© 1996 Stephen Finlan
© 1996 The Brotherhood of Man Library
| Bethsaida and The Urantia Book | Volume 3 - No. 3 — Index | Surfing the Sunbeams: Calcium, the Wanderer of Space |
The location of Biblical Bethsaida has been a vexed problem of Biblical scholarship for almost two hundred years, and a problem in the history of Christian pilgrimage since at least the sixth century.
We will consider the literary-historical evidence from Josephus, from the four Gospels, and from pilgrimage accounts, weaving in the archaeological and geographic evidence from the western and northern sides of the Sea of Galilee. There are a number of reasons for approaching the problem in that order. The first century literary evidence is our best information for any attempted identification of any site or sites with the names Bethsaida and/or Julias. The very process of identification of ancient sites implies a correlation of literature with archaeology.
Some archaeologists claim that they are no longer guided in their work by ancient texts, yet their arguments for the significance of each site in its time and place begins and ends with facts gained from literature. Solicitation of public support for their enterprises continues to focus on identification of sites with place names found in the literature, particularly the Bible. The subtext underlying these protestations of absolute objectivity is the notion that physical science is “objective,” while Biblical scholars are “subjective” and unreliable. But pottery is no more physical than Biblical manuscripts, and archaeologists are no less subjective than Biblical scholars. All interpretations must be subject to scrutiny.
¶ Non-Biblical First Century Evidence
“The identification of Julias with Bethsaida, which which Josephus makes in Ant. 18.2.1 28 is the only reference to it in the whole of the ancient literature.”[1] Aside from that passage, Josephus speaks only of “Julias” (while the Gospels speak only of “Bethsaida”). “Pliny the Elder (His nat. 5.15.71). . . mentions four ‘lovely cities’ on the Sea of Galilee in his work, which appeared in the second half of the first century CE, among them ‘in the east’ Julias and Hippos.” (Kuhn and Arav, 82)
The Josephus evidence is critical. His Julias “lay in the Gaulanitis east of the Jordan, near its entrance to the Lake.”[2] But it was not right on the sea, there was a marshy plain between Julias and the sea.[3] Kuhn[4] effectively argued that this points decisively to el-Tell and rules out the sites or el-Araj and el-Mesadiyeh, which lie in that plain (Kuhn ane Arav, 81). From Arav’s digging at el-Araj, “no evidence [was] found for Roman or Hellenistic occupation. . . a sterile level was found underneath this Byzantine structure” (94).
El-Tell shows occupation in the 10th century BCE, all well as the Roman period. These coincide fairly well with the periods mentioned for Tzer (Joshua 19:35) and Bethsaida in the Bible. These details lie beyond the scope of this article.
I accept the identification of El-Tell with Julias, and with the Bethsaida of Josephus. I do not accept that all New Testament references to Bethsaida refer to this site.
¶ Biblical Evidence
Bethsaida is mentioned seven times in the New Testament. The story of a blind man being healed there (Mark 8:22) gives no definite geographic clues. The curse against Bethsaida (Mt 11:21; Lk 10:13) will be examined later in this article. This leaves us with two useful references in John, and two difficult but crucial references connected with the feeding miracle.
The feeding of the five thousand is the only miracle found in all four Gospels. There is a significant convergence among the accounts, and some even more significant divergences.
The most inescapable divergence among the Gospel accounts is that Luke 9:10 says the miracle took place in a “city called Bethsaida” (NRSV), or in “a deserted place belonging to the city called Bethsaida” (NKJV)[5], while Mark 6:45 says after the miracle, “immediately he made his disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd” (NRSV).
At first glance, we appear to have a contradiction between Mark and Luke. But if we set aside “Bethsaida” as an uncertain factor for the moment, and examine the Biblical record in light of agreed-upon sites, we find there is substantial agreement between three of the accounts, while Luke gives us political information that seems to correlate with the geography of the other three. It is much better to examine the Biblical evidence carefully, than to hastily pronounce it to be in error.
Mark has the disciples leaving the miracle site and sailing across the sea toward Bethsaida, but actually landing at Gennesaret (Mark 6:53), possibly blown off course by the strong winds (6:48,51). Matthew does not mention Bethsaida but concurs in their landing at Gennesaret (14:34). Kopp[6] argues convincingly for Tell el-Minyeh as Gennesaret (or, more anciently, Kinnereth; more recently, Ginosar), located on the west shore, a few miles south of Capernaum, a few miles north of Tiberias.
