Palestine in Spring 1952
By a Watchtower Society missionary
NOW I write you with desire to give you pleasure in traveling with us to the various places of interest here where so much Bible history was made and to convey to you some point of interest which is not apparent in reading the Bible text. For example: Why did Jesus tell his disciples, who were fishing on the Sea of Galilee and who had caught no fish, to cast their net on the opposite side of the boat? Or why did Jesus send Peter to catch a fish to get the coin to pay their taxes? From these questions you have already guessed what our journey is about this time. Yes, you are right. A visit to the Sea of Galilee.
Having spent a most unpleasant cold and rainy winter in Jerusalem, we are ready for a change. So this fine Sunday morning in the latter part of March, while the reproduction and blossoming forth of spring is at its best, we start out for Galilee aboard a rickety old bus with wooden benches for the seating comfort of its passengers. If possible, you can imagine how we are going to enjoy five hours of sitting on a board that will continually remind us that it is hard and unyielding, and not like the springy seats in our American buses.
We are leaving Jerusalem now around noon. The first part of our journey takes us down through the rugged and stony Judean hills to the almost flat and level plain of Sharon. All along the way we observe that these hills, which had looked brown and burnt during the summer, are now covered with a carpet of rich green dotted on every hand with pink and white stones of all sizes and shapes. About these stones, and on the spaces in between, flourish many kinds of beautiful wild flowers. Predominant among these flowers is the bright red poppy which is somewhat bigger than the domestic tulip grown in the States, and the yellow daisy which grows so profusely that in whatever direction one looks he is confronted by multitudinous seas of yellow.
Coming on the plain of Sharon, which strip of land extends in width from the foothills of the mountains of Judah to the Mediterranean sea, the scenery changes. Here we no longer observe the wild beauty of the hills, but the domestic beauty of the grain fields, the plowing and the planting of the crops, and as we come into the vicinity of the old Bible town of Lydda, where the apostle Peter once visited the congregation of Christians and healed a paralyzed man, we are greeted by the fragrant perfume emitted by the blossoming orange, grapefruit and lemon trees from whose branches ripe fruit is still hanging. We pass through Lydda and continue on northward some forty miles to the vicinity of the mountains of Ephraim. All along the route we are continually delighted by the pleasant aroma of perfume-laden air from the blooming vegetation.
An hour later and we are enjoying the roller-coaster effect of the foothills of the mountains of Ephraim, of which Mount Carmel is the western spur. We climb only a few feet and enter the narrow Megiddo pass, through which in ancient times many armies went to the battlefield of Armageddon, the plain of Esdraelon, and through which many rich camel caravans passed with their goods for Egypt and Syria. It is here we see for our first time in Israel a civilization as far back as Abraham. Arabs, dressed in the style of that time, are plowing their narrow patches of land by means of wooden plows. Some are drawn by camels and others pulled along by a yoke of oxen. Once we saw a horse and another time an ass drawing a plow. Many of the Arabs live near their plots of land in black tents made from wool; others live in stone huts. This unusual scene is short-lived, however, because as we come around a bend there lies before the sweep of our eyes another more captivating scene in all the splendor of its springtime dress—the fertile valley called Jezreel in the Bible and outside of the Bible by the names “Plains of Esdraelon” and “Armageddon”.
FELLOW PASSENGERS
Since another hour shall pass before we reach our destination, and since we have become quite accustomed to the verdant splendor of the hills, I will give you some idea of what is going on in this old bus.
Yes, the board on which we sit is still with us. As the hours go by we become more painfully aware of its presence. In the front the driver, a careless, happy-go-lucky individual, is driving like a wild man. It appears that the steering mechanism is badly worn, and because of this he has to fight the wheel to keep this pile of junk on the road. But apparently no one has noticed this except me, because all about us there is hilarious conversation in a half-dozen languages, with wild gesticulation to drive the points home. Nobody cares what the driver is doing. In the aisle of the bus seated flat on the floor are several Temanite women, one of which is breast-feeding a very dirty little baby. The immigrants from Teman before coming to Israel never sat on a chair nor slept in a bed. They consider such things as devices from which to fall and injure oneself. So they sit and sleep on the floor. Many of the passengers are orthodox Jewish men wearing long curls that hang down in front of their ears, which characterize members of an orthodox mystical sect that originated in central Europe.
We are doing a lot of winding around turns now, so I had better get my head back to the window of this contraption and see what goes on outside. There it is! Off to our left and away below us like a jewel unspoiled by man is the Sea of Galilee, with hills all around. While we descend we see the lake change from an infinite variety of blues to green and indigo and silver, according to the changing cloudy sky above. We are surprised to see it so beautiful. The hills on this side are smooth and green, but they look rugged and desolate beyond. We just passed a sign on the rapidly descending road marked “sea level”, which is 680 feet above the lake. We go along for another mile or more through immigrant camps, waving palms and white hotels with Hebrew names, to Tiberias by the sea. Here at our journey’s end we are more than anxious to get off this bus.
ALONG THE SHORE OF GALILEE
After a good night’s rest, we rose early this morning, and, like the letter-carrier on his day off, we are going for a walk. We thought it would be more interesting if we walked the fifteen miles from Tiberias to Capernaum and beyond to where the Jordan enters the lake. Along the lake’s edge runs a good road, so it will be smooth walking. We started about eight o’clock and as we walked along in the quietness of the early morning the birds were chirping overhead among the branches of the giant eucalyptus trees. The fishermen were hanging their nets among these trees to dry and be repaired, because they were wet and torn from having been used for the catch during the night. My imagination began to work again.
