Sentire Cum Ecclesia

Monday, 3rd November, 2012
Antalya and Perge

The photos for 3rd December are in two sets for you to view on my dropbox site: click here to view the first and “>here to view the second. If you don’t have Dropbox, and want to get it, use this link to sign up and you and I will both get a bonus amount of free storage space.

Today’s entry in this travelogue should be quite short, as today was meant to be a “rest day” with only a few events, starting at 10am in the morning and ending about 3:30pm.

Fewer events than expected, it turned out. We were supposed to be visiting the site of the ancient city of Perge, where St Paul landed from Cyprus and spent a little time on his first missionary journey. After that we would go to the local Archaeological Museum – winner recently of Europe’s “best museum” award. I was looking forward to this especially, as I am reading “In the Steps of Paul” by Peter Walker and he had highly recommended it as well. Then we were to have some rest at the hotel. (A little note about one “exhibition” at the museum: they have some bone fragments of St Nicholas of Myra – Santa Claus – on display! Apparently these were stolen from the tomb in Bari by some Italians and brought to Turkey, and they found their way into the Museum. I was a bit disturbed by this – although one could say that what is good for Mohammed is good for St Nicholas. Hakan said there had been a number of protests from the Vatican and the Greek Patriarchate asking for them to be returned, and he believes that the negotiations are reaching a conclusion for this to happen. Bloody good thing too.)

Hakan had told us last night to expect rain today, and I checked the detailed weather report on my iPhone weather app when I woke: 100% chance of heavy rain all morning and then sunshine and 20 degrees from noon onwards. I determined to ask Hakan if we could reverse our program for the day, so that we could explore Perge in the sunshine rather than in the rain, but when I requested this change in our itinerary, he made it clear that a change was impossible. He assured me it could rain all day and there could be the chance of flooding at the Perge site which would make a visit later in the day impossible. As we rode the bus out to the site, the rain was pelting down. “This is nothing; it can really rain here”, he assured us.

So arriving at Perge in the pouring rain, we donned our wet weather gear and headed out. They were selling umbrellas at the kiosk, so in addition to my wet weather poncho, I bought one of these as well. Note to self: next time bring a pair of waterproof trousers and gumboots too… A few of the group elected not to venture out into the rain, but the more intrepid would not be deterred, myself among them. My shoes and lower trousers were soaked through by the time we had entered the site. The hardest thing was taking photos in the rain (another note to self: bring a waterproof camera), so I contented myself with hiding in the shelter of the arches to take pictures.

My deepest interest was in the ruined basilicas, from the 6th century, but there was much else to see: a splendid agora and street ways, Roman baths (which Rosemary was delighted to find with water in them, thanks to the rain!), two gates (one Roman and one Hellenistic – the latter currently being reconstructed to show the towers doing what they do best, ie. towering). Aside from the two basilicas, I discovered another small chapel (on the East side of the main street just before the cross roads), which was easy to identify, but not marked on the map I had. While clambering about on the rocks, I slipped and cut both my hands, not too deeply, but the blood was now mixing with the water running down my poncho.

The acropolis of the city loomed high above the whole site, and I determined to see what I could of it, but there seemed no way up (the sides were steep and the covered with thick reeds). I walked around onto the road going around the city, leaving the enclosure via a narrow path and rickety wooden bridge over a raging channel. I was on the farther side when the rain stopped and the sun came out, and still no sign of an ascent. Then my phone rang with a text message and I looked at my watch – it was already 12noon, the time when we were supposed to be back at the bus. Not wanting to incur the wrath of the venerable tour guide, nor wanting to miss out on the museum, I rushed back in the now steamy warm sunshine – a distance of about 1500m. I was puffed out and very sweaty by the time I made it back to the bus.

Only to be given the news that it was now the winter season and in winter the museum was closed on Mondays… Not happy, Jan.

We were then taken to view the ancient harbour in Antalya, the very same one that Paul and Barnabas and Mark arrived at in about 46AD, and still being used as a marina. Some of the group wanted to stay to explore the old city a little more and to share taxis back to the hotel. I chose to go with them, and we made a short toilet stop first. When I came out of the toilet before the others, I started to look in a souvenir shop. I was particularly interested in a number of barrels of the granular instant “tea” that he was selling. Everyone knows about “apple tea” in Turkey, but this guy had a couple of other kinds, including a pomegranate tea and one he called “sultan tea”. He made up a cup and brought it to me to taste. When I came out of the shop and returned to our meeting place, the others were gone. Well. Okay. I can handle this, I thought, I will just see what there is to see of the harbour and then I will walk back, a distance of about 10km. (I found out later that the group thought I had stopped to buy a cup of tea and wanted to go off on my own.) I thought that the distance was only 6kms, so I decided to have a look around the old harbour and then start off on my way. It would have been a very enjoyable walk, if I hadn’t had my full back pack with me. Ah well, I thought, if the Romans could do it in their forced marches, and if Paul and Barnabas could do it (even after being stoned) I could do it.

The walk was indeed a pleasant one, as there is a paved walkway all the way along the beachfront. This also made finding my hotel easy – all I had to do was keep walking west until I came to it. The beach was impossible for walking – a kind of loose gravel and pebbles. The tide was coming in anyway, and the water was very rough with the strong breeze blowing in over the Mediterranean (or, as the locals aptly call it, the Turquoise Sea). Obviously in the height of holiday season there is a roaring trade done here, as the walk was lined with bars and restaurants, now mainly closed up for the winter. There were a few people about, but it was fairly quiet. The real highlight of the walk was watching the sun setting in the storm clouds above the truly majestic mountains on the horizon. I took many photos, as you will see if you take a look at the Dropbox link above, just to try to catch the character of this wild beauty. I saw a McDonalds sign on one side of the road, and decided to stop for a cheap lunch. When I entered the area where the McDonalds were housed, I noticed that there was also a pizza shop and a kebab shop. Here I had a meat roll and a bottle of water for about $4.50. The thing about the Turkish lira is that all prices here are about what you would expect to find in Australian dollars – and when I first travelled to Turkey the dollar and the lira were about the same. But now of course, the dollar is almost double in value so food and beverages are quite cheap. A cup of tea, for instance, is 1 lira, about 50c. A McHappy meal is about 7 lira, so about half the price that it is in Australia (my kids would be in heaven here).

I walked up the drive into the hotel, a little footsore, but still going strong, just as the rest of the party from whom I was split earlier arrived by taxi (they paid 30 lira for the trip, so that was quite cheap too). Feeling hot and a bit steamy in my still wet trousers and shoes, I went up to the bar and asked for a beer. “Big or small?”, they asked. Big, I decided, and was poured a litre mug! I took this out onto the terrace and began uploading my photos from the day and writing this story up. I packed it in with just enough time to have a nice hot bath, get into some fresh clothes, and go down to join the group for our debriefing session before mass. We are just over half of the way into our trip, and today was a little wearing, so we had a long talk about how we were travelling. For most, today has been a relaxing day, but there were some wishes that it could have been a bit different. Rosemary stressed that we had to stay according to schedule and couldn’t ask for last minute changes to the itinerary. We have to trust that our tour leaders and guides know what is best.

It will be another early leave in the morning, so I am glad that I have not had a lot to write about and can get a relatively early night to rest my feet. I hope my shoes are dry by morning….

2nd December, 2012
Sille, Lystra, Taurus Mountains, Antalya

For all photos for 2nd December, click here to view them on my dropbox site. If you don’t have Dropbox, use this link to sign up and you and I will both get a bonus amount of free storage space.

The Anemon hotel in Konya really is very nice – I’d hate to know what it would cost if you just rocked up and asked for a room. The single rooms all had king sized double beds, and our twin room had two king-singles. The room was the most spacious that we had yet stayed in. There was a proper desk at which to work, with very good internet connection – even somewhere I could dock my iPhone to play my music while it recharged. And above all the internet service was excellent and fast. The buffet dinner and breakfast had a rather more limited number of dishes than some other hotels we had been at, but since the range in the past has been vast, that wasn’t really noticed (except no sweet rolls for breakfast).

We had a “sleep in” this morning: our bus was only leaving at 8:30am. It was good to hear the muezzin call for morning prayer at 5:40am and then to be able to roll over and go back to sleep (the benefits of being a Christian). This morning’s prayer call was actually quite melodic, and there was only one voice with a long echo, so I suspect that they have only one muezzin for the entire city and his voice is broadcast to every loud speaker in every minaret across town. A much more pleasant effect than the usual competition that goes on, although there is a “certain charm” to that cacophony as well!

We made our first stop at the village of Sille, just out of Turkey, which – until 1924 – had a large population of Greek Orthodox. These used the Church of St Helena, which (although first built in the 4th Century) had been rebuilt in the 1830’s. Apparently there are some really nice frescoes inside this church, but we were not allowed in as the church was undergoing extensive restoration in preparation for reopening as a museum (the usual fate of a religious building in modern Turkey – although you can rest assured that there will be little public praying going on in this one when it is reopened – plenty of private prayer though, I would think). Actually the entire town is undergoing an extensive facelift, as the government is pouring huge lira into restoring the town as a quaint Turkish village. Even now it has an attractive character. All the old buildings have little numbers on them identifying them in preparation for restoration. There are about four mosques in the village, as well as another Christian chapel up on the hill above the very large and extensive and OLD Muslim cemetery. At first I had thought that this would be a Christian cemetery – placed as it is between St Helena’s and the chapel on the hill. But it soon became clear from the orientation of the grave, the shape of some of the grave stones, and the Arabic script on some of the stones that this was an exclusively Muslim place of burial. So where, I asked myself, were the Christian graves, if this was supposed to be a predominately Christian town? One of our tour group, Diana, had an answer. She said that she had read that the Greek Christians in the area still maintained the practice of exhuming the graves of their dead after six or seven years and placing their bones in ossuaries in the church, which made it possible for them when they were evicted from the country in 1924 to simply take the bones of their ancestors – their history – with them into exile. Quite a nice idea really, but one on which I would like to check up.

We then headed out, following Paul’s trail (cf. Acts 14), to the Tel of Lystra, the mound under which the ancient city of Lystra waits to be uncovered. It is off the beaten track – there are no gift-shops and it is pretty hard to find on the map! – in fact there is no sign of human activity other than farming for miles around. The tel has been positively identified by the inscription on the stone we saw in the Konya Archaeological Museum, which was found on this site. But there is no sign of any excavation at all. It boggles the mind that no one has come up with the cash or sufficient desire to carry out an excavation on a city which is so historically and religiously attractive. As we walked up the steep sides of the tel, it was easy to spot artifacts that gave evidence of the past: First I found a hexagonal piece of marble, perfectly flat and smooth on the top – a tile? Then I found a large piece of curved, thick pottery with a bit of a lip on it – the top of a water jar? Then (really delightful) I found a pot handle, a bit bigger than the size of my thumb. All this was just lying in the grass. What must be under the soil? At first sight the mound looked to small to be the site of a city, but when we reached the top, we saw that it was several hectares in size. For the most part the top of the tel was flat, but it dipped a little in the middle, and on the (western?) side of the tel there is a kind of semi-conical incline down to the bottom, which led Rosemary to wonder if there was not (perhaps) an ancient theatre on this side. There was not much to see at the top (other than a couple of stone blocks that had obviously been shaped by human endeavour, and a jolly good panoramic view of the surrounding countryside), but my curiosity was piqued by the sight of several white stones down on the other side. Some were in a tumble at the base of the mound, others were further off, and had been lined up along the edge of the fields. I climbed down for a closer look. While most of them were severely worn, enough still bore the unmistakable straight sides and 90 degree angles of building blocks, or the cylindrical shape of columns. One piece of stone even bore a decorated edge on one side. So there is a lot of material lying about which should excite the interest of any visiting archaeologist. (Note to self: come back one day with a shovel…)

From the Lystra tel, rather than turn back to where we left the main road to Antalya, Bilgi, our driver, decided to take a country road through to a point further along the highway. This took us through several small villages (with a lot of traditional timber and mud brick housing), although the countryside was sparsely populated. At one point the road that we were travelling along was not even marked on my Pocket Maps app. Here the terrain was rocky (not unlike Cappadocia), wooded with small oak trees (with dead dry leaves, as we are just entering winter). We saw a number of wood choppers out with their tractors and trailers hauling logs of oak.

