For 10 years, archaeologists have been uncovering ruins along the shores of the Sea of Galilee in the hunt for a long-lost city tied to some of the Bible’s most famous accounts of Jesus’ miracles.
The team now says the evidence points to Bethsaida, the ancient city where Jesus is said to have healed a blind man and fed thousands, and which is described as the home of three apostles: Peter, Andrew and Philip.
Finds at el-Araj in northern Israel, including a Roman bathhouse and hundreds of fishing weights, are said to align with an ancient description of Bethsaida’s rise from a Jewish fishing village into a city.
At the site, researchers also uncovered a ruined church from the late fifth century, where a mosaic inscription refers to Peter, creating a direct link between the building and Jesus’ disciple.
Below the church, a first-century house wall may add weight to an early pilgrim’s claim that the structure was built over the home of Peter and Andrew.
Dr Steven Notley, the excavation’s academic director, told Our News Outlet he “absolutely” believes the dig has revealed the lost biblical city associated with the apostle Peter.
“Everything we bring out of the ground affirms and strengthens that identification,” he said.
“Nothing that we have found would challenge it at all.”
Archaeologists have uncovered stone walls they believe were part of the birthplace of Jesus’ apostles
The lost city, according to the Bible, is where Jesus performed a miracle that fed 5,000 people
For Notley, the ruins at el-Araj are bringing into view the setting of Gospel accounts in which Jesus restored a blind man’s sight and fed thousands with five loaves and two fish.
‘I think Jesus was there on multiple occasions,’ Notley said. ‘I think we probably have a number of miracles.’
In Mark 8:22–26, people bring a blind man to Jesus at Bethsaida. Jesus leads him outside the village before restoring his sight.
Luke 9:10–17 places Jesus and his apostles in what the King James Version calls ‘a desert place belonging to the city called Bethsaida,’ where he feeds about 5,000 men.
Notley believes the plain surrounding el-Araj fits that description: open grazing land beyond the settlement, rather than a sandy desert.
‘We have no deserts up there,’ he said. ‘But they’re pastoral areas, where your flocks will be eating outside of where people are living.’
‘The Gospels identify this as the area where you have the feeding of the multitudes,’ he added.
Inside a ruined church dating to the late fifth century, a mosaic invokes Peter, linking the building directly to Jesus’ disciple
Two walls set perpendicular to one another. One of the walls dates to the first century AD, while the second dates to the second or third century AD
Jesus also rebukes Bethsaida in Matthew 11:21, saying: ‘Woe unto thee, Bethsaida!’
The passage criticizes its inhabitants for failing to repent despite the miracles performed there.
El-Araj lies just beyond the Jordan River, in territory ruled during Jesus’ lifetime by Herod Philip, outside the jurisdiction of Herod Antipas, who ordered John the Baptist’s execution.
Notley believes he has connected the location with Matthew 14:12–13, which describes Jesus withdrawing by boat after learning of John’s death – he was beheaded by a king around 30 AD.
Although the passage does not name Bethsaida, Notley interprets the settlement’s position as another reason Jesus would have spent time there.
John 1:44 supplies the connection to three apostles: ‘Now Philip was of Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter.’
‘At least a quarter of his disciples came from Bethsaida … it played a very important role as the setting, the stage for Jesus’ life and ministry in the North,’ Notley said.
The strongest archaeological clue, in his view, emerged in 2017, when researchers uncovered mosaics, marble, roof tiles and ceramic heating vents belonging to a Roman bathhouse.
The flooring of the church dates back 1,500 years. The team believes this church was built over Peter and Andrew’s home as a way to honor them
Its significance comes from the first-century historian Josephus, who described Bethsaida’s transformation from a village into a city. The historian also left behind his eyewitness accounts of Jesus on trial and his crucifixion.
In Antiquities of the Jews, 18.28, Josephus records how Herod Philip elevated the lakeside settlement’s status and renamed it Julias.
That history gave researchers two requirements against which to test their discoveries.
‘You should find evidence of a Jewish fishing village, and you should find evidence of urbanization,’ Notley said. El-Araj, he argued, provides both.
Hundreds of fishing weights point to the industry that supported the settlement, while chalkstone vessels associated with Jewish purity practices identify its religious character.
The bathhouse supplies evidence of urban development, matching the larger settlement described by Josephus.
‘You do not build a Roman bath in a Jewish village,’ Notley said.