John mentions neither Bethsaida nor Gennesaret in connection with the feeding or the sailing afterwards, but he concurs in the general location of the miracle-site: somewhere across[7] the sea from these west-coast towns. The west-coast town he refers to is Capernaum. They sail away from the miracle site “toward Capernaum” (6:17), and reach their destination (6:21), which, again, from 6:24, appears to be Capernaum. John reiterates that the feeding was across from the lake from Capernaum (6:24-25).
Kuhn makes a muddle of the Biblical text. In dealing with Mark, he writes, “In 6:45 the original goal of the journey in the direction of Bethsaida (in the Gaulanitis) could be traditional, since in 6:52 the evangelist puts the boat not around Bethsaida but rather at the site or in the area of Gennesaret in Galilee” (Kuhn and Arav, 78). This sentence gives the impression that 6:45 refers to the journey to the feeding-site, when it actually places it after the feeding. Kuhn uses some very peculiar reasoning: the fact that Luke omits the interval between Mark 6:45 and 8:22—the only two verses where Mark mentions Bethsaida— “proves that Luke was aware of the section Mark 6:45—8:26” (79, footnote 4).
Kuhn awkwardly paints over the problem attributing the awkwardness to Luke “Not adhering to Markan tradition, Luke somewhat awkwardly transfers the feeding site of the five thousand in 9:10 to Bethsaida” (Kuhn and Arav, 78). Yet, this should strengthen Kuhn’s case, since the other three Gospels assert that the feeding took place somewhere other than the west shore of the sea. Kuhn has evidently failed to see the geographic convergence of Mark, Matthew, and John.
¶ Luke’s Evidence
The locations of Gennesaret and Capernaum (west shore) are virtually undisputed. Three of the Gospels make it clear that the feeding took place across from these towns. Luke’s geographical clues here are weak, but his political and situational clues are highly suggestive. After a pericope that takes place in Capernaum, he tells us that “Jesus went aside privately into a deserted place belonging to the city called Bethsaida” (9:10). By itself, this tells us nothing about Bethsaida’s location. But Luke had just told us that Herod had become “perplexed” (9:7) with Jesus: it was being worded that he was a prophet, maybe even John (the Baptist) returned from the dead. Immediately after telling us of Herod’s sudden interest in Jesus, we are told of Jesus’ withdrawal to the Bethsaida region. Bethsaida-Julias was just outside Herod Antipas’ territory, in the domain of his brother Philip Herod, who never showed any hostility to Jesus. Withdrawal into Gaulanitis may have been necessary to avoid arrest or other hostile attention from Herod Antipas. “It seemed advisable therefore to take refuge. . . the tetrarchy of his tolerant brother, Herod Philip.”[8]
We must admit that this is unproved; as evidence for the feeding taking place to the east of the Jordan, it require surmise, and surmise can be faulty. Luke is the only one who does not clearly state that the feeding was east of the Jordan, yet he gives us the strongest reason for a withdrawal to the east side.
Still, if we use our evidence conservatively, we must state that Luke is vague about which side of the lake the feeding took place on, although definite about the name of the nearest town. The other three evangelists are noncommittal about the name of the feeding-site, but are definite about its being across from the west shore.
On balance, we are left with the distinct possibility that there is no fundamental disagreement among the evangelists about any point except which village or city is meant by “Bethsaida.” If Luke’s Bethsaida is Julias in Gaulanitis, and the Bethsaida of the others is a fishing-village “of Galilee,” as John pointedly says (in 12:21, in a different connection), then there is no contradiction, only an unfortunate failure to clarify.
There is evidence of attempted geographic clarification by early copyists. Besides the variants in Luke mentioned above, there is an important variant in Mark. The phrase “to the other side” (εις π’εραν) found in most Mark manuscripts, is probably[9] omitted in one third-century papyrus(ρ45). If this is an attempted harmonization with Luke, it fails, since we still have the disciples sailing from Luke’s Bethsaida to Mark’s Bethsaida. But it shows us that by the third century, there was already confusion among Christians about the location(s) of Bethsaida(s). Some Latin copyists boldly (my characterization) changed “to Bethsaida” to “from Bethsaida.”[10]
One of the problems is that each individual evangelist only refers to a single Bethsaida. Christian scholars alike have tried to settle on one location for that name, but have been unable to harmonize the two sets of geographic clues from the first century authors.
The Synoptic evangelists show no awareness of a problem; only John, with his “Bethsaida of Galilee,” makes any effort to spell out the location of his Bethsaida (although Mark’s Bethsaida seems to be close to Gennesaret).
