Jesus' Mission to the Golan: Feeding the Multitudes and healing the Gentiles By YADIN ROMAN IN FOCUS Opposite Tiberias, on the Eastern Shore of the Sea of Galilee, the towering hill of Susita overlooks the fields and orchards of Kibbutz Ein Gev. On top of the hill are the ruins of the ancient Greek city of Hippos. Marble columns and capitals, remains of mosaics and the well-built walls of ancient monuments attest to the wealth of the Hellenistic inhabitants of Hippos in late Roman and Byzantine times. The remains of several large churches and the partly-excavated cathedral of the city attest to the piety of its Christian inhabitants; the historical documents of the early church record their importance. In Jesus' time Hippos was one of the ten cities of the pagan Decapolis League of Cities. The cities of the Decapolis - scattered throughout the present-day Golan Heights, Syria and Jordan -- were important and sophisticated outposts of pagan Greek culture located in close proximity to the Jews of the Galilee. Just a few centuries later, Hippos had become one of the first Greek-speaking cities in the region to embrace Christianity. In fact the bishops of Hippos took part in the earliest recorded Councils of the Church, namely Nicea in 325 CE and Constantinople in 381 CE. What caused this dramatic transformation? It seems that this astonishingly early acceptance of the Gospels at Hippos has its roots in Jesus' own initiatives to preach to the peoples of the Decapolis. These efforts are recorded in details in various portions of the Gospels, and culminate in Jesus' feeding of a multitude of gentiles with seven bread loaves and a few fish along the eastern shores of the Sea of Galilee. Jesus' first venture into the territory of the Decapolis begins, as Mark 4 relates, after he had withdrawn by boat from the overwhelming crowds of Jews who had gathered to hear him preach along the western shores of the Sea of Galilee. Rowing across the waters, Jesus decided to embark on a venture on the eastern side of the lake. Kursi's Byzantine Church ruins. For a Jew to attempt to preach to these proud Pagan-Greeks was a daring undertaking, to say the least. No wonder that the demon of chaos, as the writer of Mark's gospel perceives it, brought about a vicious storm on the Sea of Galilee that almost drowns the small flotilla of Jesus' disciples. Jesus is said to have stilled the storm, so that by daybreak he and his disciples were able to reach Kursi, on the borders of the Decapolis. At Kursi, marked today by impressive Byzantine-era church ruins, another obstacle arises. A legion of demons had taken possession of a powerful man, upset by the intrusion of this Jewish prophet into what he considered as his domain. Jesus casts out the demons, but allows them to enter the pigs grazing on the mountainside. This turns out to be a tactical mistake. The demon-infested herd of swine storm over a nearby cliff plunging down to their death in the lake. These tumultuous events nearly bring Jesus' entire mission into pagan territory to a standstill. The indignant owners of the pigs from the nearby city of Hippos ask Jesus to leave their country. (Mark 5:14) Yet this first attempt to bring the gospels to the pagans ultimately lays the groundwork for later missions. The man liberated from the demons by Jesus is dispatched to the inhabitants of the Decapolis to relate the great things that God had wrought for him. The Gospels say that the man enthusiastically followed Jesus' instructions (Mark 5:20). Jesus' second venture to the territory of the gentiles begins after the feast of Passover of the year 29 CE. This is a time when Jews from the villages of Galilee have once again been streaming to the Sea of Galilee's shores, by Capernaum, to seek out the man reputed to be a prophet and miracle worker. Again, Jesus escapes the crowds by boat, only to be followed by the multitudes. Finally, at a Sea of Galilee site called Ma-Gadan (the waters of good fortune), today Tabgha, the New Testament relates that Jesus performs the first miracle of loaves and fishes for his Jewish followers -- feeding 5000 people from five loaves of bread and two fish. At the end of the feast Jesus orders his disciples to collect the leftovers in baskets - twelve baskets are filled symbolizing the twelve tribes of Israel. Then, the disciples row their boat northeast towards Bethsaida, as Jesus goes up into the hills alone to pray. At night a strong wind arises around the boat with the disciples. Jesus, viewing the danger that they are in, walks over the waters to join the boat. And then, instead of going to Bethsaida, which means running against the wind, the boat swerves and lands at the nearby fishing harbor of Gennesareth (Mark 6:53). Jesus was now, however, in a hurry to get out of Galilee. The Jews that had gathered around him for the feast were beginning to proclaim him as the messiah, and these events were sure to be reported by spies to the authorities. From Gennasareth Jesus ascends the mountains of Upper Galilee along the riverbed of Nahal Amud to the small town of Giscala, where he crosses the border into Pagan Phoenicia on the Lebanese coast. Since the incident at Kursi had made him weary of attempting to approach the gentiles, he initially refrains from revealing his identity to the people of this pagan land. (Matthew 