Day 4
{Look for accompanying photos on the Resplendent Daughter Ministries Facebook page. I will post them in a few hours.}
The haze in the air today is a sandstorm, and it is obstructing our view somewhat as we catch our breath at the top of Mt. Arabel. It was a steady ascent up to the summit. Israel is “behind” the USA when it comes to protecting hoo-mans from their own stupidity. If you wanted to, you could walk “straight off the cliff” and fall to your death. No barricades, wires, fences, anything. I thought that was an interesting thing. The sandstorm is not what you might think of one to be. It’s more akin to “air pollution” than the stereotype you might be thinking of. This one will be here for months.
From the top of Mt. Arabel, The Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) is clearly visible. The name Kinneret comes from the Hebrew word for “harp”, because the shape of the lake mimics a harp.
It was on the north to northeast sides of the Lake where Jewish people lived in Yeshua’s day. The city of Tiberius, on the lake, was not a place he would have visited, because it was a city not welcoming to Jews.
From the top of Arabel, we can see several things:
We can see over into both Jordan and Syria.
We can also see the cities of Magdala (think the town that Mary of Magdalene was from) and also the town of Gennesaret. Do you remember the story of when Jesus cast out of the demoniac a “legion” of demons? That was at Gennesaret. The town is located between Magdala and Capernaum.
We can also see, when turning around and looking behind us, the two mountain tops called “The Horns of Hittim”. Directly behind that mountain feature is the town of Nazareth. We know who grew up there. :)
It was at Passover, the year Jesus/Yeshua fed the 5000 at the Horns of Hittim, but I will telll you more about this place when we visit there in a couple of days. For now, back to Arabel….
Arabel is the tel (mountain) above Magdala on the Kinneret.
There was a big battle here at the last of the Hasmonean period. Two brothers were competing for the throne. Hyrcanus II was Alexandra’s son and her pick for the Hasmonean throne over the more ruthless son, Aristobulus.
Antipater was an Edomite. Herod the Great was his son. Herod the Great was hired and installed by the Romans to defeat the brothers and to usurp the Hasmonean monarchy. He then ascended to the Hasmonean throne, where he ruled for many years.
Mt. Arabel was the scene of a significant Jewish battle.
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There are 350 natural caves in the Arabel cliff. People lived at the foot of the mountain as far back as prehistoric times. In 38 BCE, the Jews of Galilee and Matthias Antigonus, the last of the Hasmonean kings, rebelled, seeking independence from the Roman appointed king, Herod. One of the rebel strongholds was at Arbell. To overcome them, Herod lowered his fighters down to the caves and chests to fight the entrenched rebels. During the great revolt of the Jews against the Romans somewhere around 66CE. Josephus Flavius, the rebel commander of Galilee, fortified the caves. Later, after he switched to the Romans side, he described the battle in his writings. During the Ottoman Empire, in the 1400s, a fortress was built on the cliffs. We sat today on its remains, which can still be clearly seen.
The Romans in their violent crushing of the Jews only destroyed communities that were exclusively Jewish. Where there were Jews, living in larger, non-Jewish cities, they were allowed to continue as Jewish communities largely undisturbed. And example of this is the city of S’fat, which we will visit tomorrow. Across the Jordanian plain, at the foot of Mt. Arabel, lies the Upper Galilee Mountains. The city of S’fat can be seen there, while standing on the summit of Arabel.
At Sepphoris/Tzipori, our next stop:
The name is from the Hebrew word “bird”. Tzipori is a city at an even higher elevation than the city of Jerusalem. From Tzipori, you could get a birds-eye view. (Pun intended!)
We first went to the ruins of an ancient synagogue. A modern building has been built over the ruins to protect them. The floor of the ancient structure was a beautiful mosaic, including a mosaic of the zodiac, something rarely seen in Jewish mosaics.
One of the rabbis on the trip spoke on the history of the Sanhedrin at Tzipori. The Sanhedrin met here for a time after the Diaspora began, in 70 CE, and they took some significant actions before they disbanded for the last time.
1. Make a fence around the Torah.
2. Make them to stand on their own. (People? Commandments? What?)
3. Make no hasty judgments.
Their final act was the creation of a perpetual Jewish calendar, one that is still in use by most of the Jewish world today..
They were also working on the issue of one day of a festival in Israel and two in the Galut (rest of the world.). Also, use of tefillin, the leather straps Jewish men wrap their forearms with each day for prayer - - consistent performing of that Torah commandment.
Also, they were working on issues surrounding the get, which is a writ of divorce.
But, before all these matters were firmly established the persecution of Jews got so great that the Sanhedrin was scattered to the four corners of the Earth.
