June 2008 Archives

Due to technical problems last night, I lost my first attempt at writing up yesterday's events. Below is today's version, which extends through most of today's happenings too. Enjoy!

* * *

Yesterday was the first digging day of the season, which meant that we actually only dug for the second half of the morning. The first half was spent gathering equipment, setting up the heavy metal frames for the sun-screens, listening to talks about safety and appropriate use of our tools, and showing the first-timers some of the basics of archaeological technique. Tedious as most of these tasks were, we were blessed with beautiful weather conditions: cloud cover that protected us better than any sunscreen, and cooler temperatures than we had any reasonable right to expect. It was still warm, for sure, by Alberta standards, but in objective terms that meant no more than about 28 degrees. Even later, when the sun came out, it still didn't get much more than about 32.  Nothing to complain about there at all!

Yet still it felt plenty hot, no question. For academics, church-workers, and office-types like the majority of us are, heavy work of any sort in this type of humid heat is unaccustomed toil. I actually felt just fine, apart from this heavy cold that began about a week ago and stubbornly persists. The dust aggravated my cough and made me kind of wheezy by the time we got on the bus to head down the hill again at 12:30 (half an hour later than usual, due to some scheduling problems with the bus company). But otherwise I fared much better, it seemed, than a lot of folks. It's one thing to anticipate hard work in theory, but quite a different thing to encounter its gritty monotonous in reality.

Actually though it wasn't wholly monotonous, in our square anyway. We returned to F-0, or at least it was a return for me to a place I spent a great deal of time in two years ago. The "baulk" we had left at that time, separating F-0 from E-0, now had to be removed as part of this year's larger project of opening up the whole of the church's atrium area. Only a metre wide by five metres long, this baulk was a perfect place to train our team: we knew pretty well already that there weren't any major structures to deal with, just a few tumbled stones from the 749 earthquake amid a lot of relatively loose rubble. So the guys got to practice their technique with pick, turreah, and trowel in a fairly benign environment. Along the way, we had a good time chatting and getting to know each other too, since our group of six was fairly mixed. From our Canadian group there were three of us: me, Ian Wemyss, and Bill Hayes. One prof from Concordia-St. Paul, Dr. Jim Gimbel, director of church-work programs. One prof from a conservative Anglican seminary in Wisconsin, Dr. Dan Westberg. One retired Baptist pastor from Arkansas, Gene Balding. It was fun, chatting and laughing plenty throughout the hours of work.

It was also downright exciting, too, a few times--especially when, about ten minutes into the work, Ian found a small bronze coin just a couple of centimetres from the surface. Neither he nor most of our group first realized, of course, how significant a find this was ("You mean this doesn't happen every ten minutes every day?"), but as the hours went by and it remained a single coin, the reality of its rarity began to sink in. During the whole of the 2006 season, we found just one coin in the entire site (the North-East Church)!

Anyway, the digging part of the day ended by lunchtime and, arriving back at the kibbutz, we had a hearty and surprisingly good meal in the dining hall before heading down for a dip in the lake. The water level is very low this year, as I mentioned before, but the swimming is still pretty fine, with an absolutely perfect water-temperature, neither too cool to be chilly nor too warm to be anything less than marvellously refreshing.

I didn't swim long though since I had other things to attend to: first a much-needed, very long nap (two full hours!) and then a rather frenzied final hour or so of work on my sermon. Since it was Sunday, we were gathering for worship down by the lake at 6:00, and since it was the first time we were doing this in this season, I wanted to get things off to a good start. And thankfully we did, I think; more people than I expected commented on how much they appreciated my message. I was especially glad to hear this since Quinn, my roommate and one of our CLS students, had been ribbing me earlier about writing my sermon on the day I was going to preach it: "Is this how you're going to teach us to do this in homiletics class this fall, Dr. Chambers?" My answer seemed to satisfy him at the time: "No, I've actually been thinking about it all week and decided not to write it out until we were here on-site so I could tie it in more closely to our community life." The fact that the sermon actually did go well was more satisfying to me.

Supper was the usual lighter fare--salads, bread, cereal, and fruit--and then I finally had time to do a bit of writing before bedtime arrived at 9:00. A long but satisfying first day, all around.

