Revisiting the Galilee Boat

 

                                                           The Galilee Boat, Kibbutz Ginosar, Israel

 Immediately he made the disciples get into a boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, but by this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them. And early in the morning he came walking toward them on the sea. But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, “It is a ghost!” And they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”

Matthew 14:22-27 NRSVue

I have to include two more Israel experience blog posts and then I'll move on. Both have to do with revisiting places from trips of more three decades ago which I was aware had undergone significant changes. 

When we were in an Airbnb in the Galilee town of Migdal we literally overlooked Kibbutz Ginosar, a collective farm which has a hotel in which we stayed 35 years back. A couple of years earlier two brothers, fisherman, had discovered what they suspected was an ancient wooden boat which had been exposed by low water levels on the Sea of Galilee. Experts were summoned and a remarkable project to preserve this vessel was soon underway. The archeologists and other scientists were aware that what they surmised was a first century fishing boat would deteriorate rapidly without immediate attention. 

By the time of our initial visit to Ginosar it had been moved with great care into a tank with a chemical bath which would replace the water in the wood cells with preservatives. We saw what is called the Galilee Boat in that tank and in a building which was really a Quonset hut. That process of chemical preservation took many years. 

The significance of this discovery is that this is the oldest freshwater boat every found and preserved anywhere in the world. Carbon dating places it in the first century which means that this is an example of a fishing boat which may well have been the shape and size of the ones used by Jesus' disciples and which he was transported. There is evidence that the boat had been repaired many times and that eventually it may have outlived its usefulness, so was scuttled along the shore. 

Now there is a dedicated musuem for what is also called the Jesus Boat. It attracts large numbers of visitors and we were among them. There are roughly 50 references to fishing boats on Galilee in the gospels. Those dramatic Sunday School stories of Peter attempting to walk on water and Jesus calming the storm do come to life again walking through this exhibit.  

The different species of wood used to construct and repair the Galilee Boat over the decades of its use.