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Day 1-A
While this may be — date-wise — the second day of the trip, to me it’s been all one day, so I’m going to continue from our arrival. I’m calling Day 1A “the time before a hotel sleep.” You see, we went right from the airport (after a long walk and stops to pick up our luggage and pass through Passport Control), onto our bus and to our first tour stop. Our guide in Israel is native Israeli Mishi, along with Nancy and Olene.
On the bus, Mishi gives us an introductory talk about where we are and where we’re going. Once at Caesaerea Maritima (Caesaera by the Sea), we learn that it was a Byzantine then Roman city. (Hey, here’s an aside. Since I’m not taking notes during the trip, I could be getting some details wrong. You’ll have to go with the flow. Some day I’ll check for accuracy, but for now I’m going to give flavors and talk about things that were meaningful to me.)
The Greco-Roman culture was very physical and what we’d call sinful. Sports (naked, of course) and other “entertainments” were all available. Human life was not especially valued and the rulers in this culture routinely dealt with rebellious towns and cities by slaughtering everyone in them. Another example is that when mock sea battles were staged for people watching at the sea-side hippodrome, if some folks on the ships were killed, well, that enhanced the “realism” of the entertainment for the audience. Yikes.
Jerusalem was the “spiritual” town in the area, a direct counterpoint to Caesarea.
So Caesarea is the town where Cornelius (one of four centurions who ruled the entire area) had a dream in which he was told to seek out a man at Joppa named Peter. And just before the messengers from Cornelius arrived, Peter had that dream about all the animals being let down in a sheet and being told to eat them — a direct contradiction to the Judaic practice. A real no-no. But in the dream, Peter was told not to call anything “common or unclean.” This was a first step toward gentiles eventually being accepted by the new community of what would eventually be called Christians. (See the story in Acts 10.)
So Peter is in Joppa. When the messengers arrive and ask him to come to Casearea, you can imagine what Peter would have been thinking. “Go to that sinful city? Willingly?” Well, he went. He not only went, he conferred with Cornelius who became a Christian, along with his entire household.
Now, being a centurion, Cornelius was only stationed at Caesarea. When he finished his time there, he returned to Rome along with his entire household of (now) Christians. This is in large part how Christianity came to Rome. Interestingly, Paul wrote to the Roman church before he had even met them, unlike most of the letters he wrote to churches he actually founded during his travels, nurturing their growth as church communities.
Another interesting fact from today. The amphitheatre is still being used. While we were there, a band was setting up and testing their equipment; lots of high tech speakers and control boards and such. We learned at the gift shop that they were a Bruce Springsteen cover band setting up to do a concert that night. Small world.
So after dragging our hot and weary bones back to the bus, we proceeded to Tiberias and our hotel — the Ron Beach Hotel, right on the shore of the Sea (actually Lake) of Galilee. But wait, not time for bed yet! First a little clean up and then dinner. And then, for some of us, a swim in the hotel pool (hot, maybe 86 degrees or so) and a wading in the Sea of Galilee (a little bit cooler).
And then I hightailed it back to my room to write yesterday’s entry and get it and the pictures uploaded. I was really pleased that the system I set up for the pictures and the blog slideshow and all worked flawlessly. Good thing since I wasn’t in the mood to do any troubleshooting right then!
And THEN, to bed!!
This afternoon’s pictures:
