Capernaum Contributed by Stephen Langfur {maps}images/stories/galalee/the_lake_of_galilee_and_environs_in_the_roman_period.jpg Map of lake area right{/maps}according to Matthew 11: 20-24, Jesus performed most of his miracles in Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum. This evangelist tells us that "leaving Nazareth, he came and lived in Capernaum" (4:13) and later Matthew singles out the village as "his own city" (Mt 9:1). Many references in the gospels place Jesus very centrally here. Why did Jesus choose Capernaum as a base? The Bible gives no reason, and we shall probably never know. The principles of historical geography apply mainly to large groups; in the case of a teacher and a handful of students, more particular motives may come into play. Yet one possibility may be suggested. Jesus comes to live in Capernaum right after the imprisonment of John the Baptist: "Now when Jesus heard that John was delivered up, he withdrew into Galilee. Leaving Nazareth, he came and lived in Capernaum..." (Matthew 4:12-13). Is there a connection between John's arrest by Herod Antipas, Tetrarch of Galilee, and Jesus' choice of Capernaum? The suggestion is this: Jesus did not want a similar fate to interrupt his public mission at its start. By using Capernaum as his base, he could remain in a region that was largely Jewish, but if Antipas went after him too, he could quickly move by boat to the nearby territory of Antipas's half-brother and rival, Herod Philip. Capernaum was the closest town on the lake to Philip's domain on the other side of the Jordan River, as you can see by enlarging the map above. What's more, in Matthew, Mark and Luke - the Synoptic Gospels - Jesus is very reticent about his messiahship. Against this theory of the motive for choosing Capernaum, we have the fact that Rome kept {jtips}matthew 8: 5-9 - "When he came into Capernaum, a centurion came to him, asking him, and saying, 'Lord, my servant lies in the house paralyzed, grievously tormented.' Jesus said to him, 'I will come and heal him.' The centurion answered, 'Lord, I m not worthy for you to come under my roof. Just say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I am also a man under authority, having under myself soldiers.'" Also Luke 7: 1-5. a military presence in this border town,{/jtips} the purpose of which would have been to support {jtips}matthew 9:9 - "As Jesus passed by from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax collection office. He said to him, 'Follow me.' He got up and followed him." the collection of tolls{/jtips} from those who were passing between Antipas's territory and Philip's. [If the green links don't work, try a different browser.] According to archaeologist {jtips}stefano de Luca (2013) Capernaum in D. M. Master (ed.) The Oxford Encylopedia of the Bible and Archaeology. New York: Oxford University Press. Stefano de Luca,{/jtips} the built-up area of Capernaum in the Byzantine period (330 AD- 640 AD) extended for almost a mile along the lake and reached inland for some 200 yards. He estimates up to 2000 inhabitants for that time. In the early 1st century AD, when Jesus lived here, the population would have been half of that or less. The sole village west of the Jordan on this northern shore, it included within its sphere of influence the seven warm, salty springs of Tabgha almost two miles to the west.
The warmth of the Tabgha springs {jtips}nowadays, because of the salt, the Tabgha water is channeled around the lake and dumped into the lower Jordan on the south end.{/jtips} attracted Tilapia Galilaea, today called Peter's fish, a culinary favorite then as now. Tilapia do not occur naturally in temperate climates, because they require warm water. They are abundant only here and in the lakes of eastern Africa, such as Lake Victoria. The Tabgha springs are probably what Josephus meant when he wrote of a spring called "Capernaum, which some consider to be an offshoot of the Nile, because it breeds a fish very like the perch caught in the lake of Alexandria." Perhaps the species had a tropical origin, stemming from a time when {jtips}this rip in the earth's crust, which geologists call "the Dead Sea Transform," belongs to the divergence of the Asian and African tectonic plates. The Transform extends about 600 miles from the southern edge of Turkey to the Red Sea, reaching its deepest point indeed, the deepest point on the face of the earth at the Dead Sea (427 meters or 1400 feet below world sea level). the great rift valley,{/jtips} was full of water (before the creation of the relatively young Dead Sea and before a rise in part of the Arava). The air temperature at the Lake of Galilee dips starkly at night: in winter it can fall to 10 degrees Celsius. The tilapia would have preferred to hug the northwest shore, needing water that was warmed by the Tabgha springs. That may be one reason {jtips}additionally, the nets were made of rope, which the fish had a harder time seeing at night, not to mention the discomfort of working in the heat of the day. among several,{/jtips} why the Capernaum fishermen preferred working by night, as the gospels attest: {jtips} e.g., Luke 5:5 - "Simon answered, 'Master, we've worked hard all night and haven't caught anything.'" Cf. John 21:3.{/jtips} In general, they could count on finding tilapia nearby to the west. Along the Greek Orthodox shore, Y. Stepansky detected remains of a dry-stone structure about 600 meters along the shore, "from which extend, perpendicular to the coast, 44 irregular arms" {jtips}cited in Stefano de Luca, Capernaum, The Oxford Encylopedia of the Bible and Archaeology, edited by Daniel M. Master, 1:168 80. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. at intervals of three meters;{/jtips} these may have been ponds meant to hold live fish before selling them, as at Magdala (see under "Other structures"). In the 5th to the 7th centuries AD, a sea wall with jetties was added. An extension of it was discovered while building the modern jetty of the National Park (visible in the photo above). The main harbor here during Jesus' mission, however, was probably the large inlet just west of the village, known as the "Port of Peter." The land above the inlet forms a natural theater with excellent acoustics, and one may envision Jesus addressing the multitude from a borrowed boat. One can still see traces of jetties, although they are partly underwater today: On average (discounting seasonal variations), lake-level rose by about three feet when the opening of the lower Jordan shifted and narrowed a millennium ago. Although the Franciscan archaeologists at Capernaum found walls and pavements dating from the second millennium BC, they discovered nothing from the entire Israelite period (1200-587 BC). This makes geographical sense: in that time, there were as yet {jtips2}in Assyria bridges are mentioned from the 11th century BC. (The Egyptians used ferries.) Yet the First Testament lacks a word for bridge, and no remains of any have been found in the land for this period. Except when miracles occur, the Israelites are always portrayed as fording. The location of fords in this land was a major factor in determining the location of cities and roads. It was the Romans who first made bridges general, building them wherever they conquered no bridges{/jtips2} in the land, so the Great Trunk Road could not cross the mouth of the Upper Jordan en route to Damascus. Instead, until the time of the Assyrian conquest (735 BC), the road stretched due north to Hazor, from which one could either head east to ford the river or farther north to circumvent its springs. {maps}images/stories/galalee//capernaum-shoreline-of-sea-of-galilee.jpg Capernaum: The main inlet right{/maps}the {jtips}the Hasmoneans: family of Judah Maccabee ("the hammer") and his brothers, who revolted successfully against the Greek Empire in 167 BC. In 164 they purified and re-dedicated the Temple in Jerusalem, establishing the festival of Hanukah ("dedication"). They ruled till 63 BC, and their domain extended almost as far that attributed to King David. Hasmoneans{/jtips} may have been the first to build bridges in the land, but the earliest remains of any that we find are Roman. There was a tiny Hellenistic settlement at Capernaum before the Hasmoneans, but it blossomed in the period when the latter undertook a policy of settling Jews in Galilee. After a Hasmonean or Roman bridge appeared at the mouth of the Upper Jordan, traffic could swerve away from long-defunct Hazor, taking an easier path to Damascus and the cities on the Euphrates. (By this time, in any case, the road was no longer the major link between continents: most international trade went through Antioch in the north or Alexandria in Egypt.) Five hundred yards northeast of the village a Roman milestone was found. Thus, if you were using the trunk road coming from the tetrarchy of Herod Philip, Capernaum was the first town you encountered in the tetrarchy of Herod Antipas. Levi, the tax man, would have had a station on this road, perhaps in the town itself.
{maps}images/stories/galalee/handmills_at_capernaum.jpg Handmills at Capernaum right{/maps}coins and imported pottery indicate that the village's commercial contacts were mainly with the north: the Upper Galilee, the Golan, Syria, Phoenicia, Asia Minor and Cyprus. There was hardly any contact, it seems, with the central or southern parts of the country. No wonder Peter's accent betrayed him in Jerusalem {jtips}"surely you are one of them, for your accent gives you away." (Matthew 26:73).{/jtips} The village had other advantages, apart from the road and the good fishing. The natural rock cover is a type of basalt that has just the right texture for grinding grain. Many millstones, some unfinished, were found at Capernaum, suggesting that it may have manufactured them for export. {jtips} "He said to the disciples, 'It is impossible that no occasions of stumbling should come, but woe to him through whom they come! It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea, rather than that he should cause one of these little ones to stumble.'" Luke 17: 1-2{/jtips} could refer to a small millstone like the one pictured above, but {jtips}"there will be two grinding grain together. One will be taken, and the other will be left. Luke 17:35{/jtips} could refer to a biconical one, which required two to work it: A wood beam projected from a square hole on either side of the upper part: Until the great earthquake of 749 AD, the basic plan of Capernaum seems to have followed a grid-like form, with perpendicular streets dividing the village into apartment blocks, called insulae ("islands") by the scholars. After that quake, in the Muslim period, the town was rebuilt on a different pattern, which lasted until its destruction or abandonment in the 13th century. The remains of the later houses were removed by the archaeologists. To the houses of the earlier period we now turn. {mospagebreak title= Its houses} The Houses at Capernaum Note: My sources for much of what follows are these: (1) Stefano De Luca (2013) Capernaum in D. M. Master (ed.) The Oxford Encylopedia of the Bible and Archaeology. New York: Oxford University Press. (2) Sharon Lea Mattila (2015) "Capernaum, Village of Nahum, from Hellenistic to Byzantine Times," in D. A. Fiensy and J. R. Strange (eds.) Galilee in the Late Second Temple and Mishnaic Periods: The Archaeological Record from Cities, Towns, and Villages. Fortress Press. Kindle Edition. (3) Sharon Lea Mattila (2013) "Revisiting Jesus Capernaum: A Village of Only Subsistence-Level Fishers and Farmers?" in D. A. Fiensy and R. K. Hawkins (eds.) The Galilean Economy in the Time of Jesus. Society of Biblical Literature. In the 19th century, even before the ruins on the site were securely identified as those of Capernaum, the Franciscans bought the southwest side and the Greek Orthodox the northeast. A low wall separates the two. The ruins that we see today reflect periods extending for about a thousand years, starting from 330 BC (the Hellenistic period) and going through the Byzantine (until 640 AD). In fact the town continued to exist during the early Muslim period, but it underwent a major change in layout following the massive earthquake of 749 AD. The Franciscan and Greek archaeologists removed the later ruins, exposing the Byzantine remains (4th 7th centuries AD). With a few important exceptions, they did not delve beneath these. On the Franciscan side, where we have partial access, a few sections are visible that may have dated to the time of Jesus' mission.
One such section consists of parts of a large house, although it could have been built a few decades after Jesus lived in Capernaum. Your first contact with this Early Roman period house occurs when you leave the shade of the modern church (where the group stands in the photo below) and walk toward the synagogue (with your back to the lake). The walls on your immediate right all belong to it. The photo below is taken from the porch of the synagogue (which is later) looking south toward the lake. We look into the house's northern courtyard (not its biggest). The house extended as far as the doorway in the distance, although the inner walls in front of that doorway were added after 450 AD. The Early Roman period house had a large courtyard (about 97 sq. yards, not visible in photo), which was eventually subdivided. Part of the house was not excavated because the tourist path to the synagogue runs over its ruins, but a section west of the path (to the right of the photo) was dug and then reburied. Here the excavators found a set of fine Roman glassware, dating from the late 1st or early 2nd century. Along with the impressive size of the house, the glassware would indicate that some of Capernaum's Jewish inhabitants were not as poor as the rough gray ruins may suggest. Of course, they weren't rich on the scale of their co-religionists in Sepphoris or Tiberias, but they probably lived above a subsistence level. This house or one like it might have belonged to {jtips}behold, one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name, came; and seeing