Sea of Galilee

Sea of Galilee,  Lake of Gennesaret, or Lake Tiberias,  ים כנרת‎, Judeo- יַמּא דטבריא, بحيرة طبرية‎), is the largest freshwater lake in Israel, and it is approximately 53 km (33 miles) in circumference, about 21 km (13 miles) long, and 13 km (8 miles) wide. The lake has a total area of 166 km2 (64 sq mi), and a maximum depth of approximately 43 m (141 feet). At 214 metres (702 ft) below sea level, it is the lowest freshwater lake on Earth and the second-lowest lake in the world (after the Dead Sea, a saltwater lake). The lake is fed partly by underground springs although its main source is the Jordan River which flows through it from north to south.

History

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.

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 the second Jewish revolt against the Romans 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 Kinneret, particularly the city of Tiberias. It was in this region that the so-called "Jerusalem Talmud" is thought to have been 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.

The lake's importance declined when the Byzantines lost control and the area came under the control of the Umayyad Caliphate and subsequent Islamic empires. Apart from Tiberias, the major towns and cities in the area were gradually abandoned.[citation needed] The palace Khirbat al-Minya was built by the lake during the reign of the Umayyad caliph al-Walid I (705-715 CE). In 1187, Saladin defeated the armies of the Crusades at the Battle of Hattin, largely because he was able to cut the Crusaders off from the valuable fresh water of the Sea of Galilee.

Geography

Sea of Galilee (Kinneret) is situated in northeast Israel, near the Golan Heights, in the Jordan Great Rift Valley, the valley caused by the separation of the African and Arabian Plates. Consequently the area is subject to earthquakes and, in the past, volcanic activity. This is evident by the abundant basalt and other igneous rocks that define the geology of the Galilee region.

Etymology

Lake often appears on maps and in the New Testament as Sea of Galilee or Sea of Tiberias (John 6:1). Sea of Tiberias is also the name by which the lake is mentioned in Roman texts and in the Jerusalem Talmud, which was written in a dialect of Judeo-Aramaic, and this is the name adopted in Arabic: Buhairet Tabariyya (help·info) (بحيرة طبريا). The Babylonian Talmud, as well as Josephus Flavius mention the lake by the name "Sea of Ginnosar" after a small fertile plain that lies on its western side. This name, in the form Lake of Gennesaret (Luke 5:1) or Sea of Gennesaret appears in Christian religious texts. The name common in Hebrew today is borrowed from the Hebrew Bible, where the lake is called the "Sea of Chinnereth" (or spelled as "Kinnereth") (Numbers 34:11; Joshua 13:27). This name was also found in the scripts of Ugarit, in the Aqhat Epic. A variant of this name is Sea of Chinneroth. The name may originate from the Hebrew word kinnor ("harp" or "lyre")), in view of the shape of the lake, perhaps from a name of a fruit called in Biblical Hebrew kinar, and is thought to be the fruit of Ziziphus spina-christi.

Tourism

Today, tourism is the Kinneret's most important economic activity with the entire region being a popular holiday destination. The many historical and spiritual sites around the lake, especially its main town Tiberias, are visited by millions of local and foreign tourists annually. The Sea of Galilee attracts many Christian pilgrims, because, according to the New Testament, many of the miracles of Jesus occurred on its shores—including his walking on water, calming the storm, and feeding five thousand people in Tabgha.

On April 2011, Israel unveiled a 40 mile (60-kilometre) 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.Another key attraction is the site where the Kinneret's water flows into the Jordan River, to which thousands of pilgrims from all over the world come to be baptized every year.

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 Kinneret. Other economic activities include fishing in the lake and agriculture, particularly bananas, in the fertile belt of land surrounding it.

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. 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. This may have been aggravated by over-abstraction of water for either the National Water Carrier to supply other parts of Israel or, since 1994, for the supply of water to Jordan (see "Water use" section above). 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.