The hometown of Peter, Andrew, and Philip has two candidate sites about a mile and a half apart, and both are being excavated right now. This is one of the few Holy Land questions where the answer may change in your lifetime.
Bethsaida matters out of proportion to its size. John names it as the town of Andrew and Peter (John 1:44). Philip came from there too, and a group of Greeks approached him by name as the man from Bethsaida (John 12:21). Jesus healed a blind man just outside it (Mark 8:22–26), and the feeding of the five thousand took place nearby (Luke 9:10). He also named it in a warning alongside Chorazin and Capernaum, towns that had seen the most and responded the least (Matthew 11:21).
The name itself means something like house of fishing or house of the hunter, which fits a town on a lake. Philip the Tetrarch later raised it to the status of a city and renamed it Julias after a member of the imperial family.
So we know a good deal about the town. Where it stood is the open question.
Why the shoreline moved
The difficulty begins with geology. Bethsaida sat near the point where the Jordan River enters the Sea of Galilee from the north, and rivers entering lakes build deltas. Over two thousand years, silt has pushed the shoreline out, and the lake level has risen and fallen. A town that stood on the water in the first century could now sit well inland.
That single fact is why two different mounds can both make a case as being the location of the town.
The first candidate
A mound called et-Tell has been excavated since the late 1980s and has been the leading candidate for most of that time. It sits about a mile and a half from the present shore, on higher ground.
The excavation has produced impressive results, including a substantial fortified city from the Old Testament period, when this area belonged to the kingdom of Geshur. Remains from the Roman period have also been found, along with fishing equipment.
The objection raised against it is the distance from the water and the quantity of first-century material. Critics ask whether the Roman-era settlement here is large enough to be the town Philip promoted to a city, and whether a fishing village would be built this far up.
The second candidate
Closer to the lake is a site called el-Araj, where excavation began in 2016. It sits low, and part of the argument for it is that the first-century layer lies beneath later flood deposits, which would explain why earlier surveys missed it.
Excavators there have uncovered Roman-period remains including a bathhouse, which suggests a settlement of real standing rather than a village. Then in recent seasons they uncovered a Byzantine church with mosaic floors and an adjoining monastic complex.
That church is the strongest card in the hand. An eighth-century pilgrim who traveled through Galilee described a church at Bethsaida built over the house of Peter and Andrew. If this building is that church, then Christians of the Byzantine period believed Bethsaida stood here, and their opinion is worth a great deal, since they were closer to the memory than anyone since.
How to consider the evidence
Both excavations are active, both teams are qualified, and the argument is being conducted in the professional literature rather than in press releases. That is a healthy sign.
What can be said now: a town called Bethsaida stood near the mouth of the Jordan on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee, and one of these two sites is very probably it. The evidence has been moving toward the site nearer the water in recent years, and it may keep moving, and it may not.
It is one of the few places where pilgrims get to watch archaeology happen rather than hear its conclusions. The question is genuinely open, and people who visit this decade are watching it get answered.
Why Bethsaida matters for reading the Gospels
Set the identification aside for a moment and consider what Bethsaida means for reading the Gospels.
Three of the twelve came from this one small town. Peter and Andrew later lived at Capernaum, a few miles west along the shore, which means the first disciples were neighbors and relatives and business partners before they were anything else. The calling in the Gospels did not gather strangers from across the country. It gathered a handful of families from a few miles of one lakeshore.
Standing on either mound, looking down that shoreline, you can see nearly all of it at once. That is the image to take home.
Come and See
Why did three of the disciples come from this one small town?
Weigh the two places with us.
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Sources and Further Reading
- Jodi Magness, The Archaeology of the Holy Land: From the Destruction of Solomon’s Temple to the Muslim Conquest (Cambridge University Press, 2012).
- Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, The Holy Land: An Oxford Archaeological Guide from Earliest Times to 1700, 5th ed. (Oxford University Press, 2008).
- R. Steven Notley, “The House of Peter: Capernaum or Bethsaida?” Biblical Archaeology Review (2023): 40–47.
- R. Steven Notley and Mordechai Aviam, “Searching for Bethsaida: The Case for El-Araj,” Biblical Archaeology Review (Spring 2020).
