The "Jesus Boat" etc

From our boat we went to see the "Jesus boat which is dated to the first century and was discovered by a couple of kibbutzniks maybe 15 years ago. Remember reading a number of articles about it, but great to see. Took 10 years to preserve the wood, it was so fragile from the mud.

From there to the Mount of Beatitudes and Tabgha, the site of the feeding of the 5000. Churches on both sites, but v worthwhile visits.

Next was Capernaum, which I'll cover separately. Lunch in Cana, the site of Jesus' first miracle, was delicious at a local Arab lamb kebab type of place. Sadly, the church on the "exact" site was closed but we did get to taste a little wine from the original brew.

Then on to Nazareth, a primarily Arab town, or rather now, city. In the time Jesus grew up there, it is estimated the entire village was around 500. Now it's somewhere round 150,000--very busy, crowded and intense. Again I was amazed at how big the hills were.

The old city has had some excavations and a very impressive Christian ministry has set up a mock mini village right in the center of town. It is complete with wine press, olive oil press, carpenter's shop, house etc. All superbly done, and with intricate detail to archaeological accuracy. Oh yeah, the only intact synagogue is they're, reconstructed from Jesus' day. Headed up by a young Christian Arab believer (he says only 4000-5000 evangelical believers in the whole country!), it is superb.

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A Note on Tiberias





Tiberias is where we stayed for two nights during our excursions in the Galilee region. On the north-west side of Lake Galilee, Tiberias was established in 20 A.D. by Herod Antipas (Herod the Great's son), and named in honor of Tiberius Caesar. Besides the gorgeous view of the lake and the Golan Heights on the opposite shore, the emperor no doubt picked the spot for its famous mineral springs, which are still in use today.

Mentioned in the New Testament only once (John 6:23), the prominence of the city meant the Sea of Galilee was also known as the Sea of Tiberias (John 6:1; 21:1). It is very close to the region where Jesus carried out much of his ministry.

It's a beautiful city as this shot from our boat ride on the lake shows. From the 2nd-10th centuries, it became the largest Jewish city in the Galilee region, and the most important one for Judaism on many levels. After the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., the Sanhedrin (highest legal body in Judaism) took up residence in Tiberias around 150 A.D. In the Middle Ages, Tiberias was the site of the great Jewish scribal school known as the Massoretes who were scrupulously careful in their copying of the Scriptures and produced the Massoretic Text, which is the foundational text for our modern Old Testament Scriptures. In addition to copying the text with great reverence and care, the scribes standardized Hebrew vowel points (Hebrew orginally was just consonants) and produced the Mishnah (Jewish rabbinal law) and Jerusalem Talmud here.

On the Boat

Undoubtedly the boat ride will always be a highlight for the kosher kiwi, pictured here basking in the warm sun and cool breeze on this most sacred of all lakes.

Seriously, I found it to be profoundly moving. It just makes the gospel accounts and Jesus so much more three-dimensional. He's not just words on a page, even a nice crispy page in a volume that has "Holy" in the title. He's not just a character in a story, even though he's an amazing character in an astonishing story. He was here. Right here. And right there. And he walked on stuff that physics tells us shouldn't be walked on. And he created stuff that didn't exist a millisecond before. And he said to the 5000, "I hope you like fish cause falaffel isn't on the menu for many years yet."

So why am I crying, except that Jesus, just up the hill from here, said "blessed are the pure in spirit for they shall see God..." Because they did. Right in front of them. Peter's great realization was that he was qualitatively different from Jesus. "Depart from me lord, for I am a sinful man. I'm not and will never be properly poor in spirit, and yet you want to befriend me?" I guess that same greatest discovery in my own life hit me again but in an entirely different way so that I'm not sure I can, or even want to, try to translate it into words. Some things are meant to be just experienced, not elucidated. I hope this isn't the onset of the Jerusalem Syndrome.

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Sea of Galilee

Day 2 was more gorgeous weather--unusual for January, our guide said. After breakfast we headed down to the lake and boarded a boat. Here's a view last night from our room (I'm sharing with another pastor, named Tom). What has struck me is how incredibly hilly the Galilee region is. Not just little pimple hills, but ones that would put some impressive calf muscles on Jesus and the disciples. Isaiah 53 should be amended to read: "he had no beauty that we should be attracted to him, but he had some pretty serious calf muscles." It has been so cool to see these places Jesus often was and to be able to picture him right there.

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Plugged-In & Ready to Write

It's 8:16 pm in Stoughton and I'm ready for the new day here.

(As I write this at 4:42 am local time I'm at the Sea of Galilee with the door open for a bit of breeze. I just heard a boat engine start up, and the sound of geese honking. Why did I never hear geese honking in all my Sunday School lessons of Jesus by the lake?)

Here's a shot of the moon over the Sea of Galilee, taken from my hotel window in Tiberias. The far shore is the Golan Heights, which Israel took from the Syrians in the 1967 Six Day War.

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