Today was similar but hotter and faster. We again enjoyed cloud-cover for the first couple of hours, but then it heated up to a more normal operating temperature of perhaps the mid-30s. The work was far more arduous too: no more toying around practicing our technique, it was time to move some serious dirt!

First was the cleaning-up of yesterday's square, F-0. The baulk disappeared early, but then we had to level the floor of the two squares it had formerly separated, since the level to its west was about 15 cm higher than the level to its east. It seemed a simple job, until we started doing it and discovered several big stones just beneath the surface in the south-west corner of the square. Hmm: what was that all about? Without taking that area down quite a bit, and disturbing the newly uniform level we had achieved all the way across the area, there wasn't much we could do beyond articulating the edges of each stone and letting Dr. Schuler have a look. As we move farther, though, into the adjacent square, F-1, we'll definitely want to see if those stones are part of some larger structure.

For that was today's major project, moving 5 metres south into F-1 and starting to work our way down from surface level. This is the most brutal work in the city, opening a new square like this, partly because surface-level soil always tends to be compacted more firmly than the earth that's farther down, and partly because this particular part of Hippos was driven over countless times both by Israeli army vehicles from the late 1940s through the late 1960s and, more recently, by the archaeological expedition's backhoe. Pickaxes are the order of the day for sure, followed by a round of turreah-work gathering the clods into buckets then carting them over to the side of the cliff, followed by more of the same. Making it even more difficult was the fact that we aren't preserving any baulks in this square: normally, these one-metre wide swatches reduce the area to be dug by about 20%.

So we definitely worked hard, no question. On one of our water-breaks, we were resignedly figuring out whose turn it was next to do the pick-work when I commented on the fact that it was us, the oldest group, doing this, the hardest work. I'm not sure whether that observation helped or hurt us, though; I said it thinking it might spur us on to still-greater efforts, but for some at least it seemed to just magnify the soreness of their backs and muscles. Anyway, we did the best we could, and got the top 3-4 inches cleared from most of the square by noontime. That was enough for one day for sure.

After the requisite meal, swim, and nap (much shorter than yesterday's), I planted the seed of an idea among our Canadian group that maybe we should lodge a formal petition to Dr. Schuler to give us tomorrow off as a statutory holiday in honour of Canada Day. So, amid their visiting, e-mailing, reading, and the like, a suitable appeal was drafted for submission after tonight's devotion. Stay tuned, tomorrow, for a report on how it was received!

One of the most memorable sayings of the 2006 trip has already become a slogan of this 2008 edition, on the very first day we're here. "Embrace the heat," she said--an Israeli woman from Montreal who sat beside me on the flight to Tel Aviv two years ago. I had asked her if she had any suggestions for coping with the extreme climate change between home and here, and that was what she instantly came up with. It's good advice today too.

For man was it hot today! I asked Bill Hayes, mid-morning while we were touring the Hippos excavation, how he was doing, and his instant response was "Hot." I asked him again, mid-afternoon, how things were going, and again he gave a one-word answer, "Hot." I know from other conversations that Bill does indeed have more than a one-word vocabulary, so I take it that he really meant this reply!

Actually the heat took a toll on us all today. Another of our Canadians, Katie Anderson, got a little woozy not just once but twice. I chugged through my two litres of water in no time flat, then bought more, then re-filled my water bottle, and still felt thirsty. Who knows the temperature, but the thermometer's not the main thing anyway. Not even the howling wind helped cool us down all that much, after traipsing around all day.

We saw some neat sights, of course. Even though I'd been to them all before, hearing Mark's commentary a second time and building on what I too have read and learned since 2006 made each visit a fresh experience. One thing I hadn't thought of much before was just how limited Jesus' "world" really was. Realizing that he spent almost all of his life, apart from periodic trips to Jerusalem, in this area right around the Galilee was one thing that struck me with great force on our first trip. "This was his home turf--all this area I can see from the top of this dig!" But now a greater refinement has kicked in: No, not all of this area, but just a very small part of it was where Jesus spent most of his time, according to the Gospels anyway. This whole side of the lake we're living on, the east shore of the lake, was Gentile territory-- he seems to have only visited it once (when he cast the demons into the swine, somewhere right around here at Hippos). And the city right across from us, Tiberias, also seems to have been off-limits-- at least there's no record of Jesus ever having been there. And given its prominence as a political centre, built as a new capital on the Roman model just before Jesus was born, it really would make sense for him to have avoided it. So the scope of the land that he did visit and call home has been shrinking for me, visit by visit. I haven't really decided yet if I think that's cool, or disappointing!

