The Northern Most Reaches of Israel (Monday, June 28th)

This morning we traveled to the great northern city of Hazor. Hazor was a huge city for its day that was fortified by both Solomon and Ahab because of it's strategic position. It served as a political center for the north and sat along major trade routes. Many areas of it have been excavated and it is currently under excavation so we got to see a bit of that process. This city dates back to at least the 18th century BC so there is a lot of building over builds and most of what had been unearthed is more recent than that. (You know, only from about the 8th or 9th century BC… "Old" takes on a whole new meaning here!) I did get to see what a destruction layer looks like (a layer of black in the dirt). It was very exciting!

After Hazor we headed north to Dan. Dan felt more like home to be honest. There were no redwood trees but it was in forested mountain area. We hiked up the mountain, having to bend over to get through the trees in places, along the sides of little streams from the springs in the area. There is the remains of a temple in the area that was part of Jeroboam's plan to move the focus of worship from Jerusalem to places in Israel so that his people didn't start defecting to Judah. This is also the site where an inscription was found that refers to "the house of David" which was monumental because until that point some archeologist were trying to argue that King David was a myth, kind of like King Arthur. (I got a bit of an education on King Arthur from a friend here as well. Turns out he may not have been as much of a myth as I had been taught to believe…)


Our next stop was Caesarea Philippi where we had lunch. This is the place identified in Matthew 16:13ff and Mark 8:27ff where Jesus asks his disciples "Who do men say I am?" and then "Who do you say I am?" and Peter makes his confession of faith. It was at this time, according to the scriptures, that Jesus began preparing his disciples for what was to come. Today all that is really left of this place are broken down pagan temples to Pan and Zeus.

After that we went to Qasrin. Qasrin is not a biblical site but the buildings in Qasrin reflect what towns and houses from the New Testament biblical era would have looked like. The cool thing about Qasrin is that the archeologists there have decided to rebuild it as kind of an experimental study of how they would have built things in that day using the resources and technology and knowledge that they had. So at Qasrin you could walk through houses that were complete with mud roofs and mud brick ovens and water jars in the corner and what little furniture would have been in a typical house of that day. Unfortunately my camera battery ran out before we got there so I don't have any pictures of it! I'll see if I can get some pictures from someone else.

We ended our day swimming in the Sea of Galilee. That is something that is going to be hard to give up!