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The Bible of the Israelis:
Sacred and Profane
- Abstract
ON THE altar of the Baptist church in Nazareth is a painting of the River Jordan, flowing along gently curving green banks whose trees trail their boughs peacefully in its blue waters. It is a Jordan nobody in Israel has ever seen. The minister of the church, Dwight Baker, smilingly explains, “Mother used a bit of her imagination when she painted this picture for us.” He knows that the real Jordan (the name means “descender”) is for most of its length a disappointingly narrow, sinuous stream, descending precipitously into the barren hole of the Dead Sea, twelve hundred feet below sea level. It must have been something of a shock to the minister’s mother, who comes from the American Midwest, to see the Biblical Zion of her imagination come to life. But this is a problem which has always confronted pilgrims to the Holy Land. Even for native Israelis, the “coming to life” of the Bible in the land of the Bible not infrequently evokes a mixture of emotions- breathtaking fulfillment along with some disappointment and questions.
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