ISRAEL AND JORDAN: BAPTISMAL SITES

After stopping at the Dead Sea, our next destination was another famous body of water, the supposed "baptism of Christ site" on the Jordan side of the Jordan River.

But first, I want to go back to a different baptismal site on the Israel side of the Jordan River, which we had visited earlier in the trip.

The Israel site is called "Yardenit," which means "Little Jordan" in Hebrew.

It was a well-cared for site, really gussied up for tourists:

When we first arrived, there was some major action on the other side of the river--a group of young men catching an enormous fish. I didn't know a fish could grow that big in a river:

Yikes!

Yardenit has twelve separate baptismal pools, and visitors can be baptized there for free--with the rental ($10) or purchase ($25) of baptismal clothes and a towel. Many groups come here on pilgrimage, and I think that seems like a fair exchange. Their pastor or whomever they choose can perform the baptisms.

JORDAN AND ISRAEL: THE DEAD SEA

We had split off from our Fun-for-Less Tour, booking our own earlier flight to Amman and hiring a private guide, so that we could cover more territory in Jordan on our first day there than what was on the schedule for the group. Our plan was to reunite with our tour in the evening at our hotel. However, the one thing the larger group did on our day apart that we didn't was go swimming in the Dead Sea, something I've always wanted to do. 

We had seen the Dead Sea from a distance from Masada and as we drove south through the Negev Desert toward the Red Sea:

View of the Dead Sea from Masada

There is something mysterious, almost eerie about the Dead Sea. Maybe it's the color, or perhaps it's the isolation, or it could be its utter barrenness. 

I grew up around another "dead sea," the Great Salt Lake, and I have gone swimming there. It is well known for its high salinity of 5% to 27% (50 to 270 parts per 1,000, depending on the year), which is 2 to 7 times saltier than the ocean. The Dead Sea, however, is almost constantly at about 35% salinity, or 9.6 times as salty as the ocean. I hear this greater salinity makes the water more bouyant than the Great Salt Lake. I guess I'll never know.

However, as the Dead Sea straddles the Israel/Jordan border, and as Mount Nebo is quite close to the Dead Sea, we were able to convince our guide Isam to take us down to the water for a quick toe-dip.

I may not have gone swimming, but I saw the Dead Sea from two different countries, and I did stick my feet in it. That's not too bad.

The Dead Sea is really dead--no plants or birds, just people. In contrast, the Great Salt Lake has a bird sanctuary, marshes, and brine shrimp. The Dead Sea is also 1,407 feet below sea level and 653 feet deep, compared to the Great Salt Lake at 4,200 feet above sea level and 33 feet deep. Even though the surface area of the Dead Sea is only 230 square miles and the surface area of the Great Salt Lake is 1,700 square miles, the Dead Sea contains 27 cubic miles of water, while the Great Salt Lake contains just 4.5 cubic miles of water.

And there is one other big difference: the Great Salt Lake doesn't usually have a camel in its parking lot:

CROSSING THE BORDER FROM ISRAEL INTO SINAI: FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF EGYPT

In his book Walking the Bible, Bruce Feiler notes:

The distance between Jerusalem and Cairo is almost impossible to measure. By foot it should take about a month, by camel two weeks, by bus a day. But for most of history, such conventional means rarely worked. Abraham made it fairly easily, as did Mary and Joseph when they fled Bethlehem with the baby Jesus to escape the wrath of Herod. But Moses, going the other way, took forty years, and still fell short. Napoleon got bogged down in the dunes, as did the English army a century later. During the first thirty years of the Israeli state, the 250 miles from one city to the other was wider than any desert, and more impenetrable. Even the advent of air travel, which has reduced the trip to an hour, has done little to reduce the distance.

Sad but true. We were surprised to learn that we would not be flying from Israel to Egypt. We were told that there are not flights. Really? I did my own search on Travelocity and saw that there are indeed a few flights, but not any that are direct. A one-way ticket from Tel Aviv, Israel, to Aswan, Egypt, a distance by air of 570 miles, makes a huge detour to Istanbul, Turkey, and costs $1850; a round-trip ticket is $2,800. WOW. Granted, Aswan has a pretty small airport, so I checked to see if there are flights from Tel Aviv to the much larger Cairo airport. That flight costs much less--$480 round-trip--but that's a distance of only 250 air miles. Oh wait. It stops in Amman, Jordan. So I guess the truth is that there really are no flights from Israel to Egypt, at least none available through Travelocity. You have to fly somewhere else, then fly to Egypt. Crazy.

