Today was Jerusalem city temple day.
We went directly to the Temple Mount, which is the huge gold blob smack in the middle of the city, damn outstanding, and nope, it's not jewish, but muslim.
we entered through the Gentile Courtyard, where everyone was allowed to be at. Only Jews were allowed to enter in further than that.
This was where Jesus overturned the money changers tables. why? i have always thought it's because they were creating unholiness, but i never quite questioned how. let me elaborate.
Jews would bring their sacrifices to offer at the temple. usually animals like ox, sheep, doves, etc. but they soon realised that it's rather troublesome to bring that animal ALL the way from wherever they were living TO the city temple. So what they found more practical was to bring MONEY instead and PURCHASE the animals at the temple itself. but in order to that, you not only need people to sell these animals, but for money changes to change whatever currency they had. makes a lot of sense, once again, practicality.
so then, why was Jesus so upset? isn't it very.. reasonable? the problem was that these money changers and stall owners would UP their prices very unreasonably, knowing full well that the people who came to worship had no choice but to do business with them (sneak peak into the jewish culture haha)
of course, the chief priests also had much to gain from this transaction. think about it, there were like 400,000 worshippers every sabbath!
we saw some pillars that were from Jesus' time. one of the few remains of the time of Christ.
Question:why gold and silver domes? Silver, to the Muslims, mark the end of the night journey, while the gold dome makes the ascension to Heaven of Muhammad. just a side point.
Muslims have controlled this holy site ever since 705AD, which is 600 years after Jews were defeated officially by Romans. and the site has been controlled by Muslims all the while, besides the very short while that the crusades took over.
it was on 28 Sept 2000 when Sharon, Prime Minister of Israel, came to visit, and caused riots, that they decided to stop others from coming to visit the temple. to prevent more riots. unfortunate.
the dome is made mostly of marble, only the top is Gold, but over aluminium. King Hussein paid for it. It's an octagon, and apprently the only one in the Muslim world.
There are writings on the top of the dome, around the crown area. and it reads "God has no son, and God never sent His son to save the world." stuff like that. HOW MEAN!!! just to make the jews and christians ANGRY. terrible terrible. never mind, da ren bu ji xiao ren guo (big pple don't care about small pple's mistakes)
the old people at the top of the mount
This cleansing feet area is probably inspired by Moses and the "Take off your sandals for this is holy ground" incident. ie, have clean feet! hahaha..
No comments:
Post a Comment