We finally rejoined the main road and journeyed to Seydisehir, where we had lunch. On the way Hakan broached the topic of the relationship between the state and the religious life of the people. He told us much that I already knew, but it was interesting to get the view of a secular Turk, rather than the view of the religious Turks to which I am accustomed. His main point was that by controlling the practice of religion – including state employed and accredited imams who were shifted every two years to a new place and were restricted by law to preaching the pre-prepared Friday sermon distributed by the ministry for religion. Yet, I was not quite happy with the picture of paradise that he painted, and I asked a number of pointed questions – such as the difference between “freedom to worship” and “freedom of religion”, as religious practice in public is still quite severely curtailed. He said that what was okay for Australia was not okay for Turkey, where the possibility of a return to Sharia law or the political power of a particular sect was an ever present problem. I also asked – if democracy and equality were so important to the Turkish people – about the possibility of female imams. He declared that such a thing was impossible because the people did not want such a thing, and even if they did, what woman would want the job? “Only a liberal would want such a thing, and all the liberals are secular, not religious!” What about same-sex marriage? No, he said, but homosexuals have full rights and could also vote, so if there were ever enough support for it, well, maybe. Interesting.

After lunch, we quickly approached the Taurus Mountain range, which rises suddenly from the plain of the plateau. This range runs all along the Mediterranean coast of Turkey, raised by the slow but relentless migration of the African continent towards the north pole. The mountains are massive, rocky with little soil, but with many pine trees growing among the rock (up to a certain altitude above which the mountains were bare). Paul would have needed to cross this range after landing in Pamphylia on his first missionary journey in order to make his way north to Pisidian Antioch. We were travelling by a different route than Paul, as we were coming directly from Iconium, but also because our road was only 20 years old. The highest point along this road is 1825m which we reached about one quarter of the way through the mountains before beginning the descent. The descent was much longer than the ascent, as the northern plateau on which we started was already 1000m above sea level. During the descent, we passed a large crevice in the mountain which marks the fault line between the African and Asian continents. At the base we entered into a long fertile but narrow plain between the mountains and the coast, and took the road which led us gradually into the Turkish equivalent of the Gold Coast.

Hakan had a couple of interesting theories about why Paul took the route north to Antioch in Pisidia. For a start, he said, it was a centre of the tent making trade. I am partial to the theory which says that Paul’s family actually ran a large tent making business and this is the reason for the family’s Roman citizenship in the army base city of Tarsus (since any army needs a lot of tents). If that was so, then perhaps Paul was already familiar with this centre even if he had not been there before. Of course, there was a Roman road north from the coast to this city. Another reason that Hakan gave for Paul choosing Antioch is that the proconsul Sergius Paulus with whom Paul had had conversation in Cyprus (cf. Acts 13) was from there – a piece of knowledge which we now have because an inscription was found in Pisidian Antioch with the proconsul’s name on it. If this was the case, Hakan thought, maybe Paulus told Saul (“also called Paul” from this point on according to Luke) that Antioch would be a good base from which to work (references too perhaps?).

Any way, we arrived on the coastal plain about 3:30pm, stopped for afternoon tea, and then kept on going towards Antalya and our home for the next two nights. We passed some excellent Roman ruins at Aspendos, from about the 2nd Century – a still used Roman bridge, a theatre (said to be the best preserved in the world and in which, until recently, concerts would be held – but now, in order to preserve the ruins, a new modern complex had been built nearby to accommodate this practice), and an aqueduct. Unfortunately, due to the lateness of the hour, the theatre was shut and we didn’t have time to stop at the ruins.

We are staying tonight in the Crowne Plaza Hotel on the beach at Antalya. This is a beautiful building, built in neo-Seljuk style, and is quite comfortable, although the rooms are small and the internet (though free) is only available in the lobby. So I am sitting outside on the terrace by the swimming pool finishing this for the night and uploading my pictures. We have a late start in the morning (10am!) and are staying here for two nights (so I took the chance to do a bit of washing before mass this evening). It is getting cold out, so I will go inside now.

1st December, 2012
Avanos, Nevsihir (Nyssa), Konya (Iconium)

For all photos for 1st December, click here to view them on my dropbox site. If you don’t have Dropbox, use this link to sign up and you and I will both get a bonus amount of free storage space.

We have just come out of a visit to an underground pottery in Avanos, and are heading through the modern town of Nevsihir – which I have just learned is the ancient Nyssa, home of St Gregory of the same place. We left the hotel in Urgup early (once again, I almost forgot a pair of shoes in my room – Fr Peter found me sitting outside smoking my pipe and uploading yesterday’s travel diary and said “Are you leaving those shoes behind on purpose?” – I think he must be getting a little tired of picking up things I’ve left behind) and Hakan took us to a local pottery of a family that has been making pottery in Avanos for 200 years/5 generations (called Firca). Here we saw a demonstration of the pot making on a modern motorised potters wheel before being shown the ancient technique on a “kick wheel” – a wooden contraption spun by the potter’s feet. The master potter showed us how he makes a decanter in the ancient Hittite ring style (so that it can be poured from the shoulder). It occurred to me what a revolution (literally!) the invention of the potters wheel must have been for civilization. The place was a little like the carpet seller yesterday, but the sell at the end was not as full on. There were two showrooms (like the workshop, both underground), one with the cheaper pieces, and the other with the studio’s special works, which were real works of art. These pieces went into the $1000’s, but I contented myself with buying a little palm held teacup (glazed on the inside but not on the outside) such as that in which we were served apple tea at the pottery. As a small note, outside the pottery was one of the oldest Seljuk Turkish mosques still in use.

Then came the long drive (about 250kms) to Konya, or Iconium as it was in St Paul’s day. On the way there, once we had passed Aksaray, we left the hills of Cappadocia and entered into the area which was known in Paul’s day as Lyconium, and onto the Konya Plateau, a flat plain that would give the Hay Plains a run for their money in terms of flatness and size. We passed some places of interest, such as the volcanoes of Mount Hassan and Milandes, the Mercedes-Benz Turk truck factory, and a large sugar beet processing plant (%90 of Turkey’s sugar comes from these beets and ends up on the baklava and in the Turkish delight we have been enjoying). Here we were travelling along the exact route of the ancient Silk Road, and this was brought home vividly to us when we stopped at about 11:30am at a 13th Century Caravanserai for morning tea (actually the tea was served in the cafe next door, not in the Caravanserai itself!). The building was cathedral like (I thought we had pulled up at an old mosque at first) in its dimensions, especially in the massive stables for the camel trains out the back, built and roofed entirely with stone arch work. We are having very fine weather for the first day of Winter in the Northern Hemisphere. The sun is shining, there is a light breeze and the temperature would be about 16 degrees. As we were getting ready to leave, the call to prayer went off in the local mosques, and all the men in the cafe got up and went off to prayers. We stopped off for lunch at a big roadside buffet before heading on into the city of Konya.

I have been here before, on the Catholic Muslim Pilgrimage in 2009, when we visited the town because it was the last home and resting place of the Persian Sufi poet Jal?l ad-D?n Muhammad Balkhi (also known as Rumi or Mevlana), the founder of the Mevlevi order of Sufi mystics (to which the Whirling Dervishes belong) in the 13th Century. On that trip we paid especial attention to the religious significance of the place, especially the visit to Rumi’s tomb (and that of other Sufi “saints”) in the shrine next to the mosque. We were there on a Friday, and observed the afternoon prayers, at which there were more worshippers than could fit inside the mosque, so the whole park outside was filled with men on their knees praying. I was interested to see how Hakan represented the visit to the “Mevlani Museum” today.

Here is one of the strange things about Turkey: the Government is secular, and in the past has been fiercely so. Ataturk actually disbanded and outlawed the Mevlevi Order in the 1920’s, and only after some years allowed people to return to Rumi’s tomb, this time reopened as a “museum”. Today, according to Hakan, the Mevlevis have survived, but not as a public presence. He hesitated to use the term “underground”, but said that it was privately practiced. And yet the Turks love the Whirling Dervishes and will wheel them out for cultural occasions. Someone who went to the demonstration of the Dervish ritual last night asked the question “Do they belong to a Sufi community?”, to which the answer was “No, they take off their robes, put on their runners and go home to their families.” Hakan assures me that the Whirlers were initiates of the Mevlevi order, but didn’t really explain what this meant in community terms.

In any case, all this was stuff to ponder as we arrived at the Mevlevi Museum. It has changed somewhat since I was here last. The main buildings of the complex are unaltered, but the museum displays in the old community rooms have been vastly improved, and the entire surrounding area has been expanded and beautified. All this is clearly with the government’s financial support. A beautiful paved area now surrounds the whole complex, with garden beds of roses everywhere. Hakan says a large number of buildings were demolished in the surrounding area to expand this visitor centre. There is a gift shop and a new entrance area. The paving was being worked on even as we watched, and has now expanded to include the area outside the town mosque next door, obviously to accommodate the extra worshippers. The shrine to Rumi has itself been cleaned up – there were young girls repainting details inside as we visited. The crowds were as big as ever, and ranged from sight-seers to devout pilgrims in large numbers.

Next to the old community rooms is a building that was used by the Mevlevi order for centuries. It is divided into three sections. The first section is the burial place for Rumi, his father and his son (all in the main, highly decorated corner under the turquoise conical dome), surrounded by many other leaders of the order. While actually buried more than two metres below the ground, the place of their burial is marked by caskets shrouded in silks with turban memorials on top, each resting place clearly identified by labels. Beside these were many visitors who were obviously praying devoutly. Next to this, in the same building, was the area which the Dervishes used for their ceremonies, including their whirling. The final area in this building was the order’s mosque, now used to display a wide range of manuscript codices of the Quran and Rumi’s poetry. The oldest I saw among these were some pages from a copy of the Quran from the 9th Century (barely 200 years after Muhammad) which were of the Meryam (Mary) Surah. In the centre of the room was an exhibit in a glass case: a mother of pearl inlaid box said to contain a hair from the beard of the Prophet himself. On an earlier visit to the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, I was stunned to see such relics as a piece of the skull of John the Baptist and the Sword of the Prophet on display as museum exhibits. This reliquary was also obviously an exhibit, with a sign on the top telling the people with audio commentaries what number to press on their little thingies to hear about it. But few of the people around this exhibit were looking at it from an historical point of view. Most were standing around praying before it, and many were coming up to the glass case and kissing it in reverence. I saw a young imam (in the official dress of an imam with the white hat and long coat) not thirty years old, with a small wispy beard (unusual among modern Turks), with his 6 or 8 year old son, just standing reverently before the exhibit. I sat and watched these people for about 10 minutes and was struck at the similarity to the reverence I observed during the recent visit of St Francis Xavier’s forearm to Australia. Yet this was a relic of the Prophet himself! Imagine, if you can, how Christians would react if we had a hair of the beard of Jesus! And so this was a strange place: a place of obvious worship but officially a “museum”. That is modern Turkey for you.

I spent a little while in the other displays and then went out into the park, which is, as I said, a very beautiful place. When I was here last, it was April, and it was freezing cold. Today was quite mild (although we are told to expect rain in the coming days) despite it being the first day of winter. I looked over the gift shop, and would have liked to have bought a metal spinning figurine of a Whirling Dervish to use as a paper weight back in my office, but couldn’t afford the weight in my luggage. Instead I bought a couple of bookmarks with Rumi’s seven precepts on them, and a fridge magnet which contained the last of these precepts: “Either exist as you are or be as you look”. I was reminded of my daughter’s fierce adherence to the dictum that it isn’t what you look like on the outside but what you are on the inside that counts. It also struck me that Rumi is the difference between Turkish Islam and Arab Islam, and the reason why we have little fear from a revival of Islam in these lands. It is a softer and more humane kind of Islam, undergirded by a real spirituality and respect for all people. It is a kind of Islam that has love at the centre of it’s idea.

After this, Hakan took us into the centre of the city. Modern Konya is built around the “Tel of Iconium”, the mound that marks the spot of the ancient city where St Paul would have preached. This entire hill is a modern park today, with many public places built upon it, so very little in the way of excavation is either taking place or even possible. Around the Tel is a road, so that it is, in effect, a giant round about, with lots of busy traffic. The rest of the city has roads that circle the Tel concentrically. Right on the other side of the road from the Tel is the modern 20th Century French Catholic church built for immigrants, called, appropriately, St Paul’s Church. The sanctuary faces the Tel, so it can be said that there really is a living presence of Christianity still in this, the first of the big cities of Asia Minor in which St Paul preached the Gospel. There were probably only 10,000 inhabitants of the town in Paul’s day – there is almost a million today.

