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Israel dig deepens grad’s faith [UPDATED]
Published 10:59am Friday, August 12, 2011 Updated 10:59am Friday, August 12, 2011Fergus Falls High School 2009 graduate Kyle Sorkness, who is studying theology and church work at Concordia University, St. Paul, grew both educationally and spiritually during a one-month stay in Israel, during the month of July. During that time frame he worked with an archaeological excavation team.
“This experience gave me a deeper interaction with the Christian faith,” said Sorkness. “It was in Israel where we believe God brought salvation to the world, through Jesus.”
The son of Schan and Shari Sorkness, Sorkness is a member of Trinity Lutheran Church. He will share his month-long stay in Israel at 10:30 a.m. Sunday at the church. The public is invited.
At the end of this most recent academic year, Sorkness didn’t expect to spend a month of his summer break digging up an ancient city in the Holy Land.
“I was surprised that one of my professors, Dr. Mark Schuler, was leading a dig in Israel,” he said. “I was even more surprised that I could be part of it. I felt it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience that I didn’t want to pass up.”
Sorkness was part of a 20-person team, comprised of students from Concordia in St. Paul, other universities and other volunteers from across the United States and Canada. Members of the group ranged in age from teenagers to retired.
Schuler, director of the Northeast Insula project in Israel, is a professor of theology and Greek at Concordia. The digging site, at Hippos, is along the border of Israel and Syria.
The work has been done, over the years, mostly by volunteers using hand tools and buckets to remove large volumes of dirt and cargo nets to lift out large rocks.
The digging site is the only city on a hill near the Sea of Galilee. The city itself was founded about 200 B.C. and destroyed by an earthquake in 749 A.D.
Hippos is most likely the place referred to in the New Testament where Jesus says his followers are to be like “a city on a hill that cannot be hidden.”
When people think of archaeology, most of them picture brushes and very detailed work.
“And while a small portion of what we did at Hippos was like that, most of our time was spent moving as much dirt and as many rocks as possible,” said Sorkness. “This was necessary, in order to uncover ancient buildings.”
Notable finds included three Greek inscriptions. One was the missing third piece of an inscribed block, while the other two were in mosaic floors. The team hopes that these inscriptions will give further clues as to the age and ownership of the ancient buildings.
Sorkness spent much of his four weeks in Israel helping to finish the excavation of a late Byzantine-era residential building.
“As we were uncovering the various rooms, we kept waiting to find an exterior doorway,” he said, “but we never did. It’s still a mystery to us how the ancients would have entered and exited this building. Hopefully, more clues will be found this coming year.”
Team members used their weekends to tour various Holy Land sites.
“We moved fairly quickly, and in just a few weekends we were able to see Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Qumran, Ein Gedi, the Dead Sea, Capernaum, Tabgah and a few other places near the Sea of Galilee,” said Sorkness.
The team stayed at a kibbutz, a communal farm city, on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee.
“The sea provided evening recreation of a unique kind,” said Sorkness. “It was surreal to think that we were swimming in the same body of water that Jesus preached from and even walked upon.”
Sorkness kept a daily blog while in Israel, which can be viewed on his personal website at www.kylesorkness.com
