Miqvahs and Mud!

Mud and water - there's something about that combination that draws fascination from all people, but especially boys, of all ages and for all time.

Clay pots found on site

Miqvah bath - at least twice daily

Take Qumran, for instance. For 200 years, the ones right before and after Christ's coming, hundreds of men went out to the desert, to a place called Qumran. What did they do there? Splashed in water and played with clay! Now I'm sure they would disagree:  in their minds they were waiting for the new kingdom, where they, as prepared, purified leaders, would rule. But what filled their daily lives? Mud and water!

They were also incredibly into words - maybe because their community was silent most of the time! After their ritual miqvah washings and silent meals they wrote and wrote and wrote. What did they write? The entire Old Testament, copied many times. The rules of the pure community.

Tightly-written, restored scroll

Image of the community & leader

Commentaries on both of these. They wrote in the "Scriptorium" room, on a table that was 5 metres long - just right for such books as Isaiah - extremely lengthy.  They wrote on long scrolls, made of parchment - very thin sheep's leather. They wrote in Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek.  They used no vowels, and often left no spaces between words. Parchment was precious, and anyway, imagine the awesome word games this would create in time to come! Scholars need entertainment!

Large jars containing scrolls

When you're out in the desert there's not a great market for your writings, and in any case this group wrote to purify themselves, not to sell their work. But this was holy writing - you can't just toss it away, or burn it (as the US found out recently when a soldier burned copies of the Qur'an). So they buried the writing, sacredly. In large clay pots, sealed tightly with lids, placed in caves. Sarcophagi for words, buried and preserved in the desert as carefully as the pharaohs in nearby Egypt.

Qumran caves: this is #4 of 11 w/scrolls

Then the Qumran community was obliterated by the Romans in 68 AD, two years before Masada just down the road was bashed in. The bodies they'd worked so hard to keep pure - shunning self, sex and excess - vanished back into dust. But hidden in the sandstone caves, their words waited for resurrection.

We visited those caves, discovered in 1947 by shepherd boys, as they hunted for a lost goat. What they found turned the world on its head! Scripture - so ancient - matching what we had from much later, in our hands! Confirmation of grace and truth. Shepherds are good at being bearers of glad tidings!

Running down to the Dead Sea!

Floating without any effort

And when my guys arrived, guess what they did? Yup - mud and water! Not in the caves or Qumran ruins; those aqueducts have long since dried up. But very nearby, in the Dead Sea which is visible from Qumran. Down they ran, to the water, taking with them Frasier the gnome. In they jumped, splashing and laughing - but keeping their mouths closed if the water came too close! It tastes absolutely disgusting!

And they floated, buoyed up by minerals that are said to purify the body - and I believe soul and mind too, because what could be more healthy than a fun-loving sage of a father taking his sons for a dip in the Dead Sea? Elliot had turned 15 the day before, and Oliver had just passed me in height! This was truly a rite of passage!

Pure as mud!

Then off they went to the mud baths! Nothing more than a hole in the shore, where glorious, gooey black mud oozes out, free for the taking. They dug in and slathered it on, beaming all the while! Purification comes with much joy these days, it seems! And it's widely available, and free!

Mud, and salty shores

Some missed that point, and just down the beach a pair of tourists brought their expensive tubes of Dead Sea mud, bought in the gift store, down to the waterside. There they opened the tubes, put the mud on their hands, and rubbed it onto their skin with immense sophistication! (I have to say, I think my equally purified barbarians had more fun!)

We tried - but real skin benefits more!

You can't live long in that mud-pure state, though, and back they plunged into the water to float some more. Covered with salt, then they  followed the rocky path back to the start, and showered under fresh water for a final immersion. They did as much washing as the Qumran blokes in any given day - but not quite as silently! We left rejoicing on a glorious, golden evening. (I, who had waded in with the camera, but not showered off at once, had itchy legs for days afterwards!)

Qumran hills with the Dead Sea just below the horizon

What is it that drives us to be pure, to cleanse and better ourselves, whether through mud, water or words? A desire for more: for a new body, a new life, a new kingdom. The beauty is that a new kingdom has come, through the living Word (in the mud and water formation of a body!). He makes us more pure and complete than any ritual cleansing when his good Spirit soaks in, and renews us. We need only open Isaiah, copied carefully by the Qumran scribes and preserved in the Dead Sea Scrolls, to read how it happens and confirm that it's true.