After years of painstaking work, archaeologists say the evidence is becoming increasingly hard to ignore.
A team excavating in northern Israel says it is “absolutely” confident it has identified the lost biblical city of Bethsaida, following a summer dig that uncovered a remarkable collection of ancient artifacts.
During its 10th season at the site on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, the Bethsaida-Julias excavation team recovered lamps, cosmetic tools, coins and dozens of other objects. The discoveries, researchers say, strengthen their long-held view that the location was once the ancient city associated in Christian tradition with several miracles performed by Jesus.
“What we try to take into account is the accumulation of collected evidence from all the squares that paints a portrait of the historical profile of the ancient site. That picture is becoming clearer with each season,” Dr. Steven Notley, the excavation’s academic director, wrote in a blog post earlier this month.
Notley and his colleagues have spent a decade investigating the ruins of the site, which is known today as el-Araj.
The latest season significantly deepened the team’s understanding of Bethsaida-Julias during the Roman period, spanning the first through third centuries, while also revealing artifacts from other ancient eras across the broad excavation area.
Among the finds were “Roman-period walls, a basalt mortar (grinding stone), coins, and a fascinating half Doric capital that likely decorated a public building,” Notley wrote. The dig also produced signs that an earlier Hellenistic settlement may still lie beneath the surface.
Researchers also concluded that the Ottoman-period Syrian owner of Beit Habek had built stables directly over older Roman structures without using a foundation. Remarkably, that choice did not cause the stone walls to crack or collapse before the Bethsaida-Julias team uncovered them centuries later.
The crew also found chalk stoneware and several intact Herodian lamps, which were only made in Jerusalem before 70 CE — definitive markers that Jewish people lived in the city in the first century, when it transitioned from Bethsaida to a Roman-period polis called Julias, according to the blog.
The extravagant findings seemingly challenge the notions that the people of Galilee were poor, illiterate peasants — instead suggesting that the towns and villages Jesus visited were thriving, even under Roman occupation.
The successful season only confirms claims Notley has made years earlier that the site is the lost city of Bethsaida.
“Everything we bring out of the ground affirms and strengthens that identification. Nothing that we have found would challenge it at all,” Notley told the Daily Mail.
“I have no difficulty seeing Jesus spending considerable time there,” he said, adding that he calls it “the last lost city of the Gospels.”
Jesus restored a blind man’s sight in the city, according to the Bible, and fed thousands with five loaves of bread and two fish.
Apostles Peter, Andrew and Philip are also believed to have called Bethsaida home.
The Bethsaida-Julias excavation team has been digging the site at El-Araj since 2016 and has uncovered mosaic masterpieces, churches, house walls and more over the years.
