Day Four

Today we visited Bet Shean. It was a Greco-Roman city built around a tel, first settled five to six thousand years ago and one of the cities of the Decapolis. The city contained everything any Roman city had, like a bath house, theater, ampitheater and a temple. The temple was built for the local town god. The temples were eventually replaced by churches. Teachings were held in the theater and the bath house was used for baptisms. This was so that Christianity could be slowly integrated into the pagan community.

We traveled to Capernaum, the town where Peter lived. This was the town where Jesus centered his ministry out of. Here He healed Peter's mother-in-law. We saw the ruins of the ancient synagogue. It was made of limestone and was built exactly on top of the one that Jesus would have taught in.

We took a boat ride on the Sea of Galilee and saw an authentic fishing boat from the time of Jesus. The boat ride was about an hour long. During the ride we saw many cities around the Sea, including Magdala. We could also see some traditional sites like the Mount of Beatitudes. At the very end of our day, a few of us, including my parents and I were baptized on the Jordan River.