June 2008 Archives

I wasn't terribly sore today when I went to the dig.  I think my sorest part after the first two days is my hands.  Left me explain a little.  I've primarily been working with the pick ax at the site and I break that up with putting dirt into buckets and moving giant rocks.  Anyways, the pick ax is a great tool and I'm getting pretty good at it, thanks in part to Josiah Hagen's influence in the Tech Shop I've been reminded of a great attitude when working...that being "work smarter, not harder" so I've taken time to strike at good spots and use the leverage of the pick ax to get rocks loose in only a couple swings instead of hacking at them dumbly.  However, despite careful planning there are A LOT of rocks (in fact, I think when God finished creating the heavens and the earth he had an abundance of rock leftover and felt like putting them all in Israel as a joke) and I still directly strike a stone quite often and it hurts because the reverberation comes back up the handle.  For you baseball players and fans, it's quite similar to getting jammed when you swing at a pitch on the inside. 

As my title eludes to, we had a major discovery today in my square.  In the last hour of work Darryl Schmidt (our group leader and a fellow Missourian) discovered a glass amulet with the imprint of a Lion on it.  Dr. Schuler gave it to Eva, our resident on site expert on ... well, everything really, but she looked at it and told him that it's from the Byzantine era and that is a fairly significant find for us.  It was found after only a foot down...so that probably means that it was moved there fairly recently instead of being buried about 1500 years ago, so that hurts the find in terms of it's importance.  However, it is still a significant artifact and we were very excited about the find b/c we have the honor of having the first find like this of the dig.

We washed pottery for the first time today.  There's nothing glorious about it at all and I think I rather dread this portion of the day.  However, it is a good chance to just sit and visit with people.  In fact, I learned today that one of our experienced team members, Nancy, went to St. Paul's junior college at the same time as my Uncle Mike.  So, that's another interesting connection I've made on the dig.  Maybe I'll extract an embaressing story about him....there's a couple weeks left here for that.

After the pottery washing and devotion the funny event of my time in Israel happened.  Ok, so...I'll just preface this by saying that I love the group from Canada, they're great group and a real riot at times.  However, despite they're wacky sensibility I wasn't prepared for their latest sense.  The Canadian contigent stood infront of the group and read aloud a prepared statement to the group, but for Dr. Schuler's consideration, in which they requested with all form of pomp and high language for the day off tomorrow so that they may commemorate the most glorious of days for any Canadian, that of course being Canada Day.  The day in which they celebrate their independence, not through the sword and declaration, but through a case of Scotch and an act of British Parlaiment.  I nearly fell out of my chair with laughter, especially after Dr. Schuler was like..."well, you may request....but no".

After that we went to the dining hall for dinner and "enjoyed" a fine dinner of vegetarian dinners, boiled eggs (a staple of every meal seemingly), and milk from a plastic pouch.  Lunch is definitely the best meal.  So much chicken...oh my goodness.

Well, my I-Pod has pretty muched finished charging for the night so I think this is good for today's blog post.

Keep it real America (and watch out for those tricksy Canadians!  If even half their populace is as goofy and crazy as the bunch we have here I have a feeling Canada may invade any day now)

In Christ,
Jake

There is a wonderful breeze blowing off the Sea of Galilee as the sun sets here.  It's absolutely gorgeous. 

The day started for me at 3:45am.  I got up and got ready for the dig and was on the bus by 4:40am.  We mostly set up the camp today during the first half of the morning.  This consisted of pulling the dead weeds (which, for those of you that know my background of growing up on a farm with tons of Green houses in southeast Missouri, means that I have years of experience at pulling up weeds).  These weeds are a bit meaner than the kind that grow in southeast Missouri.  These weeds have terrible thorns that go right through leather work gloves and cotton work pants.  After the weeds were cleared we set up our tarps so that we can work with some shade.  This is very important to have b/c even though we do a lot of work in the cool of the morning it gets HOT the last couple hours on that mountain top.