Instead, we had a great drive through the lonely and forbidding Negev Desert to a border crossing near Eilat, which gave us exposure to an area of Israel--and Egypt--that we would not have otherwise seen. We crossed the border into the resort town of Taba, then flew out the next afternoon from the tiny Taba airport to the tiny Aswan airport. It worked, and the itinerary meant we got to see the beautiful Gulf of Aqaba inlet of the Red Sea, thereby completing the Israeli Sea Triumvirate of Med, Dead, and Red. (Unfortunately "Galilee" doesn't rhyme to make it a foursome.)

We started off driving alongside the Dead Sea:

We passed several salt processing plants:

Too bad there isn't something like this on the shores of the Great Salt Lake:

ISRAEL: MASADA

On our final day in Israel, we made our way south to the eastern Israel-Egypt border crossing. The further south we went, the drier it got. The terrain was not so different from the southern Nevada desert, a stretch of highway I've driven through many, many times:

On the west side of the road there were barren mesas and sand dunes:

. . . and on the east side was the Dead Sea:

Earlier in our trip we had seen Herod the Great's palace-fortress in Caesarea, overlooking the jewel-like Mediterranean and cooled by ocean breezes. Our last stop was going to be another of Herod's palace-fortresses, the famous site Masada.

Masada was built by the Hasmoneans on the top of a mesa in the driest, most inhospitable of climates, the eastern Judaean desert. About 100 years later, in 37-31 BC, Herod had it fortified so he could use it as a refuge in case he had to escape from a Jewish revolt. Herod died in 4 BC, and in 66 AD the revolt he had feared did happen, and Jewish extremists called the Sicarii captured Masada and established their own fortress there. When the Romans seized Jerusalem and destroyed the temple four years later, many Jews fled to Masada.

Masada is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the most popular tourist sites in Israel.

ISRAEL: BEIT SHE'AN

Israel really has a thing for lookouts. If there is a prominence, it has a lookout on it. But who can blame them when this is the view?

Before we went to Beit She'an National Park, we stopped at the Beit She'an overlook, which has a great view of the junction of the Jordan River Valley and Jezreel Valley.  

It's a popular place among the locals. We saw a few groups of picnickers having a good time:

We made our way back down to the valley, passing the ruins of what Wikipedia says is a Crusader castle. (Sometimes I get lucky with my random photos):

The region was first settled 5,000-6,000 years ago. It was conquered by the Egyptians 3,500 years ago, and then by the Philistines. When King Saul killed himself in battle on Mount Gilboa rather than be killed by his enemies, the Philistines recovered his body and hung it up in the city, which by then was known as Bethshan or Beit She'an (see 1 Samuel 31). In about 700 BC the city was destroyed by fire, then rebuilt by the Greeks, and around 400 AD during the Roman era, it reached a peak of 30,000 to 40,000 inhabitants. It is the remains of that era that comprise the Beit She'an National Park.

ISRAEL: TEL DAN, THE GOLAN HEIGHTS, MOUNT HERMON, AND THE HERMON SPRINGS AT BANIAS

One of our excursions took us north towards Mount Hermon, which is situated on the border of Israel, Lebanon, and Syria. The Golan Heights are located on the southern slopes. I was surprised this area was part of our itinerary because of the repeated conflict that has occurred there.

The Golan Heights were part of Syria when Israel seized the region in the Six Day War of 1967, and it's been a hotspot ever since. Mount Hermon, which straddles Syria and Lebanon, is a natural buffer between Israel and Syria, a strategic lookout point, and a highly desirable piece of real estate. 

We started out at the Tel Dan National Park, a nature reserve that includes some ancient Canaanite ruins. The snowmelt of Mount Hermon collects in the Dan River, which flows through the park and feeds into the Jordan River. A third of Israel's water comes from this source.

It is a picturesque setting, peaceful and unspoiled.

We were there in March, prime time for spring run-off, and water was plunging down the channel:

ISRAEL: THE MOUNT OF BEATITUDES, THE CHURCH OF THE PRIMACY OF PETER IN TABGHA, AND MOUNT ARBEL

I thought Jerusalem, with its complex history and many cultures, was intense and that when we went north to Galilee, the pace would be a bit more relaxed.  Ha. 

The area surrounding Galilee is full of stories that are illustrated by ruins and vistas that all call to be seen. There is no way to see everything in just a few days, and although we did manage to see an amazing number of sites, this is an area (along with Jerusalem) that we hope to return to some day for a little more in-depth sightseeing.

THE MOUNT OF BEATITUDES

On the northwestern shore of the Sea of Galilee three km from Capernaum is a spot where many believe Jesus delivered his most famous sermon, the Beatitudes. On our walk from the bus to the famous hill, we passed many reminders of the Sermon:

Next to this interesting fountain and pool . . .

