Lebanon’s Holy Land

Lebanon is a geographical extension of the territory of the Holy Land (which is typically only Christian), more precisely in the little town of Cana (known in the Gospels as the Cana of Galilee, i.e. the Lower Galilee towards the Mediterranean Sea. St. John’s Gospel relates two of Jesus Christ’s visits to Cana. The first occurred at the wedding of a family friend and the second when he healed at distahe son of an official of King Herodes Antipas, governor at the time of the city of Capharaum, on the Lake Tiberias, Jesus demonstrated his divine might in the territories of Tyre and Sidon (Saida) at least in two occasions: towards a pagan greek-cananean woman and toward the daughter of a syrian-phoenician family, also a pagan.

Jesus found so much faith among the phoenician and the cananean pagans that one day, while in phoenician territory known today as South Lebanon, he admonished the jewish people of Khorazaim that if He were to perform miracles in Tyre and Sidon, the inhabitants of these cities would do penance dressed in rags and ashes.

EXEGETICAL CONSIDERATIONS

Eusebe, the great Scholar and “Father of the History of the Early Church”, Bishop of Maritime Caesarea near Jaffa, spoke in his famous ONOMASTIKON (describing in Greek all the biblical places of the Old and New Testament) about Cana in these terms: ” Cana, in the territory of the great Sidon, where our Savior performed his first miracle, changing water into wine”. St. Gerome, one of the great Scholars of the Bible, in his latin translation expresses himself exactly as Eusebe does, word per word and without any critical observation: he totally accepts the text of the great Eusebe of Caesarea.

The pilgrims coming from Europe began little by little to appear in Palestine in the 4th century. In the 6th century the centers of pilgrimage concentrated in Nazareth (site of the Annunciation), Bethlehem (where Jesus is bom) and Jerusalem (Crucifixion and Resurrection of the Christ). To satisfy their religious zeal these pilgrims identified some pilgrimage centers with places that had no geographical and archaeological (archaeology was a science unknown then) correlation with the Bible. Sometimes they used local toponomastical names of places that had nothing to do with the biblical topography but whose names, without philological details, resembled the biblical ones: In the Middle Ages the pilgrims found it easier to identify Qana (of St. John’s Gospel), located then and now about 12 Km. from Tyre, with Kfer Kenna, 4112 Km. from Nazareth: the resemblance of the name and the easier access to the site were the only reasons of the choice of the different location. All the historical, exegetical, philological and topographical documentation regarding the new identification of the Cana of the Gospel with the Cana of South Lebanon has been provided, reevaluated and critically studied by Prof. Dr. Dr. M.P. Roncaglia,

Orientalist Scholar, Member of the Academy of German Orientalists (D.M.G.) and collaborator of Biblical Institutes of Jerusalem. In his studies he has been assisted b y his wife, Prof. Samira Bassil Roncaglia, Graduate of Oriental Theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University of Rome. These scholars already have under print three volumes on the subject of Cana in three languages: arabic, french and english.

They have released several press conferences and were interviewed by the international media. The topic has created a growing cultural movement among the arabic world too. Arabic television, newspapers and magazines don’t always relate the topic in critical fashion because it is aimed at the general public. There have been widespread reports of movements of pilgrims and tourists to Cana. According to the newspaper An-Nahar, more than a thousand visitors, some from as far as Canada, have gone to the site since the beginning of 1994.

South Lebanon, at the time of the Gospels, was the Lower Galilee on the border with Phoenicia and it was inclusive of the territories of Tyre and Sidon. This region is well known in the Bible as “Galilaea Gentium” the Galilee of the Goyim (pagans), visited many times by Jesus and where He performed many miracles.

Nowadays the enthusiasm of the population of South Lebanon is very impressive. The Christians are honoring the personal presence of the Son of God in their country; the Moslems take great pride in the fact that the Messiah, Son of the Virgin Maryam and the Word of God (Kalimat Allah, according to the Coran), had visited the region now belonging to the Lebanese Republic.