him, he fell at his feet, and begged him much, saying, My little daughter is at the point of death. Please come and lay your hands on her, that she may be made healthy, and live....while he was still speaking, people came from the synagogue ruler s house saying, Your daughter is dead. Why bother the Teacher any more? But Jesus, when he heard the message spoken, immediately said to the ruler of the synagogue, Don t be afraid, only believe. He allowed no one to follow him, except Peter, James, and John the brother of James. He came to the synagogue ruler s house...taking the child by the hand, he said to her, Talitha cumi! which means, being interpreted, Girl, I tell you, get up! Immediately the girl rose up and walked, for she was twelve years old. Jairus the synagogue leader{/jtips} (Mark 5:22-24, 35-43). Concerning the rows of window-like structures, such an arrangement is often found here and elsewhere. Each row of windows belonged to a wall supporting the roof. This wall separated an open yard from a covered room, which received light and air from the windows. According to the implements that were found in this and the Byzantine-period houses, we may judge that the extended family did its grinding, baking, and olive pressing in the semi-open courtyard. Until the earthquake of 749, the village's basic pattern consisted of a grid, in which the streets intersected at right angles to form blocks, called insulae (islands) by scholars. An insula could accommodate an extended family, with as many as 12 rooms radiating off from the main courtyard. As for the seemingly humble basalt walls, we should allow for the possibility that they were covered with mud plaster, which could be made to look quite fine. On this point, Sharon Mattila evokes the Roman-period village of Karanis in Egypt, whose dry climate preserved the plaster; in Capernaum's humid climate it would have disappeared. Finally, on the question of wealth, 200 yards north of Capernaum's inhabited area is a finely built mausoleum from the 1st or 2nd century, containing eight shafts carved into the rock and five limestone sarcophagi. The shafts reflect the uniquely Jewish burial practices in those centuries. We often see stone staircases (not visible in the photo). They signify regular use, for otherwise a ladder would have sufficed. Perhaps people slept on the roofs in summer. Or some houses may have had second stories. Occasionally one
spots an oblong rounded basalt stone, which would have been rolled over the plaster of the roofs to smooth it. {mospagebreak title=house of Peter} The House of Peter One of Capernaum's housing complexes may be glimpsed beneath the large modern church that today dominates the site. The Franciscan archaeologists, Virgilio Corbo and Stanislao Loffreda, have identified a room in this complex as one that belonged to the house of Peter which is mentioned in Mark (see, for example, Mark 2) and elsewhere. This identification depends on two ideas: (1) that Jewish Christians lived here continuously from the time of the events in the gospels, so they would have known where the famous house was; and (2) that physically they singled it out as special already in the 1st century. Let us examine both these points. First, is there evidence for Jewish Christians in Capernaum during the 1st century? A Talmudic source preserves a tradition of sects (minim) at Capernaum. Some scholars believe that the term refers to Jewish Christians. Here is the text: "Hanina, son of the brother of Jehoshua, came to Kephar Nahum, and the minim worked a spell on him, and set him riding on an ass on the Sabbath. He came to Jehoshua his friend, and he put ointment on him and he was healed. He (R. Jehoshua) said to him: Since the ass of that wicked one has roused itself against thee, thou canst no longer remain in the land of Israel. He departed thence to Babel, and he died there in peace." (Midrash Qoh Rabba I:8). In rabbinic usage, anyone who spoke against the rabbis was often dubbed "Balaam"; the "ass of that wicked one" in the passage is likely Balaam's talking donkey of Numbers 22-24. The "wicked one," then, was not necessarily a reference to Jesus. In rabbinic usage, furthermore, minim can refer to any of various deviant groups. The rabbinic form of Judaism did not become normative in Galilee, overcoming "sects," until the 4th century AD. {jtips}joan E. Taylor, Christians and the Holy Places, Oxford: Clarendon, 1993, p. 30, citing Martin Goodman, State and Society in Roman Galilee, A. D. 132-212, Rowman & Allenheld, 1983, p. 180. (Source){/jtips} In short, the term minim does not necessarily refer to Jewish Christians. Also, if the latter were here, one would expect to find their symbols; from the 2nd century, these would have included the T (the early symbol for the cross) and {jtips}ichthus, an acrostic using the first letters of Greek words meaning "Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour." the sign of a fish, Greek ichthus.{/jtips} But the earliest Christian symbols found in Capernaum date from the 4th century, after which there are hundreds.
