

How Joseph Foreshadows Jesus, part 2

The similarities between Old Testament Joseph and Jesus are striking to me. In his classic work, “Gleanings in Genesis,” A. W. Pink lists 101 ways that Joseph’s life foreshadowed the life of Jesus, the Messiah. In this 3-part series I’m sharing the first 60, broken into three groups of 20. If you’d like to read them all, you can find his work at www.archive.org. The following list is my careful summary of his work; many of the verses are mine. What do you think?

-Daniel McCabe

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Cullman, AL