We missed out on Cana. Drove through, but didn't get to stop at the church that's built over the traditional site of the wedding. Too bad. I was looking forward to a good glass of wine.
In Caesarea, there are ruins underwater from this pier Herod built (it was destroyed by tsunami) as well as wrecks from ships. I asked if it's open to the public for diving. It is. Someday I'd like to return and see the ruins down there.
I ran out of room on the camera within an hour. So I went back and deleted some of the pics I took, switched it to snapshot, and took much fewer pictures than I would've liked (especially at Meggido, aka Armageddon). When I downloaded them tonight, I discovered this "trash" folder with 400 pics. Nice. So I got rid of them, and hopefully tomorrow I'll have lots of space.
Speaking of Armaggedon, I didn't start any wars, you'll be glad to know. All is still safe.
I'm learning so much. And I'm making connections in a new way. With some things, we don't really see anything (we drove by Mt. Carmel, where Elijah and the prophets of Baal had it out, and the area where Saul died or the Mount of Transfiguration--all smashed close together!), but knowing that this is really the place where it happened makes it more real. I expected everything to be big. The world of the Bible seems this larger-than-life place. But it's small. Everything happened so close together. And Meggido (or Armeggedon), the high place that became the city to have, had 25 civilizations burned and rebuilt, saw more battles than a divorce lawyer (no wonder it became the symbol for the place of the war to end all wars!) was a small hill overlooking the fertile Valley of Jezreel.
History is boiling, our tour guide says. It's tangible here. David's palace was discovered six months ago. But more than that, it reaches into today here. An archeaologist named Jones (the real Indiana Jones, our tour guide jokes, though his first name is Wendell) searches for the Ark of the Covenant. When he finds it, the Jews will be able to rebuilt their Temple (more on this later), and all hell will break lose, they suspect. Mixed in with this are stories like the city named after the man who brought Louis Pasteur's system to the States and saved hundreds of lives (he also pawned jewelry to support the orphans of the Titanic) and heroes and survivors of the Holocaust. All of these things matter. From Elijah to Maccabees to Nathan Strauss--they all make up the stories and identities of the Jews.
Building things here must be a nightmare--they've had to move roads, prisons, and all sorts of things when they discover something new (rather, something old) underneath. Voila! New excavation site.
It's hard to grasp how old everything is. They tear down places as old as our country without thought--a building only 250 years old is considered new.
I must go to dinner now. We're going to do what our tour guide is calling a Jewish communion. If I understand correctly, he means part of the typical Sabbath celebration, although I can't be sure. In the meantime, a couple of pictures:
Mosaic floor from a 1st century Roman bath house in Caesarea
Meggido: Some of the layers from the 25 civilizations here. The round circle is a Canaanite altar.
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