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Continued…
Aug. 18 – 1:40 pm – I’m finally over my jet lag and feeling strong, in time for some more hillside hiking and Galilean sunshine today.
We began in the “Evangelical Triangle”, the area where Jesus spent the vast majority of His ministry. First stop of the day was the Church of the Beatitudes, built on the spot where tradition holds that Jesus gave those famous blessings. The church was built in the 1920s by a Spanish architect donating his work, but at this point I’m a bit confused as to Franciscan, Benedictine, Orthodox et al. I believe it would be a Franciscan church. But in terms of ancient history there was nothing in particular to gaze at, other than lovely gardens and beautiful views of Migdal and Tiberias in morning sunshine across the Sea of Galilee.
Then we descended a bit, and came to the Church of the Multiplication, the place where Jesus was given two loaves and five fish and fed thousands. The number of 5,000 which appears in Mark 6:1, 31-46 was, the guide pointed out, the count of MEN (patriarchal society, that). Wives and children would have numbered many, many more. I learned that the remainder of bread, twelve baskets, signified that it was the Jews who had been fed by divine intervention, a reference to the twelve tribes. At Decapolis, the “ten cities” on the southeastern coast of the Galilee, Mark 7:31-37 shows that He fed 4000 pagans (again, the men) and had seven baskets of bread left over. Deuteronomy reveals that the number seven reminds ancient Jewish people of the seven pagan nations displaced by the Israelites when they returned to the Promised Land. Our guide effortlessly piles on the information, impressive for any man, let alone one in his mid thirties speaking in a second language.
The Church of the Multiplication, a Benedictine I think, was built over a stone about six feet long and a couple of feet high. Tradition holds that this was the stone upon which Christ sat as He distributed the food to the Jews in Mark chapter 6.
To complete our tour of that little part of the Galilee shore, we ended at the Church of St. Peter’s Primacy. This one was right down on the lakeshore, built on the foundation of a very old limestone church from around the third century. The steps of that church, leading down to the beach, are still there, much worn by water as the lake level rose and fell over the centuries. Also in the ground are a series of six heart-shaped stepping stones from the same era, to represent the three times Christ asked Peter “do you love Me?” and Peter’s three answers. Again our guide showed his knowledge of ancient Jewish tradition, pointing out that a rhythmic repetition of three meant in their culture a sort of continuity; Jesus asked Peter that question often enough for it to be represented as “three times”, the ritual indication of “often and constantly”. The succession of three is thus probably not a literal telling of the events.
This church was also built over a stone, or rather a group of larger stones which form “Christ’s table”, the traditional spot on which He had a fire going and was preparing breakfast one morning for a returning crew of fishermen who would not have expected Him. Galilean fishermen often went out at night and in the pre dawn hours, when fish were shallower and more easily caught. The tale of a fishless night and a subsequent bounty at breakfast is told in John 21:1-14. I stood on the beach where it happened.
Some would say there isn’t enough documentation in history to know where these events took place. But early Christianity was quite dependable, as I’d learned yesterday at the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth, where archaeology has backed up tradition almost indisputably. The more we learn about Biblical history, the more we seem to discover that what we already knew was true. As for the rocks on this stretch of shoreline, there simply aren’t that many of that type, solidly buried, structurally useful, near the ancient water line, and well remembered in tradition going back to within less than 200 years of the events themselves. The Galileans surely knew what happened on their own soil just a few generations before the larger building projects to commemorate the sites began, or else what drew them to those stones?
Next on our agenda was a boat ride in the Sea of Galilee, from the docks at Migdal. It’s a small agricultural town at the north end of the lake (and it is a freshwater lake, title to the contrary), and is certainly the hometown of Mary Magdalene. There is a hotel construction site there where work was halted last year when an ancient synagogue’s foundations and mosaic flooring were discovered, and it is almost certain to have been the synagogue where Mary went to worship. (Our guide was one of the first on the scene, working with a team that was called in for original examinations. He is, I think, at least a perimeter player in Israel’s archaeological scene, a “dirt on his hands” kind of guy.)
the boats were rough copies of the ancient Galilean fishing boats, one of which was discovered not too many years ago in the mud during a drought and is now in a museum at dockside. From the middle of the lake, one can turn any direction and contemplate history; south to the mouth of the Jordan as it exits the lake, east to the ominous bulk of the Golan Heights, north to the banana plantations and agriculture of Migdal and west to Tiberias and its ancient history and modern resort status. We shared water with jetskis and rental speedboats, ordinary families enjoying a lake just as we do back home in Texas.
