October 13,2011 Part 1 Day 3 Caesarea

  View of the Mediterranean in the daylight from Marsha's hotel room.

Our first stop of the day was Caesarea Maritima on the Mediterranean Sea about 1/2 way between Tel Aviv and Haifa..  It was built by Herod the Great about 25-13 B.C.  The size of the ruins was overwhelming to me.  Herod also built a silt-free deep-water harbor, an amazing engineering feat for its time, with storehouses and offices.

Herod's Harbor This site was insignificant until Herod the Great began to develop it into a magnificent harbor befitting his kingdom.  The harbor was built using materials that would allow the concrete to harden underwater.  The forty-acre harbor would accommodate 300 ships, much larger than the modern harbor existing today.

Our guide Mickey.  He is a Messianic Jew which means he is Jewish and believes that Jesus is his Messiah.  He moved to Israel from Russia and is fluent in Russian, Hebrew and English.  He was a wealth of information about Israel's history.  I wish I would have had a video camera to be able to tape everything he had to say.

 This stone has an inscription mentioning Pontius Pilate.

These are some of the artifacts unearthed at this site.



  

 
 




















 As we headed to the theater we passed these ladies whose clothing looked like they were from the former Zaire.  I yelled out "M-bote Mama" and they replied the same to me!  Sisters in Christ!  It was so exciting to me.
 

  

 The Theater

Herod the Great also constructed a theater with a seating capacity of 3500.  According to Josephus, this is where the death of Herod Agrippa occurred, as recounted in Acts 12.  The theater was covered with a skin covering (vellum), and visitors probably brought cushions with them to soften the stone seats.

  

Marsha and I at the long entrance to the amphitheater.

  This Roman theater has been cleared and renovated and is now used in the summer for concerts and other performances.

Promontory Palace

Josephus called this a "most magnificent palace" that Herod the Great built on a promontory jutting out into the waters of Caesarea.  The is what is called the lower palace. The pool in the center was nearly Olympic in size, and was filled with fresh water.  A statue once stood in the center.  Paul may have been imprisoned on the grounds of this palace (Acts 23:35).

 Ruins of Herod's upper palace.

                                     Amphitheatron (a stadium/hippodrome complex)

 A portion of the Crusader walls and moat, as they exist today.

For 600 years, Caesarea was the capital of the Roman province of Judea and official residence of its governors including Pontius Pilate.  Simon Peter preached to a gentile congregation here at the house of Cornelious the Centurion, the first pagan to be baptized a Christian (Acts 10).  From here, Paul was sent on his missions abroad and Acts 9:30 relates how he was "brought down to Caesarea and sent to Tarsus".  He was imprisoned in Caesarea and then, when "King Agrippa and Bernice came unto Caesarea" (Acts 25:13) he talked with them.  Here in 66 A.D. began the Jewish revolt against the Romans when 20,000 Jews were killed by pagans in a grom.  Vespasian was crowned emperor in Caesarea in 70 and granted it the status of a colony.  At the end of the Bar Kochba rebellion in 135, the great Jewish scholar Rabbi Akiba was tortured and killed here by the Romans.  Christianity quickly gained ground in Caesarea and the Christian scholars Origen and Eusebius lived here in the third and fourth centuries.  There is so much more history about this area but...lots more to the trip :-)

The Aqueduct

The lack of fresh water at Herod's new city required a lengthy aqueduct to bring water from springs at the base of Mt. Carmel nearly ten miles away.  In order that the water would flow by the pull of gravity, the aqueduct was built on arches and the gradient was carefully measured.  Later Hadrian and the Crusaders would attach additional channels to Herod's aqueduct.