Jesus must often have paused upon these hills above on the left of us as we walked northward along the lake, and thought over what he saw, and meditated on how to present the truth to the people he must witness to. But what he saw was greatly different from what we now see. Here, in Jesus’ time ran trunk roads, with busy traffic passing to and fro and taxgatherers sitting at the customhouses to collect the tolls. Here were cities to compare with Tyre, Sidon, Nineveh. Here were noblemen’s houses with many servants, wealthy landlords, whose barns must be torn down and larger ones built to hold the harvest; not country sins alone, but those which curse cities—public prostitution, jealous social conditions, bitter poverty close to fabulous wealth. Here to our right on the lake were fleets of fishing boats, and on the shores miles of fishing nets to be dried and mended. Everywhere around the lake Jesus moved in the midst of a populous cosmopolitan life where one might gain the whole world and lose his life, and where the exacting crowds so wearied him that at times he had to go apart and rest from them.
Today, however, this busy, wealthy life of Galilee is altogether gone. The towns as Jesus knew them have vanished; the trees that once covered the hills are gone; where beautiful gardens once grew, there are morasses, and the lake is empty of sails and the shores idle, and for the most part uninhabited. Only the outlines of nature remain to indicate the setting of Jesus’ ministry.
Just ahead of us in the bend of the road is a house with beautiful gardens and surrounded by palm trees. Here we will rest. No sooner had we walked through the gate and descended the stairs leading down to the big house on the slope than we were met by a kindly gentleman who spoke English. He gave us water, and after exchanging a few words with each other he began to explain fishing on the lake. He pointed out that tons of fish are caught each season along this piece of shore. Because of the warm springs that bubble up here, there are more fish than elsewhere in the lake. Very likely it was here that the apostles came to fish. From the steep bank it is possible to see the fish in the crowded shoals in the water when they are invisible to men in a boat. He said, “I have stood here and called to fishermen and told them where to cast their nets.” Perhaps it was somewhere in this vicinity that Jesus called to his disciples to cast their net on the other side of the boat, but Jesus performed a miracle.—John 21:1-6.
This kind man went on to relate that there are two main kinds of fish in the lake. A little one called the sardine and a bigger one called the musht. The small ones are not really sardines, but they are a sort of fish easy to put within a roll, two of which the lad might have had with five rolls when Jesus fed the five thousand somewhere on these shores. The musht is known as “Peter’s perch”, in whose mouth Peter found the coin to pay his and Jesus’ taxes. He went on to explain that the male fish has a little sac under his mouth. They are often attracted by any bright object, like a ring that has slipped off a finger into the water. It was not impossible, therefore, for the Roman coin to find its way into a fish’s mouth.
We asked him many questions about the location of the different places, mentioned in the Greek Scriptures, along the lake, and he was most helpful. Pointing across the lake to the other shore to the country of the Gerasenes, where Jesus healed the man afflicted by the legion of demons and where the swine ran down the precipice into the sea and drowned, he said, “Draw a line from there to where we are, and north of it took place nearly all the events of Jesus’ Galilean ministry.” He pointed out for us the possible locations of Bethsaida on the far side of the lake, Capernaum to the north where a clump of trees stand at the north end, Chorazin farther away on the hills behind, and Magdala between here and Capernaum. We journeyed on to see some of the places he had pointed out.
The first is Magdala, once the home of Mary Magdalene. But occupying the sight of the town where Mary lived at the starting of the plain near the sea is a group of gruesome mud-brick hovels in which a few immigrants live. How far this town has fallen since Mary’s day!
From here we walk without a letup for almost three hours to the hills north of the lake to the site where it is believed the once great city of Chorazin stood, where Jesus must have taught and healed. No more do the great roads pass by it, thronged with merchants. We cannot even find a path, but follow sheep trails and walk across open fields to where it perhaps was. Except for the views both inland and lakeward, it is a desolate sight. Jesus’ words are more impressively meaningful: “Woe to you, Chorazin!”—Matt. 11:21, NW.
Coming down over the hills from Chorazin toward the north shore of the lake, we continue our journey through a living mosaic of color produced by the thirty or more different kinds of wild flowers, to the most interesting spot on the lake—the possible location of Capernaum. The outlines of many foundations lying uncovered on every hand indicate a once populous community. Here lived Simon Peter and his brother Andrew; here dwelt also Peter’s partners, James and John, the sons of Zebedee; and here is where Jesus did many of his mighty works that drew the attention of the entire lakeside. Here also is where Simon the Zealot, a fanatical rebel against Rome, found agreement by learning the truth with Matthew Levi, who sat in the customhouse and gathered the taxes for Herod Antipas. Today it taxes one’s imagination to picture what Capernaum used to be. Jesus described it as “exalted to heaven”. (NW) As we are leaving the ruins of the last place of interest on our journey, we cannot help but call to mind the other words of Jesus about Capernaum, “Down to Hades you will come.”—NW.
It is now late afternoon, and we must walk back across the fields of Galilee to the main road and catch a ride to Tiberias, where we will take a bus to Jerusalem and there write about the things we saw, so that we can pass them on to you.
The LORD your God is bringing you into a fine land, a land with streams of water, with springs and pools welling up in the valleys and on the hills; a land of wheat and barley, of vines, fig-trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil-producing olives and honey; a land where you may eat food without stint, lacking nothing in it; a land whose stones contain iron, and out of whose hills you can dig copper.—Deut. 8:7-9, AT.