Galilee-Saturday

It all started one slightly sunny day in the grand city of Jerusalem. We were all up by 6am getting ready to leave on our longest field study yet to the Galilee. The prediction of rain put no damper on our excitement. First stop of the day Caesarea (not to be confused with Caesarea Philipi which comes later on in the trip). The ruins of Caesarea are right on the Mediterranean Sea. And though the sea is very beautiful, it held a very negative image for the people of the Bible. During our instruction time, Dr. Wright began by telling us to try to view and understand the sea in the way in which it was seen and understood by the people who lived long ago. The ocean was a place hated and feared by the Israelites who much preferred the shelter and stability of the dry hills. Psalm 107 talks about how the sea brings no peace. Revelation 21:1 talks about how there will be no sea in the new heaven and new earth, and Revelation also talks about how the Anti-Christ will come up out of the sea. A final example of the negativity associated with the sea is the story of Jonah and how he sought to escape the Lord and so hid in a place where there was supposedly no Lord and no peace. After hearing this, I still love the sea, but I will definitely read about it with new eyes as I try to understand the view of the people I am reading about.
Detailed capitals from the post New Testament period

There were a ton of fishermen on the shore of the sea
"Horse racing" in Caesarea's giant stadium

We then went to see the Caesarean Aqueducts and then on to Mt. Carmel. The place on Mt. Carmel that we stopped at overlooked the Jezreel Valley. This was the place where many Bible stories took place including a great deal of Elijah's life.

Everyone is orienting their maps to the horizon line.

Here is a paragraph from my field study report that talks about an interesting aspect of one of Elijah's story:

The story takes place in 1 Kings 19 where, after Elijah has been hiding from Jezebel for a long time and is at such a low place in his life that he wanted to die, God reveals himself to Elijah. The wind came, then an earthquake, then lightning- but God was not in any of these. Finally there was a still quite whisper. It was through the whisper that God chose to speak to Elijah. It is hard for us humans to understand why God wouldn’t show his power in a huge way and reveal himself through one of the very strong forces of nature. We must look at the culture and what is going on around Elijah religiously in order to make some sense of this. Baal was one of the prominent gods of this time and many Israelites were beginning to compromise over their beliefs in worshiping only one God by adding bits of paganism into their normal worship and engaging in idolatry. The god Baal was the god of the rains, the sky, and bringing about new growth. The wind, earthquake and lightning could all be seen as things under his domain and God did not want Elijah to think that he might actually be similar or simply anther part of Baal. He had to be, in no way, associated with a false god. God was showing that his very essence was completely different then this false god.

It started to rain on the Mt. and I was very unprepared so I wore my Geo-basics book to keep me dry...see Dr. Wright? It has so many more purposes then just teaching me about rocks!

We went on to see more ruins at Megido (and the armagedon valley). We discussed how this would not be the place of the final battle at the end of the earth as many people tend to think (thanks Left Behind). There is a very strong possibility that the final battle will actually happen in Jerusalem. Dr. Wright explained the reasoning behind this, but it is to hard to explain on this blog. It's super interesting though.

Our final stop was a great view from the Nazareth ridge. After more class time we headed to a lovely hostel in En Gev right on the Sea of Galilee where we would be staying the next 3 nights. We had a wonderful, all you could eat, dinner before falling into bed for much needed sleep.