{"id":1115,"date":"2010-07-08T15:57:43","date_gmt":"2010-07-08T15:57:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/bibleandculture\/2010\/07\/lands-of-the-bible-the-sea-of-galilee.html"},"modified":"2010-07-08T15:57:43","modified_gmt":"2010-07-08T15:57:43","slug":"lands-of-the-bible-the-sea-of-galilee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2010\/07\/lands-of-the-bible-the-sea-of-galilee.html","title":{"rendered":"Lands of the Bible&#8212;The Sea of Galilee"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Call it a sea, call it a lake, call it Kinneret, the Sea of Tiberias (see John 21), or the sea of Galilee, it is certain a beautiful place, but a sea, by any normal modern definition, it is not.&nbsp; It is a largish fresh water lake and the Jordan feeds into and out of it. It sits in a bowl like structure of surrounding hills which explains some of its unique features, namely the ability of a wind to suddenly come up, swirl around in the bowl and cause havoc for small fishing vessels.&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>Today of course this lake has the modern (and ancient) cities of Tiberias, Migdal, Capernaum, Bethsaida on one side, and the Golan heights on the other. The lake is considerably lower today than it was in Jesus&#8217; day, as is especially evident at Bethsaida, which used to be pretty much next to the sea, but is far from that today.&nbsp; One of the keys to understanding how Jews viewed this body of water is understanding how they view large bodies of water in general&#8212;- namely with some fear and trepidation.&nbsp; Large bodies of water were where sea beats like Leviathan dwelt (think Loch Ness monster), and where the spirits or ghosts of the dead dwelt, and even where demons dwelt.&nbsp; These theological notions added to the terror of fishermen when a storm came up on the sea while they were fishing or rowing, churning up what lay below the surface.&nbsp; It is not a surprise that the disciples mistook&nbsp;Jesus for ghost one&nbsp;dark and stormy night on the sea of Galilee.&nbsp; It is also no surprise that no disciple but Peter volunteered to try that walking on water thing. You can tell how desperate Jonah was to get away from God that he booked a Tarshish sea cruise.&nbsp; Below you will find three pictures&nbsp;of the northern end of the&nbsp;Sea of Galilee and you&nbsp;can just see how small a fishing boat still is, in comparison to the size of the lake. <\/p>\n<p>\n<span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/bibleandculture\/Bble%20Lands%202010%20406.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"mt-image-none\" alt=\"Bble Lands 2010 406.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/137\/import\/assets_c\/2010\/06\/Bble Lands 2010 406-thumb-500x281-15407.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" \/><\/a><\/span><br \/>\n<span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/bibleandculture\/Bble%20Lands%202010%20408.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"mt-image-none\" alt=\"Bble Lands 2010 408.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/137\/import\/assets_c\/2010\/06\/Bble Lands 2010 408-thumb-500x888-15409.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"888\" \/><\/a><\/span><br \/>\n<span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/bibleandculture\/Bble%20Lands%202010%20409.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"mt-image-none\" alt=\"Bble Lands 2010 409.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/137\/import\/assets_c\/2010\/06\/Bble Lands 2010 409-thumb-500x888-15411.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"888\" \/><\/a><\/span>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Call it a sea, call it a lake, call it Kinneret, the Sea of Tiberias (see John 21), or the sea of Galilee, it is certain a beautiful place, but a sea, by any normal modern definition, it is not.&nbsp; It is a largish fresh water lake and the Jordan feeds into and out of&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":199,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Lands of the Bible-The Sea of Galilee - The Bible and Culture<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2010\/07\/lands-of-the-bible-the-sea-of-galilee.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Lands of the Bible-The Sea of Galilee - The Bible and Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Call it a sea, call it a lake, call it Kinneret, the Sea of Tiberias (see John 21), or the sea of Galilee, it is certain a beautiful place, but a sea, by any normal modern definition, it is not.&nbsp; It is a largish fresh water lake and the Jordan feeds into and out of&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2010\/07\/lands-of-the-bible-the-sea-of-galilee.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Bible and Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-07-08T15:57:43+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Ben Witherington\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Lands of the Bible-The Sea of Galilee - The Bible and Culture","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2010\/07\/lands-of-the-bible-the-sea-of-galilee.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Lands of the Bible-The Sea of Galilee - The Bible and Culture","og_description":"Call it a sea, call it a lake, call it Kinneret, the Sea of Tiberias (see John 21), or the sea of Galilee, it is certain a beautiful place, but a sea, by any normal modern definition, it is not.&nbsp; It is a largish fresh water lake and the Jordan feeds into and out of&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2010\/07\/lands-of-the-bible-the-sea-of-galilee.html","og_site_name":"The Bible and Culture","article_published_time":"2010-07-08T15:57:43+00:00","author":"Ben Witherington","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2010\/07\/lands-of-the-bible-the-sea-of-galilee.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2010\/07\/lands-of-the-bible-the-sea-of-galilee.html","name":"Lands of the Bible-The Sea of Galilee - The Bible and Culture","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/#website"},"datePublished":"2010-07-08T15:57:43+00:00","dateModified":"2010-07-08T15:57:43+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/#\/schema\/person\/d1fd6c7893819eabc624db38ecfd8426"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2010\/07\/lands-of-the-bible-the-sea-of-galilee.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2010\/07\/lands-of-the-bible-the-sea-of-galilee.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2010\/07\/lands-of-the-bible-the-sea-of-galilee.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Lands of the Bible&#8212;The Sea of Galilee"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/","name":"The Bible and Culture","description":"All Things Biblical and Christian","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/#\/schema\/person\/d1fd6c7893819eabc624db38ecfd8426","name":"Ben Witherington","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/75e\/75ec11e1916a2008bc4cc638a0a0de2fx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/75e\/75ec11e1916a2008bc4cc638a0a0de2fx96.jpg","caption":"Ben Witherington"},"description":"Bible scholar Ben Witherington is Amos Professor of New Testament for Doctoral Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary and on the doctoral faculty at St. Andrews University in Scotland. A graduate of UNC, Chapel Hill, he went on to receive the M.Div. degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. from the University of Durham in England. He is now considered one of the top evangelical scholars in the world, and is an elected member of the prestigious SNTS, a society dedicated to New Testament studies. Witherington has also taught at Ashland Theological Seminary, Vanderbilt University, Duke Divinity School and Gordon-Conwell. A popular lecturer, Witherington has presented seminars for churches, colleges and biblical meetings not only in the United States but also in England, Estonia, Russia, Europe, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Australia. He has also led tours to Italy, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Jordan, and Egypt. Witherington has written over thirty books, including The Jesus Quest and The Paul Quest, both of which were selected as top biblical studies works by Christianity Today. He also writes for many church and scholarly publications, and is a frequent contributor to the Beliefnet website. Along with many interviews on radio networks across the country, Witherington has been seen on the History Channel, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, The Discovery Channel, A&amp;E, and the PAX Network.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/author\/bwitherington"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/199"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}