Nazareth, Beth Shean, Jericho

Monday, July 20, 2009

I, Jake, will add my bit to Catherine's good report.

Another incredibly full and significant day. I have determined that the extent and variety of places visited makes it unprofitable to even try to report. It is difficult enough to keep up with it all when we are present on site. It would not be of interest to most people unless they had a keen interest in one or two specific places that we visited. So, here’s basically just a list of what we saw or did today.

We left the beautiful Sea of Galilee and moved in land, passing by the town of Cana of Galilee. We didn’t even stop. Location is uncertain and it has been highly commercialized specializing in weddings and wine. Lots of folks repeat vows there and buy wine, even though none is produced locally any more.

Nazareth far surpassed my expectations. We first visited the ancient spring that supplied water for the village of Jewish workers that were attracted to the area in the first century to help with construction projects at the nearby, Sephoris. The original spring still produces some water. A long legend assumes that the angel announced the coming birth to Mary there by the water spring which someone from each family would indeed have to visit nearly day. It is now covered with an Orthodox church.

We then moved to the Roman Catholic Church of the Annuciation a few blocks away. It is built over an important archeological site that contains several cave homes from the first century period. Ancient graffiti indicates that it was a revered site from a very early time and many are actually convinced that it could have been the residence of Joseph and Mary. Recent archeological discoveries have tended to confirm the tradition. The church is the largest Christian church in the Mideast. The cave-homes were certainly interesting with their rooms, “stable” areas, storage area, etc.

We then traveled to newly constructed replica of a first century “living” village with appropriate buildings and a man actually working as first century carpenter might have and a lady making yarn and weaving on a hand loom, etc. It was quite interesting and helpful in envisioning what the world might have been like 2,000 years ago.

Next stop was Beit Shean. It was not as familiar to most of us. It is the site, close to the Jordan river where enemy forces displayed the bodies of King Saul and sons on the city wall. It was quite an important city and the recent archeological excavations and subsequent restorations make it an important window into the ancient land of Israel. We found it fascinatingly interesting.

Then we were off toward Jerusalem, but not without a stop at the ancient ruins of Jericho. We saw the place where Catherine Kenyon did her important, ground breaking (literally) archeological excavations. It is the oldest occupied city on the planet as far as we know and has the oldest known remains of a human-built structure. We read the account of the Joshua’s attack, under the shade of brush arbor and sang “Joshua at the Battle of Jericho. When we came down from the tel an enterprising resident was offering camel rides, which were eagerly accepted by several, including Marilyn.

In the city we stopped by and got leaves from a very old sycamore tree reminding us of the story of Zachaeus, the short-of stature tax collector who wanted to see Jesus. We sang “Zachaeus was a wee little man…”

And finally into our hotel at Jerusalem after a hot, sweaty and very fulfilling day