Life at Masada

Day 5

Ok everyone today has to be one of the saddest days of the trip so far. We went to Masada this was again built by king Herod which he had very good taste in 70 thru 73 some Jews escaped the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans to Masada. They held up on this mountain for those three years keeping safe but of course the food gets scarce and you know what happened then. They did do a little cannibalism but that’s not the worst part the Romans were able finally to build a ramp up the mountain to break down the wall they were able to do this one evening. They were so confident that they would take them in the morning. But the leader of the Jews went into the synagogue and said let’s kill our wives and children so that the Romans could not make slaves of them. So they killed them and then drew lots to see who would kill the men. The last one had to fall on a sword to kill himself. This they did. So when the Romans showed up in the morning they were all dead except for a woman and her children that she had hide. That’s how they know this is all true because she told them. The Romans did take them to be slaves. There was about a thousand people there.

Our second stop was a reserve for the animals in the desert but in this park we were show David’s River and was told the wonderful story how a Bedouin had been looking for one of his sheep in a cave and threw a jar to get him to come out only it didn’t sound right so he went in and found a jars of scrolls which we know as the dead sea scrolls.