02.12. Towards a wider world

Towards a wider world

Ancient Israel was not a maritime nation, so the lack of a sea port near Jerusalem was of no concern. The nation’s leaders seem not to have considered making a port in the shelter of the prominent headland at Mount Carmel, a site chiefly remembered for Elijah’s contest with the prophets of Baal.¹ Today, however, Israel’s port of Haifa lies along the slopes and at the base of the headland.

South of Mount Carmel, Israel’s shores were sandy and shallow, but a small headland at Joppa enabled the building of a modest harbour. Joppa was the port where building materials from Lebanon were unloaded and taken to Jerusalem, and where the fleeing Jonah once boarded a ship.² In the early days of the church, it was the place where God gave Peter a vision of the wider world that lay beyond his narrow Jewish world. As a result of the vision, Peter was directed along the coast to Caesarea, where Herod the Great had equipped his newly built city with an artificial harbour.³

Joppa today is known as Jaffa, or Yafo, and is a southern suburb of Tel Aviv, which was Israel’s largest city till supplanted by an expanded Jerusalem. Unlike Jerusalem, Tel Aviv is mostly Jewish, though minority religions are also represented. Christians are from both Jewish and Arab backgrounds.

Most Jewish Christians in Israel call themselves Messianic Jews. (Messiah comes from a Hebrew word, Christ from its Greek equivalent.) Although Messianic Jews are free to worship within their own communities, they suffer from official discrimination. They are denied legal standing as a religious body and suffer from the strictly orthodox Jews.

Many modern Jews, however, are irreligious and even atheistic, their religion being more a matter of culture and nationalism than faith. But many immigrant Jews, especially from Russia, have believed in the Messiah Jesus and joined the Messianic Jews.

1. 1 Kings 18:19 2. 2 Chronicles 2:16; Ezra 3:7; Jonah 1:3 3. Acts 10:23-24; Acts 18:22; Acts 21:8 Joppa, part of modern Tel Aviv