Post-Resurrection Breakfast

Sometime after Jesus was resurrected, perhaps a month or so, a bunch of disheartened disciples went fishing. Suddenly poof! John spotted Jesus on shore, barbequing up a fish breakfast.

The Church of the Barbeque Breakfast. The stone Jesus roasted the fish on - supposedly - is by the Mensa Christi sign.

Cooking Food
I’m rather curious as to how frequently this happened, without the Messiah. Did Jews back then have fish barbeques like Americans have barbeques with burgers? It sounds reasonable to me.

The rest of the time cooking was done at home, logically enough. Ovens were cheap and some families had two, one in the courtyard and one in the common room. Kitchens weren’t used much in the first century, and the common room served as a place for children to play, food to be cooked and eaten, construction work to be done, etc. Weather around the Sea of Galilee is fairly mild, and these things were probably done in the courtyard for most of the year. It was also very humid, and in a place and time with high humidity and no air conditioning, the out-of-doors must have been preferable for both cooking and other activities during the hot summer months. The families sometimes ate on the roofs, which were flat and suitable places to chat, study Torah and dry fruit.

I never had a suitable appreciation for the work needed to prepare a meal in antiquity - in order to make bread and any other grain-based food, such as oatmeal, grain needed to be ground for approximately four hours a day!

Additional Information:
An Expanded Versions of This Article: Cooking
More Information: A Standard Peasants Meal

The Church of the Barbeque Breakfast
There is a church, and at least one alleged location, for virtually every Gospel occurence; the church here lays claim to the stone that Jesus roasted the fish on. Near the shore are 6 heart-shaped 'double-column' stones, angled to form part of a colonnade.

You can see them somewhat now, leading from the holy steps to the gate.

Abutting the church are stone steps the Oxford Archeological Guide to the Holy Land says may have been a remnant of quarrying for limestone, but no one really knows. Since there is a railing protecting them and a plaque "This is A Holy Ground," I guess someone disagrees. Sometimes the common-people Fodor's (which I lost) would be a lot more useful than some proper (read dry) Oxford thing. I mean c'mon, I want the scoop!

A holy quarry that goes up from the ground instead of down.

I sat on the pier, quite possibly here since Jesus’ time, writing, until the monk started giving me strange looks. (Not the one standing with his nose in his book when I walked into the church; I had to double check that he wasn't a statue, in all seriousness. Although later on I did see him walk - then I had to double-check it was the same monk, walking and talking.)

Resurrection Breakfast Spirituals
It was weird to sit on a pier Jesus must've sat on at some point. That's one of the few times the 'Jesus was here' concept sunk in, and it was strangely comfortable and right, in a sense none of the others had been. The pier felt much holier than the limestone steps a gold plaque declared 'holy ground.' It's all in the mind I guess.

I'm sitting on one pier...in the distance you can see another one curving out into the water, away from me, and one beyond that curving toward me. That's an ancient Tabgha harbor - the Galilee was filled with harbors back then, especially in this area, which was one of the most populated.

In a way I felt like my image of Him as Christ human, Christ divine was given life and made tangible on that beach. In so doing an amazing concept dulled by a lifetime of knowledge struck my heart anew.

Maybe it was because it happened after the resurrection, which shifts the balance to parallel what I'm taught - Christ in heaven, Christon earth - v. the Gospels almost exclusive telling of Christ on earth.

On this beach, He is the Resurrected Christ mysteriously appearing on earth in human form, not a human Christ mysteriously doing Son-of-God things. And the former is closer to what I know Him as - the Resurrected Christ doing mysterious things in my life, in tangible and intangible ways.

Travelogue
From later that afternoon - The Galilee is right in front of me again, the same ridge stretching out toward yonder horizon, swallowed by the morning fog. These rocks are different though, stretching down to scary slopes I navigate on hands and knees.

That latter sentence is altogether true; . I decided I had to explore further today, in order to find a shorter way to the car. Due to my brilliance, I navigated a lot of the mountain on my hands and knees, with innumerable prolonged shrieks

Aaaaaaaaaagh!! Aaaagh! Aaaaaagh! You get the idea. There was this big dirt slope that went on and on and on, which is I was most certainly going to take a tumble down.

After standing at the top for quite a few minutes, contemplating my predicament, I decided to go back the way I came - quite a trek, but preferable to somersaulting down a dirt hill.

Trek...trek...trek....lost path... briers...uh-oh...turn around. So I'm stuck staring at this masterpiece of dirt again, until I finally took off my socks and shoes, and proceeded to yelp and shriek my way down the hill, grasping at plants to keep me from falling, whereupon the plant would pull out of the ground... you get the idea. It took me forever! Next time, Emily, take the path cut out for you, please!!