We were dropped off at the church, from which we walked to the Archaeological Museum, a hotchpotch collection of bits and pieces of stone outside in the garden, and inside a collection of massive Greek and Roman sarcophagi, a very few remnants from the Byzantine and Roman periods and lots of earlier stuff going back to Neolithic times, including a couple of skeletons of infants buried during this period (a bit disturbing, really). Among the stones outside are three stones with inscriptions identifying the ancient cities of Lystra, Iconium and Derbe, the cities in which St Paul preached. Looking at the stones in the garden, we were able to identify some Christian relics from the Byzantine period, including an altar with the design of Jonah on it (being swallowed by a fish – a symbol of the resurrection) and a stone with the four evangelists represented. These were unidentified, and tucked around the back among all the other pagan stuff. Hakan told us that a new museum was being built, and it is to be hoped that these artifacts are to be given a better home and identified for what they are.

From there we headed back to the Tel, passing the church. We tried to gain entrance to the church, but the one person we could rouse from inside was not keen to let us in. So we went to our hotel – a very nice new place in the Anemon chain – and (after settling into our luxurious rooms and making our acquaintance with the very good internet connection) went down to celebrate the mass for the Vigil of the First Sunday of Advent in a private room. We had dinner, and then prepared for bed, as we are leaving again in the morning. My battery on my tablet is running low now – I am outside and have just finished my pipe – so I will head in and hit the sack.

30th November, 2012
Urgup, Zelve, Ozkonak, Goreme, Uchisar, Avanos (Nevshehir, Turkey)

For all photos for 30th November, click here to view them on my dropbox site. If you don’t have Dropbox, use this link to sign up and you and I will both get a bonus amount of free storage space.

We are staying in Urgup, a town on the edge of the Goreme National Park in the Nevsehir district of Turkey. Today was a little like our day at Petra – not directly related to the bible, but you could hardly visit the region without visiting Goreme. We are in the middle of ancient Cappadocia, best known for its most famous sons, the 4th Century “Cappadocian Fathers” (St Basil of Caesarea – modern Kayseri, about 30kms away from here, St Gregory of Nyssa, and St Gregory of Nazianzus) and for its astounding geography (more about this in a minute). It was, from early times, a great centre of Christianity (Cappadocians are mentioned as being present at Pentecost), and a great place of trouble for the Christian community too, first under Rome (until Constantine legalised our religion), then from incursions by the Arabs (7th Century on), the Seljuk Turks (11th Century on) and finally the Ottomans (14th Century on). Today there are virtually no Christians in the area at all, since the 1924 forced exchange of Christian and Muslim minorities between Greece and Turkey.

The history of the area stretches back earlier than the Christian era, of course, right back to our friends from yesterday, the Hittites. It was certainly earlier than the Roman period that people in the area first began carving out dwelling places for themselves and temples for their gods in the soft tufa rock sediment from the ash eruptions from ancient volcanoes (probably not the ones that are so visible on the horizon today – they are much younger volcanoes than the rock around Goreme). But the practice remained right through the Christian era and even up till 1952, when collapsing rock killed a number of inhabitants of the remaining cave village of Zelve, and the Turkish government relocated the remainder of its citizens to “New Zelve” – shades of Petra all over again.

So now Zelve and Goreme and Uchisar and any number of other settlements are “ghost towns” – or “Outside Museums” – but as such have more visitors than ever before thanks to the fact that these places have been placed on the UN World Heritage List and have become major tourist attractions. Actually, I would put them on my list of “last chance to see” locations because (like Petra and the Dead Sea) the forces of nature are catching up with us. The same forces of erosion that have created the alien landscape of conical rock “fairy chimneys” is still wearing away the local rock into new such formation, but in the mean time, the old rocks are crumbling away and several thousand years of human creativity with it. check out the photographs to see what I mean. In Zelve, for instance, there are three main valleys on the map for tourists to explore. One of them is now closed, as rock falls make it too dangerous to enter. Even as you walk through the other two, what you see is oddly “cut-away” dwellings, with halve a room collapsed into the valley and the other half on full display to the elements. There are not only dwellings here in the rocks, there are churches too. There is only one mosque, of later construction, and hence in fairly good condition. Entering the hewn-out rooms of the old houses and churches is a bit unnerving, as you never know when the next rock fall will take place…

When we arrived in the area, there were at least eight hot air balloons floating high above us. This is a very popular way to see the Goreme National Park, and I would dearly love to do it one day. Heck, lets be honest, I would be happy going ballooning anywhere, but a Cappadocian balloon ride would be the very thing. (Note to self: this is another thing to do before you die.) We, however, had our feet firmly fixed to the ground. I probably took far too many pictures – to anyone looking at them, they will appear just to be an endless series of pictures of rocks. After rambling around Zelve for an hour or so, we returned to the bus. I grabbed a lighter and a block of pumus stone from a stall holder in the car park, and then looked more deeply into his shop. There I found a form of head gear that has wrap-around scarf bits on the back and sides – a kind of Eastern deerstalker. It was 12L (about $6.50), so I gave in to temptation and added it to my hat collection. I have no idea what it is called, but it is very good for keeping the cold wind off my ears and neck as I wander about.

Next stop was to another odd kind of dwelling common to the area. We went to Ozkonak where there is an example of what are called “Underground Cities”. As Hakan pointed out, they are not in fact cities at all, but rather refuge shelters in times of attack from external forces. It is rumoured that these multi-room complexes up to twelve metres below the ground were originally used by Christians to hide during persecution, but more credible to me is that they were used to avoid Arab raiders after the 7th Century. It seems that these underground room networks were used in time of peace too, for making and storing wine and grain and all other kinds of food. There was plenty of water also, so whenever the population had to flee into them for protection, they could stay down there for quite some time before having to emerge. The tunnels that connected the rooms were only possible to negotiate bent double, and at the end of many of them there would be a huge rolling stone door, much like that often depicted at the tomb of Jesus, to seal off access should the system be breached. We were warned not to enter these “cities” if we suffered from claustrophobia, and I must say I didn’t experience any twinge of discomfort – until at one point at which our group emerged from a long narrow tunnel into a room in which a previous group was already present. they could not get out until we had all come through the tunnel, and the room was getting squeezy and stuffy. Eventually we got to the end of the complex, and turned around and came back out again into the light. I cannot imagine how it must have felt living down there for months uncertain of whether the threat above was still there or not. The closest thing I can think of today would be a nuclear bomb shelter. In fact, if ever there was a nuclear ware, the modern day Cappadocians would have a ready made shelter into which to retreat.

By this stage it was nearing lunch time, and Hakan said he was taking us around to a cooperative carpet producing company which was subsidised by the government and which would provide us with lunch and refreshments as well as giving us an introduction into the production of Turkish carpets. Hullo, I thought, I know what this is. Back in 2007 our guide to Ephesus had taken us to just such an institution which ended with the hardest sales pitch I have ever experienced. In that 2007 experience, we were not told by our guide that this was a sales pitch, and that if there were any sales he would get a cut of it. Hakan was at least honest about this. He told us straight away that there would be a sales pitch at the end, and that if any sales were made he would get a commission, but he added that we should not feel obliged to buy, and further that if the price was too high for any piece we wished to purchase, he would happily forego his commission to lower the price. It turned out to be exactly the same set up and presentation as I had experienced in Ephesus 5 years ago, but for all that, it must be said that it was an educational experience as we were shown the weaving process, the different kinds of rugs produced, the process for extracting silk from a cocoon, and then a huge range of carpets from many different regions as we ate pide and drank raki.

As it was, the prices were very good (probably something to do with the Australian dollar), and the quality was certainly top notch. I fell in love with a certain kind of wool on wool carpet that was made without any dyes, but simply utilising the different natural colours of wool off the sheep. These were very warm and inviting to touch and lay upon. I was up front with the seller – I wasn’t going to buy anything – nevertheless he dropped his price from $2250 to $1960 for the rug I was looking at! (That cost included free delivery home too, by the way). In the end, about four members of the team bought rugs, so it was worth their while. One member of the team said “What has this got to do with a biblical study tour?” to which the answer was, of course, very little except that just about everyone in Jesus’ day – and Abraham’s for that matter – would have sat on a rug at some stage…

Next stop was the Goreme Outside Museum. Goreme is similar to Zelve, except that it was not a civilian city like Zelve, but a monastic settlement for both monks and nuns, including dormitories, refectories, laundries, and lots and lots of churches and chapels. Some of these have very well preserved icon frescoes. It is a little difficult to sort out all the various artistic streams represented by the decorations on these rock churches. For a start there are the icon frescoes themselves, which are absolutely beautiful. The general thought is that these date from about 11th Century. The best examples are inside the so called “Dark Church”, which cost an extra 8 lira to enter – note to all future visitors: pay the money, because you don’t want to miss this. Every square inch of the tiny church is covered with icon frescoes. Unfortunately there were strict rules against taking any photos in these churches – so I determined to buy a book about the pictures in the Museum gift shop when we left . I did find an excellent book “Paintings of the Dark Church” by Halis Yenipinar and Seracettin Sahin (1998, 2005), but they wanted 150L for it (about $80), and it was quite heavy (thinking of the weight luggage limit on Turkish Airlines). So I thought “I’ll look it up on Book Depository and buy it when I get home.” Well, I did this this evening, and discovered that BD doesn’t have it in stock, and Amazon has two used copies starting at US$200…

Then there is a completely different style of decoration which is a rusty red paint in rather childish patterns and plant designs with the odd bird design. This looked to me to be classic Iconoclastic decoration, but Hakan assured me that it was by the post-Iconoclast artists. I couldn’t see it myself. There is no way these substandard decorations could be by the same artists or for the same sensibilities as the beautiful frescoes. And then there is the later defacement of the icon frescoes. This defacement is so bad that I am surprised (well, not really) that Hakan did not mention it. Whole faces and eyes are scratched out with sharp implements, or deep gouges over all the figures. This could only be done by someone – post 11th Century – who had a deep hatred of images. Seems to me that there is only one possible culprit…

Another feature of the Goreme churches were that most of them included shallow “crypts”. I presume these would once have been under the floor, but now the niches where the bodies were placed were clearly visible in rows of narrow troughs lying parallel to one another. Just to make clear the purpose of these troughs, one of the churches in the “museum” actually had a couple of skeletons placed in the crypt holes.

After Goreme, we drove out to Uchisar, the town known in the tourist trade as “the Swiss Cheese City” because of the many rock faces with windows and doors carved into them. Like Zelme and Goreme, this town features many now disused dwellings carved into the fairy chimneys. However, the town is not deserted. Aside from a thriving line of stalls selling all sorts of items, many of the rock dwellings have been converted into hotels, restaurants and cafes (and I rather suspect that some are still used as dwellings although Hakan denies this). We only had a ten minute stop here, but I went wandering off, as is my wont, to take photos of working rock dwellings which I had spied from the bus. This brought me around (eventually) to a fairy chimney that had a garden out the front with chairs and tables and a ladder up into a hole in the chimney. “Look, look,” said the owner, “Go in. Up six floors!” I stuck my head inside the hole at the top of the ladder to see a central stove, carpets and cushions on the floor and a kitchen further in the background where tea and coffee were being made. Oh, how I wished I had an extra half hour to explore the whole interior and have a cup of coffee with these people. But the bus was already waiting for me when I got back. As usual…

Last stop before going home was for mass. I have been using an app on my iphone which utilises pre-downloaded maps and gps to show you where you are in the world (the three most important things any taveller should know, according to Douglas Adams, is who you are, where you are, and when you are – an iphone is a great help with this as long as you keep roaming data switched off!). The app is called Pocket Earth and it has been really useful. Any way, it showed our bus on the map as a blue dot climbing a hill outside the town of Avanos on a road that ended with a cross marking a Christian place of worship. We pulled up on the top of a hill in a small car park, and then were directed down a paved road/pathway on the side of the hill directly over the valley below. we walked about 200 metres before reaching a hole in the rock face, which, when entered, revealed an old – really old! – carved out church. Again, dates appeared a little odd, because the decorations on the walls appeared to be from the iconoclast period, but Hakan said that this church, which was on private property, dated from the 4th Century. If that were so, this was one of the oldest churches in which I had ever entered, let alone celebrated the Eucharist. (The church of the Holy Sepulchre probably doesn’t cut it, as the place where we celebrated mass there was in a Crusade add on). It was well towards evening, and most of the light was provided through a hole in the apse, but otherwise the only light was provided by tea light candles placed in the niches. Rosemary began by leading the group in singing “Here I am Lord”, which appeared to me a little out of character with our surroundings, and Fr Thin presided and preached the homily. He was needing to use the candles for reading the missal by the end of the mass. The place was well set up for the celebration – they had a chalice and ciborium made of alabaster, little lamps and a cross on the altar, and there were rows of benches in the nave for us to sit on. It made me wonder whether groups like ours routinely were given use of this ancient church, for surely there was no local community to use the place?