Second, archaeology: Among all the houses excavated in Capernaum, this one became the site of a Christian church. So indeed it was singled out. The question is when. We {jtips}from Epiphanius, Panarion 30, 4, 1 know{/jtips} that sometime between 330 and 337 AD, the Emperor Constantine authorized Joseph of Tiberias, a Jewish convert to Christianity, to build four churches: at Nazareth, Sepphoris, Tiberias, and Capernaum. If we assume that the last was entirely Jewish (again, no prior Christian symbols have been found, and the lack of pig bones indicates an absence of pagans), Joseph of Tiberias would have had to persuade the owners of this apartment block to sell it to him, pointing out that an influx of Christian pilgrims would bring wealth to the town. What then does the archaeology say? Was the house first singled out in the 1st century or the 4th? According to Corbo and Loffreda, a room in the house was already singled out in the late 1st century AD, in the following manner: Alone among the village's dwellings at that time, it received a succession of floors made of crushed and beaten limestone. Doubts have been raised, however, and because the view of Corbi and Loffreda is so widespread, I shall present a contrary reading of their data in some detail. From {jtips}christians and the Holy Places, Oxford: Clarendon, 1993, p. 280 ff. Joan Taylor's study{/jtips}we get the following picture: The room was built on a level of fill containing pottery from the 1st century BC. This fill was topped by a level called "C": a bed of basalt stones on the west and beaten earthen floors on the east. Upon the basalt stones a Hellenistic lamp was discovered, as well as 1st-century BC pottery shards and Herodian lamps; this assemblage enables us to date the last use of Level C to the 1st century AD. On the next level up ("B"), which consisted of a bed of large stones, the pottery dated from the 1st century AD into the 3d. That is, this "B" floor continued in use until the 3d century AD at least. Above it (hence later than it) was the series of crushed lime pavements mentioned before, "but, curiously, embedded into them were very minute fragments of lamps identified by Loffreda as being Herodian." Above the lime pavements, writes Taylor, 4th-century coins were found. She then continues: "The Herodian lamps found on the bed of stones C and under bed B are therefore much more significant for dating than the tiny fragments of Herodian lamps (if properly identified) found in the lime mixture of the successive pavements..." The tiny fragments could have come from a refuse dump where the lime mixture was made. On this re-evaluation, then, the room was not singled out as special in the 1st century. It is quite possible that the crushed lime floor was first made in the 4th, as part of a house-church built by Joseph of Tiberias. In the 4th century, if not earlier, pilgrims approached the venerated room through an eastern door into a courtyard. This entrance was on the east off the main north-south street of the village, which stretched from the area of the synagogue down to the lake (see the photo above). Although the synagogue that Jesus knew was smaller than the grand white limestone affair whose ruins we see today, it was probably where the white one is. If Peter's house was here indeed, {jtips} Mark 1: 29-33 -"As soon as they left the synagogue, they went with James and John to the home of Simon and Andrew. Simon s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they immediately told Jesus about her. So he went to her, took her hand and helped her up. The fever left her and she began to wait on them. That evening after sunset the people brought to Jesus all the sick and demon-possessed. The whole town gathered at the door, and Jesus healed many who had various diseases. He also drove out many demons, but he would not let the demons speak because they knew who he was." we can imagine{/jtips} Jesus and the disciples coming to it from the synagogue after he had healed the demoniac there. The courtyard in which the "whole town gathered" would have been located where we stand when we look into the room from the viewpoint of this photo:
In the 4th century, the room was enlarged and a central arch was added, the supporting ends of which can still be seen. The room was now the focal center of a house-church, perhaps the one built by Joseph. By 450 AD - to judge from {jtips}stefano de Luca, Capernaum, Oxford Encylopedia of the Bible and Archaeology, edited by Daniel M. Master, 1:168 80. