A new trail across northern Israel offers travelers the chance to walk — or trot — through New Testament sites in the footsteps of Jesus.
The newly opened Gospel Trail winds for 39 miles, heading south from Nazareth, across gentle green hills, through Jewish and Arab towns and down to Capernaum, the fishing town where Jesus is said to have established his home base. The Tourism Ministry believes the new trail may attract up to 200,000 Christian pilgrims to northern Israel over the coming year.
Christians are a rapidly growing segment of Israeli tourism, comprising about two-thirds of the 3.45 million people who visited in 2010.
On the Gospel Trail, tourists can ride toward the Sea of Galilee on horseback, accompanied by escorts from a nearby ranch wearing jeans, big belt buckles and embroidered cowboy boots with spurs. The scene feels more Texas than Gospel, especially because according to the New Testament, Jesus’ mount of choice was a donkey. Horses were considered vehicles of war.
But as the horses canter to Capernaum, past the occasional grazing cow in a grassy pasture, with the sun setting over the distant hills of the Golan Heights, visitors can imagine for a moment that they have returned to the Holy Land of two millennia past.
The Gospel Trail, planned and researched for more than a decade, cost about $800,000. The government paid for two-thirds of it, the Jewish National Fund the rest.