Bethsaida

Listen first. Under your shoes, black basalt grit crunches with every step. A warm wind comes up from the south, carrying the smell of dry grass and, on some days, a trace of water. That water is the Sea of Galilee, a pale blue band below you. The stones around you are dark, heavy and pitted. They hold the heat of the afternoon long after the sun has moved on.

You are standing on the mound archaeologists call et-Tell, in the northern Galilee, a drive down from the hills around Safed. Many scholars identify this low hill with Bethsaida, a fishing town named several times in the Gospels. The name is usually translated as house of the fisherman, or house of the hunter. Either way, it points to one thing. People here lived from what they could catch, in the lake and in the reed beds of the Jordan River nearby.

Here is the first surprise. This hill is not the only candidate for Bethsaida. A second site, called el-Araj, lies closer to the shoreline. Teams have argued for decades about which one is the real town. Some think both were part of one settlement at different times. So as you walk, keep that question open. The ground beneath you is real and ancient. The name on the sign is still a matter of serious debate.

For Christian visitors, Bethsaida carries weight. The Gospel of John names it as the hometown of three disciples: Peter, his brother Andrew, and Philip. The Gospel of Mark tells how Jesus healed a blind man here. It describes him leading the man out of the village by the hand. The feeding of the five thousand is also placed near Bethsaida in the Gospel of Luke. And the town appears in a harsher line too, when Jesus rebukes it, together with nearby Chorazin.

But the story of this hill begins long before any of that. The deepest layers here are far older than the Roman period. The excavators found a large fortified city from the Iron Age, roughly the time of the biblical kings. Many of them link it to Geshur. Geshur was a small Aramean kingdom, part of a group of peoples who spoke Aramaic and lived across what is now Syria and the Golan. The Bible mentions Geshur in the story of King David's family.

According to the biblical account, David married a princess of Geshur named Maacah. Their son was Absalom, the prince who later rebelled against his father. After one dark episode, Absalom fled to Geshur and lived with his grandfather's people for three years. Did he walk through the gate in front of you? Nobody can prove it. But the excavators believe this was a royal city of that kingdom, and the scale of the walls supports a place of real power.

That gate is the most impressive structure on the site. Walk to it slowly. The passage is built from huge basalt blocks, set in thick walls with chambers on each side. Guards could stand in those rooms, and city elders could meet and judge disputes there. Near the entrance, the excavators found a carved stone stele, an upright slab, with a figure that has a bull's head. It points to the local religion of the Iron Age city.

Now look for the small raised platforms and basins near the gateway. Ancient city gates were not only defensive. They were also places of ritual and public life. People left offerings here before entering the town. Notice how the stone surfaces near the threshold are worn smooth. Centuries of feet and carts passed this way. The Iron Age city ended in violence, probably during the Assyrian campaigns, and the gate shows signs of burning and collapse.

Come forward again in time, to the later town of the Gospels. Here is the second surprise. Among the houses uncovered on the mound, one became known as the fisherman's house. Inside, the team found fishing gear: hooks, lead net weights, and needles for mending nets. Another building held tools for making wine, with a cellar and jars. These are ordinary objects. They let you picture a family mending nets in a basalt courtyard, while the lake lay just below.

That lake, though, is now some distance away. Look south and judge the gap for yourself. This is part of the puzzle. A fishing town should sit at the water's edge. Geologists and archaeologists suggest that the shoreline, the river and the sediment have shifted over the centuries. Earthquakes and floods may have changed the land. The supporters of el-Araj argue that their site, nearer the water, fits the fishing story better.

There is also a Roman chapter. The historian Josephus wrote that Philip the Tetrarch, a son of Herod the Great, raised Bethsaida to the rank of a city. Philip renamed it Julias, in honour of a woman of the Roman imperial family. At el-Araj, excavations in recent years have uncovered Roman-era remains and a Byzantine church. Some researchers connect that church with a tradition of a church built over the house of Peter and Andrew. That link is still being studied and is not settled.

So what should you take from all this? Perhaps that a place can be important and uncertain at the same time. Bethsaida is a town in texts, and also a hill of stone. Archaeology here does not give one clean answer. Instead, it gives layers: an Aramean royal city, a Jewish fishing village, a renamed Roman town. Each layer has its own people, its own gods and its own routines of work and prayer.

Before you leave, stand still for a moment near the edge of the mound. Feel the warmth coming off the black basalt. Listen to the birds in the brush, and to the wind moving through the dry grass. Look again at the blue line of the lake, and at the green ribbon where the Jordan runs toward it. Fishermen, kings and pilgrims all looked at a view close to this one. As you walk back down the path, notice the stones at your feet. Some of them were once part of someone's home.