There is a lot to show and tell in regard to the remarkable land we today call Turkey (which actually should be properly pronounced as a three syllable word, Turk-i-ye) and it’s going to take many, many posts to cover all the fertile ground of Turkey, and they will run surely right into 2023.   Furthermore, I’ll be combining insights from the two separate times I spent in Turkey last summer, once in late May, and a second time in late... Read more

There are many good reasons to go to see the man-made marvel that is the harbor at Caesarea Maritima. Along with the Temple in Jerusalem, the Herodium, and Masada, this was the fourth of Herod the Great’s unbelievable building projects and this one had to be the most challenging, carving a harbor out of the ocean where there wasn’t one before. He forgot one thing— the need for fresh water, so the Roman engineers and the legions had to build... Read more

We have done various posts on Capernaum, yet another site maintained by the Franciscans, so we will focus on some of the things seen under and outside the modern boat-shaped church.   First, underneath we have preserved an ancient early church site where a home was converted into a meeting room. We know early Christians met and worshipped here from some of the graffiti, but what we don’t know is whether this goes all the way back to the time of... Read more

At the same site as the Franciscan church we saw in the last post, we also have one of the more remarkable ongoing digs in all of Israel, at Migdal. What we have is a giant garum factory, making the much popular fish pickle sauce out of small fish.  So we have brine vats etc.  But what we also have is two synagogues at Migdal, and we will be concentrating on the one where the remarkable small altar was found.... Read more

Ah the sea of Galilee, or Tiberias, or Kinnert, but it’s not really a sea.  It’s just a decent sized lake fed by the headwaters of the river Jordan. It is a mere 13 miles long, and 8 miles wide at its widest.  And it is the major source of water for all the crops in the area during the dry months especially.  This year however for the first time in a very long time, the lake was full. Notice... Read more

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The old city of Jerusalem is a fascinating cornucopia of all kinds of things, including all things religious. We will pay a lot of attention to the church of the Holy Sepulchre in this post but let’s consider the old city itself first with its religious districts, street vendors, and ancient history, including the remnants of the Roman cardo running from Damascus gate right through the center of the old city. What would the city have been like during festival... Read more

It had been a very long time since I had been in the Israeli Antiquities Museum.  And we had to race through it, so I had to concentrate on just the relevant materials from the NT period. Here is the actual famous Pilate inscription stone from Caesarea Maritima. There are lots of interesting and famous ossuaries or bone boxes in this museum including Caiaphas’ ornate one. What is interesting about it is not just its style and beauty but that... Read more

The Holy Land Hotel model of first century Jerusalem (no longer housed at the hotel, but rather at the Israeli Museum complex and still being updated regularly) is an amazing look back at the city as Jesus saw it… Here’s the holy of holies and the court of the men in the temple, as well as the west gate into the city. This is looking from the south, from the city of David up to the southern entrance into the... Read more

When you think of Bethlehem you may think of sheep and shepherds in fields like this one where I last saw such a thing…. Or images like this… Or this… The main focus should be on the church of the Nativity, commissioned and funded by Queen Helena the mother of Constantine who came here in 336, and what remains is one of the oldest churches in the world, recently refurbished, and looking much better than in previous years when I’ve... Read more