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. "the hundreds of dishes stamped on the bottom with crosses"{/jtips} that were found all over the site (except in the synagogue) - Capernaum had become largely Christian with a Jewish minority. De Luca writes (ibid.): "It was probably just this demographic event that provoked the construction/restoration of the third synagogue, to be understood as an act of defense and group cohesion, a revindication of social identity on the part of the Jewish population, accomplished not without external economic support." Crosses also appear on the plaster that fell from the walls of the 4th-century house-church, as well as 175 graffiti. Of these at least 151 are in Greek. The local language, however, was Aramaic, so most of the graffiti, if not all, were probably written by pilgrims from throughout the Byzantine Empire. Since no other church has been found in Capernaum, this must have been the one that the 4th-century nun {jtips}name uncertain. A nun from the Atlantic coast, perhaps Spain, who visited the Holy Land in the late 4th century and described her journey in Latin for the sisters at home. She had a special interest in churches and Christian ritual. Only the middle of her Travels has survived, but it is a unique and valuable source Egeria{/jtips} saw during her pilgrimage: "The house of the prince of the Apostles [i.e., Simon Peter] in Capernaum was changed into a church, where the Lord healed the paralytic. The walls, however, are still standing as they were." In the 5th century, the walls of the house-church were "knocked down and buried," replaced by an ornate church of white limestone (like the nearby synagogue from this time). Its octagonal shape resembled that of churches commemorating an important event. It was formed by three concentric octagons on three levels rising toward the center. From the east side projected an apse, which housed a baptismal font probably intended for newly converted pilgrims. Rooms were built around the church, perhaps as part of a monastery. In the center was a fine mosaic (it is sometimes displayed nearby), dominated by a {jtips}a peacock or two is often found in fifth-century Christian mosaics. The bird is said to symbolize eternal life. In my view, the male's tail, alternately closed and opened (in glorious colors with "eyes") symbolizes the alternation of concealment and revelation. peacock.{/jtips} There is something strange about the building of this octagonal church: If the residents of Capernaum had a strong memory of the house where Jesus had lived and taught and healed, would they not have preserved as much of it as possible, instead of knocking down the walls and concealing the floor beneath a mosaic? In Bethlehem and Jerusalem, after all, Christians did preserve the places they connected with his birth and death. {mospagebreak title=synagogues} The Synagogues at Capernaum The grandest structure at Capernaum and one of the grandest in the country is the partly restored synagogue, which towers in white limestone above its basalt environs. {maps}images/stories/galalee/capernaum-view-of-ruins.jpg Before reconstruction right{/maps}the first three portals belong to the prayer hall, which faces south (toward Jerusalem). Beyond them (just left of the palm trunk) are the two portals of an eastern courtyard.
Enlarge the photo to the right to see what the site looked like before reconstruction began. Since just a few levels of stone were intact here and there, it seems that much speculation entered into the work, based not only on the finds but also on comparisons with other ruins. Heinrich Kohl and Carl Watzinger began reconstructing in the early 20th century. For their book of 1916, Antike Synagogen in Galilaea, Albert Frisch made this drawing of the prayer hall's façade. Gaudenzio Orfali continued their work until 1927. In our imaginations, then, we must add considerable height to the portals and fragments of walls that we see today. Below is Frisch's reconstruction as viewed from the north, facing the lake. Note the many steps on the northwest corner, surmounting an added room (where a small doorway appears in the north wall today). It may have been {jtips}when pages including the name of God become worn or damaged, pious Jews do not simply throw them away. They store them in a synagogue, in a hole or chamber called a geniza, before burying the lot in a special ceremony. the geniza.{/jtips} As for the steps that gird and surmount it, we may wonder: Might they have led to a women's section? And could they have been the "many steps" referred to by {jtips}name uncertain. A nun from the Atlantic coast, perhaps Spain, who visited the Holy Land in the late 4th century and described her journey in Latin for the sisters at home. She had a special interest in churches and Christian ritual. Only the middle of her Travels has survived, but it is a unique and valuable source Egeria{/jtips} in 380 AD? After mentioning the house of Peter, she writes: "There is also the synagogue where the Lord healed the man possessed by demons; one goes up many steps to this synagogue which was built with square [or dressed] stones." The cutout view below, also by Frisch, shows the inner parts of the prayer hall and courtyard when facing south. Note that in front of the prayer hall's middle portal, Frisch put two Torah arks. In the archaeology, two bases were found attached to the floor, but unlike in Frisch's picture, they were set directly against the south wall, flanking the inner side of the main entrance. Because similar structures have been found in other Galilean synagogues, it is thought that they supported small shrines (aediculae), perhaps an ark for a Torah scroll and a platform for the seat of the teacher ("the seat of Moses"). {maps}images/stories/galalee/capernaum--building-on-wheels_2.jpg From synagogue décor right{/maps}on the basis of the smaller pieces that are displayed about the grounds of the site today, {jtips} Capernaum, the Oxford Encylopedia of the Bible and Archaeology, edited by Daniel M. Master, 1:168 80. