Fishing Village
Bethsaida
beth-SAY-ih-duh · Modern Tel Bethsaida (et-Tell), Israel · 32.9103° N, 35.6306° E
Bethsaida was a fishing village on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee named in the Gospels as the hometown of the apostles Peter, Andrew, and Philip (John 1:44). It is associated with the feeding of the 5,000 (Luke 9:10) and the healing of a blind man (Mark 8:22-26), yet Jesus also rebuked it, along with Chorazin and Capernaum, for unbelief despite witnessing his miracles.
Archaeology
Two excavations about two kilometres apart each claim to be the Gospel town, and this is a live dispute rather than a settled one. R. Arav probed et-Tell in 1987 and the Bethsaida Excavations Consortium formed around the dig in 1990; it has uncovered a monumental Iron Age gate complex that Arav reads as the capital of the Aramean kingdom of Geshur, Hellenistic and Roman levels, and quantities of fishing gear. The standing objection is that et-Tell is not on the water — the project's own figure is about 2 km from the north-eastern coast, and other published figures differ — which Arav answers with geological work arguing the shoreline moved south. Since 2016 M. Aviam and R. S. Notley have excavated el-Araj, near the ancient shore, reporting a Roman bathhouse, a denarius of Nero of AD 65-66, and a Byzantine basilica they identify with the Church of the Apostles, with a mosaic inscription invoking Peter published in 2023. Arav's own position is a two-period one and is often misreported: he holds that first-century Bethsaida was at et-Tell and that Byzantine Bethsaida was at el-Araj. Both teams are still in the field and neither has conceded. The app's article The Search for Bethsaida sets out both cases and the published exchanges between them.
On a modern map
Further reading
- Bethsaida - Wikipedia
- The Bethsaida Excavations Project (et-Tell), under the Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archaeology
- The el-Araj Excavation Project, directed by M. Aviam and R. S. Notley
- R. S. Notley, "Et-Tell Is Not Bethsaida", Near Eastern Archaeology 70:4 (2007), 220-230
- R. Arav, "Bethsaida - A Response to Steven Notley", Near Eastern Archaeology 74:2 (2011), 92-100 - the opening piece of a four-part exchange
- John 1, Bible Gateway NIV
- Mark 8, Bible Gateway NIV
Reflect
At Bethsaida, Jesus healed a blind man in stages, sight coming gradually — where is clarity coming slowly for you?
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