A staple of the Israeli diet, much to my chagrin, consists of combining cucumbers and tomatoes into combinations.  I anticipate relying upon the bread, nutella spread, and boiled eggs for breakfast... The first day was pretty exciting already b/c one of our sub teams found a gold coin at the site.  The time period is yet to be determined on the coin.

The afternoon at the Kibbutz was lackadaisical.  At six this evening (about 10:00am central time for yall back in the U.S.) we had a worship service.  Dr. Chambers lead us in Compline and gave an excellent Homily. 

After that we had dinner, which consisted mainly of leftovers from Breakfast.  Tonight there's a big party outside the Pub for the Final game of the Euro Cup b/w Germany and Spain.  The Israelis are very excited and we quite emphatic that we should come.  However, it's going on a bit late for those of us that get up early to work.

Keep it real, America!

In Christ,
Jake  

I've received a few emails from folks that seem to be having trouble commenting on my blog.  I took a peek at the settings and anyone should be able to comment on my blog now.  Sorry for any confusion on that.

Today was quite the day for the group.  My day started off at 2:30am (Israeli time) b/c I couldn't stay asleep since my body's clock is quite confused.  I forced myself to go back to sleep at 3:00am and got up at 6:30.  I went and did some reading on the edge of the Kibbutz by the shore of the Sea of Galilee. 

The group headed out to do some touring at 8:30am.  Dr. Schuler gently reminded those of us who brought less than 2 Liters of water with us that morning (I only brought my one Nalgene bottle this time) that we would not be allowed to bring that little with us again.  From the parking lot of the Kibbutz the bus took us up the mountain so that we could tour the Hippos Site.  If you haven't taken the Virtual Tour yet from the site, I suggest you do.

The site itself is quite amazing.  If you don't already know, the Hippos Site is the largest international team working in Israel.  We represent the American and Canadian contigent respectively and work on the Northeast Church.  Another team is from the University of Haifa, here in Israel, and they excavated the main Cathedral of the town.  Another team from the University of Warsaw in Poland excavate the Northwest Church that overlooks the Sea of Galilee.  The northeast church is the most rag tag church on the site but we do have a claim to fame.  It's a Byzantine church but we're the only Byzantine Church that is known to have a woman buried in the church complex.  So yeah, that's pretty dang special.

We finished our extensive tour of the Hippos Site and then moved on to the Historic Pilgrimage site of Kursi, off the coast of the Sea of Galilee. Kursi is the last site on the ancient Byzantime pilgrimage trail in the Holy Land.  Tradition would have you believe that it is the site of Jesus casting the demons out of two men and into a herd of pigs that ran into the Sea.  There is also a partially reconstructed Byzantine church.  The odd thing about the site is that there is a bath house in the complex.  The bath house is not something that normally goes hand in hand with a monastery because a bath house is about leisure and doing business deals, it is for the wealthy.  So, why would a monastery have a bathhouse if monks don't use it?  Well, the theory is that the wealthy are the ones that go on Pilgrimages to the Holy Land and they are accustomed to a certain lifestyle, so a bath house was built there as an accomodation for the rich and the monks probably made a little money through that to keep the monastery running.  In fact, in the ruins of churches I've seen here it is not uncommon at all for a wine press or olive press or some other small business to be attached to the church to help it make money to keep going. 