This summer’s excavations revealed walls built over earlier walls, showing successive phases of construction. Stone vessels continued to appear in later layers, suggesting the growing settlement retained its Jewish population.
Not only could the find prove the existence of the legendary church, but it would lead the team to the location of the home of Jesus’ famed apostles Peter and Andrew – the Church of the Apostles was said to have been built atop of their residence
‘It doesn’t lose its Jewish identity, it maintains that, but it’s much larger,’ Notley said.
He estimates the settlement covered 15 to 16 acres.
‘Everywhere we’re digging, we’re finding extensive settlement on the site,’ he said.
Notley contrasts those remains with et-Tell, a competing candidate nearly two miles inland from the modern lakeshore. He argues that its impressive Iron Age ruins give way to weaker evidence around the first century, when Josephus describes Bethsaida growing in importance.
‘It completely contradicts the historical record,’ he said.
Excavations at el-Araj began in 2016, with Notley working alongside excavation director Mordechai Aviam.
‘Everyone thought I was crazy, everyone thought we were crazy, that there was nothing there,’ Notley recalled.
A late fifth-century church added another line of evidence linking the settlement to the apostles.
‘No one knew there was a church there,’ he said. ‘We didn’t go looking for a church.’
Gilded glass mosaic pieces first suggested an elaborate Christian building, and by 2018 the team had identified the outline of a basilica.
Its discovery prompted Notley to revisit the account of Willibald, an eighth-century pilgrim who described a church at Bethsaida built over the house of Peter and Andrew.
In August 2022, researchers uncovered an intact mosaic inscription north of the apse, the church’s sacred eastern section.
It honored a local official and benefactor named Constantine before seeking intercession from ‘the chief of the apostles and the keeper of the keys of heaven,’ in Notley’s description.
Roman coins have been found at the site, supportinga theory that it was urbanized
Christians recognize Saint Peter, originally a fisherman, as one of the first followers of Jesus and the leader of the early Church following the ascension. He was born Simon Peter and grew up to be a fisherman until he met Jesus
The Bible says that not only was Peter the leader of the apostles, but he would receive the keys to the kingdom of heaven from Jesus.
‘That title can have no other reference than Peter, which confirms the church’s identification with Peter,’ he said.
For Notley, the question is why Christians would have honored Peter at this particular location. ‘We have very few Byzantine churches connected with Peter,’ he said of the Holy Land during that period.
Such churches generally marked places associated with Peter’s appearances in the Gospels. At el-Araj, Notley believes the dedication commemorates his hometown.
Its importance lies in connecting the excavated church with Peter, consistent with both John’s identification of his hometown and Willibald’s description of a church there.
Willibald’s account gave the team a prediction to test: if the church commemorated the apostles’ home, earlier domestic remains might survive directly beneath the apse, the sacred area where relics associated with saints were often preserved.
‘There should be a first-century house under the apse,’ Notley recalled predicting.
In October 2023, a conservator removed and preserved the mosaic floor, allowing archaeologists to excavate below the church’s most sacred area.
Gilded glass mosaic pieces first suggested an elaborate Christian building, and by 2018 the team had identified the outline of a basilica
Above is a close look inside the ruins of the church
They uncovered a house wall dating to the first century, placing domestic remains from the apostles’ lifetime beneath the later Christian building.
‘It doesn’t get much better than that,’ Notley said.
The wall cannot establish who lived there, but its age and position support the tradition that the church commemorated an earlier home.
Beneath the late fifth-century basilica, researchers have also identified a fourth-century Christian structure that the team believes may have been an earlier church.
Notley connected that sequence with the early fourth-century historian Eusebius, who associated Peter and Philip with Bethsaida, suggesting Christians continued to remember the settlement’s biblical significance.
‘There’s a continuing memory of Peter’s connection to Bethsaida,’ he said.
The case therefore joins evidence from different periods: a Jewish fishing community, Roman urban development and successive Christian buildings honoring an apostle whose hometown was Bethsaida.
‘Everything we bring out of the ground affirms and strengthens that identification. Nothing that we have found would challenge it at all,’ Notley said.
The identification does not amount to archaeological proof of miracles. ‘Archaeology has its limits,’ he acknowledged.
For Notley, however, the discoveries restore the setting in which the Gospels place Jesus’ ministry and the lives of three of his closest followers.
‘I have no difficulty seeing Jesus spending considerable time there,’ he said, adding that he calls it ‘the last lost city of the Gospels.’
