Welcome to Seetheholyland.net. We hope it will encourage you to go as a pilgrim to this place where three faiths believe God entered into a relationship with the human race.
For our purpose, the Holy Land encompasses the places in the Middle East that are mentioned in the Old and New Testaments. It includes Israel and Palestine, western Jordan, the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt and southern Syria.
Israel, the Occupied Territories and their neighbours (Howard Morland / Wikimedia)
Three points of explanation should be made:
• Seetheholyland.net looks at the sacred sites from a Christian perspective but with respect for the beliefs and traditions of all faiths. In the interests of modern Christian pilgrims, the focus is mainly on sites of the New Testament.
• We seek to be factual rather than pious. We aim to present well-researched articles written in a down-to-earth style that avoids the hype and — to coin a word — sanctimentality that descriptions of holy places sometimes employ.
• The development of this website has been prompted by a desire to inform and encourage pilgrims to the Holy Land, especially from the southern hemisphere, rather than by commercial interests. Travel agents who organise pilgrimages to the Holy Land are offered free listings, but without endorsement.
Seetheholyland.net is the retirement project of a journalist who has spent 50 years in secular and religious journalism, not in the Holy Land but on the opposite side of the world in New Zealand.
Pilgrims at the Grotto of the Nativity in Bethlehem (© Rob Hardie / Seetheholyland.net)
My wife and I have led pilgrimages to the Holy Land. We have seen at first hand the spiritual benefits experienced by those who journey to the holy places, and the support these visits offer the declining and often beleaguered Christian population of the land where Christ walked.
To adapt an expression attributed to the 12th-century scholar Bernard of Chartres, the contents of this website rest on the shoulders of giants, who have shared their knowledge and expertise in print and their skill in photography (see the Bibliography, the reference lists at the bottom of articles, and the credit lines under photographs).
In particular, acknowledgement is due to the well-established websites which have allowed the use of photographs and to the many photographers who have shared their work through Creative Commons licences or by placing their images in the public domain.
Despite every effort to be accurate and complete, any website on the Holy Land must inevitably be a work in progress. More holy places will be added, and new information will demand revisions. Feedback is invited, especially to update information or correct errors.
We do not have the resources to publish moderated comments, but users should feel free to comment about our articles on blogs or other websites.
And if you find this website useful, please tell your friends. We can all be pilgrims.