Shade in the desert leading to the Jordan valley.

In the Footsteps of Mary and Joseph

Monday December 1 2014

Iain Connon walks the Nativity Trail from Nazareth to Bethlehem.

In the Holy Land the heat of the summer is over by October and the winter rains have not arrived.

It was the perfect time to walk the remarkably varied 100 mile Nativity Trail, following a route that might have been taken by Joseph and Mary all these years ago in their long journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem.

Our journey had to avoid the West Bank settlements, a problem not met on the original journey, but our route certainly took us through terrain that Joseph and Mary would have recognised.

There were four of us: myself, Presbyterian; Brian, from the UK with a Roman Catholic background, Lars from Sweden and Johannes from Norway, both Lutheran.

The journey was organised by the Alternative Tourism Group located in Bethlehem, www.atg.ps, and we were guided and cared for by Nidal a very fit, easy going Palestinian. In the evenings, we stayed in cheerful and hospitable Christian and Muslim Palestinian homes eating with the families and enjoying the company.

Leaving Nazareth, we climbed to the top of Mount Tabor. Though not defined in the Gospels it is, by tradition, the sight of the transfiguration of Christ and the summit is crowned by a sturdy Franciscan basilica with a bright golden mural of the Transfiguration set above the altar.

To avoid the Israeli settlements edging the main road to Nablus our route led us very pleasantly westward through olive groves, small pine woodlands, rolling hills and stony, well-cultivated fields.

The olive harvest had started and families were active, picking and gathering the olives in a way that I am sure has not changed over the generations. Several times we stopped to chat and share hot sweet tea brewed on an open, crackling fires of olive twigs.

The country opened up as we reached the crest of the West Bank hills. In hollows were scattered large, irrigated, fertile fields, often overlooked and threatened by continually spreading settlements.

We dropped down into the Biblical Shekem, later the Roman Neapolis or new city, and now shortened to Nablus. Here we visited Jacob’s Well where our original travellers would almost certainly have stopped for water.

To reach the valley of the River Jordan from the hill slopes above Nablus we suddenly entered a narrow Wadi, first on a thin path high above its floor and then dropping down to scramble along its dry, shady, rocky base. This is a route that would have been testing 2000 years ago and sitting on a donkey, high above the path, would have made me very nervous!

Our next stop would, in many ways, have been just as familiar then as now. The Bedouins in camp in the dry edge of the Jordan Valley still make a living on livestock, with flocks of sheep and goats being led into the camp in the evening and led out again to pasture in the morning – and the night punctuated with the never-ending barking of the watchful dogs.

Jericho, our next stop and the oldest city in the world, is surrounded by the ruined palaces of ancient kingdoms. Here we visited the tree, still amazingly flourishing, where Zacchaeus perched and we avoided being persuaded to ride a camel.

We visited the River Jordan and found it thronging with pilgrims in white garments, splashing in the muddy water watched by bored armed Israeli soldiers.

If they had chosen this route, Mary and Joseph would have been tested on the next section of the journey through the dry, bleak, but entrancing Judean desert where, even in October, the temperature reaches 35 to 40 degrees centigrade. However they would have been rewarded in the evenings, as we were, by the beauty of the place and its sense of space and peace.

Surviving the Judean desert, their journey would have brought them, as did ours, rising through rolling foothills, past shepherds with their flocks, to the complex of Palestinian towns, including Bethlehem, that lead to Jerusalem.

Passing the Shepherds’ Fields, again marked by a substantial church, we could now see our destination, Bethlehem, on the crest of the hill and we passed through the now built up suburbs to our destination, the Church of the Nativity set in Manger Square.

Passing through the low door into the vast 6th century basilica we visited, with a steady flow of many others, the cave where Jesus was probably born, having been identified by contemporaries during the second century AD.

Though fascinating to visit, I have no emotional reaction to the now developed sites associated with the main events in the life of Christ, but the journeys through the open countryside and the opportunity to share, at least a little, with the life of the Palestinians was a remarkable experience that I will never forget and would certainly recommend.

 This is an abridgement of an article in December's Life and Work. Subscribe here.