Page 24 - Holyland Magazine - 2022 Edition

Searching for

Bethsaida

The last lost city of the gospels

2020 aerial photograph of el-Araj on the Jordan River
(looking north). Photo: courtesy of Achia Kohn-Tavo

he New Testament Gospels describe Holy Land today were identified beginning only buildings and street layouts and a significantly
Jesus travelling from village to village in the nineteenth century. Adventurers and increased population.
throughout the Galilee, especially historians used descriptions from the Bible
along the Sea of Galilee. If you travel and other writings, geography, the rudimentary But where was this city, with its church and
Tthere today, you will likely visit places archaeology of the day, and the fact that some its earlier Roman buildings? If you travel to the
with names you recognize from the Bible. Hebrew place names survived in modern northern edge of the Sea of Galilee today, you
Capernaum, for example, is most famous as Arabic designations to identify many places will see signs marking “Bethsaida” that lead
the place where Peter and Andrew lived. In mentioned in the Gospels. about 1.25 miles north of the current shore, up
fact, you can see the remains of what might a hill to a place with the modern name e-Tell.
be Peter’s house in Capernaum, as well as the The location of Bethsaida, however, remained a As the result of excavations that extend back
foundations of the nearby synagogue where mystery. Not for lack of importance. In the New to the 1990s, e-Tell has been identified as the
Jesus himself visited. Modern churches have Testament, it was the birthplace of the apostles Iron Age capital of Geshur. It has also been
marked pilgrimage destinations along the Sea Peter, Andrew, and Philip. In the 30s of the first identified as a potential site for Bethsaida.
of Galilee (or, Sea of Tiberias) for centuries. century, tetrarch Herod Philip (son of Herod the Since 2016, however, an alternative site for
Great) upgraded the village of Bethsaida to the the location of Bethsaida has been under
Bethsaida, however, has remained something status of polis, or city, and renamed it Julias excavation by Prof. Mordechai Aviam. Very
of a mystery. Its precise location, right on the in honor of Caesar Augustus’s wife, and the near the modern shore of the Sea of Galilee—
shores of the sea, has remained uncertain. mother of the emperor Tiberius. It transformed and in fact, often submerged in spring—is a
In fact, most places visited by pilgrims to the a sleepy fishing village to one with Roman-style site called el-Araj.

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