Thursday: Dan, Caesarea Philippi, and the Golan Heights

Wednesday had been a miserably hot and humid day in Galilee and our travels had been particularly uncomfortable. When I looked out my window and saw these clouds in the morning, I feared another sweat-soaked day. Fortunately, the clouds that gave such beauty, were not harbingers of heat and humidity and Thursday was bearable.











We went to two very important sites today: Dan and Caesarea Phillipi. Historically Dab was important for two reasons: It was the seat of the tribe and Dan and marked the northern Boundary of the Land which God had given to the Israelites. It was also one of the cult centers established by King Jeraboam after the political breakup of David's Kingdom. Jeraboam erected a golden calf at Dan and at Bethel, the northern and southern borders of the Kingdom of Israel so that the Israelites would no longer have to go to Jerusalem to make sacrifices. The site of that Golden Calf temple is still visible today. The Site of Dan is also rich with the waters which eventually flow into the Jordan River.











The second site we visited it the technical spring that is the headwaters of the Jordan. The name of the site today is its more ancient name: Baniass. At the time of Jesus, it was the political seat of one of the Herodian Tetrarch and part of what is visible today is Herod Agrippa's 1st C. Palace.

After visiting these important sites, we drove through the Golan Heights near Mt. Hermon, passing the impressive hilltop fort at Nimrod and seeing much evidence of the Arab Israeli conflicts by which the Nation of Israel came into possession of this and much land on the East side of the Sea of Galilee in 1967. The area is beautiful and the vistas are stunning. This area is covered in snow during the winter and forms a beautiful northern highlands of Israel.

There are many more pictures from all these sites at http://picasaweb.google.com/frbart and I will have more to say about them in my final reflections on Galilee and the north.