John is the last of the four Gospels, and on several points (for instance, on the resurrection) he seems to intend to correct his predecessors. The specification “of Galilee” seems to be a very pointed identification of which Bethsaida was the home of Philip, Andrew, and Peter. Mark has Peter and Andrew living in Capernaum (1:29). However, if Bethsaida was merely the seaside district of Capernaum, the two terms could be interchangeable.
Dodd observes that John has no motive for fabricating Bethsaida as the hometown for Philip, Andrew, and Peter.
“The Synoptics have given most readers the impression that the home of Peter and Andrew was Capernaum. . . There is no particular reason why the name Bethsaida should be introduced, unless the evangelists believed it was actually the (place) in question.”[11] There are strong church traditions that John and James, the sons of Zebedee, fishing partners of Simon and Andrew (Luke 5:10), also hailed from Bethsaida (Kopp, 16).
¶ The Two Bethsaidas
Both Mark and John testify clearly of a Bethsaida on the west shore of the lake. Even an advocate of the one-Bethsaida (in Gaulanitis) hypothesis, C.Kopp, is led by his honesty to observe that: “In its natural sense, εις το π’εραν [Mark 6:45] does in fact point to a Bethsaida on the western shore.”[12] C.H. Dodd also leans towards one Bethsaida, yet must admit that, in John 12:21, “it is definitely stated, as it is perhaps implied in 1:44, that Bethsaida belonged to Galilee. The Bethsaida which the tetrarch Philip rebuilt and named Julias was in Gaulanitis. . . At any rate there seems to have been some looseness about nomenclature in these parts. Judas of Gamala (Antique. xviii.4) is called indifferently Γαυλανιτης and Γαλιλαιος.” I would submit that a person, who can live in more than one place, is more likely to have two geographic labels than a city, which does not move about. Kopp admits that “people have tried to show that Josephus also counted placed places as belonging to Galilee which lay outside its political boundaries. But this attempt has failed” (Kopp,15). Josephus never mentions a Bethsaida of Galilee, but he leaves most villages unmentioned; of the 204 towns and villages which he says are in Galilee, he names only 40. (Kopp, 14).
We cannot escape the observation that Luke is in some disjunction from the other three evangelists. I would suggest that the disjunction is not geographic or factual, but nominal. Luke, conversant with Gentile affairs and with connections between cities in the empire, knows of the Bethsaida raised by the Romans, though he retains the Jewish name for the site. Luke is the evangelist most remote from the original twelve apostles and the rural middle-Galilee which they frequented. We see in his writing a familiarity with the more important cities of Asia Minor and Palestine. Bethsaida-Julias fits this profile.
Mark and John, more familiar with Galilean viewpoints, know of the little fishing-town half way between Gennesaret and Capernaum, home of several of the fishermen who made up Jesus’ group of disciples. Even if Luke knew of a Bethsaida in Galilee, his Gentile readers did not, and he preferred to mention only the more internationally-known city of that name.
Against this interpretation, Kuhn argues that Mark’s description (8:23, 26) of Bethsaida as a 'Χωμη (“village”) reflects its status in Jesus’ lifetime, while the later evangelists label of πολις (Lk 9:10;Jn 1:44) reflects Bethsaida’s status at their time of writing, after its renaming and elevation to πολις status (Kuhn and Arav, 79). This implies an acceptance of Mark’s accuracy in describing the situation as it was in Jesus’ lifetime, but Kuhn does not even mention Mark’s placement of Bethsaida near Gennesaret on the west coast.
The Talmudic scholar turned Christian, Alfred Edersheim,[13] explained that Bethsaida means “fisher-town,” and that there were two or more towns with that name. The Bethsaida “on the eastern bank of the Jordan. . . must, however, not be confounded with the other ‘Fisher-town’ or Bethsaida, on the western shore of the Lake, which the Fourth Gospel, evidencing by this local knowledge its. . . Galilean authorship, distinguishes from the eastern as 'Bethsaida of Galilee.”[14]
This places Bethsaida of Galilee in the neighborhood of the towns most frequented by Jesus and the apostles; proceeding from north to south, we have Capernaum, Bethsaida, Gennesaret, and Magdala. From these towns come most of those disciples whose hometowns we know.
In this connection, it seems unlikely that Jesus was condemning this supportive village when he said, “Woe to you Chorazin. . . Bethsaida. . . Capernaum” (Lk 10:13-15; Mt 11:21). More likely he was condemning three fairly well-to-do towns whose proud and status conscious inhabitants snubbed his message.
