SEE THE SEA OF GALILEE
I have learned a lot lately about the Sea of Galilee in my research for a writing project. Many of the miracles of Jesus occurred here including his walking on water, calming the storm, the disciples and the boatload of fish, and his feeding five thousand people (in Tabgha). Just for some perspective, The Sea of Galilee is about 1.5 times as big as a well-known local lake in my neck of the woods: Coeur D'Alene Lake in Northern Idaho. Here are the stats if anyone is curious about this as I was...Coeur D' Alene Lake is approx. 25 long X 2 miles wide, (with an area of 50 miles);
Galilee is approx. 13 x 5 Miles, with a surface area of 64 miles. The Idaho pond is much deeper, though with a max depth of 220 feet, while Galilee is only 140' or so at its deepest point. Its history is very interesting, and the body of water has been a cultural epicenter since before the Bronze Age, with all sorts of groups cloistering along its edges over time, each with their own rising, falling and fate, and each naming the lake at different periods through history.One of its earliest names from the Old Testament and other ancient texts is ("Kinnerot"). I was researching some of this to try and understand the environment I was writing about for a devotional passage in one of my books. I wanted to understand how that might have contributed to, say the feeling of the men in the boat, for example, when he filled their nets to the point of listing their modest, but respectable fishing boats. I had no idea if Galilee was a "Loon Lake," or the Gulf of Mexico, but "Sea," had given me the impression, in my bias, of a much larger body of water.It is interesting to learn of the regional lay of the land, or in this case, the lake...to understand one of the early, poignant interactions between Jesus and his Disciple (and us, vicariously) - the Calming of the Sea:A storm on the Sea of Galilee is described in Mark 4:37:
A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat so that it was nearly swamped.
Luke 8 describes the wind and raging waves during this storm. Matthew calls it a furious storm without warning.
Such storms result from differences in temperatures between the seacoast and the mountains beyond. The Sea of Galilee lies 680 feet below sea level. It is bounded by hills, especially on the east side where they reach 2000 feet high. These heights are a source of cool, dry air.In contrast, directly around the sea, the climate is semi-tropical with warm, moist air. The large difference in height between surrounding land and the sea causes large temperature and pressure changes. This results in strong winds dropping to the sea, funneling through the hills.
The Sea of Galilee is small, and these winds may descend directly to the center of the lake with violent results. When the contrasting air masses meet, a storm can arise quickly and without warning. Small boats caught out on the sea are in immediate danger.The Sea of Galilee is relatively shallow, under 200 feet at its greatest depth. A shallow lake is “whipped up” by the wind more rapidly than deep water, where energy is more readily absorbed, making it thus considerably more “moody,” than say a lake with a little more depth, such as Pend Oreille, with depths up to 9 or 10 times as much. Even with that, most of us know how cranky that one can get...
In addition to (but not excluding the 8 typical nature-miracles, and all the others Bible readers are familiar with, there are those mentioned in the 2nd-century texts, called Infancy Gospels, (not included in the KJV), which narrate Jesus performing miracles during his childhood.
Published on December 06, 2015 01:10
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