Heaven in the Jungle: A Visit to the Jordan

Here’s one fact about Bethabara, or Bethany-beyond-the-Jordan, the narrow plot of desert real estate where Elijah was assumed into heaven, where John the Baptist proclaimed the Kingdom of God, and where he baptized Jesus: it’s rustic. You’ll see bees buzzing in thickets of reeds hemmed in by bare rock mesas. You’ll see the domes of churches belonging to several denominations. Depending on what items of clothing pilgrims choose to leave on under their white baptismal robes, you might see a great deal more of them than you ever planned or cared to see. But one sight you’ll be spared is kitsch.

“We didn’t want to turn the place into Disneyland,” says Rustom Mkhjian, the Jordanian engineer who serves as the site’s assistant director. Here, the commission has succeeded spectacularly. Pilgrims won’t have to fight their way through gift shops selling locusts and wild honey, or guest houses with names like Chariots of Fire. As much as possible, they’ll see the place – and the badlands landscape beyond, stretching all the way to Jerusalem — as Elijah, John, and Jesus saw them

Here’s another fact about Bethabara: it’s authentic. Or rather, it bases its claim to be what it is on a small mountain of venerable sources. These include pilgrim accounts dating back to the 4th century and a mosaic map found in a 6th-century Byzantine church in the nearby town of Madaba. Eight patriarchs, a pope, an archbishop of Canterbury, and Rick Warren have all vouched for it formally. (The pope is a Coptic pope, but three of the Catholic kind – St. John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis – have come as pilgrims.)

The site as it exists today is a dividend of the 1994 treaty establishing peace between Jordan and Israel. Until then, the area was highly militarized and protected by mines that took two years to remove. The Jordanian army maintains checkpoints nearby; trucks and jeeps armed with .50 caliber machine guns are still common sights. Nevertheless, the general mood remains strenuously peaceful. Everywhere along the covered plank bridges spanning the muddy ground are photos of popes greeting Jordanian royals. Signs remind pilgrims in the name of Abdullah II, Jordan’s current king, that they are visiting a place of tolerance and mutual respect.

In the history of Bethabara’s excavation, the Jordanian royal family has proven even better than its word when it’s come to collaborating with Christians. In 1994, while visiting nearby Mt. Nebo, Prince Ghazi, a grandson of Jordan’s King Talal and holder of a PhD from Cambridge then serving as cultural minister to King Hussein, met Fr. Michele Piccirillo, director of the local Archaeological Institute. As the two pious polymaths hit it off, Fr. Piccirillo convinced the prince to support his plans to dig around the east bank of the Jordan. Within a few years, archaeological teams uncovered the remains of 21 ancient sites, including 11 Byzantine churches and monasteries.

Those remains are all on display today, cared for by locals and shaded by temporary structures that protect their integrity. There’s not much left to see at any one particular spot – a foundation here, a Greek inscription there. But the digs do, at least, show plenty of variety. Along with cave cells, once occupied by rugged monks in imitation of John the Baptist, they include a deep baptismal pool accessible by a flight of stone steps leading down from the foundation of a 6th-century church.

Bethabara exudes peace like a fragrance. It has been suggested that the atmosphere of the nearby Dead Sea, free of allergens and low in ultraviolet rays, produces a natural mellowing effect. But Wadi Kharrar – the Arabic name for the very spot of Jesus’ baptism – is onomatopoeia, reflecting the sound of gurgling water. The water level has dropped considerably since Jesus’ time, but the Jordan still flows, and its gurgle has softened into a murmur. The water is green, but a soothing, golf-course green. Though the zor, or thickets of reeds and palms, has been called “the Jungle of the Jordan,” it is free, at least in April, of mosquitoes. With help from the Jordanian government, the God of nature has provided Christians and Muslims alike with their very own Zen rock garden.

“Here, we are at the lowest point on earth, but the closest point to heaven” – this is how assistant director Rustom Mkhjian summarizes the effect his commission has been striving to create. In fact, Mkhjian embodies that effect. A wiry man in his 50s whose profile advertises his Armenian heritage, he gestures with the abandon of a 12-year-old and smiles like the sun. When he showed our group around Bethbara – as he has popes and princes – he spoke with fatherly pride, reciting pilgrim accounts and Bible verses as fast as the average listener could assimilate them. “I’d like to keep the place open 24 hours,” he said.

Mkhjian might be onto something. Touring the various sites at speed, in the daytime, offered us little time for the silent meditation to which the place seemed to invite us. As members of the press, we were too easily distracted by our fellow humans to fulfill the pilgrim’s calling. Repairing to an out-of-the-way stretch of the Jordan, we found we were sharing the spot with a party of smartly-dressed Arabs celebrating the baptism of a two-year-old girl. The landing closest to the opposite, or Israeli, bank had the feel the Ganges, as pilgrims on both sides piled, splashing, into the water. Still, even the few hectic minutes we spent there gave us the chance to look into the Promised Land.