God. Real. Right.

Sunday began with a visit to the ancient crossroads city of Megiddo. Megiddo was three times as old as any American city (say, Jamestown as 500 years old) before Solomon made it one of his three chariot cities. Then we crossed over toward the Jordan Valley where we visited Bet-She’an (or Beth Shean, or something like that), which is a First Century Roman city not mentioned in the New Testament, although it was certainly along the trail Jesus travelled when, for instance, leaving the Galilee to be baptized and face the wilderness temptation. Finally we arrived at the Dead Sea, the lowest point on the surface of Earth, 1300 feet below sea level (and another 1300 feet deep, by the way). Along the way we also saw the mountain of Elisha’s pre-prophetic farm life, the mountain on which David heard of Saul’s death, the location from which Gideon’s confrontation with the Midianites began, and the oasis city of Jericho, in the running for the most ancient city in the world. Best moment: putting together innumerable events with a few of the twenty layers of archeological evidence at Megiddo. Worst moment: taking two showers and still having Dead Sea residue.

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I arrived in Israel yesterday with a few other faculty, and will be here for one more week. (Yup, we’ll be flying back—from Israel—on September 11th.) I thought I’d share a few pictures from our first two days. If the player doesn’t work for you on this web page, you should be able to click it and get the pictures directly on my Picasa site.

The first day was spent traveling from Tel Aviv (where we landed) to Tiberius (where we are staying for the first few days). The captions of the pictures should give a sense of the places we stopped along the way. The best: being in the place where Elijah saw one of Israel’s two greatest miracles in the OT was certainly my favorite. The worst: knowing that since capitalism conforms the merchant to the customer to a certain extent, I had the privilege(?) of seeing the caricature of real Christianity with which many non-Christians believe they must deal.

Our second day was spent traveling around the Sea of Galilee. Again, the captions of the pictures should give a sense of the places we covered. The best: seeing what is very likely the very mountain from which the Gadarene demoniac would have emerged to meet Jesus was impressive. The worst: a vodka and juice special for those who chose so to celebrate after being “baptized” in the Jordan was ironic, to say the least.

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