People have been picnicking here for thousands of years. In the excavations they found picnic boxes. It's called Panias, after the Greek god Pan. It's a very pagan place.
Spring that is the beginning of the Jordan River
Caesar Augustus gave the area to Herod the Great. Herod built a temple dedicated to Augustus. His son, Herod Philip, renamed it Caesarea Philippi.
Originally this cave was the source of the spring, but it's now down the hill.
It was here, near all these temples to pagan gods, that Jesus asked his disciples,
"Who do people say that I am?" (Mark 8:27)
This was the first women I saw on this trip that was fully covered. Most just wear head coverings.
Nimrod's Fortress. Arabs built the fortress to protect the road between Damascus and Panias after the Crusades.
Syria.
I believe those concrete buildings just over the fence are the remains of Kuneitra. A Syrian city that Israel almost complete destroyed before withdrawing in 1974.
UN Peacekeeping force on the Syrian border.
Mine fields everywhere.
That evening we went to downtown Tiberius for ice cream. Can you see the tree growing from inside the restaurant? There were two of them!
Paul and I left Daniel with the rest of the group by the waterfront and took a little tour of Tiberius on our own since we weren't going to get another chance to see it.
No cheeseburgers at this McDonalds. I learned about the "no meat with dairy" rule on this trip. Because of the verses that say, “Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.” (Exodus 23:19, 34:26, Deuteronomy 14:21), Jews don't eat meat and dairy in the same meal. So at our breakfasts in the hotels, we had no meat but had lots of cheeses, yogurt and milk for cereal and coffee. But for dinners there was meat but no dairy.
We asked some people sitting nearby what this building was. It looks old and important. They told us to read the sign.
We never learned what it is! If anyone can read the sign, please let me know. :-)
People celebrating in the street that Mexico won one of the games leading up to the World Cup. It's hard to tell but some of them are waving Mexican flags and one is wearing a sombrero.
These pictures aren't from this date but I thought I'd put all the Tiberius pictures together. Tiberius was built by Herod Antipas on top of a cemetery. He had to force Jews to move here. After the destruction of the Temple it became the center of Jewish learning. Many important rabbis are buried here.
I saw this old wall every time we drove to and from our hotel but never found out what it is. It's in the middle of the city and you see parts of it on different blocks. Maybe old city walls?
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