We started at Kibbuz Tzuba up in the hills for a wine tasting. You'll forgive me if I don't have much to say about the wine. I don't really drink wine (or any alcohol) normally, so I only took tiny sips to have the experience with the group. None of it was appealing to me at all. I'm sure that was just me, because some members of the group did enjoy it and bought bottles of it to enjoy later.
John the Baptist (or "The Dipper," as Dr. Tabor liked to call him) grew up nearby, and our next stop was a pretty recent discovery: The Suba Cave. Yes, Suba and Tzuba are the same word, just different transliterations.
The Suba Cave is kept locked, so this was a special privilege of our group to be able to enter the cave that has been connected to John "The Dipper" and Jesus himself. It's also said to be the place where Mary (mother of Jesus) and Elizabeth (mother of John) hid out.
My photos inside the cave are not very good now that I see them.
It was plastered, and some of the plaster remains on the walls. Several feet of silt filled in the lower half of the cave before the excavation, as you can see, and it still remains in the back portion.
The most interesting features here were the wall etchings and the ritual areas. There is a place carved out to just fit a right foot. Just above that feature is a small well that is understood to have been filled with oil. The oil spilled over onto the right foot as part of a ritual.
The cave was certainly used for immersions (avoiding the term "baptisms" because they are so different from the activity associated with that word today). A massive number of pottery shards show that part of the ritual involved pouring water over the participant and subsequently breaking the pot so it can never be used again. That sounds quite foreign to us today, but it is a ritual still practiced today by a group of John The Dipper's followers called Mandaeans.
A strong case was built for this being "the" cave of The Dipper in part because of the etchings on the walls. There is one of the man himself, and others of two tablets, three crosses, and others. Again, my photos are not very clear.
In the outside area of the cave there are some very old structures that I believe were a large-scale wine production area from the time of King Hezekiah (tenth century BC).
Next was Ein Kerem, the spring that provides water for the Suba area. I must have missed the spring itself. Lunch took forever.
I spent my free time looking into getting a replacement phone at Mamilla Mall, between the hotel and the old city. I was unsuccessful, but I enjoyed the music of these performers there.
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