Israel Day 14: Hazor, Dan, and the Golan Heights

I don't really feel like posting pictures tonight. I might come back and add them later. But here's the impression report.

Today we started off the day heading to Hazor. This was a location I had heard a lot of people talk about, but I didn’t know much about it. One interesting thing about it is that it is a very large tel (mound) which means it was probably a very large city. The tel is over 200 acres. This is huge, especially when compared to places like Jericho which is only seven acres. There were two things I found interesting there.
The first is that Hazor is currently an active dig site. There were people doing excavations while we were walking around. This was interesting especially because we got to talk with someone who has excavated there for several seasons now. Honestly though, my main initial impression was that it’s another antiquities site that has had some reconstruction done to it, but it’s till an antiquities site. There were a few interesting things there, but overall, it’s already run together in my mind with most of the other tels I’ve been to.
The second interesting thing that happened there for me was that I spotted a rough tailed agama while Dr. Rasmussen was talking about something (I think it was a storehouse). I lifted up my camera and managed to get one shot of it before I was yelled at for taking a picture while he was lecturing. To be perfectly honest, I was really annoyed by that. Agamas are not terribly common lizards to see when there are so many people around. Compound that with the fact that the rough tail agama only occurs in part of Israel—a part I’m only in for a few days—and the agama had my sole attention. The tel has been there for thousands of years and it will probably continue to be around for many more. That agama will not be. That means to this point, I’ve seen ibex, two different frog species whose pictures I need to check against a field guide to be sure what they are, several bird species (mainly pigeons and doves though), a spider I have yet to identify because the only field guide for it I’ve seen so far was in Hebrew, and a lizard I only saw the tail of so I’m not sure what it is. I was hoping to see more wildlife here. I guess I’ll just have to keep my fingers crossed!
One of our next stops was Tel Dan and the nature preserve there. The nature preserve was absolutely beautiful. I wish we had been able to spend more time walking through a few of the trails to hopefully see the wildlife instead of rushing through it all to get to the antiquities site. I recognize that the antiquities sites are important, and there was some fascinating stuff there, but there’s really something to be said for enjoying God’s creation. Man’s creation is interesting, but I find God’s far more magnificent. That’s why I’m so glad to be able to spend some time here sitting on the shore of the sea of Galilee watching the water and sky and listening to the waves lap against the shore.
The main part of the antiquities component of Tel Dan that I found interesting was listening to Dr. Richter talk about site B which she and Dr. Stone, along with some students from Asbury, helped excavate. The most fascinating part of her talk was when she was talking about the Muslim graves they excavated as part of that site. The anthropologist that worked with them there was able to estimate the ages of the people buried there fairly accurately. Not only that, but the anthropologist was able to determine things like how well they ate and how hard they would have worked by closely examining the skeletons. This makes the site more real because it gives it a face (well, skull really) and some form of an identity. It made the site more human to me.
Visiting Qasrin was an interesting site because of all the reconstruction done. We got to go in a reconstructed house to see how a family might have lived several thousand years ago. The most moving part of this was listening to Dr. Richter talk about how in a given family, everyone would have known everyone else’s business because they all lived in such close quarters. Not only that, but everyone in the community knew everyone else’s business. Isaiah uses an analogy at one point of a women in labor who is losing all of her strength and cannot birth a child. In this situation at that time, that was a death sentence for both mother and child. Dr. Richter went on to talk about how when a woman first went into labor, the whole community would be aware of what was happening because of her cries and the activity of the family. As she started to lose her strength the community would realize this and they would know when she died. When this happened, this was not a loss just for the family, but for the entire community. This was absolutely heartbreaking, and it served to put make Isaiah’s analogy become more real. This passage came alive to me like it never had before.
At the tail end of the day, we stopped by Bethsaida to have a quick look around. This site was interesting mainly because what we visited is called et-Tell. The reason for this is that we’re not sure that this is the location of Bethsaida. It seems to be a good candidate, but it’s anything but certain. It showed me just how difficult it can be to be certain of the physical location of a place mentioned in the Bible. Names change over time, and as this happens, some names get lost to history. Bethsaida is one of those sites.
Overall, today was a good day that allowed me to see more of God’s beautiful creation. It’s really helped me to feel more of a connection to events in the Bible and the locations at which they took place.