The Sea of Galilee, Israel

The Sea of Galilee, also Kinneret, Lake of Gennesaret, or Lake Tiberias (Hebrew: יָם כִּנֶּרֶת, Judeo-Aramaic: יַמּא דטבריא, Arabic: بحيرة طبرية‎)

The Sea of Galilee, -210 meters below sea level, is the main fresh water sea of Israel with unique forms and subterranean sources including hot water springs. The Kineret, or Sea of Galilee, is Israel’s largest fresh water reservoir, and is also the country’s largest and most important source and reservoir of drinking water. For this and other reasons, the Kineret has become an important national symbol and is also a first class tourism center.

The sea is home for 27 fish types, with many endemic. The water surface is 168 square kilometers while the perimeter is 55 kilometers, densely populated over the generations. The cities of Tiberias and Hammat Gader as well as Korazim, Kursi, Capernaum, and Tabgha surround the Sea of Galilee contributing to the area’s unique cultural authenticity.

Jesus of Nazareth and his disciples from the north of the Sea of Galilee, lived and worked in the towns, villages and the countryside of Lower Galilee in the Holy Land. The region between Nazareth and Capernaum has undergone many changes since the Second Temple period. Many pilgrims and visitors will walk in the footsteps of Jesus and the Apostles, in order to experience their trials and tribulations.

The route constitutes a thread connecting the pilgrim sites sacred to Christianity, alongside natural and cultural sites, and the scenery and local communities. Some sites like Nazareth, Tiberias, and Kafar Kana became modern cities while others have become ruins, like Sepheris and Capernaum.

Recommended for Christian and non-Christian tours in Israel.

It is proposed to develop the sites already in existence while linking others and binding them together, to complete the historic story.

The route also serves as a means of preserving the heritage, archaeological sites, and the scenery, natural woods and forests and traditional agriculture, whereas emphasis has been placed on the Christian pilgrim population; nevertheless the broad range of experiences offered by the route apart from pilgrim sites, such as scenery and cultural sites as well as a range of hiking trails, makes it suitable for visitors from all countries and religions.

The route in the Galilee begins at the city of Nazareth, travels via Sepheris, Kafar Kana, The Horns of Hittin and Magdala, around the Sea of Galilee and ending at Tiberias.

Between Nazareth and Capernaum, at the northern end of the Lake, the road splits into a number of routes. The pilgrim can combine the different routes to enrich the experience; short routes or circuitous roads leading to other sites.

The ministering of Jesus and the Apostles between Tiberias and Nazareth represent the historic association of the cradle of Christianity, and the cultural landscapes of Mount Tabor, the Mount of Beatitude, Arbel and the Sea of Galilee provide an authentic backcloth to the historic events on this route.

Tourism

The beaches that surround the entire lake are similar but different. The width of the beaches varies in keeping with the local geography, creating different landscapes in every location. Above the eastern and western shores, for example, rise the Galilee mountains and the foothills of the Golan, while to the north there is the Beit Tsida valley, a wide area with plentiful water that drains from the Jordan River and the Golan streams, and to the south is the Jordan estuary, which flows south toward the desert regions.

For this reason, some of the Kineret’s beaches have soft sand, while others are rocky; some beaches are narrow while others are very wide. Either way, the beaches are fun and offer many tourist attractions for every age group. Most of the beaches allow nature-loving visitors to sleep in camping areas on the sand, and there are also hostels, guest houses and beachfront hotels. Most of the beaches also offer various types of water sports and water activities, such as boating in inflatable rubber dinghies, canoes, etc.; children can enjoy the giant slides at the water parks (Luna Gal, Tsemakh or Gai Beach). There are plenty of restaurants and grocery stores along the way, and most of all one can enjoy the calm and tranquility.

The beaches surrounding the Kineret are also a perfect starting point for wonderful nature tours of the area. Some of the most popular and beautiful nature sites are the Jordan Park, the Beit Tsida Nature Reserve, Khamat Gader, Naharayim. There is also the lower Golan Heights region, which borders on the Kineret and is full of swift flowing streams, historic sites and nature reserves.

In April 2011, Israel unveiled a 40-mile (64 km) hiking trail in the Galilee for Christian pilgrims, called the “Jesus Trail”. It includes a network of footpaths, roads and bicycle paths linking sites central to the lives of Jesus and his disciples. It ends at Capernaum on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, where Jesus espoused his teachings.

