The Holy Land Then And Now: A Comparison

Shortly after midnight on February 27, 1974, my great-grandfather left Lambert St. Louis International Airport with a church group on a flight bound for Tel Aviv, Israel. He spent the next week touring the Holy Land, stopping at popular pilgrimage sites and taking photographs along the way.

38 years later, in May 2012, Alyssa and I made that same journey from Kansas City. We spent about a week visiting many of the same sites my Pa visited, though I did not realize it at the time. Several months after we returned back to the States, my mom presented me with a flash drive for Christmas, loaded with—among many other family treasures—the entire collection of my great-grandfather's slides from Israel, converted into digital photos. Below are several photos that Alyssa and I took that later turned out to match the pictures taken by Roger Connelly between Feb. 27 and March 5, 1974.

Church of the Annunciation, 1974

Church of the Annunciation, 2012

Inside the Church of the Annunciation, 1974

Inside the Church of the Annunciation, 2012

Church of the Nativity, 1974

Church of the Nativity, 2012

Church of the Nativity, 1974

Church of the Nativity, 2012

Marble Manger at the Church of the Nativity, 1974

Marble manger at the Church of the Nativity, 2012

Megiddo, 1974 (Note the date palm tree at the center of the photo)

Megiddo, 2012 (Same date palm, left foreground)

Entrance to Capernaum, 1974

Entrance to Capernaum, 2012

Capernaum capital piece, 1974

Same Capernaum capital piece, 2012

Capernaum synagogue, 1974

Capernaum synagogue, 2012

On Lake Gennesaret, 1974

On Lake Gennesaret, 2012 (I don't think this is exactly the same view)

On Lake Gennesaret, 1974

On Lake Gennesaret, 2012

Entrance to Gethsemane, 1974

Entrance to Gethsemane, 2012

Near the Pool of Bethesda, 1974 (Note column in right foreground)

Near the Pool of Bethesda, 2012

The Pool of Bethesda, 2012 (Different angle)

The "Upper Room," 1974

The "Upper Room," 2012

Wrestling with God

Around Abraham's rackety grandson Jacob are woven several engaging tales of outrageous cheating and deceit, and they culminate in an all-night wrestling match with a mysterious stranger who overcomes Jacob and is able to give him another name, Israel, meaning 'He who strives with God'. Out of that fight in the darkness, with one who revealed the power of God and was God, began the generations of the Children of Israel. Few peoples united by a religion have proclaimed by their very name that they struggle against the one whom they worship. The relationship of God with Israel is intense, personal, conflicted. Those who follow Israel and the religions which spring from his wrestling match that night are being told that even through their harshest and most wretched experiences of fighting with those they love most deeply, they are being given some glimpse of how they relate to God.

—Diarmaid MacCullogh, "Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years" (p. 50)