Back at the hotel by 5pm, again having difficulty with the internet which seems to come in waves and bouts. It being too cold to sit outside to smoke, I sat by the fire in the lobby which had just been lighted and began writing there. I ordered a hot cup of Salep – a hot milk vanilla and spice flavoured drink that I had discovered on my last trip to Turkey. Most of the group are going out to see the Whirling Dervishes at the local Caravanserai tonight, but we are on our way in the morning, and I want to finish writing and publishing the photos.

29th November, 2012
Ankara to Hattusa to Urgup

For all photos for 29th November, click here to view them on my dropbox site. If you don’t have Dropbox, use this link to sign up and you and I will both get a bonus amount of free storage space.

Hittites. You’ve come across them before, of course, in your reading of the Old Testament, usually in lists such as Genesis 15:18-20: “On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To you and your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river of the Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, the Kenizites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites and the Jebusites” – and the Turnoutthelites, as the old joke goes. That makes it sound as if the Hittites are just one little tribal group among all the others – and by the time Genesis came to being written down, that’s probably all they were. But in the days of Abraham, they were in fact one of the biggest players on the field, along with the Egyptians and the Assyrians.

Today, aside from a lot of travelling – 448kms – we spent most of our time exploring the ruins of their ancient capital city of Hattusa (sometimes written as it sounds: “Hattusha”) near a little town called Bogazkale in central Turkey 200kms east of Ankara. Still today, despite the area being a UN World Heritage Site, the locals use the place to run their cattle, sheep, goats and geese on, and so we had to be careful where we walked! It was very picturesque seeing the shepherds walking their herds of sheep (wearing bells!) through the ancient ruins.

Again, like so much else on this trip, for details I suggest you google “Hittite” or “Hattusa”. The long, tall and short of it all is that the people we know as the Hittites had an extensive kingdom in central Turkey and then empire (which covered all of modern Turkey and parts of Syria down to Lebanon) from about 18th to the 12th Century BC. The excavations of the site last century brought to light thousands of clay tablets in a cuneiform script which, once deciphered, opened a huge window onto our knowledge of the ancient Near East. In addition, there are many stone reliefs, pottery and bronze-age implements to add to our knowledge.

Their capital city covered an area of more than a square kilometre, fortressed all the way around with several km’s worth of walls. Most of what survives of the city today is the stone foundations upon which the Hittites built with adobe mud brick. The mud brick has washed away years ago, but the stone foundations have survived, leaving a kind of map layout of their city. At the main entrance gates today, a part of the walls have been rebuilt in the original fashion with financing from Japan (of all places). Some parts of the walls are built completely of stone, especially around the gates. Three gateways in particular are of interest: the Lion Gate, the Kings Gate and the Sphinx Gate – each so called because of the stone reliefs and statues decorating the gateways (except the “king” at the Kings Gate is probably a god, not a king). These features on site are actually copies of the originals, some of which are in the Ankara museum we saw yesterday and some in the splendid little local museum in Bogazkale (which opened only 9 months ago). A special feature under the Sphinx Gate was a long tunnel gate of about 75 metres, running right under the stone battlements. This was only big enough to allow people to walk through single file. Other features include many temples (the Hittites collected gods and goddesses from every tribe and village they conquered), one of which was very large in the old inner city. Near this was a strange green granite stone, almost cubic, and smooth on top. It must have been some kind of cultic object, probably an altar, but the stone stuck out like a sore thumb, being completely different from every other rock in the place. On top of a high rise was the “acropolis” – the walled palace complex where the kings lived.

After scrambling about on the ramparts of the walls, I asked Hakan how these constructions compared to the pyramids of Egypt. “About 500 years younger,” he replied. That is still quite old! I could write a great deal more about this visit, and the many details, but really, I am very tired and we have another early start to explore Cappadocia in the morning. The great benefit of Hittology to biblical studies (and the reason we visited the site) is that their culture and literature places the rise of the Hebrew culture and literature in a broader context. By comparing their religious practice and literary output we gain a greater knowledge of the character of the bible (for instance, a portion of the Gilgamesh Epic is able to be seen on a clay tablet in the Bogazkale museum).

We had an excellent lunch in a restaurant in the village, which Hakan had to prearrange. It was a one-menu meal, consisting of an excellent tomato soup, goulash, pilaf and salad, and sweets, all washed down with a half-litre bottle of Efes Pilsner (came to about $12.50). After lunch, we went to see the museum and a final site, a rock face sanctuary which reminded me of the Panion at Caesarea Philippi, with some splendid reliefs in the rock. Here I found a chap using a knife to carve small blocks of serpentine stone into little lions in the Hittite style with the symbols of the Hittite Empire (the sun goddess, the weather god, the two-headed eagle, etc) carved on them. It was so beautiful that I determined to buy one from him. I found myself wishing that during our visit to the Holy Land we could have bought more authentic souvenirs such as this instead of the mass produced items. Other members of the group, seeing my purchase, then also bought pieces from him and the other craftsmen at the site.

On the long trip to Urgup in Cappadocia (where we are staying tonight), Hakan played us a Turkish produced documentary, called “The Hittites: A Civilization that Changed the World” (http://www.amazon.com/The-Hittites-Civilization-Changed-World/dp/B001139ZI8). This was both educational and entertaining, although after our large lunch and early start to the day it was hard to stay away, Nevertheless it filled in all the details of the civilization and empire and even featuring an Australian Hittologist by the name of Trevor Bryce. We stopped about an hour and half out of Urgup (which is south of Hattusha) for a cup of tea at a roadside cafe warmed by a central wood stove. It was 6pm when we arrived at the Dinler Hotel, and we celebrated Mass in a private room at 6:30pm. I was very surprised to find a number of Christian themed paintings on the walls of the hotel – there was a large Christ the Pantocrator on the wall of the room where we celebrated mass, and on our floor there is another big picture of Christ and his apostles with the multiplication of the loaves and fishes. I suspect that they have been copied from the ancient churches we will be visiting tomorrow, but it is unusual to see Christian art publically displayed in Turkey. Dinner was lovely (the food in Turkey is always good), but the internet connection is frustratingly erratic. I have only managed to get about half of my pictures uploaded. I want to go to bed now, so I will try to do the rest in the morning.

28th November, 2012
Tel Aviv to Istanbul to Ankara

For all photos for 27th November, click here to view them on my dropbox site. If you don’t have Dropbox, use this link to sign up and you and I will both get a bonus amount of free storage space.

We were up very early this morning, waking at 3am to be ready to have our luggage on the bus by 3:45am, to be on the bus and going at 4:15am. We drove through the dark for about two hours. I slept a little, wrote a little, and spent some time in conversation with Gila and Rosemary – mainly about the politics of the region and about Turkey and about the Christian heritage of Turkey. I asked Gila about the possibility of conducting a joint Jewish Catholic Muslim pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and she was quite positive, saying she had done this before for a group from Russia. She is confident that while there would be significant difficulties, most of these could be handled, as long as the tour leaders were sensitive and ready to understand that at some points the Muslim members of the group would take longer to process in security checks. But if they have foreign (eg. Australian, British or American) passports, there would be no serious obstacle, she thought. There would be no problem with such a group visiting the temple mount, although only the Muslims would be able to enter the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Gila has a very good website, which I looked up last night before going to sleep: www.itsgila.com. Check it out.

We arrived at the airport about 6:30am just as the sun was coming up. I gave the vote of thanks to Gila and Abed (giving them the copies of Kairos I had meant to give to Habib in Nazareth). We farewelled Abed after he had unpacked our cases, and Gila shepherded us inside to the security check line, giving us clear instructions about what would happen, where we would be asked to go, and what we should say and do and not say or do. The process can be quite daunting, I am told, as there are a series of checks, but the airport was not very busy – perhaps a combination of the morning hour and the reduction in tourists at this time. It is easier too going in through as a group with a recognised tour guide. There are random checks all along the way. After my luggage went through the x-ray, I was one of those randomly selected for a further questioning. Although I did not have to open my suitcase, I was asked how many shoes I had, and whether I had bought these in Israel or brought them with me. After simply answering these questions, my bag got the required sticker of approval and I moved on to the check in stage. My case came in at 19kg (a good thing, I thought, that they didn’t weigh my backpack). We went through customs, put our carry on luggage through the x-ray scanner, one final check of our passports and boarding pass and we were finally on the other side at 7:30am. We spent our last shekels on breakfast, I bought some fridge magnets for our collection at home, and then went up to the departure lounge to write up yesterday’s diary. The plane boarded on time, and we left promptly for Istanbul.

The flight was just over two hours, and on the way we received “breakfast” – a roll, a piece of cheese, a slice of meat and a slice of tomato – hardly a snack really given we had had little substantial since we left Ma’agan (and even then, “breakfast” was just tea and cake). Coming in to Istanbul, we circled for a good while, giving Versi and me a good view of the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque on the Golden Horn.

The Istanbul changeover started off easily enough with no queues to speak of, but after paying our US$60 in cash for our visa, we missed the line up for the passport check, which, when we found it, had developed a queue the size and variety of the whole of the United Nations. There was one line for Turkish citizens with about 6 processing stations, and then there was one line for everyone else also with six processing stations. No more than two or three Turks were in their line, while hundreds of us were crammed into the winding line for the rest. Meanwhile the time for boarding our connecting flight in the domestic terminal was drawing ever closer. After being in the queue for about twenty minutes, someone decided to open the Turkish processing stations for the rest of us, and things moved much faster. I had time to duck into the duty free shop for another bottle of whisky for the next leg of the trip, and then we had to make a dash for it to the other end of the airport to the domestic terminal, to gate 402! We had to go through another screening check (off with the coat, the hat, the bum bag, out with the computer and the liquids etc. etc., and then all back on again) and arrived at the gate just moments before the boarding began. Our new guide for Turkey, Hakan, met us and another tour member joined us (Diana) and we were on our way onto the plane for Ankara. As soon as I sat down on the plane, I fell asleep.

I was woken by the voice of the captain, and was thinking “Hullo, we are here already and I have slept right through it”, but in fact we were still on the tarmac and the captain was just announcing that there would be a 25 minute delay before take off. The flight took us over the Sea of Nicea (I had a very good view of Iznik/Nicea from the window) and in the distance were the snow covered mountains near Bursa (which I had visited back in 2007). We arrived in Ankara a little later than expect, but were greeted with a coach which was of limousine proportions compared to what we had been travelling in before. Abed must lie awake at night dreaming of driving a bus like this. It was at least twice as big as we needed, as everyone had a seat to themselves. It had two doors, a fridge at the back, and wide window that would enable good photography. The bus and the driver, Bilgin, will see us all the way to Izmir sometime at the end of next week. Bilgin had an early opportunity to display his talents to us. He had to get us as quickly as possible to the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations as the closing time for the museum was close approaching. We drove through a growing and fresh looking city. I expect this. Turkey’s economy is doing okay, and Ankara is a relatively new city, purposely developed as the capital of Turkey ( like Washington DC, Brazilia and Canberra). What I didn’t expect was to find a wonderfully preserved area of traditional housing and shops in the Old City of Ankara, which is where the Museum is located. I would love to come back to explore these little winding alleyways and exotic shops one day, but there will not be time on this trip as we are leaving early again for Cappadocia in the morning (we have 8 places to visit and 400km to cover tomorrow!). Bilgin demonstrated his skill in negotiating these narrow winding hilly streets. I believe this man could drive the proverbial camel through the eye of a needle.