We have no universally accepted Sanhedrin today, and have not had one for approximately 2000 years.
The Sanhedrin fled Jerusalem to this town, because it had been the foremost center of Jewish learning in northern Israel for hundreds of years. Jesus and John the Baptist were from priestly families. John was a Levite. Jesus’ mother was from a Levitical family, because her cousin, Elizabeth was married to a priest. Tzipori was where Jesus would have been sent to Hebrew school. If you see this area in person, you can see that all of these little towns were close together. Even though Jesus lived in Nazareth, that town was less than 3 miles away on foot, from Tzipori.
After the Romans came to Tzipori, at the end of the first century CE, a theater was built as in every major Roman city. The theater had 4500 seats and presented lighthearted performances, such as pantomime, clown shows and social satire. The Jewish sages believed the theater, symbolized Rome and hedonistic culture. Accordingly, they forbade their followers from attending it.
The Tzipori fortress is located at the top of the hill overlooking the entire area. It’s no surprise that the inhabitants of Tzipori, throughout its history, renovated the fortress. When archeologists in modern times began to once again be interested in this area, the fortress was the only structure that stood out route surface before archaeological excavations to begin.
Dionysius House
After leaving the fortress we walked into the ruins of the house of a very wealthy unknown person. This house was on the summit. The mosaic in the floor pictures the pagan, drunken orgy known as Saturnalia. Over a million and a half stones are in this floor mosaic. Conquering a country even included conquering the gods of that country. Minet is a goddess who preceded Mithros. The b-day of Mithros, the sun god of the Persians, was believed to be Dec. 25th. This luxurious home even had an elaborate mosaic in the nearby toilet room!
One of the mosaics in the floor is nicknamed “The Mona Lisa of Israel.”
The central mosaic pictures the two demigods, Dionysus and Bacchus, having a drinking contest. No wine drinking allowed in the Inner courtyards of the Jewish Temple, because wine indulgence and extravagance was so often associated with paganism.
The Dionysius House was definitely not owned/inhabited by Jews.
Orpheus House was another wealthy home from the third century CE in the center of which was a mosaic in the floor of what is believed to have been the dining room. The floor was decorated with a mosaic featuring Orpheus who plays music to wild animals.
Opposite the great bathhouse in the market stood one of the most important public structures in the city, a public house built in the fifth century CE. That building featured a main hall and several rooms, all adorned with spectacular mosaics.
Then, in this same structure, we saw two more fascinating mosaic floors: The Amazon Women, pictured riding into battle on horseback. The origin of the word Amazon lies in the Greek words “matos”, which means breast. The legend tells us that these warrior women cut off their right breast in order to draw the bow more easily yet on this mosaic, no mutilation was visible on the Amazons’ breasts.
The last mosaic we saw in this house, and in Tzipori, was the Nile-o-meter mosaic - - featuring a measuring rod pole-type of tool to measure the depth of the Nile River in Egypt, which would predict drought, famine and death.
It is believed this was the living room floor of the wealthy person, something along the lines of the governor’s mansion.
We were hot and tired after this, and went to have lunch. Somewhat revived, we went down to the shore of the Kinneret, near Magdala.
“The Jesus Boat”
During a severe drought in Israel in the 1980s, two fishermen discovered this boat, buried in the mud and silt of the Kinneret, the Sea of Galilee, which is 5 miles wide and 17 miles wide.
It took about 9 years to complete the treatment and restoration of the boat.
In order to move the boat from the waters of the Kinneret onto land, the restorers used a polyurethane foam coating, which surrounded the boat inside and out. Once the boat was floated on the lake for the first time in 2000 years, it was lifted by a crane to a work area destination in the museum. Next, the conservationists took samples of the different types of wood for identification and analysis. There were several different kinds of wood that were used in the construction of this boat. Christ Thorn, Carob, Aleppo Pine, Hawthorn Cedar, Tabor of Sycamore, Laurel Willow , Judas Tree and others. The boat is made mostly of oak and cedar, however. Possible damage from worms or bacteria that were present before the restoration process continued was controlled by the hearty appetite of the Saint Peter’s fish brought in specifically for the purpose of getting rid of these bacteria. Also, 65 tons of chemicals were used according to meticulous calculation over a period of nine years of conservation to enable the wood to dry for the first time in 2000 years.
The result is that an authentic 1st century fishing boat was revealed. The model is now placed in the museum.
One of our rabbis recommended a couple of articles by Mendel Nun, who wrote very well about the Kinneret.
By this time, it was after 5 p.m. here. We headed back to the kibbutz for dinner, where we celebrated the birthday (surprise!) of one of the rabbis in our party.
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