okay, so there's TONS to blog about on this day, I just looked through my pics and wow! we'll how far I get.
We started the day by going to Tel Hazor. So, if you didn't know, in archeaology a "tel or tell" is a huge mound that has layers of civilizations piled on top
of each other, the oldest on the bottom. What happens is that one group of people say, "hey! this hill is surrounded by water, it has caravan's passing by, lots of rich land is around it where we could farm, and the hill is a place of protection. So let's build a city on top of the hill, okay?" so they do, and then after awhile, another civilization comes by and destroys them
and then says, "oooh! this really IS a good place to live, we'll build on top of this
city and live here our selves!" so they cover
the old city with dirt and build on top of it their own houses with their own style, so there are these tels all over and you go and dig in
them and can find evidence of several different civilizations in just one tel. Tel Hazor has 21 strata (layers) beginning from the early bronze age, which means that they found some old stuff there. The thing that interests us the most is that there was a huge Canaanite city there with tons of "High Places" or meeting houses for their god Ba'al.
In this huge field they excavated in 8 places an i
n 5 of those places, they found Canaanite temples. Crazy! The cool thing about this place was that when the israelites took over,
they built
their city on top and in the digging they found below the israelite city a burn layer and then the
canaanite city. So they moved this israelite palace, stone by stone, to the side so they could keep digging around the canaanite palace below.
Pretty amazing. Brother Seely made sure that we took a picture of the different strata. In this pic you can see the canaanite layer and the burn/destruction layer and then you imagine the israelite palace that they moved to the side of the site.
We then went to Dan. Dan is so beautiful there is a spring that comes through it and on our walk through the nature reserve we were pretty much just walking on rocks through
the creeks that run through the land. Dan was the border city of the north part of the Northern Kingdom during the time of Jeroboam. When you hear "from Dan to Beer-Sheva" in the Bible, they're talking about the bordering cities of the land during the United Monarchy (Saul, David, Solomon) But his was where he placed the golden calf at and had a huge altar.
There is also a dig they are working at where they are uncovering a whole Canaanite Gate.
The amazing thing about the structure behind Me, Jenn and Mitchell in this picture is that it is made out of Mud bricks and so its been preserve until now and they have discovered a mud brick gateway that is till intact. Its really, really cool! (as Brother Seely would say)
After Dan we went to Caesarea Philippi. This was a really cool place to go to because it was where Matthew 16:16-19 happened. When Christ asked his apostles "whom say men that I am?" and Peter responds, "Though art the Christ, the
son of the Living God!" The Lord responds and says "thou art PETER,
and upon this ROCK will I build my church" If you look in the footnotes it says that Peter the name comes from the word rock, but that it means small rock, like a pebble and that the word used to say ROCK in the scripture refers to a foundation stone.
So in essence the Lord is saying, thou peter art a little rock, but upon this foundation rock the church will be built. In Caeserea Philippi there are small stones all over and there is also a wall of stone (Mt. Hermon's base) where Herod built temples to the greek gods. But its so amazing to see the contrast when he's talking about the two kinds of stone. We should be built up on the foundation stone of revelation. It was way cool.
It was a super tiring day, and the very last stop was this HUMONGOUS castle that they call Nimrod's Castle, after the great hunter, it really is huge and its on top of the mountain and the stones they used to build it are immense! We're not really sure how they got to be up there. A few funny stories are involved with this stop. When we got there I was so tired that I though tthat the hour and 15 minutes they gave us to explore was too
much and that I'd wait in the bus before going, but I also knew that I should go anyway because it always takes longer than I expect. well I get off the bus and snap a quick picture before realizing that my battery is dying so I get back on the bus to grab my extra battery (which was SUCH a great idea! so many people have borrowed it.) and there are Mitch and Micah. Two punks that I adore! They are SO awesome. They're sitting on the back seat of the bus and they moan to me,
"deb! we're tired! come scratch our backs for a half hour and then lets go to the castle." and me, little sucker, did just that, got sucked in. I told them that I'd only do it for 10 minutes and then we'd have to go in, well, of course Micah begins asking questions getting me to stay longer, I knew what he was doing, the
little trickster and it was so fun to talk to him, that we really did stay in the bus a half hour longer than expected. :) Mitch had fallen asleep and was really out of it as we began up the hill to the castle. So began our 45 min of adventure. we first went down this secret passage way. From below where it lead us out, you could see all the castle. it was HUGE! We saw people up on the ramparts and so we had to go there too, so we hurried as fast as we could to get up there and explore. It was really windy and so the skirt that day wasn't the best idea, but we found this broken down tower and climbed through little tunnels and had a blast! We were behind the main group and so we were leaving to go to the bus and then we wanted to go down this cistern really quick so we did. We usually have to travel in threes, but I should have just left them at that point and went to the bus,
because we were really cutting it close. In the end, they went down this other water system and I was left on top waiting for them, and finally I ditched them to run back to the bus before it left, but as I got to the bus, Sandy told the bus driver to shut the door! agh! I was late! so then I had to wait outside until Mitch and Micah also come running out behind me and they then let us into the bus, but we were punished and had to entertain the whole bus. I told some really amazingly stupid jokes. it was all pretty funny. Mitch and Micah are pretty close to being my favorites here, even though they get me in trouble.
okay! so I had a bunch of cool pics, but this silly blog thing, kept deleting them. so sorry! THis last picture is of the sunset that night. Galilee has definitely been my favorite out of JC experience. it was so relaxing and a great time to get to know the others on the trip.
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