After lunch, we got a tour of the Caprice Diamond, hmm, headquarters maybe? We got to see a $230,000 5 karat diamond in their showroom. The Jewish people have been in the diamond business for many generations because they have long been a people oppressed, and diamonds are a currency that you can carry in your pockets if you need to flee. It was interesting.
Next, we went to the house of the High Priest, Caiaphas, which was the first trial of Jesus. After Judas betrayed Jesus and the soldiers came to arrest Him in the Garden of Gethsemane, he was taken to the home of Caiaphas. While this was happening, outside of the house Peter was denying that he knew Jesus. The mosaics and artwork in this church depict the denial of Peter and the rooster crowing.
This is the door to the church with Jesus in the blue and Peter taking the stance of “not I, Lord, I will not deny you.” There is another statue of this on the other side of the church, which I could not get a great picture of because there was a group around it the whole time I was in the area. 
This is above the door, neat.
Just one of the murals in this lovely church. My favorite artwork in this church was on the ceiling though. Check out this cross.
So beautiful. Caiaphas was the High Priest, an important man, so it is a sizable area, and in those days, if you were going to have a would-be criminal in your home, you would keep them in the cistern, like a prison. So Jesus would have been lowered into what is now called “the sacred pit.”
In the same room now is this statue of Jesus in chains.
In order to lower Jesus into the cistern, He would have been put into this hole, which was later, during the Byzantine times, marked by three crosses.
So this plaque tells us that there are crosses here, but when you go down into the cistern, the sacred pit, you can look up and see them in the opening.
While we were down in the cistern where Jesus was held, one of the men in our group read Psalm 88. Pastor said he believes that this psalm, written long before Jesus was born, captured Jesus’ feelings in this particular moment. Whenever we feel alone, abandoned, heartbroken, afraid…we have a Savior who knows exactly how that feels. He felt it most acutely this night, not only betrayed and abandoned by His closest friends, but also feeling the weight of all of our sins on Him…the wrath of God. We closed our eyes and felt the dark silence of this place. Yes, I cried again, but by now I’m carrying tissues everywhere.
As we leave the house, we see steps from Jesus’ time, that He would have used at least twice during that 24 hours. Once into the house, and again when He left for the Antonia Fortress to face Pontius Pilate. These are original steps, the real ones. We could walk down a few of them.
After leaving this area we walked back up the hill a bit to an overlook area. Along this walkway was a few poinsettias.
I was surprised to see them there, but thought they were beautiful. From the overlook we could see this:
So, see this green area of prime real estate in the middle of Jerusalem…NOT developed? This is known as Potter’s Field, the field that was purchased by the high priests with the money that had been paid to Judas to betray Jesus. Since that was blood money, it was cursed or unholy ground, so it remains undeveloped to this day. It was used after the time of Jesus for the burial of poor people and criminals.
Next up is the supper we ate with new friends in Bethlehem, a wonderful addition to the trip, and so interesting!