Feiler says the emotions evoked by “ancient sites” are “testaments to the ability of places to mark holy spaces where humans come into contact with their god.” (Places marking spaces? Whatever.) But it seems these emotions testify only to a willingness to feel them: Feiler gets so worked up by the Biblical landscape that he sees a donkey and exclaims, “Abraham’s transportation!” As one fellow pilgrim tells him on another mountaintop (said to be Mount Sinai, where Moses is said to have received the Ten Commandments), “It doesn’t matter if it’s the real mountain. What you have is a memory–a real memory–of what happened here three thousand years ago.” This makes perfect sense to Feiler, but I don’t know–maybe you’d have to be there to get it. Not a ringing endorsement for a travelogue, I know. Not intended to be.