¶ One Bethsaida
The one-Bethsaida theory asks us to imagine Peter, Andrew, and Philip coming from a cosmopolitan city where Jews were engaged in non-kosher fishing, a city that was named after a Roman queen! This hardly fits with the devout and rustic image of the apostles that all our sources give us. Numerous catfish carapaces, with accompanying fishing implements, have been found on et-Tell, suggesting an extensive operation farming these fish, which are non-kosher because they are bottom feeders. Some liberal halakhic rulings of rabbis (of a later period) allowed Jews to sell non-kosher meat to gentiles; such a rationalization may have been accepted in Bethsaida-Julias. But Jesus, at any rate, opposed liberal rulings on divorce and on children’s obligations to their parents. John the Baptist (whom Peter and Andrew had followed) may have been even stricter.
A northeast-shore origin for several of the apostles leaves unexplained the fact that the heartland of Jesus’ activities was clearly among the villages of the west shore, where also he called these fishermen from their nets. And a cosmopolitan origin for the apostolic group leaves unexplained the aversion that the group seemed to have for the major cities of Galilee; they never visited Sepphoris or Tiberias. Nor do we have any record of them being in Bethsaida of Gaulanitis, only in a piece of country belonging to a Bethsaida, in fact, near some “villages” (Mark 6:36; Luke 9:12). The only big city which the Gospels tell of the apostles and Jesus visiting, was Jerusalem, which every Jew was obligated to visit on holy days. Their attendance at Passovers in Jerusalem (spelled out most clearly by John) indicates a traditional devoutness on their part.
The Gospels give a consistent picture of the apostles as a rustic, devout, west-shore group. The cosmopolitan and religiously loose city of Bethsaida-Julias in the Gaulanitis contradicts this picture at every point. Philip Herod erected his gravestone apparently within the city,[15] something not allowed by Jewish law. These stark contradictions are not addressed by the advocates of the one-Bethsaida theory.
The problem of two Bethsaidas is no greater than the problem—the fact—of two Bethlehems, two Hazors, two Beth-shemeshes, two Tripolis, two Caesareas, two Antiochs17—or, in fact, two cities in the Transjordan named Julias, one in Gaulanitis and one in Perea (Kuhn and Arav, 89) Actually, it may be less of a problem, if readers understood the frame of reference of the authors they were reading: with Mark, Matthew, and John, the focus was on the Jewish homeland: with Luke, the whole Mediterranean—particularly cities of importance in the administration of the empire—is the setting. The fairly important city in the Gaulanitis and the tiny village in the Galilee (hardly more than a sea-side suburb of Capernaum or Gennesaret) are not comparable in terms of their international connections.
One of the most feeble theories is that there were two Bethsaidas in close proximity, at et-Tell and el-Araj.[16] This is really just a variation of the one-Bethsaida theory, for el-Araj would be nothing but a suburb of the first. It appears to be an attempt to “let the Bible off the hook”—which is neither necessary nor scientific. Sailing from one to the other of these “Bethsaidas” would never put one “in th middle of the lake.” (Mark 6:47).
The Biblical evidence clearly speaks of a Bethsaida on the west shore (Mark and John), and of another one “across” the lake (Luke, supported by Josephus; supported also by the other three evangelists as concerns general direction, though they do not refer to the Bethsaida in Gaulanitis by name.)
¶ Pilgrim Evidence
Eusebius, in the fourth century, is our earliest post-biblical witness. He knows of only one Bethsaida. He uses a phrase from Josephus, and seems to have et-Tell in mind (Kopp, 17). Kopp says the next two pilgrim testimonies have no geographic worth, but Theodosius in 530 places Bethsaida six miles north of Capernaum: a slight overstatement but in the neighborhood of et-Tell.
Kuhn (p.83) refers to Theodosius’ account as “the oldest pilgrim itinerary,” although we have seen that Kopp’s more thorough investigation considers it to be the fourth testimony. Kuhn then jumps to the twelfth century, discussing errant identifications of el-Minyeh with Bethsaida. We have seen that Kopp had already dismantled these mis-identifications in his 1950 article, showing the stronger tradition that el-Minyeh is Gennesaret (20ff).