Hakan then had the opportunity to demonstrate his expertise to us as he introduced us to the artwork and relics of the ancient Anatolian civilisations dating back to the very beginning. See the photos for some examples. The women in the group seemed especially taken by the artifacts of the worship of the earth goddess, the Great Mother. I don’t know why – they seem to think that this must have been a good thing. This isn’t the place to discuss theology (not today and not at this hour) but it is my conviction that had the Mother goddess religion survived, the development of monotheism would not have been possible. There were other treasures here too, including some golden jewellery found at the Troy site (which I also visited in 2007), which have been in the possession of the United States until very recently. There are very many stunning bass relief carvings on stone also.

When we left the Museum, Hakan took us on the bus around to see the monumental monument to Ataturk himself. There is something overwhelming about the size of this tomb, and makes one wonder (not for the first time) about the status of Ataturk in the Turkish psyche. Hakan told us that his father was in the military, so I must quiz him about this experience and about his own religious position.

We were then taken to our hotel, the Hotel Ickale, which is not far from the old city, but in the newer downtown area. This really is a very nice hotel, and yes, it has free wifi in the rooms. But I have to go out on the balcony outside my room if I wish to smoke. It is quite cold outside – I would say about 9 degrees Celsius – so I am working inside at the moment. Tea was delicious (great soup – I have been looking forward to this – and wonderful deserts). We had “Angora” red wine, and it didn’t taste in the least bit hairy. (Ankara is the origin of the Angora goats). After dinner we went for a short walk up the street to negotiate with the ATM to give us some Turkish Lira.

It is time for bed now. I am completely worn out and we have a 6am start in the morning. We also are moving on to a new hotel. Pity, I would have liked to have stayed here and in Ankara for a bit longer.

27th November, 2012
To the Borders

For all photos for 27th November, click here to view them on my dropbox site. If you don’t have Dropbox, use this link to sign up and you and I will both get a bonus amount of free storage space.

I woke this morning feeling decidedly off. I seem to have ate something that disagreed with me, and made like a gate in a Roman Theatre (called by the vivid title a “vomitum” before breakfast. Thankfully we have a pharmacist on the team, and he had something to settle my stomach. This together with some other medication offered by other members of the pilgrimage had me feeling more settled by the time we set off for the Mount of the Beatitudes on the North shore of the Lake for Mass.

The grounds here are run by the Franciscan Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and they have developed very beautiful gardens around the octagonal church by Antonio Barluzzi. I really like his churches, and this is the last that we are visiting on this tour. The Mount is the traditional location for the Sermon on the Mount, and hence not only a site for the teaching of the Beatitudes but also an alternative site for the teaching of the Lord’s Prayer. I like the suggestion of some commentators that there is no reason to choose between the two locations – Jesus could have taught this prayer more than once, more than twice even. The location is on the hill above Tabgha, the traditional place of the Feeding of the Five Thousand. Like other countryside holy places, it was much easier to pray here than in the city locations, although one cannot really say that the place is as it was in Jesus’ day. The banana plantations and the gum trees were not there originally for a start… See the photos for a sense of this location, and for the details of the Church (which features a very nice exterior cloister, and a central altar on which the blessed Sacrament is reserved, around which is a tiled floor featuring the seven virtues and above which is a dome with eight windows each with one of the beatitudes in Latin).

From here we travelled North East to the relatively recent and ongoing excavation of the ancient city of Hazor. This is rated as one of the most significant excavations in Israel today, as the city dates back to pre-Israelite times at least to 1800BC. From a biblical point of view it relates to the question of the entry of the Hebrews into the land. The book of Joshua records Joshua’s victory over the city and its king Jabin, and specifically credits him with burning the city with fire (Josh 11:10-11). Interestingly, the excavations of Hazor show exactly this – a massive fire (“the mother of all fires” according to the leader of the excavation) destroyed the “palace” and surrounding buildings at about 1200BC. You can see the blackened and cracked stones quite clearly today. Hazor (and oddly Jabin again) are mentioned once more in the book of Judges, in an incident in the time of the judge Deborah (connected to the gruesome story of Jael driving a tent peg through Sisera’s head).

The site today is a little like Jericho – it is a mound or “tel”, on and under which is the main administration centre of the city (it is the largest such “tel” in Israel0. On the lower side of the hill and surrounding are exploratory excavations, which indicate that the residential part of the city during the Canaanite period extended beyond the tel itself. One frustrating aspect of the excavation is the scarcity of documentary evidence found in the excavation thus far (and there is much more of the city still to be uncovered). The great hope is to discover the “archive”, the collection of clay tablets usually kept in such politically central cities in the palace. One reason I put palace in quotation marks above is that the building originally excavated as “the palace” is today thought to have perhaps been a temple – there is, after all, a great big altar in front of this building and the similarity to the Jerusalem temple would suggest that the building behind it is a temple, rather than a palace. Of course, in some places, the temple and the palace were the same thing because the king was worshipped as a god, but I don’t think that was the case here. Adding to the suspicion that this structure could be a temple, not a palace, is the discovery of another “palace” on the side of the city mound. Gila showed us the trench excavation that had been made. But no “archive” have been discovered in this building either. Still, early days…

The city of Hazor was significant as it lay on the main road leading from the coast to Damascus (Megiddo lies on this road too, and it is quite possible that Saul passed this way on his mission to persecute Christians in Damascus). It was rebuilt by Solomon (1 Kings 9:15) and used by the kings of Israel (the Northern Kingdom) right up to the time of its capture by Tiglath Pileser III of Assyria in 732BC. The front gates are referred to as the Gates of Solomon.

Being so near to Syria, Gila completed our geographical orientation by taking us as close as possible to the border. To get there, we travelled through the Golan Heights, control of which Israel wrested from Syria in the Six-Day War in 1967, and has been the object of contention ever since (officially, Syria and Israel are still at war, and, as I understand it). We crossed the Jordan at the Daughters of Jacob bridge (not named after the daughters of Jacob the patriarch – he only had one daughter according to the bible – but after an order of nuns in the times of the Crusaders who controlled this bridge and charged a toll to cross it). This was once the border with Syria and is the official entry point to the Golan Heights. This has been the crossing point of the Damascus Road for centuries. The bridge itself has been regularly destroyed and rebuilt, most recently in 2007 when a modern concrete bridge was built to replace the two Bailey bridges (one has been left stand).

Beyond this was an old Syrian customs house (camouflaged by eucalyptus trees), and on the fences on either side of the road were the ominous little red triangles indicating that the countryside around here was land mined from the time of the war. From this point on we were travelling through the hills of biblical “Bashan”, as in “Og the King of Bashan” (Numbers 21) and “the bulls of Bashan have surrounded me” (Psalm 22) (we did see some cows!). It is here that we had our first glimpse of the vineyards from which “Galilee wine” comes – it is in fact from the Golan Heights. Apparently it used to be called “Golan wine” but it was found that this name did not advance the marketing of the product.

We had seen many jets flying overhead while we were at Hazor (“Don’t worry about that, its just training practice”, said Gila), but now the military presence was very strong. Many military vehicles were passing us (we were caught at one point behind a truck carrying an army tank up the hill very slowly), and there were UN cars all over the place. We stopped at a lookout: the valley before us was a virtual “no man’s land”, and over the hills on the other side was Syria. Below us in the distance was the old town of Quneitra, now abandoned because it was destroyed by the Israelis during the six-day war. The Syrians have rebuilt Quneitra, just a little further away from the border. From here we were looking straight towards Damascus. “I would like to visit Damascus one day,” Gila said wistfully. The chances, as an Israeli citizen, are small that she ever will. As for us? Well, pray for the peace of Syria and it may one day be possible. But not today. So close, yet so far. While heading back for the bus, we came across a group of UN officers, and one recognised us as Australians and came over to us. He was an Australian himself, deployed here for 12 months as part of the peace-keeping force. He spoke to us for a while about his work here.

Back on the bus, we continued north along the border road until we came to a T junction. Actually, it would not have looked like a T junction to the casual observer, rather it seemed that the main road simply took a sharp turn to the left and South West. But there was a small dirt track leading off to the right North West. “That’s the road to Damascus”, Gila said. It did not look like it had received a great deal of traffic in recent decades. We took the left turn (it seemed the wisest road to take) and then made our way further north into an area around the town of Masade. This area is home to a predominantly Druze population (the Druze are a very old Islamic sect – google them to find out more). We had lunch here, next to the apple orchards, under the looming presence of Mount Hermon (the highest mountain in Israel), and on the edge of a volcanic crater and lake, at a Druze roadside cafe, where they made for us a traditional Druze sandwich: a soft flakey flatbread, spread with goat’s cheese, drizzled with a dressing made from sesame seed, olive oil and (a secret ingredient) “kaatar”, then rolled up and toasted on a BBQ. Very nice washed down with a cup of black sweet spiced tea and finished with a piece of baklava. Outside, an old Druze woman was selling the local produce. Had I not been flying out the next day, I would have been very tempted to make a purchase. You could buy the “kaatar” mixture, honey, quince jam, goats cheese, “grape honey” (??), marmalade etc. etc. I had a little conversation with the woman (mainly consisting of pointing to things and she trying to tell me the name in English). Not being able to buy anything else, I settled for a cup of pomegranate juice for 10 shekels (rather exorbitant).

We then kept heading north until we were almost at the meeting point between the Israel, Syria and Jordan borders. We then headed South a little way, through the hills of Dan and past the ruined Crusader fort of Nimord. This is as far North as we were going within Israel, and as far North as Jesus ever travelled too, for we had now reached Caesarea Philippi, where a spring flowed in ancient times from a large rock cave (it still flows – being the source of the River Hermon and then flowing into the Jordan, but it doesn’t flow from the cave anymore). This place was dedicated in ancient times to the Roman god Pan. Pan (the half goat half human god) was the god of mysterious places, and all caves were regarded as such. Even today it is a beautiful glade, and it appeared a popular place among the locals picnicking in the grounds. We went up and looked around the ruins of the temples. The significance for Christianity is that it was in this region that Jesus posed the question to his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter answered “You are the Messiah (the Son of God)”. Jesus commended him and said “On this rock I will build my church”. The reference to “rock” is often thought to be a reference to the towering rock face in which the Panion cave and shrine was situated.

Now was the long drive home to Ma’agan on the southern shore of the Sea of Galilee. Along the way, we made one final stop at a location which we had not yet visited, the Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes. Egeria mentions a shrine here in her travel diary during her travels in the late 4th Century. She refers to the spot as a place of “seven springs”, in Greek “Heptapegon”, from which the name “Tabgha” is derived. We had been in this region a few days earlier, as the Church of the Primacy of Peter is not far away. The fifth century Byzantine church built on this spot was destroyed during the Persian wars in the early 7th Century. The place remained deserted until German archaeologists excavated the remains of the Byzantine Church (including the mosaic floor and the famous loaves and fishes mosaic in front of a particular feature rock). Then, in the 1980s, the German Benedictine’s rebuilt the church in a simple Byzantine style, preserving the mosaics. The Church is very simple and uncluttered (only a few pews are in the centre of the nave with a large stone baptismal font at the rear). the only artwork inside is an icon of Jesus on the right and of the Theotokos on the left. I lighted three candles before the icon of Christ. The windows of the church are of alabaster, creating a dimmed yellow light. Outside is a cloister with a goldfish pond and olive tree.

That was to be our last visit in the land of Israel. On the way home, I snapped a shot (as we passed by) of the diggings at the site of Magdala (the home of Mary Magdalene), but this is not yet open to tourists. Back at the holiday village, it was time for the big pack up. Having discovered the kibbutz laundry, I decided to do some last minute washing. Fr Bhin and Fr Thin were at the laundry already doing some drying. I used five packets of shampoo from our rooms as soap for the machine and put my 12 shekels in to get an automatic wash. Versi came over and did some drying as well, while I waited for my washing to finish. I sat outside smoking my pipe and uploading pictures to Dropbox. It doesn’t take much to make a good place to stay on holiday: free and widely available internet and a good cheap laundry are two of them. After drying my clothes, I went back to my room and packed. We have a luggage limit of 20kgs on the Turkish airlines flights, to I put the heaviest items into my backpack. I paid up my bill before going to dinner, and after dinner went almost straight away to bed (at 8pm). We needed to be up at 3:15am in the morning to catch the flight from Tel Aviv to Istanbul at 9:50am. I figured I could write up today’s events tomorrow while travelling, and I needed the sleep.