After visiting the historical pilgrimage site at Kursi we ventured on to Capernaum.  The site is quite small but today it was extraordinarily packed!  We arrived amidst an onslaught of tourists, except these weren't just any tourists.  We encounter loads of conservative church leaders from the Anglican Church that just held their first conference called GAFCON (Global Anglican Future Conference).  Here's link to an article about some things they discussed, click here. Something that was quite noticible about this group of church leaders is that they were predominantly African church leaders, with scattered from Asian countries and other Global South Nations.  Anyways, back to the topic at hand.  Capernaum is quite small. There is a modern church built over the supposed house of Saint Peter.  They also claim to have the synagogue of Jesus.  However, Dr. Schuler explained in detail why that would not be the case.  They have an old stone foundation from the first century but it probably was not built to be specifically used as a synagogue.  Instead, a young and up coming Roman military officer probably commissioned the creation of a public building and the people were probably like, "Hey, you built us a building we can use as a synagogue" so it became passed down to the generations that it was built as a synagogue when in fact the most probably scenario is that the building was just built to be a public structure and the townsfolk saw fit to use it as their synagogue.  
,
The next stop today was to The Church of the Multitude at a site called Tabgha, which is famous for the seven springs located there.  This is the traditional site where it is said that Jesus fed the 5,000.  Again this is the traditional location for the miracle and there isn't any evidence for this being the actual location of the miracle.  However, the importance of this site is that this is where Christians have come for nearly 2,000 years to remember this miracle and that counts for a lot.

Our final destination of the day was the Church of the Beatitudes. This is a modern church and not ancient at all.  The site is modern and quite comfortable.  It is, of course, the traditional site of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. The nuns are very strict about people observing a respectful dress code and it was quite funny to hear and see the nuns chastising girls that came dressed in clothing revealing a little too much skin for the Nuns liking.  Those poor Italian tourists didn't know what to do with the Nuns being grouchy with them.  I got a good laugh out of that.  On the whole the Church and it's complex is an excellent location for a time of contemplation and reflection on God's Word.

Tomorrow is the first day of digging and we have to be up and at the bus by 4:40am.  I'm excited to finally get to work and discover something!

Take care America!

In Christ,
Jake

Greetings one and all!

My first post to you from the dig comes as I sit in a chair over looking the Sea of Galilee.  You may remember this Sea from the Bible....you know, it's the one that Jesus walked on the water and St. Peter fell into after he tried to walk on water too.  The lake the Apostles were fishing in when Jesus called them to the ministry.  I went swimming in this Sea this afternoon.  It was awesome!

It's been a very long day and we're all really tired.  The challenge has been to stay awake and go to bed at the proper time so that our bodies get used to the new timezone.  For my part I was able to get a couple hours sleep on the flight to Tel Aviv but most of the group couldn't get a wink of sleep on the flight.

Also, if you're ever in Israel be careful about the drinks you buy.  Nathan bought a can with a eagle on it and thought it was soda but it actually tasted like coffee mixed with alcohol.  Yeah, that didn't taste very good at all.  If only I had a year of Hebrew under my belt already!

Tomorrow is gonna be a busy busy day so I'll wrap it up for tonight.  Till next time!

In Christ,
Jake

This is my first post from Israel!  We're in the terminal in Tel Aviv.  One of our group got held up at Passport control.  Anyways...on to passport control.

Hello Friends and family!  Welcome to my blog that I'll be keeping while I'm in Israel for the dig at Hippos.  I hope to keep you all up to date with my posts about any adventures I get myself into while on this trip.  If any of you actively use an RSS feeder to read your news or other blogs online then I humbly suggest you add my little blog to your RSS feeder.

For those of you that don't know.  I leave tomorrow morning from the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport around 8:45 - 9:00am.  Planes tend to leave whenever they feel like it so I find that it is better to provide people with a time frame instead of a specific time.  From MN we fly to Newark, NJ to meet up with the rest of our group from the states and then fly out Thursday evening for Israel.  We'll be arriving in Tel Aviv around 9:30am Israeli time (for those of you in the Midwest that's about 1:30am central time, so I am told)

I'm pretty much completely packed up and ready to go.  I've got my papers ready to go and passport in hand. 

In preparation for my departure I shaved my head yesterday.  I think this may be the shortest my hair has ever been.  For those of you with facebook please check out the photo albums I posted to see a picture.  If you don't have facebook but are still curious email me and I can shoot you a picture via email. 

Anyways, time to make a few phone calls and finish with the packing.  More to come later!  Love you all!