Quinn Moerike, one of our sem students, had a neat comment while we were bobbing in the lake after getting back to the kibbutz in late afternoon. "This feels great," he said; "maybe even better than seeing all those holy sites!" Sort of like apples and oranges, really, but I knew exactly what he was getting at. Yes, the water level in the lake is so far down this year that all of the sandy areas are well-exposed, meaning that swimming has to take place "way out there," after quite a walk. And yes, today's ferocious wind had whipped up such a chop that we it was pretty much impossible to really "swim." But the sheer refreshment of plunging in, sweat-soaked and weary as we were after almost eight hours of hoofing around in this heat, was practically miraculous. "I think I've got an appointment, right here, at 12:30 every day," I said to our little group of swimmers-- Bill, Quinn, and Darren Siegle.

OK, so it's hot; I've dwelt on that enough now that I probably won't have to say too much about it later (though that's not an open-ended promise, sorry). But it's still fabulous to be back in this country again anyway. On many levels and for many reasons, it really does seem to be a holy land.

You'd think-- or I would , anyway-- that I would be a little less hurried and stressed right now than the others in our group, if only by virtue of experience. Such a veteran I am, eh?-- having done this once before! They call second-year students "sophomores" for exactly this reason-- "wise fools"-- having just enough knowledge and experience to be truly dangerous. Maybe that's what I am too, in this sophomore season of my archaeological avocation. Let's hope not!

Lots to do. Some of it was easily foreseeable-- laying out clothes, gathering excavation gear, reading the students' short papers on methodology, the Galilee, Byzantine Christianity, etc. Those chores have all unfolded pretty much as expected. It's the unexpected things that have been, well, unexpected (for lack of a better word). Like suddenly realizing I simply can't remember which of the pairs of very thick wool socks in my drawer seemed so wonderful on the dig two years ago, leading to the realization that maybe I'd better make sure I get some new and thinner ones. Or gathering together camera gear and, again, suddenly realizing that it might not be the smartest move in the world to take along our almost-new, fairly expensive Sony-- yikes! Maybe I'd better pick up a cheap and basic model just for this trip (and for our son Kevin's trip to Japan, and our other son Jonathan's trip to Germany). You get the idea, anyway.

Major decision item at this point: How much reading material should I bring? I've spent two years gathering articles and books on Hippos, the Galilee, Jerusalem, Byzantine Christianity, and so forth. Haven't had time to read many of them yet. Wouldn't mind some good reading material on the plain. Also wouldn't mind having them available for students too, in those inspired moments when they rush up in a fervor after reading something in Scripture or seeing some particular sight, saying, "Got anything I can read on this subject, Doc?" (Yeah sure, as if...) But my suitcase space is no greater than anyone else's: two times fifty pounds. And books are heavy. And the binder of reading material just for E-573, Field Archaeology, is four inches thick. I guess it's time to see if I can actually apply in my own life the same maxim I've been telling everybody else: "Most people who travel tend to take too much stuff." Why am I suddenly thinking of another maxim instead, Jesus' "Physician, heal thyself"?

Seventeen days until we leave. Two years ago, I was pretty well-prepared already by this time. This year I'm not. Partly I think it's because I'm more complacent this time-- feeling that I know the ropes. Partly it's because I've been very busy with many other duties, both at seminary and at home. At any rate, I need to get with the program pretty quickly, for my sake and for the sake of this year's Canadian contingent. 

We've got a much larger group than last time-- again two seminary students, but supplemented by six other people affiliated with our Lutheran Church-Canada. I'm absolutely delighted to have such a large and fine group to travel and work with, but what it means to be their "leader" is still a bit of a mystery to me. I've planned the trip, collected their information (and money), and answered a lot of their questions. But how I'm going to actually function in a leadership mode isn't something I've got worked out yet. They're not seminary students... nor parishioners. Hmmm. Another reason to get onto this dig business again, with greater focus, pretty fast!