Janna's Jerusalem Journies: Caesarea--Bible Study field trip #1 (January 20th)

Skye and I host a small Bible Study once a week for some of our fellow Mosse students and a few students we have met along the way. We decided in the beginning that we wanted to take trips together to see places mentioned in the Bible. Our first trip was on January 20th to Ancient Caesarea where Paul spent a couple years before going to Rome for his trial (Acts).

We decided to rent a car and split it between the 5 of us. Public transportation is not as simple here as it is in Europe! Thankfully Dan and Veronica we willing to take care of those details, and split 5 ways, it wasn't very expensive at all.

We left around 9am, and it's about a 2 hour drive from Jerusalem. When we got there it wasn't very busy at all, I assume because it was January and about 60 to 70 degrees, which apparently is cold for native Israelis. It was absolutely perfect for us!

Caesarea is a small ancient city most famously known for Herod's rule there. Herod turned it into a port city and named it after Augustus Caesar. It was a planned city that took twelve years to build and had everything: city walls, a palace, a hippodrome, a theater, a temple, a bathhouse and of course a huge port. The cities water source came from the Shuni springs through a large high-level aqueduct.

These last two years abroad, Skye and I have really been "in touch" with the Romans and their culture. We lived in Trier, the oldest city in Germany, built by Romans. It had many Roman ruins to explore. And we even spent some time in Rome itself. Not to mention we seem to be following around Helena, Constantine's mother, who lived in Trier (if you remember from my Germany blog, it was she who brought the Holy Shirt from HERE--Jerusalem to Trier!). We have seen many of the sites she has been to here, and we met her in Caesarea! In the visitors center they have this cool section where you can pull up holograms of different famous people who spent time in Caesarea, we also met Paul and King Herod.

While seeing all these ancient ruins, I often think about how fascinating it is that a lot of it still remains. They built such beautiful buildings and had such advanced technology but it was hundreds or even thousands of years ago. The most interesting thing to me in Caesarea was perhaps the thing we didn't actually get to see face to face, the port. Well, you can see the port, but you cannot see the port foundations under the water. They have a scuba dive tour of it, but we didn't even want to know how much that cost (also the air may have been a pleasant temperature, but I bet the water would have been freezing). Anyways, the technology of those foundations was so brilliant! They used hydraulic concrete. They filled large boxes with volcanic ash (probably imported from Italy) and put them in the water, as soon as the volcanic ash hit the water it hardened and became very heavy. Most of those boxes are still there supporting the port, they occasionally do maintenance on them, but it was still so amazing to me.

We followed our little numbered map and explored the different sites. It was BEAUTIFUL to be along the coast and to see the Mediterranean. There are tons of shards of old pottery around in some of the walls and other ruins, so we found a few cool pieces to take home. I have no idea what I'll do with them, but I've got them! We ate lunch and wandered around a little more and then decided to drive over to the aqueducts to check those out before we headed out. We had to have the car back by 5pm, perhaps the worst part of renting the car, so we needed to make sure to leave on time.

The aqueducts were along the beach and were massive and beautiful! The sand was powder fine. Skye, David and I took our shoes off and stood in the ocean for a little bit. It was chilly! Skye found a 10 shekel coin that had rusted over pretty bad, which later on we had a lot of trouble spending. Finally we suckered a guy in the old city to take it. I don't think he was thrilled, but it was real money! It just spent some time in the salty sea. It was a nice end to a lovely day.

Escaping the tension and busyness in Jerusalem is a good thing to do sometimes, and quiet, calming and warm Caesarea was just the place to do it! We got the car back on time and "enjoyed" sand in our shoes for the next few days.