East Again

My goodness! Once again a lot has happened since my last post, including two field studies and turning 21!
I'll just briefly mention our one day study in the Wilderness, we hiked up two of Herod's palaces, Herodium and Cypros. We saw lots of Camels too! I enjoyed the open spaces and rugged terrain, we hiked about ten miles that day! It was tiring but good.

This past weekend we spent four days in Galilee, turning to focus on the new Testament a bit more than we had. We stopped at almost 20 different places, most of which I had never been to. These included sites like Hazor, Dan, Megiddo, Jezreel, Sepphoris and Caesarea Philippi, but some of our stops were mostly scenic, where we could observe the territory and talk about geography and history. For instance, we hiked down the Arbel heights, which look out over the Sea of Galilee, and our last morning we were able to take a boat out onto the lake and talk about life as a fisherman in the New Testament.

The first time I came to Galilee the lake seemed smaller than I expected, but coming back it was larger than I remembered. It stretches about 12x7 miles, and in the time of Jesus was shared by three different regions, Gaulanitis, Decapolis, and Galilee. I really enjoyed thinking in closer detail about the lives of Jesus' disciples and even Jesus' life in Galilee.

Theater at Caesarea Marittima

Although I really loved having the sites explained from a Christian point of view, and tied into the Bible, one of my highlights of the trip was hiking to the top of Hippus, a Decapolis city overlooking the Sea of Galilee. It was an optional hike, and we had to be back to the bus that morning by 7:30. Six of us opted to go, and headed out in the dark at 4:45 that morning, well before the sun had risen. When we got to the top, shortly after 6:00, the sun still wasn't really up, but it was light enough to see well, and the Sea was breathtaking. We read some Psalms, and explored the ruins for a while, then ran almost the entire way back down to make it in time for breakfast and onto the bus.

Kurkar shore of Caesarea Marittima

My birthday was lovely, so many people were very kind and bought me coffee, ice cream and flowers! I also went on a tour of the Temple mount tunnels. After the temple was destroyed the west wall was left staning, and some of it you can see today, where many Jews pray. However, more of it still exists beneath ground level, but was covered in a later period when arches were built against the wall to level off a valley and create space for building new houses. we walked through these arches, and looked at more of the west wall, it really made me realize how huge the temple mount would have been! One of the stones there was absolutely massive, and weighs almost 600 tons!

Aquatic life at Caesarea Marittima

Although my birthday was busy preparing for the test we had for our Galilee trip, it was a good day. I have field studies every weekend until the end of the semester now, and assignments are really starting to pick up. Its hard to believe that we only have one more month of school, it will be hard to say goodbye to the semester.