Entrance to Caesarea Philippi
Cæsarea Philippi, Bâniâs. This ancient city occupies one of the most picturesque sites in Syria. It is about three and a half miles from Dan. This was anciently the old Greek city of Panium, which Herod the Great rebuilt and renamed Cæsarea Philippi. In the picture we are looking northward. We enter the old city through a gateway beyond a narrow single-arched bridge. “Two sublime ravines cut deeply into the ridge, having between them an isolated cone more than 1000 feet in height crowned by the ruins of Subeibeh. On the terrace at the base of this cone lie the ruins of Cæsarea Philippi. The terrace itself is covered with oak and olive trees, having green glades and clumps of hawthorn, acacia and myrtle here and there, all alive with streams of water and cascades.” The main attraction of Bâniâs is the great fountain, the “upper source” of the Jordan, bursting from the mouth of a cave, sweeping down a rocky bed, scattering its spray over thickets of oleander and dashing away over fallen columns and rocks, and at length plunging over a precipice into a dark ravine. The citadel, the walls, the moat, the bridge, the gateway, the towers, are all worthy of study, but there is one episode in the history of Cæsarea Philippi which has served to impress it more deeply on the memory and heart of the Christian than all the pomp and circumstance of Syrian, Greek and Roman idolatry. Into the coast of of Cæsarea Philippi came our Redeemer. Six days at least did He sojourn here. Among these rocks St. Peter confessed His divinity, that confession which was the “Rock of the Church,” while still in the same region Christ led three of His disciples “unto a high mountain” and was “transfigured before them.” It is strongly probable that Mount Hermon was the mount of transfiguration.
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