Chorazin

Chorazin is an ancient Jewish city on the upper shores of the Sea of Galilee.  It is constructed completely of the black basalt stone that is found all over the area.  There were some intricately carved sections of stone, which is apparently very hard to do in black basalt.  Christ said in the New Testament that Chorazin was a wicked place.

Upper Section of Synagogue walls

Carvings

In the doorway of the Synagoge 

Look out in the distance...That's the Sea of Galilee

Inside one of the houses.  The arches held up stone slabs that were the roof.

The Synagogue

The Sea of Galilee

This is the view from right outside the little bungaloo we stayed in on the Sea of Galilee.  The place was owned and operated by a Jewish kibbutz, which is a communal living society.  Very interesting, and a topic for another post.

 

Our boat that took us across the Sea

On the boat.  Yes, I am wearing about 6 layers at this point.  Our guides said this was the coldest, wettest trip they've ever had in Israel.  Luckily this day the sun was shining!

 

View of Tiberius from the middle of the Sea of Galilee. 
It was on the Sea of Galilee that Christ walked on water and also that he calmed the raging storm. It seems funny, since it is a lake, but our guides explained that the way the water is situated, storms roll off the mountains and it's basically a big swirling pot down below. Apparently it can get pretty rough. Luckily for us, it was a nice day.

Bet Shean

Bet Shean is by far the most amazing archetecture I've ever seen.

It is a city, or rather layers of cities with one huge one at the bottom, with a long history. People have lived here since 3000 B.C. We saw some Canaanite ruins and other very, very old stuff at the top of the hill you see in the distance. There are evidences of 18 different layers or civilizations somwhere in or on that hill. Crazy! It is mentioned in the old testament in first and second Samuel that the heads of Saul and Jonathan were hung from the city gates here after they were defeated by the Philistines. The large city at the bottom of the tell (hill) was built by Herod and was a metropolis in it's time. 30,000 people lived there.

The Theater

Main Street

It was destroyed in an earthquake in 747 and buried almost completely. That's a good thing for us, because it was well preserved and has only recently been excavated. AMAZING!

View from the top of the tell looking back toward the theater.

The Mean Tree

I swear this tree could only exist in a Biblical land...

 

 

Gideon's Spring

I, um, didn't really remember ever hearing this Bible story before we heard it in Israel.  I of course blame that completely on my non-Bible reading past.  But, it's a good one, and here's the Cliff Notes version: The Lord commands Gideon to choose only the best warriors from his army for a certain battle.  He finds them by watching them drink from the spring.  He is commanded to only choose those who scoop the water and drink with their sword ready.  They win the battle.  The end.


Here is our geologist friend, Bob explaining that the spring was here because of a fault in the rock.

Our friends, Emily, Shauna and Shannon demonstrating how the best soldiers did it.

Nazareth

This is the huge Catholic Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth.  It is built over the place that was the supposed home of Mary when the Angel announced to her that she would bear the Son of God.  One of things you learn when you go to Israel is that most of the Holy sites are covered by churches.  Most of the ground level during biblical times is actually underneath these churches.  It does get really old seeing everything that way, but at the same time, we would probably have no sites to see if they hadn't been preserved like this.   

 

View from the street.


Carved wooden front door.

 

 The baptisimal font...wait, what?  Yes, a baptisimal font in the lower level of the church.  Wrap your mind around that.  Our tour guide was good friends with the caretaker here and once asked him why there was a baptisimal font in a Catholic Church.  He said they used to baptize by immersion.  Our guide then asked why they changed it and he replied that it was "more convenient."

Megiddo

Sorry for the interruption in photos--being in charge of the Relief Society Birthday Party tends to put everything else on hold...


Megiddo was an amazing place. There are 23 layers of civilization built on top of each other! It boggles my mind that they would just keep stacking it on top of each other. The whole place is a hill now, but it wasn't before they started wrecking it and stacking the next people on top. It's basically been a battlefield throughout history and the scriptures say that this will be the site of the beginning of the battle of Armageddon.

 

 

 

Elijah on Mt. Carmel and the Jezreel Valley

This trip really gave me more of an appreciation for Elijah.  He was an amazing prophet who always stood for the Lord, and mostly did it alone.  Here is a statue atop Mt. Carmel in honor of Elijah slaying the wicked preists of Baal when the Lord sent down fire to consume Elijah's sacrifice.

The Jezreel valley is just below Mt. Carmel and has a huge presence in the Old Testament, including being the site of the death of Ahab and Jezebel. 

Caesarea

Herod built this coastal city (along with a majority of other ancient ruins we saw--he was a busy guy!) and it is mentioned in the Bible.  It was here that Paul made his defense before Festus and King Agrippa.  There was also a 12 mile-long aqueduct to carry water to the city (last picture).
 

 

 

Israel: The Traffic

When we first arrived, we headed for downtown Jaffa.  This photo was our first roundabout in the bus and it took about 5 minutes to get around it.  In the words of our guide, our driver was a "bus artist."  And thank goodness!!!  There were many, many times we were thankful for Mohammad Abu Ghabi and his driving skills, not to mention his GQ style!  He was the best dressed and most professional of any bus driver we saw.


A normal parking situation:

 

Israel A Picture A Day

Mostly because I can't look at that pink slime meat picture any longer...

I give you Israel, A Picture (or 2) a day.  I'll likely keep at it till I get bored, or until the garden really has to get planted and weeded, etc. etc.  I realized I am never going to actually blog the whole thing.  We are doing a shutterfly book that we may finish before we die, (though not at this rate!) and that is where all my efforts to record our trip and photos is going.  But, for those of you friends/family who we only see virtually, this will assuage my guilt and give you something to see and read.



Isreal is almost exactly halfway around the world from where we live.  Which means, a LONG flight!  The point of this whole trip was that it was our 10-year anniversary, so we used all our frequent flyer miles to upgrade our tickets to first-class.  Chris has always had a dream of flying upstairs on a 747 and now he can check that off his bucket list.  And, yes, it was worth it!

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This is just gross...