Gina was eager to write yesterday, but alas the keeper of the laptop fell asleep at 8pm and no one could find him (that would be me, Nate).

She will have the reins tonight, and perhaps another student or two!

I will briefly highlight yesterday's stops for you before breakfast and departure for the Dead Sea:

Tel Hazor, destroyed by Joshua 3200 years ago. Destroyed again by the Israelites later on, it would be rebuilt by Solomon along with Gezer and Megiddo. Archaeologists have found the burn layers carbon dated to that time, as well as pottery shards from pots that would have EXPLODED due to the intense heat of the conflagration. Like Meggido and Masada and many others, famed Israeli archaeologist Yigael Yadin lead this site.



Dan, part of a national park and abruptly pulling up at the Lebanon and Syrian border, reveals the incredible site of Abraham's Gate (or the Damascus Gate) through which the father of our faith CERTAINLY walked so many years ago.





Also in Dan we were able to sit in the gate where the local governors and perhaps the wicked king himself would have held sway during the reign of Ahab in Israel. If Elijah ever visited Dan, he would have walked these stones. And the name of King David was found in the stones Ahab used to build rebuild the walls, a profound discovery in its own right.



Caesarea Philippi was built by Herod the Great's son Philip the Tetrarch to honor Caesar, on the same site where the Greeks had worshiped their god of panic, the goat figured abomination Pan. Jesus is said to have neared the city in the Gospels, and outside have asked the disciples who they thought he was.



After an tasty lunch (humus, pita bread, salad, fries, olives, peppers, etc.) in one of the four Druze villages in the Golan we made our way to Gamla, the defiant Jewish settlement which fell to the Romans under Vespasian in 67AD (the future emperor at the end of 69AD). Josephus records that, once the walls were breached and the end seemed near, 5,000 Jewish men, women, and children cast themselves from the peak pictured below rather then taste slavery.



AND THE HIGHLIGHT OF OUR DAY - half our group was baptized in the River Jordan, truly a watershed experience in the life of any follower of Christ. I'm hoping Gina will share about this more, so just a teaser...