Exploring Greece, Israel, and Jordan– Part Forty Four

Exploring Greece, Israel, and Jordan– Part Forty Four

As most of you will have heard some time ago, a boat was excavated out of the mud in the sea of Galilee when it was at a low ebb, and it turned out to be a boat from the era in which Jesus and Paul lived. This was clearly a home-made boat, made out of many different kinds of wood, as we will see shortly, apparently whatever wood was ready to hand. Today the boat looks like this….

But in antiquity it would have looked like this….. Originally, it was nailed together with these sorts of nails…
Here is chart of the numerous kinds of wood used to build this boat…..

The process of carefully extracting this boat from the lake, without it deteriorating, and then preserving it is really quite impressive. It was encased in a foam that protected it, then bathed in wax or some solidifying solution. Here we have a boat dated to the 2nd temple period, which Jesus and his disciples could have fished in, or at least one very much like it, though there was no carving in the stern of this boat saying— Jesus slept here 🙂


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