November 11, 2005

Nineteen times over the last 50 years, Herb Anderson has traveled to the Holy Land and other sites mentioned in the Bible.

He left Monday, Nov. 7, with 30 others on what will be his final visit, said his wife, Betty Lou Anderson.

“He loves to introduce people to the places the Bible has told them about,” Mrs. Anderson said. “He loves the land. He loves the people, but he’s going to be 90 in February, and we have things to do here.”

He didn’t go last year because of heightened security concerns; two years ago he led a tour of the seven cities described in chapters two and three of Revelation. This year the two-week tour is set to include Egypt, Israel and Jordan.

“I hope to cover an area that includes most of the Bible, from Genesis 12 to the end of the Gospels,” Dr. Anderson said. “We only go to safe places; the guides watch over that.”

Dr. Anderson won his first trip to the Holy Land, through a Christian magazine in 1955. That was just eight years after the United Nations’ creation of the nation of Israel out of a land that had been neglected for centuries.

“Mark Twain had called it a ‘God-forsaken place,’” Dr. Anderson said. “It was Winston Churchhill who said, ‘Turn it over the Israelites; they’ll do something with it.’

“As soon as Israelites came in and made a nation, they restored the productivity of the land,” said the associate professor of Bible and theology. “I remember seeing one hill, a barren hill, just rocks, and next to it a hill of beautiful forest they had already restored.”

He marveled at the striking difference between land that had been reclaimed and land that still looked as it had for centuries. The Israelis drained swamps and developed that land into productive agricultural land.

“The Bible says, ‘the desert will blossom like a rose;’ that’s been the biggest change,” he’s seen over the last 50 years, Dr. Anderson said.

His wife spoke of how being in the Holy Land brought the Bible to life for her.

“I had read the Psalms many times before I went there,” she said. “The thing that got me was both a visual and a sensory kind of experience. When we were in a hot place by the Dead Sea it was really hot, and at Masada, it was really hot, and we would go into the shade, and we were cool – really cool. I understood then what the Bible is saying when it talks about the blessing of hiding in the shadow of the rock. What comfort and protection David must have felt.”

Dr. Anderson said he was more apprehensive about this trip than any of his previous trips to the Holy Land.

“There is a lot more anti-Americanism than there was, partly because of the war in Iraq,” he said. “There’s anti-Americanism all across the Muslim world, and that hasn’t been true in the past. I’m a little concerned about Egypt; I am.”

Dr. Anderson turned the conversation to the advantages of touring the Holy Land.

“It’s as valuable for an understanding of Scripture to go to Israel and see the geography, looking at the stage on which all these things took place – that’s as valuable as learning the original languages,” Dr. Anderson said, quoting former colleague Dewey Bertolini. “Israel is the fifth gospel. You see some things there you wouldn’t see elsewhere. It becomes an outstanding experience for almost everyone who goes.”

When he returns Nov. 21, Dr. Anderson said, he will begin preparing for a 1,000-mile bike tour of Oregon, set to start May 6, 2006.

--By Karen L. Willoughby