This is up there for me too. Jesus home during His ministry years, and the home of not only Jairus, as in Jairus’ daughter who was raised from the dead by Jesus, but also the home of Peter’s mother-in-law…so Peter’s home and the site of the very first church of Jesus. Seriously…Jesus lived here. For real. Not kidding. In fact, they found “graffiti” where Peter and Jesus’ names were carved into the rock, which is part of why they are sure this was his house. It is also octagonal, like the first churches. I mean…this is really amazing.
Mike says Caphar naum means “town of Naum”. The first thing you see as you come in is a few statues…I think he said St Francis of Assisi, and a sculpture of what looks like a homeless person sleeping on a bench. Right after that is the entrance to the city and houses to the left. As you round the corner, there is a row of period column works that are really amazing. Like this
This one has a menorah carved into it. There were several others with grapes, pomegranates, trees, birds, flowers etc. Really neat, but this one is my favorite:
This one has the Ark of the Covenant. Pretty cool, huh? There are also two mile markers. One Hebrew, and one Roman. So Matthew, the tax collector, would have sat by one of these mile markers and taxed anyone that walked by. Right? As Mike would say, “Are you with me?”. Check these out.
There’s the Hebrew one, and here’s the Roman one.
I haven’t even gotten warmed up yet…check out some of the best pics I got of Peter’s home…
Octagon inside of octagon, but built on top of rectangles. These are walkways Jesus walked…he lived here.
There is a chapel built on top of the main area with glass in the floor so you can see in without going in. They found candles in here. This was where the first Christians had church. Breathtaking.
Pastor points out the representative ironwork in the chapel of the things carved in the wall from the room below…the Alpha and Omega (under his hand) and the P with 2 stars.
Right next door to Peter’s house was Jairus’ house. This would be where his daughter was raised from the dead. Right next door to that was the synagogue. In this picture above you can see the dark stone which was the original first century stone, and then they built right on top of that after it was destroyed, hmmm, I think he said around 200AD, which was when the lighter stone synagogue was built right on top of the old walls/foundation. Here’s a picture with that awesome kid of mine in the synagogue:
We are standing in the room for the men. The women were allowed only in the upstairs room…this was a 2 story building. They weren’t allowed to worship on the main floor with the men.
So obviously I have about 500 more pictures than this, but I tried to pick out good representatives of the main things we saw. Our last stop after Capernaum was a short stop to see a really neat thing that we couldn’t see closer because of lack of time. That is Mt Arbel. There is an entire city of caves dug into a mountain along the valley that Jesus would have walked between Nazareth and the Mt of Transfiguration to get to places like Bethsaida, The Mt of Beatitudes, and Capernaum. It is amazing to see, and pastor said we may hike up there to see it if we have time during the last three days…our hike days. So I may be revisiting this one later. Here a picture though so you get an idea of it.
There are cows grazing there and we had to watch out not to step on cow patties. Those holes are doors and windows. There are way more than this. They were inhabited by Bedouins who still live in home on the other side of the valley. It’s about an hour hike straight up to get there. Seriously. Did I tell you that I had over 12.000 steps today? And I had my watch off for awhile. My feet….oooo. Good news is my back is holding up GREAT. Thank you Jesus!
One more thing I forgot to share too. Right by the Primacy of Peter, we tried to go see a beautiful waterfall that is very close, in walking distance. Due to big-time mud, we could not go see it. However, on the way, we did get to see this…
Again, the picture is sideways, sorry. But this is a cave where Jesus would have went to be alone and pray. I love this. It is really bringing scripture to life. I hope that it does in a small way for you too, through the reading and pictures. I hope you are enjoying the read.
Time for bed…wake up call is in 7 hours. Time to rest! Writing this feels very important to me, though…otherwise I’ll never remember it all. Tomorrow is Bethlehem and the Jordan River and the Dead Sea I believe, too. Then staying the night in Jerusalem. Don’t hold me to it, I was really tired when he ran the list for us. I’ll let you know tomorrow! Good night!