Saturday, October 15
Chorazin
We visited the ancient village of Chorazin, a talmudic village (perhaps 400 years after Jesus) and saw the way they lived, the synagogue in the center of the community - not just a place of worship but the community center as well. There is a mikvah - a ritual bath - right next to it.
It is believed this village was built on the ruins of a first century town about which Jesus said:
Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! If the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes (Matthew 11:21).
One of the features of the synagogue is the “seat of Moses,” where the rabbi or teacher would sit.
This may well be the kind of seat Jesus took after reading Isaiah 61, and then saying that the words they had heard “had been fulfilled in your hearing.” Below Rebecca takes this seat and reads.
It is about such a seat that Jesus says:
Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples: "The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat. So you must obey them and do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. (Matthew 23:1-3)
Following this, Jennifer reads from Psalm 40.
We then went to a talmudic village named Katzrin. One of their main industries was olives: they ate them, crushed them for olive oil, and burned the pits for warmth. Some of the original stones used for crushing them are still there.
After the olives were crushed, they were placed in woven baskets and stacked over a drain. The first olive oil that came out naturally from this stack was considered the very best (the “first fruit”) and so it went to the Temple. After that, heavy weights, using a long wooden beam as a lever, were placed on the olives in the baskets, and that oil was both used in the town and also sold to traders. The town produced more oil than it needed so this was a significant source of income.
Below shows where these baskets were stacked. Just one is above the drain here. These would be stacked several high. You can also see the huge beam used with large stone weights for the additional pressings of the oil.
This is a diagram of the same device from a different angle:
This is the 6th century synagogue in Katzrin.
It was built on top of an earlier 4th century synagogue. Note the square block of stone with holes drilled into it. This is a speaker. We suspect it may not be original to the time period of the 4th century, though maybe by the 6th???