. . . was this scriptural passage:

. . . and this caveat:

Two stone fish and five stone loaves of bread on a stone table remind visitors that after his sermon, Jesus fed 5,000 people with two small fish and five loaves of barley bread:

ISRAEL: CAPERNAUM, CITY OF MIRACLES

Capernaum, known as "Capharnaum" in Israel, is located on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee about 30 miles northeast of Jesus's hometown of Nazareth. During his day it was a prosperous and crowded region, and it was here that Jesus lived after he began his ministry. Matthew says it was "his own city" (Matthew 9:1). 

Capernaum is mentioned in all four Gospels and was the home of Simon Peter, Andrew, James, John, and Matthew.

A Franciscan monastery stands guard over the site:

It was in Capernaum that Jesus recruited Peter, James, and John to be "fishers of men" and where he called the publican Matthew to join them. It was where he began his ministry in the synagogue and taught his first parables. And it was here that he performed eleven of the thirty-seven miracles mentioned in the New Testament, including healing Peter's mother-in-law, healing the centurion's servant, curing a man of an unclean spirit, healing a man sick with palsy after he was lowered through the roof into the room where the Savior was preaching, raising the daughter of Jairus, healing the man with the withered hand, detecting the touch of the woman with the issue of blood and then healing her, and directing the apostles to catch a fish and find a coin in its mouth with which to pay taxes.

ISRAEL: THE NAZARETH PRECIPICE AND TIBERIAS

One of Bob's great disappointments is that our tour did not take us into the heart of Nazareth. There were several churches and monuments there that he wanted to see, and the thought of wandering the streets where Jesus grew up and prepared for his ministry was very appealing to both of us.

When Bob pressed Michael, the tour lecturer, about why the tour didn't go into Nazareth, Michael said that its nearly impossible to navigate by bus; the streets are narrow, the traffic is unbelievably bad, there is no parking, etc. When Bob asked about the feasibility of taking a cab from Tiberias, where our next hotel was, Michael looked at him in surprise and asked, "Are you Catholic?" We laughed a little about that, but if we have one criticism of this tour, it's that it didn't range out to include other religions quite enough for us. (E.g., The focus was on the Garden Tomb and there was no escorted trip or guidance for Church of the Holy Sepulchre.)

We did drive up to the Mount of Precipice lookout point, passing this quarry on the way. . .

. . . from which we got an excellent view of the city of Nazareth . . .

. . . and we had to admit it looked pretty intimidating.

We stopped for a lecture just before we reached the summit. It was windy, and we had a little more protection on the side of the mountain than we would have had on the top:

ISRAEL: CAESAREA

When our group left Jerusalem and headed for Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee, we took a wide swing away from the West Bank to visit some ruins on the beautiful Mediterranean Sea. Caesarea was built by Herod the Great in about 25-13 BC to serve as the administrative center of the Judaean Province of the Roman Empire. In a very savvy move, Herod dedicated the city to the emperor, Caesar Augustus.                                                                                               Herod is the ruler referenced in Matthew 2 to whom the Magi came to inquire about the location of the King of the Jews, whose star they had seen in the east. Of course, Herod, as the current King of the Jews, was not too keen on having a rival, so he ordered all the baby boys in Bethlehem to be killed. An angel warned Joseph in a dream of Herod's plot, and he and Mary and the infant Jesus fled to Egypt, where they stayed until Herod's death. When they returned, the family moved to Nazareth so as not to be under Herod's son Archelaus.

Herod the Great was an all-around bad dude. He was ambitious and cruel, a dreadful combination. In three different fits of jealousy, he had his brother-in-law murdered, and then his sons, and then his wife. Augustus noted, "It is better to be Herod's dog than one of his children."  No kidding.

On the other hand, Herod is probably called Herod "the Great" because of his massive building program, which included building Caesarea, building the fortress Masada, and rebuilding the Temple in Jerusalem. He didn't skimp either. 

Clearly, Herod was an important man with a lot of power.

Sand dunes on the way to Caesarea

Caesarea is also a key Christian site. This is the city from which Pontius Pilate governed during the time of Jesus. It was here that Paul converted the centurion Cornelius, the first non-Jew, after Peter had a vision in Joppa of the unclean animals caught in a net (Acts 10). Later, Paul was imprisoned at Caesarea for two years, and during that time he defended himself to Agrippa, the grandson of Herod the Great. Paul told Agrippa about his sordid past as a Christian persecutor and about the vision that led to his conversion, and then he testified of Christ. Agrippa responded with the famous words: "Paul, almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian" (Acts 26).

These days Caesarea is a very wealthy area. In fact, it has the only golf course in Israel, and it has a stunning beach:

We were there on a day when the radiant hue of the sky was surpassed by jewel tones of the Mediterranean Sea:

Clouds were moving in, and we needed to see the Mediterranean up close before the threat of rain became a reality:

. . . VERY up close: