Thursday evening May 23, at Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee
Dear Family and Friends,
A full day in Galilee experiencing the Bible Old and New Testament in person! Our accommodations last night looked out over the Mediterranean Sea. Wake up call and baggage packed by 6:00, Breakfast, then on to Haifa from Netanya (see last blog). Our first stop was a cave from the Old Testament …Elijah’s Cave. It is presently inside a Carmelite Monastery in Haifa. Haifa is on the back of Mount Carmel where Elijah challenged the prophets of Baal. The Cave is where he spent years hiding from King Arab and Jezebel.
The second stop was what I call a photo op. A beautiful garden at the top of Haifa called the Bahai World Center. From the top of the garden we had a beautiful view of the Mediterranean. From the photos you can see that the haze was beginning to form. This is because the heat was really riding…109 and because there was little humidity it felt like only 105.
On to next site…Tel Megiddo as the heat was rising. Here we were at Tel Megiddo National Park, an archeological dig site since 1903. Tel Megiddo is a tel or hill created by more than 20 different levels of civilization. It is considered one of the oldest ancient towns or settlements in the Middle East. The first inhabitants date from about 7000 BC. It was a major trading center as it was at the crossroads of the north-south road from Assyria to Egypt and the east-west route from the Mediterranean to Mesopotamia.
In biblical times , it was the route Abraham took from Ur, Solomon captured it from the Philistines and King Ahab and Jezebel made this their headquarters until their untimely and violent end. When Assyria captured the town in 586 BC the town was abandoned and not inhabited again. A battle in WW I was fought in the area and returning Holocaust survivors created a Kibbutz ( an agricultural community unique to Israel) in the area but not on the Tel.
After going south to Megiddo, our bus turned north east to Nazerath. This was the home of Mary, the mother of Jesus. And later the family when they returned from Egypt. We visited the Church of the Annunciation which is a 20th Century built over the first century home, 4th and 12th century churches. The lower floor is very modern but very tasteful in preserving the original site. The worship area is on the second floor seen through the open canopy in the center of the church.
The last site on our tour was Cana of Galilee where we visited a 1st century BC synagogue. According to the town and our guide this was where the marriage feast and first miracle took place, but I wonder if this miracle of turning the water into wine was not held at the bride’s home the feast lasted over three days.
Tomorrow we will travel across the Sea of Galilee by boat to Capernaum. Posting will be from the bus as wifi here is so limiting.
I am blessed to be with a wonderful Christian group. We have Bible reading at every site to understand what we are seeing, and every evening we have devotional and a short liturgy of evening prayers.
More later…
Ellen and Linda
Ellen’s Travel Journal 2016-2025 