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First Letter from Nazareth 2023

Sunday June 18, 2023 Dear Family and Friends, I’m late with this first letter, so I’ll do my best to catch you up on our progress. I landed on May 30 with a small early crew. Most headed to Nazareth to start preparing our storeroom in the hotel and the site for the dig, while Tom and Mary Lynn McCollough and I drove to Jerusalem for a couple of meetings with folks at Hebrew U. The next day we joined everyone at the site to supervise the delivery of our tool container and toilets, and to get shade over our squares. Tom McCollough, Motti Aviam, and I walked the site, discussing where to re-open old squares and where to sink new ones. The weather has been kind to us. That has been the general pattern this year, with the exception of one day that hit 40 C/104 F, and yesterday, which got close to 38/100 during our tour of Megiddo, Beit She‘arim, and Caesarea. Most days have been somewhere in the 80s Fahrenheit, and today the high is predicted at 81. Two Fridays ago, we left the fiel...
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First Week, continued

Third Post, Installment 2 Students also saw the 4 th and 5 th century synagogue floor at Hamat Tiberias, which was built of black basalt at the site of hot springs on the west coast of the Sea of Galilee. The wheel of the zodiac in the mosaic floor is a bit startling if you’ve never seen one in a synagogue before. I imagine it would be like encountering a large pentagram in the floor of the Washington Cathedral. It would have been the second zodiac we saw that day, but we missed the turnoff to Beit Alpha, where the 6 th century synagogue sports a similar floor that was discovered in the 1920’s after the discovery of the one at Hamat Tiberias. Since those discoveries many more have been found, including one at Sepphoris. Next came swimming in the Sea of Galilee, which the students did with some enthusiasm. I was not surprised that all went in because earlier they all had piled out of the vans to photograph one another on the banks of the Jordan when we crossed on our way north fr...
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First Letter from Nazareth

Dear Family and Friends, It is late in the morning on Sunday June 3.   I did not write last Sunday because by then I had only been in the country two days.   About 11 of us arrived Friday May 25 and 22 more the 26 th .   When all is said and done, we will be about 47 strong.   Students from Samford University, University of South Florida, Randolph-Macon College, Southeastern University, and the University of Lausanne make up our youngest stratum, and our volunteers come from Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Florida, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Kentucky, Illinois, Nebraska, Texas, Missouri, Utah, Israel, and Switzerland.   I may have left out some spots. The relatively cool temperatures and clouds have felt like a blessing.   We have even endured the threat of rain, yet rain did not prevent the archaeology from happening, despite some students’ hopes.   Speaking of archaeology, it has gone well so far...
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