Caeserea

As some of the readers of the blog know, my wife and I lived for a year in Jerusalem. While we were there I studied a variety of topics at Hebrew University and we took several trips throughout Israel and two of the surrounding countries. When I came back to the States, I taught a class (at Northwest Baptist Seminary as well as a Sunday School class at the church I attend) on Bible Geography. Some time ago I started a series on Bible Geography and got a whole two posts into it before I quote. Well, I am now going back to it. I plan to post pictures of various sites as well as a small amount of data. Hope it will be fun! We are going to start with Caesarea.

Caesarea was a large and important city on the coast of the Mediterranean. It did not exist in OT times, as it was built out of thin air (or sandy beach in this case) by Herod the Great. The Coastal Plain was a major highway during OT times, and was highly valued by countries such as Assyria and Egypt. Because of this, Israel only rarely had control of the plain, which prevented them from developing a maritime culture like the Phoenicians to the north. As a matter of fact, the most frequently mentioned Israelite port was Eilat (Elath), a city on the Red Sea.

Since Herod was interested in keeping ties with Rome, he needed a port on the Mediterranean, and Caesarea was the result. It quickly became a very important town and the center of government. The next post will look at the city in the NT. 

This is the harbor. After we left Israel they opened up a new area of tourism: you can go scuba diving in the harbor and see the ancient ruins below the water. Very cool. 

 Column Graveyard.

 The Crusaders lived here for quite some time, and most of the ruins that can be seen today are from that time period. Here are some Crusader walls. 

 This is the stadium where chariot races were held. The turns were a literal killer. 

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