Archaeologists
think they may have found the lost Roman city of Julias, the home of three
apostles of Jesus: Peter, Andrew and Philip (John 1:44; 12:21). A multi-layered
site discovered on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee, in the Bethsaida
Valley Nature Reserve, is the spot, the team believes.
The key
discovery is of an advanced Roman-style bathhouse. That in and of itself
indicates that there had been a city there, not just a fishing village, Dr.
Mordechai Aviam of Kinneret College told Haaretz.
None
other than the Jewish historian Josephus Flavius – in fact the only source
describing this city's existence – wrote that the Jewish monarch King Philip
Herod, son of the great vassal King Herod, transformed Bethsaida, which had
been a Jewish fishing village, into a real Roman polis. Philip flatteringly renamed the city
"Julias" after Livia Drusilla, who after marriage would become known
as Julia Augusta, the mother of the Roman Emperor Tiberius.
"Josephus
reported that the king had upgraded Bethsaida from a village into a polis, a
proper city," Aviam says meticulously. "He didn't say it had been
built on or beside or underneath it. And indeed, all this time, we have not
known where it was. But the bathhouse attests to the existence of urban
culture."
Josephus
himself would take over fortifying Bethsaida's defenses (as reported by
himself) ahead of the Great Jewish Revolt against Rome that began in 67 C.E.,
and would end in disaster for the Jews in 70 C.E. Josephus himself claims
to have been hurt in battle in the swamp near Julias (Life 399-403).
There are
actually three candidates for Julias: this one, called el-Araj; and two nearby
sites by the lake. After unexpectedly finding the bathhouse and other Roman-era
remains below the (previously known) Byzantine ruins at the site, the
archaeologists think this site, at the delta of the River Jordan on the
northern shore of the Sea of Galilee, is the strongest candidate.
What the
archaeologists found at el-Araj is an older layer dating from the late Roman
period, the 1st to 3rd centuries C.E., two meters below the Byzantine level.
That Roman layer contained pottery sherds from the 1st to the 3rd centuries
B.C.E., a mosaic, and the remains of the bathhouse. Two coins were found, a
bronze coin from the late 2nd century and a silver denarius featuring the
Emperor Nero from the year 65-66 C.E.
And has a
major missing church been found too? The excavators found walls with gilded
glass tesserae for a mosaic, an indication of a wealthy and important church.
Willibald, the bishop of Eichstätt in Bavaria, visited the Holy Land in 725
C.E., and in his itinerary, he describes his visit to a church at Bethsaida
that was built over the house of Peter and Andrew. It may well be that the
current excavations have unearthed evidence for that church, say the
archaeologists.
Source: http://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/1.805402
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