26th November, 2012
Mt Tabor, Ceasarea, Nazareth

For all photos for 26th November, click here to view them on my dropbox site. If you don’t have Dropbox, use this link to sign up and you and I will both get a bonus amount of free storage space.

We had an early start today (leaving at 7:30am) in order to fit in the whole tour from Ma’agan to Mt Tabor to Caesarea to Nazareth and back. The advantage of this is that when we arrived at the foot of Mt Tabor, we had no competition from any other tour group for the minibus taxis to the top. Other members of our group who had been here before said that they can recall waiting for up to an hour for the ride up the steep, winding mountain road. Tabor is the traditional site of the Transfiguration – the other contender is Mt Hermon, more popular among protestants, is Mount Hermon, but both the Greeks and the Catholics have long established themselves on this mountain and are not particularly interested in other theories. Oddly, “Tabor” is a common name for Lutheran Churches in Australia and elsewhere in the world, although I can never recall this being particularly associated with the Transfiguration in our story telling.

The Gospels do not give the name of the mountain. The only clue seems to be that, on one reading of the Greek text in Mark 9, it was a “mountain apart”. Of course, the text could simply mean that Jesus lead the disciples “apart”, but there are two terms – one “apart” and the other “on their own” in the Greek. Compare the NRSV translation to the ESV and you will see the essence of the translation debate. Mt Tabor is certainly “a mountain apart” from the others – it stick up all on its own above the plain. Apparently there is evidence of a town on the mountainside in Jesus’ day, which raises a problem for the “on their own” part of the story, but for the moment, at least, we are sticking with Mount Tabor as the “very high mountain” (and it is certainly that!).

The road winding up the mountain is impossible for a full sized bus to negotiate, so there are mini bus taxis at the foot of the mountain, which ferry tourists and pilgrims to the top. At the top, there is a large Barluzzi church built on the site where there was once an even larger Crusader period church. There are intricate mosaic floors in the Crusader ruins, which caused me to wonder if they might not be from an even earlier Byzantine church. I have checked this on the internet since returning to Ma’agan, and it seems my hunch is correct: the Crusader church was built upon the site of an earlier 4th-6th Century Byzantine church.

There are also excavated ruins of a Benedictine monastery on the peak, including an easily identifiable chapel. The views from Mount Tabor are panoramic, but the real attraction is Barluzzi’s church. This is by far the largest of his churches that we have visited and, I think, the most beautiful. There are two central sanctuaries, one above the other, on the centre East end, and, either side of these are two chapels, one is the Blessed Sacrament chapel and the other is dedicated to St Francis. At the back of the church, there are two “grotto” chapels, one dedicated to Elijah and one to Moses. I went into the Elijah chapel, but didn’t see the Moses one. The idea, I believe, is that these two grottos, together with the lower sanctuary dedicated to the life of Christ, are intended to represent the “three booths” that Peter suggested should be built for Jesus, Moses and Elijah.

Above the main upper altar is a great mosaic of the Transfiguration scene. Reached by stairs below it, but open to full view from the nave of the Church, is a lower sanctuary, under a deep arch that reaches from one floor to the other over the altar, with a stained glass window of peacocks and chalice design at the East end behind the altar. The window is designed so that on August 6th each year (the Feast of the Transfiguration), the sun shines through it and is reflected on a round glass plate on the floor of the nave above, and the light then shines up onto the mosaic above the upper altar. I would like to be there to see this.

The arch over the lower grotto dedicated to Christ is decorated with four mosaics depicting the birth of Jesus: the institution of the Eucharist, the sacrifice of Calvary and the resurrection. Each is done in a highly symbolic manner involving three angels, the central one seeing to take the place of Christ in at least two of the mosaics (perhaps the three angels appearing to Abraham at the Oak of Mamre was the inspiration, as in Rublev’s icon of the Trinity?). An abundance of gold was used in the mosaics, so that when the sun shines in, the whole chapel is filled with light and shining. Check out the pictures in the link above! On the floor of the lower grotto there are glass windows looking down onto the rock below.

Words cannot do this building justice. I found it extremely easy to pray in this place. Unlike other holy places where I felt that the church built over it has obscured the significance and sanctity of the place, this church can only be said to have heightened the spirituality of the location. Of course, I lighted the customary three candles and prayed for my family.

The drive to Caesarea took about an hour and half over the plain through the Valley of Jezreel. Along the way, we passed the village of Nain where Jesus raised the widow’s son, and then, at the other side, the ancient city mound of Megiddo – from whence we have the term from the book of Revelation “Armageddon”. Apparently archaeologists have discovered evidence of 26 distinct periods of settlement on this hill, but none since the Persian period in 400BC. On the opposite side of the highway as it passes Megiddo, is a high security gaol. Within the grounds of this gaol, the remains of the oldest Christian Church yet uncovered were discovered in Israel were found in 2005 (there is an older contender in Jordan), dating from the 3rd Century AD. Google “the church of the Megiddo prison” and you will find more information. It is not, of course, accessible to tourists, and even during the excavation, the labour was provided by low security prisoners. The joke Gila told us was about a conversation between two of the prisoners working on the excavation: “What are you in for?” “Me? Antiquities theft.”

Gila had said that we could have spent all day just at Caesarea, the ancient port city purpose built by King Herod the Great in honour of Augustus (whom he had failed to support in the war against Marcus Antonius) and called Caesarea Maratima to distinguish it from Caesarea Philippi (which we are visiting tomorrow). Here we had our first encounter on this trip with the Mediterranean. A big thunderstorm – with forked lightening – was coming in over the ocean just to our South. It threatened to drench us with rain, but we never had more than a light sprinkle all day.

The whole site and the modern town today is actually owned and operated by a corporation which runs Caesarea as a tourist attraction. The remains here are extensive, and many of the excavations quite recent, covering several periods – Herod’s own time, the time of the Roman Occupation (when it was used as the headquarters of the Prefect, including Pontius Pilate – the famous Pilate inscription was found here in the 1960’s, on a stone being used as a step in a staircase – who used Herod’s palace as his own residence), the Byzantine period (a tax office with a striking mosaic floor – on which is written in Greek a message encouraging people to pay their taxes! – dates from this period), and the Crusaders. The Muslims never made much use of the area, and the prominent stone mosque on the shore front dates from the early 20th Century when it was settled by Bosnian Muslims (who left after the Second World War). Then the first Jewish settlers came in at about the time the excavations began. The remains are quite extensive – and much has been rebuilt (one way of telling the rebuilt bits is that they have cut the old worn stone straight again), including the theatre which has been entirely reconstructed and is used for concerts. In terms of scale, the most extensive remains are the walls and moats of the Crusader period. On the centre sea front, right next to Herod’s palace, a barely covered hippodrome (horse racing arena) was discovered and excavated in the 1990s. The significance of the place for Christians is, of course, that this was where Cornelius, the first Gentile convert to Christianity, lived and was baptised by St Peter (Acts 10 and 11). St Paul also passed through here a number of times, as it was a major connecting port for travellers.

Lunch was at the kiosk outside the exit gates – $10 for a sandwich of cheese and tomato and cucumber and a drink. I decided it was to expensive, and spent the time smoking my pipe and reading up on Caesarea and Nazareth, our next destination. After lunch, Gila had time to take us to one last site (and what a sight!) of Caesarea – the ancient aqueduct that was used to bring water from Mt Carmel 28kms away down to the city – there was no spring or other water supply in the area (Gila called it “daring” of Herod to build the city here because of the lack of water). Gila thought that the Crusaders may have reconstructed Herod’s aqueduct for their own use when they were here. Earlier today I was saying that one day I would like to walk around the Sea of Galilee (a distance of just over 50km). I am adding the Caesarea aqueduct as possible walking tour one day…

We then travelled back towards the Sea of Galilee to Nazareth. Here is the Basilica of the Annunciation, which Gila calls “the three M church”: Mary, Modern and Multi-national. Mary of course is obvious. In this otherwise entirely modern city, the only excavations worth noting are directly below the Basilica. Here there are the remains of a 1st century house, believed to be “the house of Mary”. There is an altar in this grotto with the words “Hic verbum caro factum est” engraved upon it: “Here the word became flesh”! I took the time later to pray the Nicene Creed in front of this grotto. Whether or not you believe the tradition, it is certain that somewhere in Nazareth the angel appeared to Mary “and she conceived of the Holy Spirit”. Like the star under the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and the Holy Sepulchre, this is one of those churches which confronts you with the question: did this really happen here? Yet that is the thing about all events in the life of Christ – they happened somewhere here on earth, and most probably in these traditional locations. Rocks and caves often form the place of veneration, and this is a reminder that the Christian faith is not some airy-fairy story dreamed up by someone, but is really grounded in historical reality.

But this brings us to the “M is for Modern” part of Gila’s idea. The modern basilica, started in 1960 and consecrated in 1969, is built upon earlier churches, the evidence of which remains in the lower floors of the basilica (and there is a central opening which enables you from the upper modern level to look down on all the ancient churches below it). The earliest shrine was probably built here in the 4th Century, then built upon by Constantine with a church that was still there in the late 6th century. This building is thought to have been destroyed by the Muslim invaders in the 7th Century, but was rebuilt by the Crusaders in the 12th Century. This was again destroyed by the Muslim armies in the 13th Century. In 1620 the Franciscans built a new church on the spot, which was demolished in 1954 to make way for the huge modern structure that stands there today. At first we thought this might have been another Barluzzi church, but it was in fact designed by Giovanni Muzio. It uses a lot of concrete, some covered in mosaic and some left bare, which I had thought was rather out of character for a Barluzzi creation. The whole structure does not have the same theological and spiritual depth of Barluzzi’s churches and would feel a bit cold and lacking in any true depth, where it not for the existence of the lower shrines. A large mosaic of the “unam sanctam catholicam et apostolicam ecclesiam” covers the East wall of the modern basilica, curious for the fact that it uses at least half a dozen different kinds of halo on the saints depicted.

Now we come to the “M is for Multinational” part of Gila’s description. There is an awful lot of original artwork in this basilica, all of a high quality. The doors, for instance, depict scenes from the biblical history leading up to the conception of Jesus. A smaller example, which I photographed, is a simple etching on a small glass window overlooking the courtyard of Joseph at his carpenter’s bench. But the real attraction in the basilica (besides the grotto of the house of Mary) is the huge collection of mosaic pictures of Mary, donated by all the various nations of the world, both inside the Church and outside in the cloister, in a manner like the Cloister of the Pater Noster in Jerusalem. The Australian one is on the north wall.

The acoustics in this building are very good, and I took the opportunity to pray the Angelus and sing a Latin Gregorian Ave Maria at the lower grotto. We celebrated mass in the church, and were given the upper main modern altar at which to do so. Disconcertingly, the altar was microphoned so that the mass was amplified throughout the Basilica, despite the fact that it was in fact a “private” group mass. Given that the amplified call to prayer of the local muezzin went off while we were in the Basilica (and the local rivalry between the Christian and Muslim community, demonstrated by a recent plan of the Muslims to build a large mosque in front of the Basilica and banners and posters quoting anti-Christian verses from the Koran), some members of the group wondered if this was not a way of making a Christian “noise” in competition with the Muslim presence.

Both John Paul II and Benedict visited this church on their pilgrimages to the Holy Land in 2000 and 2009 respectively (making this the second place at least where we crossed paths – the first being at the Holel in Amman). Gila told us that the Israelis were highly concerned for Benedict’s safety when he was here, and even suggested that he would be safer if he visited Haifa instead of Nazareth (which showed how much they understood of the Christian significance of this place!).

I lighted my three customary candles in the Church of the Annunciation, before wandering around outside to look more closely at the other aspects of the area. I took the opportunity to take out my copy of Kairos and be photographed sitting under the statue of Mary reading it for the “Where’s Kairos?” feature in our venerable Archdiocesan rag. (Hullo to all the staff at Kairos/Catholic Communications reading this). I then discovered a separate “Church of St Joseph” at the other end of the complex and entered to pray for myself that I might have the grace to be a good father to Maddy and Mia and for all fathers (St Joseph is my confirmation saint). There were no candles to be lighted, so I made a donation in the church.