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. Stefano de Luca{/jtips} surmises that the small shrines inside the synagogue near its front were "integrated into an elevated and highly ornate architectural structure with gabled cornices with double-arch foundations, two stylophore lions, twisted small columns and semicolumns, conchiform basins, and curved entablatures decorated with lively and populated acanthus, between which one finds the famous frieze representing the ark on wheels, in the shape of a tetrastyle temple with gable pediment." The date of the synagogue is an enigma, and it will probably remain so at least until all the finds are published. If we judge from the art of its lintels, friezes, and capitals, as well as its architecture, the building belongs in the 3d century AD. It resembles Syrian churches of that time as well as other Galilean synagogues, and it seems to have influenced the builders of the synagogue at nearby Chorazin, which is from the 4th century. On the other hand, troves of coins some dating as late as 476 AD were found beneath the pavements of both the courtyard and the prayer hall. There were also pottery shards some of them from imported vessels dating as late as the 6th century. At the
courtyard's northeast corner, just inside the threshold of the portal, more than 20,000 coins, many from the 4th and 5th centuries, turned up in the mortar beneath the pavement. In the prayer hall itself just inside the southwest entrance another trove of more than 3000 coins was discovered, some also from the late 5th century. Isolated coins of these dates were also found in other parts of the building, deep into the fill that composed the synagogue's podium. How can we reconcile the 3d century dates of the art and architecture with the 5th-6th century dates of the coins and pottery? Some have proposed the following sequence: (1) the synagogue was built in the 3d century; (2) it collapsed in the great earthquake of 363 AD, and people took away some of its stones for private use, including those of the original pavement; (3) it was rebuilt over a period of time, and a new pavement was installed, preceded by a votive offering of coins near two of the entrances. This explanation does not quite work, however: The paving stones left an impression in the mortar containing the coins, so the mortar must have been wet when the stones were laid. Beneath the mortar the excavators found a layer of limestone chips (probably the product of cutting the building stones); below the chips was a fill made of basalt boulders - nine feet deep in spots - forming the podium. Beneath this fill was a cobbled floor dating from the 1st century into at least the 4th (to be discussed below). Thus there is no evidence for a reconstruction of the pavement after 363 AD - or at any time between the 1st century AD and the 5th-6th. We are left with the theory that the white synagogue was constructed in the 5th-6th centuries AD, as the coins and pottery attest, but that the builders chose to employ an older style. We may connect this possibility with the contemporaneous 5th-century church surrounding Peter's house just a stone's throw to the south (it was built of the same white limestone). Uzi Leibner suggests that the "extensive construction of churches in Palestine, particularly from the 5th century onward" challenged the Jewish leadership to confront Christianity, resulting in a {jtips}settlement and History in Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine Galilee, Mohr Siebeck, 2009, p. 403 "struggle of monuments".{/jtips} The builders may have used an antique style to stress the fact that Judaism was the older faith. There are those who argue against a 5th- or 6th-century date for Capernaum's monumental white synagogue, on the ground that Christianity was then in control
