See the Holy Land

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See the Holy Land

A website (www.seetheholyland.net) devoted to promoting pilgrimages to the Holy Land since 2010.

Seetheholyland.net is the retirement project of a journalist who has spent 50 years in secular and religious journalism, not in the Holy Land but on the opposite side of the world in New Zealand.

30/10/2024

The location of the town of Emmaus — where the resurrected Jesus appeared to two disciples — remains a mystery. Conflicting distances from Jerusalem are given in different texts of Luke’s Gospel, and the most likely candidate has no commemorative site . . . .

Unfortunately for pilgrims drawn by the account in Luke’s Gospel, the identity of Emmaus became lost early in the Christian era. Only in the 21st century are scholars reaching a consensus favouring a location near Moza (or Motza), on the western edge of Jerusalem, where there is no commemorative s...

22/10/2024

The place where Christ was born is not a stable but a cave. Entry to this subterranean holy place in Bethlehem is by steps from beside the sanctuary of the Greek Orthodox Church of the Nativity . . . .

Far from the Christmas-card image, the place of Christ’s birth is a dimly-lit rock cave. Instead of a star above, a 14-point silver star on the marble floor of the Grotto of the Nativity bears the words “Hic de Virgine Maria Jesus Christus natus est” (Here Jesus Christ was born to the Virgin M...

15/10/2024

On a clear day, today’s pilgrims can stand on Mount Nebo and see the panorama of the Promised Land that Moses viewed before he died: The Dead Sea, the Jordan River valley, Jericho, Bethlehem and the distant hills of Jerusalem . . . .

After 40 years leading the headstrong Israelites in the desert, Moses stood on the windswept summit of Mount Nebo and viewed the Promised Land of Canaan — after having been told by God “you shall not cross over there”.

08/10/2024

On the road from Jerusalem to Jericho, a museum of mosaics commemorates the parable of the Good Samaritan. In an area that was once notorious for robbers, it displays mosaics from Jewish and Samaritan synagogues, as well as from Christian churches in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza . . . .

Though the Inn of the Good Samaritan existed only in a parable, a real-life site was proposed in the early Christian centuries to edify the faith of pilgrims.

01/10/2024

Jacob’s Well is often considered the most authentic sacred site in the Holy Land — since no one can move a well that was originally more than 40 metres deep. The location, 2km east of the Palestinian city of Nablus, is near the site where the patriarch Jacob bought “the land on which he had pitched his tent” (Genesis 33:19) . . . .

Jacob’s Well, where Jesus asked a Samaritan woman for a drink and offered her “living water”, lies in the crypt of a modern Greek Orthodox church at Nablus in the West Bank.

24/09/2024

The Jordan River, where Jesus was baptised, is now more like a creek in places. More than 90 per cent of its natural flow has been diverted for domestic and agricultural use, and the World Monuments Fund has listed the lower Jordan in the top 100 most “endangered culture heritage sites . . . .

The Jordan River runs through the land and history of the Bible, giving its waters a spiritual significance that sets it aside from other rivers.

17/09/2024

The hull of a fishing boat found in the muddy bed of the Sea of Galilee in 1986 has become known as the Jesus Boat. Radio carbon dating has established that the boat began life as a fishing vessel between 120 BC and AD 40, a period that could encompass the time that Jesus spent on the Sea of Galilee . . . .

The Sea of Galilee yielded an unexpected catch in 1986 — the hull of a fishing boat old enough to have been on the water in the time of Jesus and his disciples.

10/09/2024

Kursi, on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, lay unknown for many centuries until pieces of Byzantine pottery were noticed in the trail of a bulldozer constructing a new road to the Golan Heights in 1970. Then the remains of the largest Byzantine monastery complex in Israel were discovered . . . .

A headlong stampede by a herd of demon-possessed pigs into the Sea of Galilee is remembered at Kursi, a picturesque site beneath the Golan Heights on the eastern side of the lake.

03/09/2024

Mar Saba is one of the oldest inhabited monasteries in the world. It provides an enduring reminder of the age-old tradition of holy people leaving behind worldly distractions and seeking God in the solitude of the desert. But women visitors are excluded . . . .

The greatest of the ancient monasteries dotting the wilderness of the Judaean Desert, Mar Saba hangs dramatically down the cliff edge of a deep ravine.

28/08/2024

Monks and hermits have inhabited the Mount Temptation since the early centuries of Christianity. They turned caves into cells, chapels and storage rooms. A sophisticated system of conduits brought rainwater from a large catchment area into five caves used as reservoirs . . . .

The Mount of Temptation, with a gravity-defying monastery clinging to its sheer face, is traditionally regarded as the mountain on which Christ was tempted by the devil during his 40-day fast.

21/08/2024

Because it lies low in the Great Rift Valley, surrounded by hills, the Sea of Galilee is prone to sudden turbulence. Storms of the kind that Jesus calmed (Mark 4:35-41) are a well-known hazard for Galilee fishermen . . . .

Among Holy Land sites, the Sea of Galilee has changed comparatively little since Jesus walked on its shores and recruited four fishermen as his first disciples.

14/08/2024

Herod Antipas made the city of Sepphoris “the ornament of Galilee”. And the maker of an exquisite mosaic floor in a palatial mansion there created an elegant portrait that has earned the nickname “Mona Lisa of the Galilee” . . . .

Sepphoris, a ruined city 6.5 kilometres northwest of Nazareth, was the capital of Galilee during the time of Jesus. Though it is not mentioned in the New Testament, it is of interest to Christian pilgrims for two main reasons:

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