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Toward the end of my stay in Israel, i ventured up to the Sea of Galilee to see where Jesus walked. 

Tiberias shoreline in the Sixties

I forget if i took the train or the bus, but by the time i arrived in Tiberias it was late afternoon. There was nothing much there but crumbling walls and rocks returning to earth.  Now, as of yore, fishermen dragged their nets into the sea and, now as then, fishing was a slimy business.  The sun was setting but the stones still radiated a languid heat from earlier in the day and flies busied themselves over the odorous remains of market.  

I moved on up the road to the youth hostel at Tabqha which was cool and empty.  I had six metal bunks without mattresses all to myself in the large room with a tile floor and pale blue walls.  There wasn't much of anything to do but wait till dark and go to sleep until morning. 

Since at least the days of Constantine's mother, St. Helena, pilgrimism has been a business in the Holy Land and it surprised me to see so little evidence of it.  There were no big hotels, no warrens of curio shops, no crowds.  The only sign to the scene of Christianity's most universally remembered occasions (apart from the Resurrection which took place elsewhere) was a bent traffic sign which read "K'fer Nahum  2km -->" It was almost as if the place had been forgotten.

But of course the place had not been forgotten. There were the usual Roman and Greek churches divying up the "places where...."  The Romans got the mount of The Sermon on which Benito Mussolini had commissioned the Church of the Multiplication.  The Greeks got the probable remains of the houses of The Seven Apostles near to whereabouts Jesus had cured a lame man and stilled the waters.  As for the rest, it was given over to intermittent archeology. 

The whole arc of the northern shore was peaceful and desolate.  I liked it that way.  I had the tranquil shores of Galilee to myself and my spiritual imaginings. In the morning (or perhaps the evening before) i bought some white fish, a loaf of bread and a small bottle of wine with which  i headed off in the direction of Capernaum for a Holy Picinic by the water. 

Pebbly beach where i ate my loaf and fish

The picnic wasn't much.  I got there. I ate. That was that, except i felt privately foolish for what now struck me as a corny idea. 

Capernaum was not visible from the dusty shoreline road i was traveling.  It was beyond a hillock before me, but as far as i could see there was nothing there.  My heart sank as i wondered if "the ruins at Capernaum" would turn out to be just another rocky hole in the ground like so many other ruins in Israel at the time.  The Walls of Jericho, which looked like a large abandoned well, had been a major disappointment.

But as i rounded the bend and got to the top of the hill, i saw before me a genuine pile of original rocks.  In fact a whole bunch of them all over the place.  Ruins!!!   Not Teotihuacan... not the Roman Forum... but bona fide ruins where one could "be where..." Jesus had been. 

I walked down the unpaved road toward the open gate to the precincts.  A cluster of tall trees shaded a boxy,  stone  building to my right.   Unfortunately, the "museum" or "archeology institute" was closed, it being Tuesday...  So there was not much to do but amble around the ruins of the 3rd or 4th century synagogue and the foundations of what was billed as Peter's House

From the looks of it, Capernaum had been a prosperous community.  The synagogue was rather large, built with heavy square stones and decorated with capitals and entablatures carved in the ornate style of the later empire.

I sat on a ledge and pondered half-heartedly about Jesus walking on stones that had not been laid down during his lifetime.  It was not long before i tired of this game and ended up simply feeling the warmth of the afternoon, staring blankly at the ruins and wondering if the trip up had been worth it.  

Suddenly my idle was interrupted by a cloud of dust appearing over the hillock through which and over which a large, bouncing tour bus emerged. 

"Oh Christ... "

The red bus with large closed and tinted windows came to an abrupt halt which sent up more pufflets of dust from the ground. For some reason i thought of a whale, which sure enough, in brief moments, disgorged tow-headed boys, women in gauzy dresses with sun hats and  men in flowered shirts with camera's hanging on straps around their necks....

I tried not to feel disparagement.  After all, we were all there doing the same thing, only some of us did it quietly.

A preacher or tour guide (i couldn't tell which) had drawn several tourists? pilgrims? in a semi-circle and began to  instruct them on something... Others just ambled about gawking, and no doubt thinking about Jesus.  From the sounds of their voices, they were definitely from the Mid West. 

Out of the crowd, four or five kids coalesced and were led into the precincts of the synagogue where they were lined up in front of some tumbled columns and upside down capitals.   

"Okay kids... let's have a big smile; on the count of three you know what to do..."

Dad hunched down angling his camera...

"One...two... three -" 

"MONEEEEEEEEEEY! came the loud chorus in reply.

It was time to head back to Jerusalem. 

One of the post cards i bought at Mussolini's church on the way out

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