of the land. It became the official imperial religion in 391 AD, and anti-jewish legislation followed. (Indeed, Capernaum was largely Christian after 450 AD, as attested by many pottery fragments stamped with crosses.) Yet a synagogue at Capernaum would have had great resonance with Christian pilgrims, who remembered Jesus' healing of a demoniac there, as well as his claim to be the bread of life, which he made "in the synagogue at Capernaum" (John 6). The pilgrim Egeria mentions the building in the same breath as the House of Peter. And since there is no doubt that Egeria visited a synagogue here around 380, one wonders what she saw. If we take the coins and pottery into account, it could not have been the white one. Perhaps she saw a basalt structure that was still being built (or enlarged) at the time of her visit and was never completed (see below). Or perhaps the white synagogue was indeed earlier than the 5th century, and people had the custom of lifting the paving stones to deposit coins. But that solution doesn't work well either. First, the vast majority of the discovered coins were of miniscule value. Second, this hypothesis cannot explain the 5th- and 6th-century pottery. We cannot exclude the far-out possibility that the white synagogue was built by a Byzantine Christian emperor as a pilgrimage attraction and that the antique style was chosen on the mistaken assumption that the synagogue where Jesus worked and preached must have looked like this. Militating against this idea, however, is the fact that hundreds of late 5th-century dishes stamped with crosses were found all over Capernaum - except in the synagogue. {maps}images/stories/galalee/tel-hum-syn-diagram-1916_trenches.jpg Two of the trenches that were dug beneath pavement right{/maps}as for the synagogue that Jesus knew, it was present in the memories that gave rise to Mark 1 and {jtips}after he had finished speaking in the hearing of the people, he entered into Capernaum. A certain centurion s servant, who was dear to him, was sick and at the point of death. When he heard about Jesus, he sent to him elders of the Jews, asking him to come and save his servant. When they came to Jesus, they begged him earnestly, saying, He is worthy for you to do this for him, for he loves our nation, and he built our synagogue for us. Luke 7: 1-5.{/jtips} In fact, parts of a 1st-century public building were found beneath the monumental one. In 1981, the Franciscan archaeologists dug an east-west trench between the {jtips}a stylobate is a wall supporting a row of columns to take the weight of the extra load they bear stylobates{/jtips} that separate the white synagogue's side aisles from its nave. When they removed the stones that formed the fill beneath the white pavement, they discovered more than four feet below the surface a cobbled basalt pavement. The part they exposed spread over a space of 20 by 8 meters. On its east and west side this floor abutted two low basalt walls, which later served as foundations for the white synagogue's stylobates. Under and in the cobbled pavement were pottery shards from the first century AD, while above it were shards from the 1st century to the 4th. At an even lower level were traces of private dwellings from the Hellenistic period (332 BC - 63 BC). The pavement, then, likely belonged to the synagogue that Jesus knew, and it continued in use until replaced by the higher pavement of the white synagogue. {maps}images/stories/galalee/capernaum-synagogue-with-earlier-basalt-level.jpg Older basalt wall right{/maps}as for
the low basalt walls beneath the white stylobates, they are part of a broader scheme. For when you approach the white synagogue from the south on the tourist path, before ascending the steps you see a basalt foundation wall extending along the whole west side. On a closer look, this wall could not have been built to serve as a foundation for the white synagogue, because it is crooked to the white wall and slopes down in relation to it. That is, the builders of the white synagogue used an existing basalt wall to serve as foundation, making an adjustment in the slope. Parts of other basalt walls have been found beneath the white prayer hall on its remaining sides as well (but not beneath the eastern courtyard). Virgilio Corbo (one of the Franciscan archaeologists) concluded that the basalt outer walls and basalt stylobate walls, as well as the cobbled floor, belonged to the 1st century synagogue. {maps}images/stories/galalee/capernaum-house-pre--1st-century_tb.jpg Traces of private house beneath SE corner of white synagogue's prayer hall right{/maps}but his colleague, Stanislao Loffreda, held that the cobbled floor alone belonged to that earliest synagogue, and that the basalt walls were part of an expansion, the building of which may have been interrupted by an earthquake like the one of 363. That would explain the lack of any pavement between the cobbled one of the 1st century and the monumental one of the 5th or 6th. This expansion, or the remains thereof, may have been what Egeria saw in 380. A century or so after her visit, the basalt walls were raised by one to two courses, becoming "the retaining wall for the artificial filling of stones, earth, and scraps from the stonework, which forms the elevated podium... upon which the Byzantine white synagogue was built" (de Luca, op. cit.). {mospagebreak title=logistics} Logistics for a visit to Capernaum The site is open from 8.00 until 17.00, although the last entrance is at 16:30. {jtips}shoulders covered, legs covered below the knees Modest dress{/jtips} is required. The place can be quite hot. Bring a hat and water. Phone: 04/6721059