Strata: New Dig Reports: A Place of Miracles

In the New Testament, Jesus performs many miracles in and around a town called Bethsaida. We see him walk on water, cure a blind man, and feed 5,000 people from five loaves of bread and two fish. Three of Jesus’s apostles (Simon-Peter, Andrew, and Philip) are said to have been born there. While other excavations contend for Biblical Bethsaida, an archaeological team led by Rami Arav believes they have located Bethsaida by the Jordan River to the north of the Sea of Galilee, at a site called et-Tell.

Bethsaida–Julias (et-Tell)

Betsaida/Bethsaida–Julias (et-Tell): The First Twenty-Five Years of Excavation (1987–2011)

Novum Testamentum et Orbis Antiquus—Series Archaeologica 4

By Heinz-Wolfgang Kuhn (Göttingen and Bristol: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015), 310 pp., color and b&w illustrations, $375.00 (hardback)

A quarter-century into archaeological exploration of et-Tell (alleged Bethsaida), Heinz-Wolfgang Kuhn has conveniently compiled in this single volume his essays published between 1989 and 2011. Spanning the long historical period from the Early Bronze Age to the Early Roman period, these essays offer a broad view of the exploration of the site, focusing especially on the time of Jesus.