JBC Israel 2013

Thanks to Bruce Cotharn for today's dialog.

We had a very nice breakfast this morning and headed out of Tel- Aviv on the bus @ 8 am heading due north along the coast on Hwy # 2 to Caesarea. You could see the Mediterranean to the west for almost all of the drive. Ziggy /Ze 'evve, the comedian, told us historical story after historical story of the area.

One of the most interesting to us Louisianian's familiar with swamp land was that the land had been nothing BUT swamp land. Eucalyptus trees were shipped in from Australia and planted. The deep rooted trees soaked up miles and miles of the swamp land, which allowed for the Israelis to develop it. Later in the day he also told us Israel Nature Fund which was started to bring in and plant trees throughout Israel because there were none at the time....now there are millions!

At Caesarea we watched a short film about how it took King Herod the Great 12 years to build the city. Christianity began there and the Roman Gov't under Ponticus Pilot is confirmed from archeological findings of his name on a seat in the amphitheater and other evidence of his name on stones.

Herod used his knowledge of Roman engineering to not only build the greatest port for exporting goods by building a deep water pier for the ships, but he did it from a shallow water beach!

Herod also made it an entertainment mecca with a 4 thousand seat Amphitheater and Hippodrome. We joked whether Roland Thompson could count all of those 4k people. :)

The Hippodrome where the chariots would race seven laps and where the movie Ben Hur was filmed, also held the lions by putting them in one way to hold them and bringing them out another. Ziggy also showed us mosaics that were laid heading to a swimming pool from Herod's palace.

The Amphitheater with building materials brought in from all over Europe but mostly from Spain and Italy, with completely unobstructed stadium seating view was an engineering marvel but most impressive were the acoustics. Alan Shoumaker sang a verse of ' How Great Thou Art ' from the stage as we were behind him towards the sea standing where the guests of honor would arrive in their chariots....you could hear Alan perfectly! Currently Ziggy said, they have some summer - Oct. concert series, perfect weather, breeze off of the Mediterranean Sea, beautiful music...makes a nice evening of entertainment.

From 1959 - 1964 an Italian expedition group found the Amphitheater under sand. Sand had completely covered up this great cities entertainment area over the centuries and centuries...Ziggy said the Italians thought they were going to have to dig deep, but instead simply learned they had to remove sand for five years. Today a $ 3 million dollar donation has been given to help the restoration.

Because my Father spent his entire working career in the water works business getting water to housing and business developments all over the world, I was very intrigued by the method of which Herod got drinking water to the Roman Army and into Caesarea and this the great city of activity and business...he built a 7.5 mile aqueduct coming off of Mt. Carmel to the city. The arches of the aqueduct stand about 7 ft tall, NOW in the sand and about 18-20 ft high by my guess...I didn't confirm with the Smart family of engineers concerning the height on the height ...but I did ask coming off of the mountain how much elevation change over the 7.5 miles did they think it took to help gravity move the water...Ridleys answer was... ' Probably just a little bit was all he needed...(holding his thumb and finger close together) but don't think he had a code of so much per foot (of course he quoted the exact number :) like we do for sewage !' The width of the channel to me was about 2ft wide...but the depth looked 3-4 ft...they could move water in that thing for sure!

In the Amphitheater Bro French read to us from Acts 10:44 where the Bible speaks of Peter's vision and for him to carry the message to the Gentiles from Jaffa to Caesarea. The very places we had traveled, simply came alive in our minds. Mark Stewart told Ridley Smart he had to go back and do his study of Acts AGAIN, now that he has seen Caesarea!

Also Bro. French read the Bible about Paul making his plea/appeal because he was a Roman citizen to return to Rome. He did this after spending two years in prison in Caesarea. The area where he was kept was back under part of the Hippodrome. Bro. French also said an amazing statistic about Paul was that every Roman guard who was in charge of him, he led to Christ!