Korazim, Bethsaida, Gamla

In my previous post I mentioned Paul and Mary Hewerdine. I ought to say a few more words about them.

I met them at Mass at St. Peter's Church here in town on Monday evening, the day I checked out the rabbinic tombs. I hadn't been feeling well, both physically suffering from a cold and having experienced a growing sense of purposelessness over the past week or so. I'd determined to get up and check out the tombs for the day in order to get myself back on track, and make it to Mass that evening.

After chatting with them for a bit and explaining what I was doing here all by myself, they invited me back up to their place for a coffee (which inevitably, due to their generous hospitality, turned into a delicious turkey and chili dinner). Paul and Mary Hewerdine are originally from Illinois, but have been here in Israel for twelve years as part of a ministry of prayer for this land and its people. As part of their ministry they take care of pilgrims and other wayward souls who happen to pass their way. It's a fine Catholic tradition of prayer and hospitality that pops up every now and again in history in such organizations as the Benedictine monasteries and the Knights Hospitaler.

As part of their ministry, they offered to take me around to a couple sites that I wasn't sure how I'd get to: Korazim, Bethsaida, and Gamla. Korazim and Bethsaida are known to those of us who read our New Testament; Jesus curses both towns for their lack of faith: "Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes." (Luke 10:13).

These sites are now uninhabited but they were sporadically settled for the eighteen centuries after Christ. Both are build in rock like at Capernaum. Korazim has a particularly impressive reconstruction of its fourth century (A.D.) synagogue, pictured left. Both towns sit on hilltops overlooking the lake; however, Bethsaida was on the lake in Jesus' day. An earthquake in the fifth century changed the topography of both the lake, causing it to retreat back from the plain that now sits on its north shore, and elevating the site of the town. Bethsaida was at the time a fishing village much like Capernaum. Two of the more interesting ruins there are a set of houses, one of which contained numerous wine-making instruments, of which clearly belonged to a fisherman's family. These have been appropriately dubbed 'the winemaker's house' and 'the fisherman's house.' There isn't much to take pictures of at Bethsaida (and best of luck finding any on Google image search), but I managed to snap a photo of the wine cellar in the one house.

Gamla is not mentioned in the scriptures, but it was a major site in the first century. The identification of the well-known Gamla of today, where I visited, with the Gamla detailed in Josephus is up for debate. Josephus records the destruction of a mountain village called Gamla at the beginning of the first revolt against Rome (A.D. 66) and indeed, the site today called Gamla was a mountain village destroyed by a Roman attack at around that time. Numerous arrowheads and a breach in the wall evidence the destruction. However, Jerome Murphy-O'Conner in his The Holy Land: An Oxford Archaeological Guide, places the site of Josephus' battle farther to the east, in present-day Syria, for a number of incidental topographical reasons (for instance, the citadel in Josephus' account is on the south side of the mountain summit, whereas the citadel on this fortress is on the western slope). In any case, this site, originally called Khirtbet es-Salam, has been identified as Josephus's Gamla and is now known almost exclusively by that name.

Pictured left is Gamla, which sits between two hills where two wadis come together, and the valley strangely rises up into a peak. Gamla means 'the camel's hump,' and from the shape you can see why. The eastern slope, on the left, is the primary site of the ruins. You can see the defensive wall running down on the west-east axis of the eastern slope, which was the only one that didn't provide a natural defense. It was this wall that the Roman legions breached to enter the city.

It's ruins are extraordinarily impressive, and the topography is straight out of Lord of the Rings. Without going into too much detail, the central feature is the synagogue: it is quite possibly the earliest excavated synagogue in existence, having been destroyed in A.D. 66 and therefore having been built well before the destruction of the temple. This, together with the slightly later synagogue at Masada, tell us that synagogues had some sort of function in the first century while the temple was still standing. They seem to have arisen first as a community meeting spot (sun aggoge merely meaning 'place of gathering' in Greek), but because of the centrality of religion to social life must have had a religious significance very early on. They may have developed as early as the Babylonian exile, where the Jewish people were scattered and without a central temple complex, but the first century provides the first examples that we physically possess.

The landscape around Gamla was filled with wildlife. On Facebook you can see pictures of lizards, vultures, and flowers that people come to this spot to see. The vultures are of particular interest, as this is one of the few places in Israel where they nest in such numbers. In one picture I managed to catch six of them in flight all at once, though you may not be able to see them all in the shot. Gamla also has one of the Golan's many magnificent waterfalls. It's tiny, but if you magnify the picture of the western wadi I have here you should be able to see it right in the center.

Tonight, I move from the Aviv Hotel into the home of Paul and Mary to escape the rains that are supposed to come this week. Pray for them and for their ministry, as you have prayed for Alex and his family in Nazareth. There's no doubt the hand of Providence is upon me; there are simply too many blessings to count.