15:24). Then the unexpected happens. Near Phoenician Tyre a women falls at his feet, proclaimed him the Son of David, and imploring him to cure her child. Jesus initially refuses. But the woman persists. "It is not right to take bread from the children (Israel) and give it to the dogs (the gentiles)." (Matthew 15:26). "You are right, Lord", she replied, "but even the dogs under the table receive of the bread that is thrown to them." Jesus understood. She had touched a tender point in his heart. For Jesus this must have been a moment of truth, much like the one that Jonah the prophet from the Galilee had faced in a previous era. Jonah had tried to escape God's command to preach repentance to Gentile Nineveh - and fled to the sea to ultimately be swallowed by a whale in a storm, spit out onto the shores before he finally reconsidered his stance. Similarly, Jesus feels an aversion to preaching to the gentiles, particularly after the reception he had received once already in Kursi. But, touched by this mother from Tyre, he ultimately faces his destiny to become what one follower had already had described as a "light unto all nations." "Because of this word that you have spoken, woman," Jesus says to the woman, "go home your daughter is cured". This incident apparently prompts Jesus to change his itinerary. Leaving the refuge of Tyre behind, he turned back - back to the Decapolis, to the cities of the gentiles. He led his apostles on the road to Caesarea Phillipi (Banias), at the foot of Mount Hermon. From there he descended along the Golan Plateau reaching the middle of the Decapolis (Mark 8:11). Jesus was now in the flat fertile area above Hippos - the area described by Josephus as the Hippene. The atmosphere was completely different from what it had been during his first visit at Kursi. The man cured of demons at Kursi there had preached Jesus' message effectively. People received Jesus and his disciples with open arms. They brought to him a man who was deaf and had an impediment of speech, whom Jesus cured (Mark 7:32). We do not know how much time Jesus spent in the Hippene, but when he started to descend from the Golan towards the lake, heading northwest in the direction of the Galilee, many followed him, with their sick and crippled relatives. They carried food for only a few days. Matthew says that when Jesus saw all the people gathering around him, he sat down on the hill next to the sea and started to instruct the crowds. Three days the people stayed with him while he was teaching and healing. Then an amazing thing happened: "When these gentiles saw the dumb speaking, the maimed whole, the lame walking and the blind seeing, they glorified the God of Israel (Mt 15:31). They wanted to say: "Such things cannot happen with our gods, Zeus, Apollo and Aphrodite, they can happen only with the God of Israel." When Jesus noticed that these pagan crowds were giving glory to his God, he was deeply moved. He called the twelve apostles to gather around him (Dodeka-thronon). Then he said: "I have compassion on the crowd, because they have been with me now three days, and have nothing more to eat." (Matthew 15:32). "Some of them have come a long way," he adds, referring not only to their physical but spiritual journey. (Mark 8:3). All of the food that the apostles had to offer were seven loaves of bread and some little fish, probably sardines, which are plentiful in that part of the lake. Jesus took these few provisions, uttering the Jewish blessing over food, and told the disciples to distribute them to the people sitting on the ground. All ate and were satisfied, Afterwards the disciples gathered the leftovers and filled with them seven baskets. In the same way that the twelve baskets of the first multiplication of the fishes and loaves had stood for the 12 tribes of Israel, these seven baskets represented the seven gentile nations that had inhabited the Land of Canaan (Act 13:19). We are told in the Talmud, for instance, that one of the seven ancient Canaanite nations, the Gergesites, had settled down in the region of Hippos and Afeka. By this feeding of the gentiles Jesus wanted to proclaim that the munificence bestowed by God on Israel was now to be shared also by other peoples. After this multiplication of the bread and fish on the eastern lakeshore, Jesus and his disciples cross back again over to Ma-gadan (Tabgha). Some Pharisees and Sadducees, who happen to meet Jesus, might have missed the first feeding and were eager to see another sign. But Jesus refuses: "No other sing shall be given to this generation," Jesus says to them, "but the sign of Jonah." (Matthew 16:4) The sign of Jonah refers to the gentile acceptance of the divine message. Jesus' statement thus foretells not only the conversion of Hippos and the Hippene, but of gentiles throughout the world. The journey to Caesarea Philippi: "Who Do People Say the Son of Man Is?" Banias and Caesarea Philippi of the Roman period Jesus' Mission to the Golan: Feeding the Multitudes and healing the Gentiles Tel Hadar: Identifying the site of the feeding of the multitudes The Golan Heights and Sea of Galilee: Syria's Holy Land claims Bethsaida - A Biblical tradition comes alive again Bethsaida in New Testament tradition More QuickTime VR Panoramic Views Back to Index - Digital Holyland Back to Main © Copyright - Eretz Magazine