LANDS AND PLACES
Caesarea [Gr. Kaisareia, “pertaining to Caesar”] was a city of administrative and mercantile importance in Roman times and a center in the early Christian church.
Caesarea was located on the sea-shore of Israel, about half-way between modern Haifa and Tel-Aviv. It was called also Caesarea Maritima (“Caesarea by the sea”) to distinguish it from Caesarea Philippi, a town in the northern part of Palestine, near the foot of Mt. Hermon. Herod the Great had built Caesarea from 22–10 BC at the site of an earlier Phoenician and Greek town called Straton’s Tower. He then renamed the city for his patron, the Roman emperor Caesar Augustus. After founding the Roman province of Judea in AD 6, Caesarea became its administrative capital, while Jerusalem continued to be the religious center of the Jews during the first century AD.
The book of Acts reveals that Caesarea was an important city for the early church. Philip was the first evangelist to introduce the gospel to that metropolitan center (Acts 8:40). Caesarea became his home where he received his fellow gospel workers (Acts 21:8). It was in Caesarea that the apostle Peter baptized the first recorded gentile convert to Christianity – Cornelius, a centurion in the Roman army. When Cornelius and his household believed in Jesus they received the gift of the Holy Spirit that corroborated the fact that salvation was for all people, not only the Jews (Acts 10). The apostle Paul often used the port of Caesarea in his travels (Acts 9:30; 18:22). He was imprisoned in Caesarea for two years before he was deported to Rome to stand trial (Acts 23:23;25:4). During his imprisonment, Paul preached the gospel to King Agrippa II (Acts 25:13–26:32).
Excavations undertaken since the 1950s have uncovered a Roman temple, an amphitheater, a hippodrome, and an aqueduct, which confirm as evidence that Caesarea was a political capital with all the comforts of a Roman seat of government. A find of great interest was a Roman inscription uncovered in 1961 that mentions Pontius Pilate, the Roman procurator of Judea governing from the year 26 to 36, who condemned Jesus to be crucified. Further excavations in the 1970s and 1980s, both on land and underwater, gave a clearer picture of the artificial harbor constructed by Herod the Great. The port was one of the technological marvels of the ancient world that made Caesarea a major center of trade between the Western Roman Empire and the Near East.
The archeological findings from Caesarea reveal the significant impact of Hellenistic-Roman culture on Judea in New Testament times. The preaching of the gospel, however, transformed the city into a Christian metropolis, which became a center of Christian learning and the seat of a bishop by the third century AD.