Saturday in the Holy Land

Saturday in the Holy Land May 1, 2016

 

Arbel and al-Hammam
Mount Arbel (on the left) and the opening of the Wadi al-Hammam (Wikimedia CC)

 

I’ve fallen a bit behind in my (already rather perfunctory) trip journal, so here’s an attempt to catch up:

 

We began yesterday with a visit to the Wadi al-Hammam, the Valley of the Doves, which begins at Magdala, just below the cliffs of Mount Arbel.  This was almost certainly the valley through which Jesus would have walked between Nazareth and Capernaum.  As usual, we had the place pretty much to ourselves, along with some cows and calves.

 

Then we visited Tabgha (Arabic for “a meal”), the name of which is a corruption of the original Greek Heptapegon (or “Seven Fountains”).  It’s the traditional site of the miracle of the loaves and fishes.

 

On the traditional Mount of Beatitudes (one of the prettiest places in Israel), I offered a few remarks to my group on the first part of the Sermon on the Mount.

 

Then we visited the waterfalls at Banias (named after the Greek god of wild places, Pan) and, following lunch amid very atypical flowing streams and greenery, went to another of my favorite places, Caesarea Philippi, where Jesus asked Peter “Whom do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?” and spoke to him of the keys of the kingdom, the sealing power, and the gates of Hell (or, better, Hades).  I love this place, because the physical setting helps to understand the relevant scriptural passage in Matthew.

 

From Caesarea Philippi, we drove past the Crusader-era Ayyubid fortress of Nimrod and through the Druze villages of the Golan Heights up to the top of Mount Bental.  From there, standing beside a United Nations observation post, we looked out over Syria and back toward Mount Hermon and Lebanon.  I delivered a very basic summary of Islamic history to all three bus groups there, trying to put the current crises in the Middle East (and particularly in Syria) into context.

 

Driving back to Tiberias via the village of Bethsaida (the original home of Peter, Phillip, and Andrew), we closed the evening with a fireside at which Jack Welch, Brent Top, and I spoke.  (The LDS sabbath in Israel is on Saturday, but Church policy doesn’t currently allow us to hold sacrament services ourselves, so this fireside was an attempt to do something sabbath-like.  Of course, most of the day was already quite sabbath-consistent.)

 

One of the great pleasures of this particular trip is having our longtime friend and colleague Louis Midgley along on our bus.  As we drove up and down from the Golan Heights, he shared with us some of his passionate expertise on figs andolives and their use as scriptural imagery.  Perhaps relatively few are aware that, along with his professional career in political philosophy and his strong interest in philosophical theology and Mormon subjects, he is also a very serious amateur horticulturalist.  Lou recently turned 85, and he’s remarkably vigorous.  It’s a delight to have him with us.

 

Posted from Jericho, Palestine

 

 


Browse Our Archives

Follow Us!