Capernaum Synagogue: The Ruins Beside Mark's Sabbath

In 1866, Charles William Wilson identified a ruined site as Capernaum. At the time, it was known in Arabic as Tell Hum.

Scripture: They went into Capernaum, and immediately on the Sabbath day he entered into the synagogue and taught.

Mark's Gospel has just described Jesus calling fishermen from their nets. Next it moves to Capernaum, and a Sabbath day in the synagogue.

Capernaum was a fishing village on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee. About fifteen hundred people lived there in the first century.

Excavation shows it was founded in the second century BC, in the Hasmonean period. Fishing was a major source of income, and people lived there until the eleventh century AD.

Then the digging. In 1905, Germans Heinrich Kohl and Carl Watzinger began studying Galilean synagogues. Franciscan fathers Vendelin von Benden, then Gaudenzio Orfali, carried on until 1926.

They found two public buildings: a synagogue, partly restored by Orfali, and an octagonal church. The finds are at the site itself, Capernaum, in Israel, on land held by the Franciscans and the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem.

Photographs of the synagogue's carved decoration show an ark of the covenant, and a pentagram, a five-pointed star, with grape clusters. They are labelled fourth or fifth century CE.

Here is the caution. Two synagogues were built one after the other on the same spot. The sources I have do not date them closely enough for me to say which one stood there in Jesus' time, so the link to Mark is indirect.

So the ground confirms a real lakeside village with a synagogue. It cannot show what was taught inside. That rests on the Gospel text.

Stones can place a village and a building on the map. The reading is still ours to weigh. May the Lord Jesus Christ be with you today. Follow Bible Evidence for more.