Magdala

Magdala was one of my most emotional experiences on the trip. It was at this site that there was an excavated single layer synagogue. Because it was the town mary Magdalene was from, it is likely that Jesus taught at this very spot. Mary Magdalene was probably the main source of financing for Jesus' ministry. She was the first person that Jesus appeared to after the resurrection.

First century synagogues were not houses of prayer, but rather places where Jews read and studied the Word. What was interesting about Magdala was that it was a 100% Jewish town with about 2-300 people. This included God fearers, who were not ethnically Jewish, but believed in the Jewish God.

Some of the ruins of Magdala included a period where the Galilee was fortified using walls, even abandoning part of the town. Magdala was likely a city, or polis, however, because there were paved roads.

There were good examples of how one was made clean here using living water. The places where you were made clean were indoors for decency.

There was also a good discussion of what it meant by "wings" in the Bible. Apparently the wings of a Jewish man's garment was the four tassels on the bottom. This is significant in the story of the bleeding woman, because prophecy said there would be a "man with healing in His wings" and she likely touched one of the wings of His garment. We had a time and moment of prayer to pray for healing after this discussion. I prayed for healing from my mental health issues.

It was also said that a lot of the reasons why we do not understand the Bible from a Jewish perspective is because of 1600 years of de-Judaizing the Bible by the Catholic Church.