Touring on the first full day

After arriving at the Kibutz and getting some sleep, we woke up for some touring on our first full day in Israel. This is where we went, and hopefully I didn't forget anything!

The ruined decapolis city of Hippos: this is where the church we are excavating is located. Ours is called the Northeast church. There is also a Northwest church (being excavated by a team from Poland) and a cathedral. Also visible is a Roman forum--a public meeting place and Roman streets with some stones still in place. Also visible are two buildings built by the Israeli Defense Force (the military) earlier in the century.

Kursi: a partially reconstructed byzantine church and the commemorative site of Jesus' driving out a legion of demons from a man, who entered pigs in the nearby hills and drowned themselves in the Sea. Remember, commemorative sites are NOT necessarily the exact locations of the biblical stories, but they are somewhere in the vicinity of where the events took place.

Tabgha: A fully reconstructed Byzantine Christian church commemorating the first feeding of the multitude. Here we saw beautiful mosaic flooring (made of hundreds of small, colored, stone squares and held in place by plaster), including a depiction of loaves and fishes under the altar of the church.

Capernaum: The "home base" of Jesus' Galilean ministry. It is a Jewish village along the Northern shore of the Sea of Galilee, and during Jesus' day it was probably about 50 meters deep and probably half a mile long, stretched out along the shore. Several large chunks of this town are fully excavated. A sense of awe came upon the group as we gazed upon houses and streets where Jesus almost certainly walked.

Mount of the Beautitudes: Another commemorative site, with a beautiful church building standing on the hillside. There was a great view of the lake.

Tiberias and Mt. Berenice: Tiberias is a hopping tourist town across the Lake from our Kibbutz. We would take a taxi and bus to and from Tiberias for a morning at the end of the first week of digging. Ancient Tiberias was visible along the road south of the modern city. High above Tiberias is Mount Berenice, with a beautiful view and a "pilgrim bench". Religious pilgrims would journey from the west to the holy land, and the view from Mt. Berenice would have been the first that they saw of the Sea of Galilee. Naturally, they would want a place to sit down and soak it all in, as we had done too.

Here ends the tour. The following day was Sunday, and also the first day of digging.

Random fact: Israeli culture is slightly more aggressive than what we see in America, and this feature emerges in the way they drive. It is common to pass with oncoming trafic: the person being passed moves onto the shoulder, the oncoming car does the same, and the passer goes right down the middle of the small two lane highway!