Then, to Capernaum. An extraordinary place, where the home of Peter has been excavated, and centuries of aggregate churches on that site carefully outlined and drawn up by archaeologists. A small section of the wall from Peter’s original home, a black basalt lower section like all the buildings of that era, is still standing at the center of the excavation.
And across from there, fifty yards away over the tops of the foundations of many homes from that era, sits the synagogue of Capernaum. Much of its white limestone walls and pillars still standing from the third century, it is built on the exact outline of the previous synagogue, also a black basalt structure whose foundation walls can clearly be seen on the sides of the excavation. And that synagogue, of local black basalt, is the one attended by Christ during His time in Capernaum.
Today I stood where Jesus taught and did miracles.
From there, we went around the southeast side of the lake (passing two old hulks of Syrian tanks from past wars, still rotting in the fields beneath the looming Golan Heights) and to the mouth of that section of the Jordan river. It is, of course, nowhere near the scene of John the Baptist’s encounter with Jesus; the Judean wilderness of Scripture where that Jordan flows is presently IN Jordan, in a military area, and inaccessible to tourists. Nevertheless, four members of our own party elected to be baptized in a ceremonial renewal there, and because one of our group was a pastor, we had the job covered! I was elected videographer, as often happens with me, and the video looks wonderful.
From there, back to Tiberias for our last night there. But on the way, a traffic jam, caused by a car that had hit a street sign, went up the pole as it bent, and flipped onto its roof at the side of the road. We watched as the wrecker crew hooked a cable to the car, put tension on it with the truck’s winch to flip the car back upright, and— snapped the cable.
But they got the job done a few minutes later. Modern problems. Remarkably, the occupants of the car were fine.
Tomorrow, to hotter climes. I shall float in the Dead Sea, and at the end of the day, Jerusalem!
Aug. 18 – 6:58 am – Galilean shore, where Jesus made breakfast and told Peter where to cast the net…
Aug. 18 – 6:08 am – A replica Galilean fishing boat, on the Sea of Galilee
Aug. 18 – 12:29 am — What a day in the Holy Land!
We began on the ancient hilltop fortress city of Megiddo.. and it was here I first began to realize the full breadth of knowledge possessed by our guide, a young man I feel privileged to hear as he wades into the history of his nation going back seven thousand years, so full of understanding of it that he speaks rapidly and the words tumble over each other in English. It’s no wonder, as he speaks five languages well and several others competently. (I tested his French on a whim and it is immaculate, better than mine by far. When we entered the market of the Arabs in Nazareth, I said “regardez bien votre poches, Monsieur” and he exploded in laughter. Watch your pockets carefully, sir. We talked in French for a good while after that.) But to the events—
Megiddo is central to any ancient human history, far more important than I had realized. It is perched on a hill over the agriculturally rich Jezreel Valley, which does double duty as the legendary Plains of Armageddon (a Greek error, as the author misunderstood “Har Megiddo”, the name of the city). It sits on a trade route between Egypt to the south and Assyria and Mesopotamia to the north and east. If you had your army stationed at Megiddo, you could halt all trade from your enemies and extract payment from them. The alternate routes were much longer and more difficult.
Recently, archaeologists have found a stone altar and proven that human sacrifice took place there, showing that Megiddo was occupied, essentially, as far back as the history of human beings can go. Thutmose II, Pharaoh of ancient Egypt, occupied the hilltop fortress, as did Alexander the great in the late 4th century BC, and of course Canaanites and Hebrews, including King Solomon, and Roman garrisons and so forth, all down through history. The guide says that, quite literally, more blood has been shed at Megiddo than any other place in the world.
It is this the lends credence, to me, to the idea that the plains around Megiddo might be the scene of man’s last battle. We in the west do not know the full history, but when it is told, the place takes on an ominous sort of weight.
Megiddo had its own spring-fed well and a huge underground grain silo, even stables for livestock and military horses too, so it was well equipped to outlast any encamped armies besieging it. Looking out from the top, over the Jezreel Valley with all its fertile and well planted land, one imagines the King in residence at the palace at Megiddo might have felt himself to be the king of all the world. He certainly had a powerful influence over the known world from that perch, whoever he might have been at any given century.
Then it was off to Nazareth to sort out the place of the Annunciation.
There are two churches there, a small Greek Orthodox one and a gigantic basilica further down the hill. I do not recall precisely why the Greek one was built, but something in history suggested an inability to visit the land where the first one stands now, and I think it was an Islamic action that had this result. But there was a spring fed well at both spots, and so both “could have been” where Mary filled her water bucket and took it home to do her work. So the Greeks built the church in the second spot several hundred years ago and it is now called “the Church of the Annunciation”, the spot where Mary received her visit from the archangel Gabriel.
