Best of Israel
"First
Class"
10 Day Tours When
you return you will see things from a completely
different perspective. The scenic beauty,
stimulating culture and bountiful history are
outdone only by the spiritual insight given at every
turn.
Treasures of Italy
"Tourist Class"
9 Days - Several Dates
View
Italy from a Christian Perspective, including:
The Vatican, Sistine Chapel, St. Peter Basilica,
Florence, Pisa, Venice and much more!
Greece Cruise
8-15
First Class Days |
from $1735
Thessaloniki, Berea, Philippi, Corinth, Athens,
Patmos Cruise, Ephesus, Churches of Revelation,
Laodicea, Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Troy, Thyatira,
Colossae, etc.
The Passion Play tickets will be included in
packages of 8-21 days in length. Groups are welcome to custom plan
their own itinerary.
Pilgrim will be
offering private tours, co-hosted and retail Christian Fellowship tours,
including excellent rates and services. (Sample Itinerary Links - Bottom of Page)
Please put your name on our information list
and you will receive your options in 2007.
The town vowed that if
God were to spare them from the effects of the bubonic plague ravaging the
region, they would perform a play every ten years depicting the life and
death of Jesus. The death rate among adults rose from one in October 1632 to
twenty in the month of March 1633. The adult death rate slowly subsided to
one in the month of July 1633. The villagers believed they were spared after
they kept their part of the vow when the play was first performed in 1634.
The most recent performance was in 2000.
The play, now performed
repeatedly over the course of five months, during the first year of each
decade, involves over 2,000 performers, musicians, and stage technicians,
all of whom are residents of the village.
The Oberammergau play has a running time of approximately seven hours. A
meal is served during the intermission of the play. Audiences come from all
over the world, often on package tours, the first instituted in 1870.
Admission fees were first charged in 1790. Since 1930, the number of
visitors has ranged from 420,000 to 530,000. Most tickets are sold as part
of a package with one or two nights' accommodation.
There were at least two years in which the scheduled performance did not
take place. In 1770, Oberammergau was informed that all passion plays in
Bavaria had been banned by order of the Ecclesiastical Council of the
Elector, Maximillian Joseph at the behest of the Catholic Church. In 1780,
the play was retitled The Old and New Testament. The new Elector,
Karl Theodore, having been assured that the play was "purged of all
objectionable and unseemly matter" approved the performance of the play. By
1830, the Catholic Church succeeded in halting the performance of all other
passion plays in Bavaria. Only Oberammergau remained.
