Forty Centuries: Israel, part 5: Sea of Galilee

I now rank the Sea of Galilee as one of the most beautiful lakes I've seen, up there with Buttermere in the English Lake District and Wallowa Lake in northeastern Oregon. We took a day to explore the east and north edges of the lake, starting with the museum in Tiberias which houses a 1st c. fishing boat they discovered in 1986. Buried in mud, the boat began to disintegrate as soon as it was exposed to air, so the story of how they excavated and preserved the boat was very interesting.

The museum for the boat was large and modern, set up for hundreds of tourists at a time. Actually, we saw several sites along the Sea of Galilee which had been built up to accommodate large tour groups being shepherded around the lake in very large tour buses. For example, these photos are from the Mount of Beatitudes, where Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount, which has been built up into a lush garden and chapel complex, complete with a snack bar.

I was trying to imagine what the area might have originally looked like.....a fruitless task 2000 years later. Although it was neat to look at the water, the cliffs, the general lay of the land and to think that this was much the same way it looked back then. I won't pretend to guess what Art and David were thinking. :)

Next we stopped at the Church of the Fish and Loaves, purportedly at the site of Jesus' feeding of the 5000. For most of these Sea of Galilee tourist sites, there was no evidence other than the remnants of very early churches built in memory of the event. For example, there was a Church of the feeding of the 5000 built at this location as early as 350 AD.

A 4th century pilgrim from Spain described the church:

By the sea is a grassy field with plenty of hay and many palm trees. By them are seven springs (heptapegon), each flowing strongly. And this is the field where the Lord fed the people with the five loaves and two fishes. In fact the stone on which the Lord placed the bread has now been made into an altar. People who go there take away small pieces of the stone to bring them prosperity, and they are very effective.

They still have a stone under the altar, probably not the same stone, but they're not allowing anyone to chip away pieces of it! That would have been a major boon for Suzy's rock collection. :) The beautiful mosaic floors in the church are mostly from the 5th century.

Down the road a little bit was the village of Capernaum, one of my favorite places we visited that day. Here you can see the ruins of the village Jesus lived in for a time, where he performed at least two miracles, and where he spoke in the Synagogue. While a remnant of the 1st c. synagogue still exists, these remnants are from a 4th c. synagogue built on top.

Just a few hundred feet from the synagogue lie the remains of an octagonal church built in the 5th c. to indicate the exact location of Peter's house. In the 1960s, archaeologists found that the foundations of this octagonal church were actually built on the walls of a private house...a private house with inscriptions leading researchers to believe that it was used as a meeting place for Christians in the second half of the 1st c. It was amazing to think that this very likely could have been the place Jesus healed Peter's mother-in-law and quite possibly he could have lived here with his disciples Peter and Andrew.

Next, we drove up on to the Golan Heights which rises to the east of the Sea of Galilee. I was surprised by how beautiful it was.....lush pasture land and wildflowers, but peppered with signs warning of landmine danger and other signs of recent warfare such as this abandoned tank.

We stopped at Gamla, famous for its strong defense against the Romans in the 66 AD Jewish revolt. They set up their stronghold on this rock outcropping and and held off the Romans for about 8 months before finally being overrun. About 5000 were killed and another 4000 either fell or jumped to their deaths off the cliff at the far end.