Jerusalem's ancient escape tunnel

Achaeologists have unearthed a clandestine escape tunnel in Jerusalem, which led off from an ancient Roman drainage system. The Historian Josephus Flavius recounted how the Jews had hidden underground and ultimately slipped out the tunnel's southern exit while Roman conquerors ransacked the city over their heads during the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD. Now
they have found the very place.
Scholars Ronny Reich of the University of Haifa and Eli Shukron of the Israel Antiquities Authority described today how they stumbled upon the mammoth structure, dating from King Herod's reign, while searching for remains of the main road. Big blocks of treated stones lined this 2000 year old tunnel, and several manholes and original plasterwork are still in place along the stretch which has been cleared of rubble.

"It was a place where people hid and fled to from burning, destroyed Jerusalem," Shukron said.

Tens of thousands of people lived in Jerusalem at the time, but it is not clear how many used the channel to escape, he said.

About 100 yards of the channel have been uncovered so far. Reich estimates its total length will reach more than a half-mile, stretching north from the Shiloah Pool at Jerusalem's southern end to the disputed holy shrine known to Jews as Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Al Aqsa Mosque compound. The shrine is the site of the two biblical Jewish temples.

Archeologists think the tunnel leads to the Kidron River, which empties into the Dead Sea.

The Shiloah pool, one end of the newly-discovered tunnel, is shown above and at right
Digging beneath old Jerusalem's stones inevitably incites controversy. As the excavation approaches the zones sacred to Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, politics and religion are apt to trump science. Israelity bites.

Pope pooh-poohs Protestant churches & prays that the Jews convert

When the pope pooh-poohed protestant churches as defective, he riled Christian evangelicals and post-reformation High Church congregations the world over, particularly here in the Holy Land, birthplace of Jesus and Judaism. Church clerics are flabbergasted that the pontiff seems to be stirring the pot and encouraging rifts in Christian unity at a time when civilizations are clashing.

Pope Benedict XVI also has just revived the Tridentine Mass, a defunct liturgy, complete with a Good Friday prayer in Latin to convert the "perfidous Jews." Critics say an appeal to anti-Semitism to boost the ranks of Catholics is ill-advised. Appeasing traditionalists who years ago quit the Catholic church because they prefer the ancient services in Latin was the reason the Vatican spokesman cited. The number of Catholics in Europe are in decline.
The Vatican praised the old version for enriching faith and piety, and also the culture of many peoples.

"It is known, in fact, that the Latin liturgy of the Church in its various forms, in each century of the Christian era, has been a spur to the spiritual life of many saints, has reinforced many peoples in the virtue of religion and fecundated their piety."
In an explanatory note to the world's bishops, the Pope said he had seen in the post-Vatican II period "how arbitrary deformations of the liturgy caused deep pain to individuals totally rooted in the faith of the church."
He added that it was clear that, in addition to older Catholics from the pre-Vatican II era, young people are also being attracted by the older form of the liturgy.

Meanwhile, the Catholic anti-defamation league has petitioned in Italy for the removal of "Miss Kitty", a looming statue of the formidable German pope dressed in blonde wig and fishnet stockings, and another artwork which has the face of Jesus Christ pixilated onto the body of a transvestite.

An artists' group insisted that the statues were meant to provoke thought and to defy "dogmatic and ecclesiastic censors."