Walking in Jesus' Footsteps

We spent last night at Nof Ginosar, on the shore of the Sea of Galilee.  The kibbutz was founded 1937 on Purim, a Jewish holiday,  It is adjacent to the leased land of Migdal and was needed as protection during the Arab revolts in 1936-1939. What started as an agricultural settlement is now solidly tourist based and sits adjacent to the town and school of the same name.  It is a very popular place to stay and draws thousands of fundamentalist Christian tourist because of not only it's proximity to the sites of Jesus ministry, but in the mid 1980 the "Jesus Boat" was discovered by two fisherman from the Kibbutz Ginosar.  This boat has been carbon dated to 50 AD is likely to be like the one that Jesus and his disciples used and is mentioned number times in the New Testament of the Bible.

  One of them of the most secure sites we've seen is the National Water Carrier--the source of most of Israel's water.  This is a desert and without water, it would be uninhabitable.  The Sea of Galilee is fresh water and is 200 ft. below sea level. The water flows in an open channel from the Sea through a filtration system, then a closed system to the rest of Israel.

Jesus lived in  the northeast part of Galilee and his ministry was centered there among the Jews.  His message was for the Jews, not the Gentiles until later.  Over a Byzantine church is the modern day Church of the Beatitudes, built by architect Antonio Barlucci.  It is octagonal to represent the 8 beatitudes, and was the first place that a Roman Pope visited.  1964, Paul XI post Vatican II and John Paul II in 2000.  The traditional site of Jesus' sermon on the Mount is on the hill to the right of the  church.  Our guide, whose Zionist feelings became more and more obvious, reiterated to us over and over that Jesus' message was for the Jews, to reform them, not for the gentiles.

Tabgha, the site of Jesus' miracle of feeding the multitudes with 5 fish and 3 loaves of bread .

After the Resurrection of Jesus, he had a breakfast with his disciples by the Sea of Galilee where he said to the apostle Peter, "feed my sheep".  This is called the Peter's Primacy when Jesus say to Peter in Matthew 16:18 

     Thou art Peter and on this rock, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail 

     against it.

It has caused a rub between Catholics and Protestants since the Reformation.  It's certainly a beautiful place. This statue shows Jesus telling Peter of of his responsibility and the Sea of Galilee is in the background.

 

 

The last three years of his life is spent at Capernaum, which is on a "super highway" between the two super powers of his day--Mesopotamia and Egypt.  Because of the trade between the two areas, this becomes a cosmopolitan, more liberal region, whereas Nazareth, Jesus' home remains orthodox and backward in his time.  Someone from Nazareth would have been considered a "hillbilly" in the time of Jesus.  Jesus' message was to the Jews first, the gentiles next and he probably chose this location for non-Jews to hear his message.  He wasn't having a lot of luck giving his message to the Nazarene Jews and their numbers remained low.  Capernaum was a prosperous town and the black stone basalt building that are still standing attest to it's wealth.   A early synagogue where Jesus is reputed to have taught is of limestone and still stands in the middle of town.  Synagogues came into existence after The Temple--with a capital T--the only temple in Jerusalem that was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE was for reading the Torah and teaching.  When the Torah was put away, the building was probably used as a community center.  As in the time of Jesus, the Torah was read Monday, Thurs. and Saturday.  Monday and Thurs were market days in ancient times and it was the day that people would congregate in town and Saturday was the Sabbath.  The Torah is still read on those days. This synagogue from 2000 years ago has 3 doors facing Jerusalem like synagogues of today. Nazarene Jews started to pray using the example Jesus gave them in the "Our Father",  and orthodox Jews added prayer much later in time.  (Info from out tour guide, not me!)

 

In Capernaum, under an early Byzantine Church is a house that Biblical Scholars and archaeologist believe to be the house of St. Peter.  The early Byzantine churches were octagon shaped and describes the structure surrounding the house.  Above it the Catholic church of St. Peter that was built with a glass floor to look down into the Byzantine octagon and the house inside. 

 

The early Jewish symbol of their faith was the menorah, not the Star of David, that came from India much later.  This "star of David" is thought by archaeologist to be a design feature  to predate it's use as symbol of Judaism

 

 

We passed through the sparsely populated Golan Heights, home to 17,000 Jewish settlers since the 1980s. This area was annexed by Israel after the 1967 war and almost lost again in the 1973 Yom Kippur war.  The US gave arms to Israel to prevent them launching a nuclear attack against Syria. At the time, David told us the Israelis would rather perish than lose the Golan Heights back to Syria.    This is a very quiet area today with no Arab population and just a few Druze villages which are not as hostile to Israel now that they are  minor tourist attractions with the "visit a Druze village for lunch" tours and apparently their have some wonderful food! 

 

Anita was baptised int he Jordan River close to where John the Baptist baptised Jesus. 

History is at every turn--the hill where the Muslim, Saladin, defeated the Crusaders.  Cana, the town where Jesus performed his first miracle of turning water into wine at a wedding.  Nazareth, where Jesus lived and the place of Mary's birth. Nazareth is no longer a Christian town even though it has the largest Christian church in the Middle East, the Basilica of the Annunciation, to commemorate the angel Gabriel telling Mary that she would be the mother of the son of God.

 

 This is the place where Pope Paul VI met with the Patriach of Constantinople, head of the Greek Orhodox church, in 1964 for the first time in over a 1000 years to try to mend their divide of long ago.  A large statue marks the occasion. 

 

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Today the town is predominately hostile Muslims and a few years ago, there were plans to build a Mosque across from the large Basilica. The Vatican approached the Israeli authorities. The church didn't get built

 

 Interesting--a Christian woman in the gift shop told us that the Vatican changed the date that Easter is celebrated this year in Nazareth and Bethlehem to coincide with the Greek Orthodox Easter on May 5.  So Easter is next weekend and she is not very happy about it.  Her comment was, "Let's see if they (Greek Orthodox) celebrate Christmas with us!"