But the basilica is the real thing, as archaeologists have now satisfactorily proven. There is a first century AD cavern now excavated beneath the Basilica, and on its wall is an inscription left sometime before the Romans took over Christianity and began erasing its humble sites of worship and building giant churches instead. The inscription reads “I am Valerie, and I came to visit the place where Mary received the annunciation” in Greek. This shows that Christians were visiting this site before Constantine’s takeover of the faith. Clearly it is the place venerated by the first generations of Christians for that reason.
We finished our day in Cana, where Jesus performed a “sign”, which our guide differentiated from a miracle for this reason–
He did not want to do it. It was his mother who extracted the feat from him, putting him on the spot before the servants, telling them he could solve their problem of the empty wine jars. Our guide explained that Jesus was, in His human nature, a Jew, and in the middle east then and now, more than anything else a man venerates and honors his mother. And so it was not a miracle in the sense of His other performances, as he did not do it to make a point or teach a lesson but to satisfy the demand of his mother. Remember, the guide said, Jewish blood comes down through the female; Ishmael had the claim as firstborn to Abraham with Hagar the servant woman, but Sarah was his wife, and so her child, Isaac, was the inheritor.
I want to say that our guide is in my view the trip’s biggest blessing so far. I hope we keep him for the duration. He is a brilliant man with a vast knowledge of history, and in spite of his careful explanations of the viewpoints of all the different faiths, he is clearly a committed Christian. He revels in the recent archaeological finds which support biblical history and I am learning far more than I can recall at present.
I was so physically beaten after yesterday’s climbing and hiking, I didn’t even listen to today’s itinerary. I will report when it is done.
From Tiberias, Big Dave, checking in. 
Aug. 17 – 11:57 am – Nazareth from a nearby cliff.
Aug. 17 – 11:10 am – We roll into Nazareth, while our guide explains lunch to his wide eyed tourists…. and that big, grand, new, fabulous building right at the top of the hill? you guessed it. Government. The “northern regional council” I think it said. Very expensive, very new, sticks out like a sore thumb, reminds me of our stupid new city hall in Irving.
Aug. 16 – 11:45 pm — Sunrise on the Sea of Galilee
9:08 pm ET — Leaving Ben Gurion airport, Tel Aviv looked like many cities I’ve seen. Wide, not too tall (a decent downtown area), and situated on a desert backdrop that reminded me of nothing else but Las Vegas. The buildings are all white or off white, but other than that, the landscape is a match for the Nevada desert.
Driving past the valley of Megiddo… Where perhaps the last great battle of mankind will be fought…
The bus headed east-north-east, crossing the body of Israel to the Sea of Galilee. I was limited to the bus-window view on this, my first day in the Holy Land after decades of wishing, and yet that bus window showed me a lot of things.
Turning east toward Galilee. More bus window video, you can hear our Arab Christian guide in the background..
I saw the incredible roughness of the coastal desert, the tough plants and dry infertile soil, and I could not imagine the courage of the people who were so determined to build and grow things here.
Then the climb began, and pines and deciduous trees appeared on hillsides as the altitude increased. In the area of Mt. Carmel, the peaks are over 500 metres above sea level and the trees are HUGE. And soon we saw gold domes and minarets, signaling the Arab Israeli areas as we neared the northern border of the West Bank.
And just like that, the highway paralleled a concrete fence with a barbed wire topper just to the right of the road, the actual border with the northern part of the West Bank. The parallel lasted for a mile or more.
We drove past Cana, the town where Christ worked His first miracle. He turned water into wine at the wedding feast there. And on a distant hilltop in the haze, we saw Nazareth.
The climb continued, a gradual one that had to have taken us a thousand feet above sea level, and suddenly the bus took us down a steep hill overlooking the sea of Galilee. It’s a beautiful body of water in the high desert, but it is LOW, seven hundred feet below sea level! Only seeing it will give the full sensation of it. On the winding road down, you pass a sign at roadside saying ‘niveau de la mare’, sea level, and the lake is still WAY on down the hill.
I noticed two things in Tiberias before I fell victim to two days of sleepless travel. First, gasoline is roughly seven NIS per litre, meaning about $8 a gallon.
Second, the stone foothills of the Golan Heights do something marvelous at sunset. When the town of Tiberias on the western shore is already in shadow, and the sun can only reach the hills on the eastern shore, it turns those stones a brilliant pink.
Pictures to come. Day one, done. Eight more to go. Or is it nine….?
Video of passing countryside:
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Here’s Dave’s first text message:
9:47 a.m. ET — Greetings from points east Tel Aviv, on bus for Tiberias… . Hot, damp, breezy, not as hot as texas though… More to come…
