Second Temple Galilee

This weekend I had the opportunity to go on a field study in Galilee for my Second Temple History class.  I'll try to recount some of our adventures there.

April 25, 2009

We were on the bus by 7am.  Well, most of us were.  Someone, who will remain unnamed, overslept and was a little late (no, it wasn't me).  At any rate, we soon were on our way, down the now-familiar Decent of Adumim, past Jericho, up the Jordan Valley, past Beth Shean, to the Sea of Galilee.  We headed east around the lake, driving up into the Golan Heights  along a windy and narrow road, looking across the Yarmuk valley at Jordan. 

I kind of wanted to just hop the fence between the two countries, but decided that might not be a good idea.  Instead I stayed on the bus until we reached to top of the plateau.  

It's the tail end of "spring" in Galilee, which means that its starting to dry out, but still quite green.  To top of the plateau was fairly flat, and between that and the greenness of the grass, it reminded me a bit of eastern Montana in, say, late June or maybe July, depending on rainfall that year.  

At any rate, in a reasonable amount of time we arrived at Hippus/Susita, one of the decapolis cities. 

 It's on a hill, overlooking the Sea of Galilee, surrounded on 3 sides by deep valleys, connected by a saddle to the hill behind it.  Pretty typical formation for cities.  We walked down the cardo to the ruins of some large public building which we promptly climbed on and sat down to talk.  

At most of our stops we looked at relevant texts from Josephus, and Hippus was no exception.  However, our main discussion there didn't center specifically around Hippus, but around Hellenism, and the Jewish reactions to Hellenism.  Some Jews tended to accomidate, some tended to confront, and some, probably the majority, did a mixture of the two, depending on the specific issue.  This somewhat abstract discussion actually touches on our lives and faith in two rather important ways. 

First of all, in examining the past, we are faced with the question of how Jesus interacted with the culture around him.  We know he spent much of his ministry time in Galilee, and we know that the main cities in Galilee (Tiberias, Bethsaida, Hippus, and the other Decapolis cities) were more or less Hellenistic.  With the exception of Bethsaida, the gospel accounts never mention him going to any of them.   Yet surely he must have at least passed through.  Why are the ommitted from the account?  Did he spend so little time in them that they are unworthy of mention?  Or is his time there ommitted by the gospel writters for some purpose?  In either case, we are left with the question of why.  Why didn't He go there, why didn't they write about it?  

Our answer to that impacts the second point of connection with our lives.  The Jewish response to Hellenism in many ways is mirrored by the Christian response to our culture (secular humanism, perhaps?)  So Jesus' reaction to Hellenism (confrontation, accomidation, maybe he just ignored and avoided it?) could give us an idea of how we should react.  So many questions...

Anyway, we had a little while to explore Hippus before moving on to the next site: a few churches, mosaics, 

water instalations, beautiful flowers and an unbeatable view of the lake.  

Our next stop (with lunch!) was at Bethsaida/Julius.  This is a debated site, for a number reasons.  Most of the site dates to the Iron Age.  A huge gate has recently been excavated there.  

I believe that it's the widest gate yet found in Israel, and it has standing stones and an incense altar in front of it.  The excavator, Rami Arav claims that it's the Old Testament site of Geshur and the New Testament site of Bethsaida.  Of course, to quote my archaeology professor talking about this excavator, "He was my student.  Very nice person.  Stupid man."  So perhaps his conclusions should be taken with a grain of salt. :)  The identification as Bethsaida is probably more contraversial, because we have more information about Bethsaida.  The Biblical account would lead us to believe that it was along the shore and this tel is a couple miles from the sea.  Possible solutions have been proposed: geographical changes?  satalite town along the shore?  wrong location?  It's hard to know for sure.  

From there we headed into upper Galilee, on the western and northern side of the lake.  We stopped at Baram where a Jewish synagogue is preserved.  We know that it is a synagogue because of its similarity to other synagogues, like the one in Capernaum, and because of accounts of Midieval Jews visiting a synagogue in a town by the same name.  However, if we look strictly at the archetecture, it bears quite a bit of similarity to Canaanite and Nabatean temples of the same time.  Perhaps it was a temple that was converted into a synagogue?  Well, that's interesting.

Our last stop of the day was Kadesh, where, of course, we found the ruins of a Roman temple.  (Hardly surprising with a name like that, right?)  The layout of the temple was very similar to that of the synagogue we had just been to.  Hellenism and Judaism, so close together.  What adjustments must be made?  What hills must we die on?

Kadesh is a beautiful site with fields of yellow flowers and storks (I think?) flying all around and landing in trees.  

The wind was blowing, the sun was low in the sky, it was utterly lovely and utterly lonely.  It is a site a little bit off the normal tourist track, which partly explains the lonliness.  There's sort of a similar feeling at many sites, though.  These are places where thousands of people lived and bought food and worshipped and slept and ate and gave birth and died.  And now it's all silent and covered by weeds with only a few visitors now and then.  It's an odd thought.  

We spent the night at a hostel on the north-west corner of the lake.  With good food in me and orange curtains in my room I slept well. :)  

This post is quite long enough, so I'll try to post day two of our trip later.  Oh, and by the way, my spell check doesn't seem to be working too well, so please forgive my errors in that area.