![]() These stones of remembrance would serve as a permanent national reminder and a memorial to future generations of the miraculous river crossing. Carry them out and pile them up at the place where you will camp tonight’” (Joshua 4:2–3, NLT). Tell them, ‘Take twelve stones from the very place where the priests are standing in the middle of the Jordan. And the river has changed course over time, meaning the bend in the river where Jesus is thought to have been baptized is now on dry land.After the people of Israel supernaturally crossed the Jordan River to enter the Promised Land, God commanded Joshua to “choose twelve men, one from each tribe. But the Jordan River is lower than it was, with water being pulled for agriculture on both sides. The huge site has been left deliberately largely pristine, dotted with bulrushes and palm trees. "They come up after the heavy rain," Mkhjian says of ancient coins. Israel also claims a similar spot on the west side of the river.Ī worker cleaning debris from the gravel approaches him to matter-of-factly give him a coin he has just found – possibly Byzantine or Roman - to be sent to the site's small museum. Mkhjian points out an area known as Elijah's Hill, reputed to be where the Bible says Prophet Elijah ascended to heaven in a flaming chariot. The site includes early churches built by pilgrims to commemorate where Jesus was baptized. Part of Elijah's Hill on the grounds of Jordan's baptism site, where tradition says the Prophet Elijah ascended to heaven in a chariot of fire. ![]() Before the pandemic brought travel to a halt, tourist numbers had been rising. ![]() Jordan, a resource-poor country, depends heavily on tourism, one of its biggest sources of jobs. ![]() We want the tourists to spend three nights in Jordan, experience the other holy sites in Jordan, come to Jordan, spend some money." I said unless the tourists spend three nights in Jordan I'm not opening it just so you can walk over. The negotiations stalled over how much time tourists would spend in Jordan. Prince Ghazi says before the coronavirus pandemic, after consultations with Palestinian officials, he had discussed with Israeli President Reuven Rivlin launching a joint project in which tourists would come from Israel into Jordan through a new "soft crossing" near the baptism site on the Jordanian side. Basil is believed to have grown near the cross where Jesus was crucified and is used for blessings. Orthodox Church Patriarch of Jerusalem Theophilos III tosses a bouquet of basil into the Jordan River, at Qasr al-Yahud, a baptism site near the West Bank city of Jericho, on Jan. Israel and international agencies removed thousands of land mines from the site and it reopened to visitors. Almost two decades later, Israel reopened a much smaller area it identified as the baptism site directly across from the Jordanian location. Jordan's 1994 peace treaty with Israel, which envisioned negotiations with the Palestinians to decide the West Bank's fate, paved the way for Jordanian excavations and reopening the site as a more than 3-square-mile national park in 2002. The West Bank, home to more than 3 million Palestinians and hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers, remains under Israeli occupation. The site has been closed to tourists and pilgrims because of the coronavirus pandemic but staff are preparing it for an eventual reopening.Īfter the 1967 war in which Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan, both sides of the river were closed military sites, riddled with thousands of land mines. ![]() Workers maintaining the grounds of the baptism site, a major religious pilgrimage tourist destination in Jordan. ![]()
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