Israel’s most well-known open water swim race, the Kinneret Crossing, is held every year in September, drawing thousands of open water swimmers to participate in competitive and noncompetitive events.

Tourists also partake in the building of rafts on Lavnun Beach, called Rafsodia. Here many different age groups work together to build a raft with their bare hands and then sail that raft across the sea.

Etymology

The modern name, Kinneret, comes from the Old Testament or Hebrew Tanakh “sea of Kinneret” in Numbers 34:11 and Joshua 13:27, and spelled (Hebrew) כנרות (“Kinnerot”) in Joshua 11:2. This name was also found in the scripts of Ugarit, in the Aqhat Epic. Kinneret was listed among the “fenced cities” in Joshua 19:35. The name Kinneret may originate from the Hebrew word kinnor (“harp” or “lyre”), in view of the shape of the lake.

In the New Testament the term “sea of Galilee” (Greek: Θαλασσαν της Γαλιλαιας, Thalassan tēs Galilaias) is used in the gospel of Matthew 4:18; 15:29, the gospel of Mark 1:16; 7:31, and in the gospel of John 6:1 as “the sea of Galilee, which is the sea of Tiberias” (θαλασσης της Γαλιλαιας της Τιβεριαδος, Thalassēs tēs Galilaias tēs Tiberiados), the late 1st century CE name. Sea of Tiberias is also the name mentioned in Roman texts and in the Jerusalem Talmud, and was adopted into Arabic as About this sound Buhairet Tabariyya .

All Bible writers use the term “sea” (Hebrew יָם yam, Greek Θαλασσα) except the gospel of Luke, written to Theophilus of Macedonia, where it is called “the lake of Genneseret” in Luke 5:1, from the Greek λίμνη Γεννησαρέτ, (limnē Gennēsaret), the “Grecized form of Chinnereth” according to Easton, who says Genneseret means “a garden of riches”. The Babylonian Talmud, as well as Flavius Josephus mention the sea by the name “Sea of Ginosar” after the small fertile plain of Ginosar that lies on its western side.

History

Ancient and Classic Antiquity

The Sea of Galilee lies on the ancient Via Maris, which linked Egypt with the northern empires. The Greeks, Hasmoneans, and Romans founded flourishing towns and settlements on the land-locked lake including Gadara, Hippos and Tiberias. The first-century historian Flavius Josephus was so impressed by the area that he wrote, “One may call this place the ambition of Nature.” Josephus also reported a thriving fishing industry at this time, with 230 boats regularly working in the lake. Archaeologists discovered one such boat, nicknamed the Jesus Boat, in 1986.

Much of the ministry of Jesus occurred on the shores of Lake Galilee. In those days, there was a continuous ribbon development of settlements and villages around the lake and plenty of trade and ferrying by boat. The Synoptic gospels of Mark (1:14–20), Matthew (4:18–22), and Luke (5:1–11) describe how Jesus recruited four of his apostles from the shores of Lake Galilee: the fishermen Simon and his brother Andrew and the brothers John and James. One of Jesus’ famous teaching episodes, the Sermon on the Mount, is supposed to have been given on a hill overlooking the lake. Many of his miracles are also said to have 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).

In 135 CE Bar Kokhba’s revolt was put down. The Romans responded by banning all Jews from Jerusalem. The center of Jewish culture and learning shifted to the region of the Galilee and the Kinneret, particularly the city of Tiberias. It was in this region that the so-called “Jerusalem Talmud” was compiled.

In the time of the Byzantine Empire, the lake’s significance in Jesus’ life made it a major destination for Christian pilgrims. This led to the growth of a full-fledged tourist industry, complete with package tours and plenty of comfortable inns.

Fauna and flora

The warm waters of the Sea of Galilee support various flora and fauna, which have supported a significant commercial fishery for more than two millennia. Local flora include various reeds along most of the shoreline as well as phytoplankton. Fauna include zooplankton, benthos and a number of fish species such as Acanthobrama terraesanctae. Fish caught commercially include Tristramella simonis and notably Tilapia, locally called “St. Peter’s Fish”.

However, low water levels in drought years have stressed the lake’s ecology. Droughts of the early and mid-1990s dried out the marshy northern margin of the lake. A fish species that is unique to the lake, Tristramella sacra, used to spawn in the marsh and has not been seen since the 1990s droughts. Conservationists fear this species may have become extinct.