October 14, 2011 Day 4 Capernaum, Mount of Beatitudes, Dan, Caesarea Philippi, Yom Kippur War Memorial

                                                      Sunrise over the Sea Of Galilee from my hotel room

       
 Some of our fellow travelers at the entrance to Capernaum

This town is cited in the Gospel of Luke where it was reported to have been the home of the apostles Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John, as well as the tax collector Matthew.  In Matthew 4:13 the town was reported to have been the home of Jesus.  According to Luke  4:31-44, Jesus taught in the synagogue in Capernaum on Sabbath.  Jesus then delivered a man who had an unclean spirit and healed a fever in Simon Peter’s mother-in-law.  According to Luke 7:1-10, it is also the place where a Roman Centurion asked Jesus to heal his servant.  Capernaum is also mentioned in the Gospel of Mark (2:1), it is the the location of the famous healing of the paralytic lowered through the roof to reach Jesus.  According to the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus selected this town as the center of his public ministry in the Galilee after he left the small mountainous hamlet of Nazareth (Matthew 4:12-17). Capernaum has no obvious advantages over any other city in the area, so he probably chose it because if was the home of his first disciples, Simon (Peter) and Andrew. Capernaum, Bethesda, and Korizim has been called the Jesus triangle.  Capernaum is one of the three cities cursed by Jesus for its lack of faith.

 
The ruins of this synagogue are one of the oldest synagogues in the world.  This synagogue was built almost entirely of white blocks of calcareous stone brought from distant quarries.  In this area one synagogue was built on the top of another.

One of many excavations
in Capernaum.

 

 The House of Peter 

Excavations revealed one residence that stood out from the others.  This house was the object of early Christian attention with 2^nd century graffiti and a 4^th century house church built above it.  In the 5^th century a large octagonal Byzantine church was erected above this, complete with a baptistery.  Pilgrims referred to this as the house of the apostle Peter.

  This is how the excavation looks like below the church.

This is what the excavation looks like looking down on it through the glass on the inside of the church.

Altar in the church above Peter's house.  It was an inlaid mosaic.

              Me in front of the largest aloe vera I've ever seen overlooking the Sea of Galilee.

The traditional location for the Mount of Beatitudes is on the northwestern shore 

of the Sea of Galilee, between Capernaum and Gennesaret.  The actual 

location of the Sermon on the Mount is not certain.  The current Roman Catholic 

Franciscan chapel was built in 1938.

Looking out over the Sea of Galilee from the  porch that surrounded the chapel. 

 The inside of the chapel.

Looking up at the roof
of the chapel

I had written at the beginning of this blog that I had fallen 2 weeks before the trip.  The trip to Tel Dan began along Dan Spring-the largest of 4 sources for the Jordan River.  After walking on uneven wet rocks for a couple of feet, I decided that because of the unevenness and my unsteadiness that it was probably not a wise choice to attempt the trip, I went back to where we started and waited with 3 others for the more adventuresome to make it back.  I have borrowed some of their pictures and got information about them from Wikepedia, BiblePlaces.com, etc.  Dan was the northernmost city of the Kingdom of Israel and is in the Golan Heights..

Nearly all archaeologists agree that this excavated podium was the one that Jeroboam constructed to house the golden calf at Dan.  Archaeologists now think the platform was roofed.

Evidence of a four-horned altar has been found as well as religious objects such as three iron shovels, a small horned altar, and an iron incense holder. 

Middle Bronze Gate-Built about 1800 B.C., this mudbrick gate was in use 

approximately 50 years before it was covered (and thus preserved) by an earthen rampart.

The style of the gate is typical for this period; it is a "Syrian gate" with three 

pairs of piers and four chambers.

Before we went to Caesarea Philippi we went to a restaurant where we were served falafel again and baklava.  We also had an Arabic coffee called Hell-it was aptly named!

 This is Caesarea Philippi.  When watching a Focus on the Family video on Israel, they said that it was the home of the god, Pan.  Since the 1933 class of Juniata College in Huntingdon dedicated their yearbook to Pan (an action that boggles my mind), I knew that Marsha and I needed to pray at this site.

Grotto of Pan

The spring emerged from the large cave which became the center of pagan worship.  Beginning in the 3rd century B.C., sacrifices were cast into the cave as offerings to the god Pan.  Pan, the half-man half-goat god of fright (thus "panic"), is often depicted playing the flute. 

 

This is a hewn niche where the a statue of the god Pan was placed.

You can see that there are several niches.  Many gods were worshiped in this area.  We could feel the evil.







 On a positive note this is the area where the confession of Peter took place-where he proclaims Jesus to be Christ-the Messiah.  Matthew 16:13-20; Mark 8:27-30; Luke 9:18-20

We were supposed to go to the Jordan River Baptismal site but when Mickey called there were 1000 people from Brazil waiting to be baptized so we were able to visit the Memorial of the 10/6/73 Yom Kippur War.  Yom Kippur is the holiest day on the Jewish calendar Syria and Egypt took advantage of this when they attacked Israel.  For the 1st week Syria and Egypt were winning. In the Suez region 500 Israeli soldiers faced 80,000 Egyptian soldiers. Israel tanks were outnumbered 1:9 .  The 2nd week Israel was victorious.  The Syrian commander took tanks into Israel and the farther he went into Israel, the more he became convinced that they were going to be ambushed so he turned the tanks around.  There was no ambush-he could have taken Israel.  He paid for this decision with his life sometime after returning to Syria.

                                         
                                                Syria in the distance from the Memorial Site.