(Israel/Palestine) Thursday, January 8

Thursday, January 8

Katie: We started the day at Mount Tabor, which is traditionally thought to be the site of Christ’s transfiguration. There is a Franciscan church on the mountain filled with beautiful mosaics that depict the event. (I am so sorry that we have not had enough bandwidth to upload pictures to the blog!! I would love for you all to be able to visualize what we are seeing.) The church has an altar dedicated to Jesus and two chapels – one dedicated to Moses and the other to Elijah – honoring the appearance of the prophets on the mountain. The chapels also represent the dwellings that Peter offered to make for Jesus, Moses and Elijah on the mountain (Matthew 17).

The church, like many others we have seen, is built over the ruins of the Byzantine church that was in this spot and dedicated to the transfiguration. Seeing all of the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches on this trip has made me think a lot about symbolism and iconography. Both churches use symbols and icons in their sanctuaries to venerate Jesus, Mary and the saints, as well as to aid in worship. Icons got a bad rap in the 8^th century when Constantine V called a local synod to bad their use. John of Damascus argued in favor of iconography, saying that we can picture (and create pictures of) Jesus even though we cannot picture God. Picturing God, because God, being divine, does not have human characteristics would lead to idolatry. On the other hand, Jesus is both fully divine and fully human so Jesus can be pictured. Christians do not worship the picture though – worship (latreia in Greek) is due to God alone. However, we can honor (proskynesis in Greek) ions that lead us to God. It is similar to the honor that we pay to the scriptures.

Our next stop was Magdala, which was the hometown of Mary Magdalene. The story of the discovery of Magdala is one of the coolest things we’ve heard on this trip. The Vatican asked the Legionaries of Christ (a Catholic order) to build a place on the Sea of Galilee for pilgrims to stop and pray. When the construction began on the site in 2006, a piece of stone was hit while digging. This led the church to calling the Israeli archeological department, who then initiated an archeological dig on the site. An entire city was unearthed just 6 feet under the ground – including the oldest known synagogue in the world!

A coin in the synagogue was found that dated to 29 CE. There has also been confirmation that the mosaic floor dates back to the 1^st century from independent archaeologists and analysts. It is a fair assumption to say that Jesus was in that exact synagogue, though archaeological evidence to that effect has not been discovered. There is still an active dig underway (you can sign up to volunteer to dig!!) but the Roman Catholic Church was allowed to build their church on a different area of the site.

The church is right on the Sea of Galilee (again, I wish we could share pictures! The views were just beautiful.) and was built in honor of women followers of Jesus. There are 8 columns in the church, seven with the names of female followers identified in the Bible inscribed on them. The last column is blank and is in honor of the worldwide community of female followers. The Father that led our tour said the marble chosen for the columns was in honor of the strength, dignity, and elegance of women.

From there, we got on a boat to ride out into the Sea of Galilee. In scripture, Jesus and his disciples go back and forth across the sea on a regular basis. I always assumed it was like a really large lake, but it is way bigger than I imagined. While we were out on the water, we read the stories of Jesus stilling the storm and Peter walking on water. On our way back to land, the wind picked up and it started raining, causing the waves to increase. It made it easy to imagine the stories that we had just read in scripture. Having scripture come to life like that is one of the things that I am most grateful for on this trip.

After lunch, we visited the Mount of Beatitudes, the location of Jesus’ sermon on the mount and then we went to Tagbha, the traditional site of the miracle of loaves and fishes. Each of these sites had a modern church.

We finished the day at Capernum, the town where Jesus began his ministry and continued to teach very often. A huge city lays in ruins there and shows the various empires that have governed – there are Roman and Byzantine buildings. The synagogue of Jesus’ day is covered up by the Roman synagogue, but a corner is visible.