Next, “Arculf (670) describes the. . . course of the Jordan. It flows ‘past a town called Julias’ and then enters the lake of Gennesareth. Julias had ahmost certainly long since lost its artificial name. Thus it is surprising that he does not call the town Bethsaida” (Kopp,18)—unless it needed to be distinguished from another Bethsaida.
The record of the pilgrim Daniel (1106) is important, because it occurs before the Crusaders have had a chance to alter or add to local traditions. He seems to locate Bethsaida at el-Minyeh, but he also speaks of a “village of Zebedee, the father of John,” which he locates on Tell el-'Oreimeh or at Tabgha hospice (Kopp, 27).
Niccola da Poggibonsi in 1345 writes of the Galilean Lake beginning between Bethsaida and Capernaum, and he mentions no western Bethsaida, although he visited the west shore (Kopp, 19). In the 15th and 16th centuries witnesses located Bethsaida at various places along the western shore, including Tabgha (Kopp, 31).
Variant traditions persisted for a west-shore location, for a northeast location, or for two Bethsaida. Most pilgrims speak of a single site, rather than two. It is clear that the memories of the actual locations of these towns were lost soon after the New Testament period. Bethsaida-Julias may have been abandoned after the Jewish war (Kuhn and Arav, 97)[17] while the Galilean Bethsaida, little more than the “fisher-town” of Capernaum or Gennesaret appears to have lost its name or to have been assimilated to its parent-town.
The two Bethsaida theory was accepted by the earliest scientific observers: “The renowned theologian and archaeologist from New York, Edward Robinson, although he himself in his diary from 1838 identified et-Tell as Julias-Bethsaida in the Gaulanitis—as the Anglican bishop Richard Pococke, who visited Palestine exactly one hundred years before him had done[18]—still firmly maintained a second Galilean Bethsaida, which he identified with Tagbha[19]” (Kuhn and Arav, 84). In 1738 Pococke was “shown the ruins of the biblical Bethsaida on the western shore” (Kopp, 20). The two Bethsaida theory enjoyed acceptance throughout most of this century, following Schurer’s “The Life of the Jews.” (1902)[20]
¶ Tabgha
The persistent tendency to identify Bethsaida with some west shore location, carries some weight. Robinson’s identification of Tabgha as the specific site, supported by Daniel’s love of “Zebedee’s village” there, seems the most plausible. Tabgha is located two kilometers west of Capernaum. If the lake were a clock face, Gennesaret would be at 10.00, Tabgha at 10.30, Capernaum at 11.00.
Tabgha is the site of the warm springs (hence the name, “seven springs” in Greek) which draw fish to that area in the cold part of the year, and has been a favorite site for winter fishing from earliest times. Mendel Nun, longtime Galilee resident and independent historian, refers to Tabgha as the ''fisherman’s suburb of Capernaum.[21] Josephus refers to the largest spring as “the well of Capernaum.” The musht are drawn to the springs in the winter. “Capernaum fishermen stayed in this area during winter and early spring, making Tabgha an important industrial suburb of Capernaum.” (Nun, 14).
We saw that Mark has the apostles leaving the feeding-site, heading back to Bethsaida (6:45), and landing at Gennesaret (6:53); Matthew concurs in the latter point, but John has them land at Capernaum. If these are consecutive sites on the west shore, the range of disagreement of the biblical records may be very small. They may even be referring to the same landing. A landing at a minor fishing village might be referred to as a landing at its parent town, either Gennesaret or Capernaum. Mark may be inconsistent by referring to both Gennesaret and Bethsaida in the same story, but literary inconsistency is not rare.
There are currently two pilgrim sites at Tabgha. The “Church of the Multiplication” celebrates the feeding of the five thousand. It appears that the name “Bethsaida” at an early date, attracted to this site the story of the feeding which occurred in the vicinity of the other Bethsaida. We saw that by the third and fourth centuries, manuscript copyists were already confused about the locale of “Bethsaida.”
The other pilgrim site at Tabgha is the “Church of the Primacy,” referring to Jesus statement “on this rock will I found my church” (Mt 16:18). The church is located right on the water. What appears to be the tops of ancient stone piers lie a foot or two under the surface of the lake. On the shoreline are several large heart-shaped rocks. They may have been water-level markers. In like manner, theories of Biblical scholars which are dismissed as sentimental, sometimes turn out to be accurate markers.
¶ Bibliography
- Culpepper, R. Alan. “John, the Son of Zebedee.” University of South Carolina Press, 1994
- Dodd, C.H. “Historical Tradition in the Fourth Gospel.” Cambridge University Press, 1965
- Edersheim, Alfred. “The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah.” Third Edition, 1886. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 1971.