We were supposed to meet a local leader of the Christian community in Nazareth, but for some reason this didn’t happen. Which is a pity, because I wanted to give him my copy of Kairos in which was reported the exchange between the Nazareth Parish Primary School in Beaumaris and the Catholic School in Nazareth itself.

The last port of call was a visit to the town of Cana. Again, this is the traditional site of the first miracle – there are contenders, of course, but since there is evidence below the modern church of a fifth century church, I take it that this is as good a place as any. The town today is still called Cana in any case. Here, in this church where many couples come to renew their wedding vows, I lighted only two candles, for Cathy and myself, and prayed for Jesus’ blessing in our marriage as he blessed the wedding couple in Cana with his presence. One of the tourist souvenirs is “Cana Wine” – which we sampled afterwards in a little store directly across from the church. This stuff gives Galilean wine a bad name – we have in fact been drinking an excellent drop from the Golan Heights for dinner each night, made by a winery called “Galil”.

It was dark by the time we came back to the bus, and we travelled back to the Kibbutz arriving at about 5:30pm. Our washing, which has been hanging out for two whole days, and still was not dry (something very strange about the atmosphere around here seems to prevent it from drying) so I enquired about a clothes dryer. Yes, there was such a thing on the property, but we needed to go over to the Kibbutz proper to use it. Fr Peter and I packed our clothes into plastic bags, took a handful of change, and were driven in a golf buggy around to the laundry. Here 5 shekels gave us 20 minutes use of a huge dryer which had our clothes dried in no time. Other members of the group were glad of this news, and after dinner, I took them around to the laundry so they could do their own drying.

Tomorrow is our last day in Israel. As we were bussing home tonight, I was praying the Mysteries of Light on the Rosary and realised that in the last few days I had visited the location of all these mysteries: the Baptism in the Jordan, the wedding at Cana, the preaching of the Gospel by Jesus in Galilee, the Transfiguration and the institution of the Eucharist. I had been told by one of my Anima students that the visit would affect the way I prayed the Rosary, and he was quite right. It is so much more immediate having visited these locations.

Drive home and arrived at about 5:40pm.

25th November, 2012
Sea of Galilee: Tiberias, Ginosar, Tabgha, Capernaum, Bethsaida.

For all photos for 25th November, click here to view them on my dropbox site. If you don’t have Dropbox, use this link to sign up and you and I will both get a bonus amount of free storage space.

I woke at 6am, and decided to go down to the Galilee lake to pray the Angelus. I found a place on the rocks where I could sit, and after the Angelus, continued to pray silently. This is so different from anything so far on the journey – the sound of the distant traffic was being drowned out by the birdsong. The lake was glassy smooth – it looked as if you could walk on it if you had a notion to do so… I watched the birds, so many of them and so many different kinds. I wished that I had a pair of binoculars to see them more clearly. There were a number of birds that I took to be kingfishers, one of which was brightly coloured in blues and reds. My wife had asked me on the Skype last night if I was experiencing this as a specially spiritual time – and up to now, those moments were far and few between, but today it was easy to pray at so many different places. Perhaps because the layers of time were thinner here – the holy sites were not covered up with the stones and concrete of centuries since. Perhaps because here the places were closer to nature, and thus closer to how it may have seemed two thousand years ago. Perhaps too, as someone suggested, because Jerusalem was connected to the “darker” times of Jesus’ life, but here it is his ministry with which we are coming into contact.

Breakfast was again a delight, with four different kinds of soft cheese to choose from (I chose them all!), small home-made olives (complete with leaves still on!), home made bread warm from the oven, and a kind of local date which is not dehydrated, but soft and juicy – fresh from the freezer, Gila told us afterwards – which struck me as odd, but that is apparently how they are treated. We were on the bus at 8:30, and drove around to Tiberias, where we boarded a boat for ride on the lake. Here we were told about the general layout of the geography, pointing out the valley that connected Capernaum to Nazareth (along which Jesus would have travelled), the Mount of the Beatitudes (where we are going tomorrow), where the Jordan enters the lake from the North, where Capernaum is situated and so on. The captain of the boat stopped the engines for about a quarter of an hour and we were able to pray and sing in the silence. Thunderstorms were gathering in the West, but we had no fear at this time of a storm like Jesus and his disciples experienced – Gila explained the kind of phenomenon that brought that kind of occurrence on. We were in fact lucky with the rain today – it rained while we were at lunch and it rained at Ma’agan while we were away (my washing got wet again), but we were able to explore the sites in the dry. Which was a good thing, because we were due to celebrate Mass out-of-doors at Tabgha.

The boat dropped us off further up the shore of the lake at Ginosar, the modern name for Gennesaret (the “Sea of Gennesaret” was another name for the Sea of Galilee in Jesus’ time – ironically the strange modern Hebrew name comes from a transliteration of the ancient Greek and Latin name, while the Greek and Latin name itself was originally a transliteration of the original ancient Hebrew name, which was different again). Here today the big attraction is the “2000 year old boat” or “Jesus Boat” as it is marketed. This boat was discovered by a couple of local fishermen (and amateur archaeologists) in 1986, during a drought in which the level of the Sea had dropped considerably (a problem again today – the locals watch the level of the lake as we watch the level of our dams back home – it is the source of all their water). It took a very complicated and careful procedure to remove the fragile and soft wooden vessel from the mud in one piece and then to preserve it for study and display, involving encasing the whole artifact in a kind of foam which solidified when sprayed and pumped around the vessel so that it could be taken out of the mud and transported without damage. The boat has been dated to the time of Jesus and hence is an excellent example of the kind of boat that Peter and Andrew and co. would have used, and on which they travelled to and fro across the lake on Jesus’ ministry. There is an excellent website giving all the details at www.jesusboat.com.

Outside the museum in which the boat is housed, I found the first patch of Eucalypt trees on this trip, in a park that was planted during the Second World War. In actual fact, these trees served a purpose in the area: planting them was a way of reclaiming swampy land and lessening the number of mosquitoes. Early Jewish kibbutz settlers in the early 20th century contracted malaria from these pests (which are actually being a bit of a nuisance to me as I am writing this while smoking my pipe on the verandah of our cabin). The other place were they were very common was around the ruins of Bethsaida which we visited later in the day, and where they were planted by the Syrians for shade when the location was being used as a military post.

Our next stop was Tabgha, the site where Jesus is traditionally believed to have appeared to the disciples after the resurrection, and where Jesus asked Peter three times if he loved him (John 21). This site is called “the Primacy of Peter”, because it was here that Jesus commanded him to “feed my sheep”. We celebrated Mass here, outdoors as I said, overlooking the lake. Afterwards we went into the church, which has, as its main feature, a large rock called the “Mensa Domini”, that is “the Table of the Lord”, as it is here that it is believed (since the end of the 4th century when the first church was built here) that Jesus served the breakfast of fish that he had prepared for the disciples. It was an appropriate place for me to light my customary three candles, and kneeling and touching the rock I prayed for my family and for the blessing of our family table, that we would always have enough in times of need, that we would share our hospitality with others in times of plenty, and that our table would always be a place of unity for our family and a place where we would always gather together. Down on the shore, it was good just to sit and imagine Peter swimming ashore when he realised “It is the Lord”. It was in fact easier to imagine the resurrection appearance here than in the Upper Room in Jerusalem. As I said, little had changed since the time Jesus was here, except, of course, for the whacking great church…

The next stop was the excavation site of Capernaum, which was first discovered in the mid 19th Century. At that stage, both the Catholic and the Greek Orthodox churches bought up the land in the area, and both began excavations in earnest in the hope of finding more of this important site. As it turned out, all the main sites were discovered on the Franciscan land, and virtually nothing on the spot purchased by the Greeks. Well, after all, Peter was a Catholic! (Jest). There was some discussion in the bus on the way to the site about how the name should be pronounced. When I was a Lutheran, we always said “Cu-per-nay-um”, with the emphasis on the second syllable, but when I became a Catholic, I found that most Catholics called it “Cu-per-nah-um” with the emphasis on the third syllable (an attempt to pronounce it in the biblical way, according to Rosemary). I was surprised therefore when our American Israeli guide called it “Cu-per-num” with the emphasis on the second syllable. I also had noticed signs to the site with English, Hebrew and Arabic, in which both the English and the Hebrew had “Kafer Nahum”, and Gila pronounced this with the emphasis on the last syllable of each word. It means “Place of Nahum” in Hebrew, although the Nahum in question has not been identified, and has nothing to do with the biblical prophet.

When we walked through the gate the first thing we saw, besides the rather imposing statue of St Peter rushing along with keys in one hand and a crosier in the other, were a line of intricately carved stones from the top of a building. Gila immediately directed us to these and said that they come from the large white marble 4th Century synagogue nearby (which we would soon investigate). The decorations were of grapes and olives and stars of David and so on. One particularly striking decoration depicted a wheeled temple being towed through a grove of palm trees. This, Gila said, was a picture of the ark of the covenant being transported into the City of David. But, I asked, what was a synagogue of this size doing in a city in Galilee during the Constantinian period? Surely there was not a sizable Jewish population in this place at that time? I had asked the right question because this was just what Gila wanted us to ask. The excavations over the place which has been identified as the “House of Peter’s Mother-in-law” (Matt 8:14ff) have disclosed evidence of Byzantine churches, but nothing the size of this synagogue. Gila’s theory, and I kind of like it, is that the synagogue was in fact built as a “tourist attraction” for Christian pilgrims who wanted to see “the Synagogue of Capernaum” according to the Gospel accounts (cf. Mark 1:21ff). A kind of “theme park”, I suggested?

When we looked over the synagogue afterwards, which is very near the “House” excavations, Gila showed us the clear evidence of a large bluestone synagogue from the 2nd Century. All that is left of this is the foundations, but the 4th Century marble synagogue is built right on top of these foundations, to the same basic dimensions and with great care to preserve the foundations (a one point the marble stair case is actually built around the foundations – suggesting a degree of veneration for the original building. At one point in the synagogue, an excavation has shown an older and much smaller synagogue under the bluestone 2nd Century construction – and this would have dated back to the time of Jesus. The big marble synagogue can be dated quite accurately because coins dating from the 4th Century were found scattered in the soil under the marble flagstones.

But to the “House of Peters Mother-in-Law”. This is, of course, the main attraction. The excavations are extensive and show a very large house about 40 metres from the synagogue and with a nice view over the Lake. How do we know that this is the house mentioned in the Gospels? Well, of course, we cannot be one hundred percent sure, but there is evidence that already in the first century the place was being used as kind of “house-church”, and there are the remains of several later churches built upon the site, the last being a Byzantine octagonal structure (the octagon is very significant in Christian theology, as it represents the “eighth day” of the new creation – cf. traditional baptismal fonts). Today there is a church built on the site again (we didn’t go in) – a rather embarrassing concrete building built in 1990. It serves the purpose of protecting the site underneath, but hangs rather too low to afford a proper view of the archeological remains. And, being supported on four columns, with a staircase extending down to the ground, it does look for all the world like the Robinson family’s flying saucer spaceship from the 1960’s “Lost in Space”… One could imagine the Robot coming down saying “Warning, warning, Will Robinson”!

Between the “House”/Church and the Synagogue are extensive excavations of other smaller houses. Some asked the question: would it have been likely that Peter, a humble fisherman, would live in such a grand house as this so close to the synagogue and with such a good view of the ocean. On the principle of “location, location, location”, his wife’s family must have been very well-to-do. Well, speculation of this kind leads in all kinds of interesting directions. For a start, we now know that being a Galilean fisherman in the 1st Century did not mean that you were poor. The family of James and John, for eg., had hired men to work for them in the fishing trade (cf. Mark 1:20, and below in relation to Bethsaida). Secondly, perhaps Peter had “married up” (he was living with his wife’s family, not with his father). Finally, maybe Jesus didn’t just pick the first fishermen that he happened across on the lake-shore, but had picked Peter out as a man with connections in the town. Look, anything is possible, but it is fun speculating.

