A thorny subject

The Crown of Thorns kind of tipped it.

That's when I knew I'd had enough biblical history for one day. And it was only the first full day of the trip.

It wasn't the fault of the trip. Just a little too much too much of the layering on of how the Jews have suffered.

The Crown of Thorns was on sale in a souvenir shop to where we were brought at the end of the day by our guide, Abie. Short for Abraham, an Israeli Jew via USofA. A guy quite engaging and really good at his job. You've really gotta like Abie.

"I can recommend this shop," he'd said last night after our introductory boat ride on the Sea of Galilee. "If you're happy with the idea, we'll stop off there tomorrow night."

True to promise, we were here. Pretty worn out, truth be told. And God knows, you gotta tell the truth in Galilee. So we were at the end of a day of touring key locations of the Gospel stories.

It began with the Sermon on the Mount and finished with the church that marks where Jesus is said to have made Peter his first pope, even if that wasn't what he called him.

In between we'd visited the Golan, on the way to and from Banias. That last is the location of a former Temple to Zeus and Pan. There's apparently a Jesus connection too, which at the time of writing I'm still a little confused about. But maybe, like Tiberias where we're based this week, its reputation for Roman Empire debauchery made it a place about which the Lord denounced such goings-on.

Going up there and back gave Abie the time to instruct us on the legalistic complexities of the Jewish Covenant with God. Bottom line, which over the centuries provided rabbis with a great deal to do in interpreting it to make it work with whatever were the requirements of the era. Still does, probably. Though the political mix of secular Israel and its religious orthodoxies must make for even more complicated cohabitation.

Really bottom line, interpreting Abie's homeland truths alongside his narration of the recurrent plights of the Jews in the time of what became that nation's most important prophet, they suffered.

Kind of like Irish history, really. But Jews suffered in one of the cradles of old civilisation, whereas Irish suffering was of a much more recent vintage. And we might even have just got over it.

Back a long time ago, Rome ruled, Jews suffered. And on the Golan today, they occupy it because Jews suffered in the sixties by having their post WW2 Israel homeland subject to bombardment by the original Syrian stakeholders. The fence-enclosed minefields which our road snaked through are grim reminders of that. The warning signs are rusting, though.

But the Israel state yesterday and today are another story. This is a trip through religious history.

For the Kilcullen group -- and with us are a number of Carlow people, it should be recorded -- the mass at the Church of the Beatitudes was a very pleasant start to the day. This is the storied site of the Sermon on the Mount in the New Testament, but which also is described as the Sermon on the Plain in the Gospel of St Luke, on whose feast day Fr Michael Murphy's mass was celebrated.

"He probably never knew Jesus," Fr Michael said of Luke. "He wrote his Gospel later, and was like an editor with a vast amount of information. He wanted to tell the story of Jesus outside the area where it had taken place."

Fr Michael is the first to say that new testament locations visited today are not necessarily the actual places of the stories involved. But culture past, and culture includes religion, is mostly about symbols. Locations are symbols which endure beyond most others, at least in folklore. And even if they are not quite right geographically, they're lodestones of belief.

Today there were several of those lodestones. Not least the 'St Peter's Fish' lunch in a restaurant which bordered the beach of Magdala, Mary of Magdalene's area of birth. Before that we had visited Capernaum, with seriously good excavated and reconstructed homes and streets of the time when Jesus had apparently stayed with Peter's mother in law. And also where he is believed to have made his final appearance to Peter before going home to Heaven.

We went after lunch to a close-by pair of churches. The first built in recent times on the place where the Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes is said to have taken place. Then to another which is built on a basalt outcropping suggested to be the location where Jesus told Peter that this was the 'rock upon which you will build my church'. Making him the first pope, actually.

The modern church is managed by the Benedictines. There's a piece of rock under the altar which people kneel to and even touch fervently with their foreheads.

Outside on the little beach of the Sea of Galilee it was a little closer to the reality of a couple of millennia ago. Waves sloshing on the sand. People paddling in the moving water.

Yes, Jesus could have been here. So could Peter. Neither actually expecting what they might achieve, because there wasn't a global perspective then. Their 'globe' was circumscribed around the Sea of Galilee.

Which was where this accidental pilgrim came from to the souvenir shop. It was a pushy place. High priced too. There were two sizes of Crowns of Thorns. Both of olive wood, and with 'guarantees of origin'.

I didn't look at the prices. But I wondered what kind of friend you would bring home such a souvenir to?

"And look, I got your right size ..."

Reported from Galilee by the Accidental Pilgrim.