- Kopp, Clemens, D.D. “Christian Sites around the Sea of Galilee.” in Dominican Studies, 3. London: Blackfriars Publications, 1950
- Kuhn, Heinz-Wolfgang, and Rami Arav. “The Bethsaida Excavations: Historical and Archaeological Approaches” in “The Future of Early Christianity,” Ed. Birger A. Pearson in collaboration with A. Thomas Kraabel, George W.E. Nickelsburg, and Norman R. Petersen.
- Nestle-Aland. “Novum Testamentum Graece.” 27th ed. Stutgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1993.
- Nun, Mendel. “The Sea of Galilee and its Fishermen in the New Testament.” Kibbutz Ein Gev, Israel: Kibbutz Ein Gev, 1989.
- Rousseau, John J., and Rami Arav. “Jesus and His World.” Augsberg Fortress, 1995.
- [SBL.] Abstracts for the summer 1995 Budapest meeting of the Archaeological section of SBL.
¶ External links
- Article in Innerface International: https://urantia-book.org/archive/newsletters/innerface/vol3_3/page10.html
| Bethsaida and The Urantia Book | Volume 3 - No. 3 — Index | Surfing the Sunbeams: Calcium, the Wanderer of Space |
¶ References
Kuhn, Heinz-Wolfgang and Rami Arav (cited above) ↩︎
Kopp, Clemens D.D. (cited above) ↩︎
Jew. War. 3.10.7.515, Life 398-406- Kuhn and Arav, 81 ↩︎
Kuhn is “author of the first part of this article” (Kuhn and Arav, 77) ↩︎
Also in the 1955 Chall.-Rheims Rev. This reading is based on the presence of εις τοπου ερημον in some of the oldest manuscripts: Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus, Vaticanus, and Ephraemi Rescriptus. It makes more sense than “in” the city, since five thousand could hardly crowd into the city comfortably. Furthermore, a remote setting is suggested by the apostles’ anticipation of the crowd needing to go “into the surrounding towns. . . and get provisions; for we are in a deserted place here” (9:2). In Mark 6:31-32, Jesus twice makes reference to going to a a “remote place.” ↩︎
Christian Sites Around the Sea of Galilee, in Dominican Studies 3, 20-27 ↩︎
This refers to crossing a significant portion of the sea; it does not signify crossing to a spot on the east coast directly opposite to the starting point. ↩︎
Kopp, “Christian Sites” in Dominican Studies 3, 11. ↩︎
Nestle-Aland’s apparatus refers to P45vid. The “vid” (?) indicates “that the reading. . . cannot be determined with absolute certainty. . . [but with] a high degree of probability,” Novum Testamentum Graece. 27th ed., p.55. ↩︎
Richard Freund lecture of July 17, 1995 at Ribbutz Ginosar. ↩︎
C.H. Dodd, (cited above) ↩︎
“Christian Sites Around the Sea of Galilee.” in Dominican Studies 3, 12. ↩︎
Edersheim, Alfred (cited above) ↩︎
Edersheim, 1, 676 ↩︎
Antiquities XVIII, 4, 6. (Kopp, “Christian Sites” in Dominican Studies 3, 13, 35.) ↩︎
Refuted in “Jesus and His World.” John J. Rousseau and Rami Arav (Augsburg Fortress, 1995), 20. ↩︎
Sandra Fortner, on the other hand, finds pottery evidence (late Roman Terra Sigillata) for occupation of the site around the year 300 CE (from the abstracts for the summer 1995 Budapest meeting of the Archaeological section of SBL.) Fred Strickland identifies five corns from Trajan’s time (98-117), he asserts that the city became uninhabited after an earthquake near the end of Trajan’s reign (July 12, 1995 lecture)
Rabbis from Bethsaida are mentioned in rabbinic sources, but not after the third century: Richard Freund, lecture at Kibbutz Ginosar, July 17, 1995.
Approximately 400CE, a catastrophic breakout flood of the Jordan River sent boulders hurtling into the delta area, destroying any anchorage sites that may have existed: John Shroder, Ginosar lecture, July 19, 1995. ↩︎“Description of the East.” London 1743-45 ↩︎
“Biblical Researches in Pal.” 2nd ed. 2: 404-6;0 3:358f ↩︎
This information is from Rami Arav’s lecture at Kibbutz Ginosar, July 6, 1995. ↩︎
Nun, Mendel. (cited above) ↩︎