One other incident drew attention. I was photographing some especially interesting masonry (on which the same scallop shell design that I had photographed in Jerash reappeared here – apparently it was a symbol in paganism of Aphrodite/Venus who was born out of a scallop shell – which was a symbol of a female vulva – and this came to be a sign of rebirth and recreation, and hence used as a Christian symbol for baptism – weird, eh?), when the group began excitedly pointing at something. I thought they were pointing at the same thing I was photographing, but no, they were pointing at the strange furry creatures perched on top of the wall behind the masonry carvings. These looked like a cross between a guinea pig and a meercat, and were the size of a cat (see the photos). Gila then proceeded to explain something that answered one of those questions that I had had since a child about the bible: what on earth was a “coney”? Here was the very animal mentioned in Proverbs 30 and Psalm 104, called in Hebrew a “rock rabbit” or, more strictly, a “rock hyrax”. The ones we could see on the wall were the “lookouts” for the rest of the pack – and it was this practice of keeping watch that earned them a place in the bible as one of the three wise creatures (Proverbs 30:26). Perhaps we could adopt a couple to add to our collection of pets at home?

It was lunch time now, and so we were taken to a restaurant to sample the local delicacy: St Peter’s Fish. These fish, caught in the Sea of Galilee, are so-called because of the story in Matthew 17:24ff. There isn’t much meat on these fish, which were prepared whole and fried in a flour coating, but it was amply supplemented with an “all you can eat” salad, pita bread and dip accompaniment. I sat in the lobby of the restaurant smoking my pipe while waiting for the others to finish their meal, but lost track of the time and again had to be called for the bus. I dashed out and boarded the bus, only to be followed by some Asian tourists/pilgrims waving my tobacco purse at me, which I had left behind on the bench. What kind people – they probably thought I had left my money purse behind me! I am very grateful nonetheless.

Travelling around the lake we saw evidence of a very wide range of agriculture, including banana plantations and mango trees. These, Gila was quick to point out, were not here in Jesus’ day. Otherwise, she said, the Gospels may have told the story of Jesus walking through the banana plantation and picking and peeling a banana on the Sabbath… doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, does it?

We then arrived at the recently excavated site of Bethsaida. This site was only uncovered in the late 1980’s and is continuing to be excavated by the University of Nebraska. It is so recent that it isn’t really on the regular tourist run, and so we had the place all to ourselves. There is considerable controversy over whether this is in fact the biblical native town of Peter and Andrew, as it is a good distance (about 2kms) from the present shore of the lake, but less so since the discovery of a large house in which there was a large number of fishing artifacts (this house is now known as “the fisherman’s house”). It is of about the same size as the neighbouring “wine seller’s house” (identified as such by the large wine cellar incorporated in the residence) and suggests that the fishermen who lived here were quite prosperous. There are any number of theories about the location of the shore-line 2000 years ago, including a possible tectonic shift that altered the lie of the land. In any case, the site has also been identified (as recently as 1996) as even more ancient pagan town of Geshur, the home of one of King David’s wives, Maacah, the daughter of the King of Geshur and the mother of Absalom (2 Sam 3:3). The city gates have been unearthed, and are in surprisingly good condition. Given that David would probably have entered this city at a time when these gates were in use (to come and claim his princess bride), I can be fairly certain that today I stood in a spot that my namesake himself once stood. While at the site, Gila pointed out a recently planted fig tree, planted in memory of the story of Nathaniel, who was sitting under fig tree in this city when Peter came and told him that he had “found the Messiah” (John 1:43ff). Also, while here, several jets flew overhead. We could not see them because of the clouds, but they sounded as loud as thunder. Then a couple of military helicopters flew overhead. That, plus the fact that this had once been Syrian territory in the not to distant past and that there were the little red triangles around the place indicating that the area still contains mines from the time of hostilities from the same period, reminded us that we were today very close to the Syrian border and all the troubles not too far to the North.

We returned to Ma’agan on the Southern shore of the lake by completing the full circle around the lake on the Golan Heights side of the sea. This area is not very highly populated, largely due to the fact that it has been an area of dispute in the past. But we did notice some hang gliders high up on the mountain tops. The sun was setting over the Sea of Galilee as we returned, which was quite picturesque. We arrived home at about 4:30pm, which gave me plenty of time for writing up this entry in my travelogue, and then gathered for a group debriefing before dinner.

We have an early start in the morning again (7:30am) to travel out to Nazareth and Caesarea, so I had best post this and get to bed.

24th November, 2012
Masada, Dead Sea, Jericho, Galilee

For all photos for 24th November, click here to view them on my dropbox site. If you don’t have Dropbox, use this link to sign up and you and I will both get a bonus amount of free storage space.

I am beginning to write this in the few moments that I have after lunch at Qumran. I am sitting outside the restaurant overlooking the Dead Sea with the mountains of Edom on the other side, smoking my pipe. We have just come up from Masada where we spent most of the morning. At 1pm, the bus will come back to collect us and take us somewhere where we can have our “Dead Sea experience”.

We farewelled Jerusalem at 7:30am. The bus took us down to the Jordan Valley and along the road running south through the West Bank on the edge of the Dead Sea. About Masada is located towards the bottom of the Dead Sea as it is today. The terrain on the west side of the Sea is very dramatic, with high limestone cliffs crumbling down into the sea. The Sea is shrinking due to irrigation and evaporation (it has fallen 80 feet in about 25 years). The resulting mudflats are a dangerous place to explore, as sink holes are want to develop without warning.

We took the cable gondola up to the top of the Masada mountain – the alternative is to walk up the “Serpent” or “Snake Path”, which takes about 45 minutes. I would have liked to have done this, at least on the way down, as the views are quite spectacular. I think they should offer a certificate to everyone who makes it to the top along this path. The cable ride is short, but equally breathtaking. At the top, a ramp takes you to the entrance to the fortress. Please google Masada if you don’t know about it; I was introduced to the story back in first year Seminary when the great mini-series starring Peter O’Toole as Vespasian first aired on television. I was amazed by the story then – especially the Roman determination to take the Jewish rebel outpost at all costs. This is what Masada is best known for, but of course it was a fortress built by King Herod the Great before that. He didn’t come here very often – Gila proudly said that she has visited Masada more than Herod did.

The excavations are extensive, and show the evidence of not only Herod’s fortress on the northern slope, but also the 66-70AD buildings of the Zealot rebels and even a later Byzantine monastic church (actually quite well preserved). The real “problem” with Masada is what it represents for modern Israel. Partly because of this “problem”, it has no place at all in Jewish tradition. The “problem” is the way in which the rebels cause met it end: when the Romans finally breached the fort – after building a gigantic ramp up the Western side of the mountain and using fire and a battering ram to get through the walls – they discovered that all the rebels had killed their families and committed suicide. Only two women and a few children survived, and it was from these, according to Josephus, that the story was told of the last days on the mountain. The “problem” is the way the Masada rebels ended their standoff. When the Romans finally breached the walls, the men of the community determined to kill their wives and children and then one another, until there was only one left, and he fell on his own sword. They did this rather than be killed by the Romans and their wives and children taken as slaves. The way this story is taught today to Israelis is that this was a great stand for freedom, and yet as Gila pointed out, suicide and murder is as forbidden in Judaism as it is in Christianity. Masada therefore, while being a symbol of the national determination to be a free people, has a highly ambivalent place in the story of modern Israel. The next thing on our agenda today after lunch is a recreational visit to the Dead Sea…

(later)

Okay, I’ve decided that swimming in the Dead Sea definitely should go on the list of things you should do before you die. In fact, if I could, I would put it on the list of things to do every morning when I woke up. I couldn’t take my camera down to the sea, as all we could take with us was our bathers to change into (we hired towels), so I don’t have any pictures, but those of us who went in had a lot of fun. At one point, I was “standing” in the water, with my shoulders and upper torso well out of the water, and not touching the bottom. It is easy to lie back and float on the surface. Where I got in the water was quite cold, but a little distance away it was warmer and nice to sit in. Then we discovered the mud – and the more adventurous of us, reckoning that this stuff cost $40 for a small packet in the gift shop, decided to try the all over body mudpack for free. You could feel the salts in the mud getting into your skin, and rubbing it on your skin was like being steam blasted. After washing it off in the showers, it left the skin feeling very clean (and a little bit tingly). Unfortunately, we only had an hour to change, get in the water, swim around for a bit and then get out, wash and dress. I could have spent a couple of hours here but we needed to get to Jericho.

Jericho is going through what Gila called “a building boom” at the moment and is actually quite a large city. The Centre of the modern city is closer to the ancient settlement which goes back more than 12,000 years. It claims to be the oldest city in the world, although the city has not been continuously inhabited for all that time. One of the difficulties biblical historians have is that it appears that at the time when Joshua and the people of Israel were supposed to have entered the land, Jericho was (as far as the archaeologists can tell) in a period of desertion. I asked Gila what she thought of this: do we take our cue from the archaeologists about what “really happened” or do we suppose that the scriptures are correct and we just don’t have all the information yet. She said that she is definitely of the latter opinion. We climbed up onto the mound where the ancient city of Jericho is being excavated. Here, in the trench diggings, the various layers of the city over the millennia can be clearly seen. A sizable tower has been unearthed deep in the mound which is claimed to be the oldest city building ever yet to be discovered, dating back to 10,000BC. Nearby the city mound is the spring which provides Jericho with all its water for drinking and irrigation (now under a red tiled building, but mentioned in the bible in association with Elisha – 2 Kings 2:18ff). At the entrance to the mound, there is a building with a red-tile roof which now covers the spring, but at the entrance to the mound there is a rather beautiful and touching moment to “Elisha’s spring”. Certainly the area today is very fertile – the principle crop is date palms which are everywhere, and which has long been associated with the city. It is no coincidence that at least one account in the Gospels says that as Jesus entered Jerusalem from Jericho, people welcomed him by waving palm branches.

Also in the town is a sycamore tree, which is said to be the tree that Zachaeus climbed in order to see Jesus over the crowd. Of course, not only is this tree not 2000 years old, it isn’t in the right place. During Jesus’ time, the city was actually not on this spot at all, but some distance away up the side of the mountains – you could see the spot from the mound. Further up the cliff face above Jericho is the Greek Orthodox monastery of the Temptation, reckoning (quite reasonably) that this was the area in which Jesus was tempted in the wilderness after his baptism by John nearby. There is a cable lift going from Jericho up to the mountain where the monastery is located.

On the way North to Ma’agan on the Sea of Galilee where we are staying tonight, we stopped at Beit She’an – the place of King Saul’s death in battle. The exact spot of the battle is today marked by a Kosher McDonalds (perhaps the starkest example yet of the way in which the past is covered over by the present in this land)! There are many archeological digs in the area, but we did not have time to look at them. We did stop at an ancient Roman amphitheatre very near the MacDonald’s site where Saul was killed, which was used during the 2nd to 4th Centuries AD for lion fights and gladiatorial fights (it even had a gladiator school). The lions would have been the local breed, smaller than the African lion, although there are no lions left in the region – the Crusaders killed them all. At the time when the amphitheatre was in use, Beit She’an would have been the second largest city in the area, some 20-30 thousand inhabitants.

We then got back on the bus and headed North for Galilee, arriving at the Ma’agan Eden Holiday Village after sun-down. This is a very different place to the kind of places we have stayed at so far, resembling a family holiday park. We are staying in individual bungalow style rooms not unlike cabins in a caravan park. It is very comfortable, with the two things that we most need to make this place a true “Eden”: free and fast wifi internet connection in our rooms and a place to hang up our washing outside. The place started just before the Second World War as a Kibbutz for young Zionists. It is still a Kibbutz, with a farm attached for growing food and running dairy cattle, but the Holiday village is the main source of income for the community today. The Kibbutz is on the very shores of the Southern end of the Sea of Galilee, which looked very pretty with the lights of the surrounding towns reflecting in the water.

We celebrated mass for Christ the King tonight before heading down to a very nice dinner in the dining hall (which is more like a big buffet camp refectory than a hotel dining room). The night was calm and so I sat outside under the verandah of our room, to smoke my pipe and do the nightly blogging and picture backup/upload. I skyped my family (who were just getting up and preparing to go to church), and then prepared for bed. Because our room has a separate lounge and bedroom, Fr Peter decided to move his bed into the lounge room so we effectively have a room each to ourselves for the next few nights. It is just after midnight now, and so I will upload this in the morning.