BETHSAIDA (Aramaic: "House of the Fisherman"). - A locality in Galilee, the homeland of Philip, Andrew and Peter (Jn. 1:44; 12:21). In Mk. 8:23, 26, B. is presented as a village; elsewhere in the Gospels it is called a "city." In its vicinity occurred the first multiplication of the loaves (Lk. 9:10). It was often visited by Jesus, who preached there and performed several miracles; but it remained obstinately unbelieving and was anathematized (Mt. 11:21).
The question of its identification has been and still is much debated. For a long time it was held that B. in the Gospels designated a single locality to be identified with the B. of Flavius Josephus (Antiq. Iud., XVIII, 9, 1; 4, 6; Bell. Iud., III, 10, 7; II, 9, 1), situated on the Lake of Gennesaret, east of the mouth of the upper Jordan, to which the tetrarch Philip, having enlarged and fortified it, gave the name Iulias in honor of the daughter of Augustus. Galilee extended as far as there. At the end of the 16th century it began to be held that the Gospels speak of two B.: an eastern one (Lk. 9:10, and Mk. 8:22) to be identified with the Iulias of Fl. Josephus, and a western one (Mk. 6:45 and in all the other passages) which had to be located in the plain of Gennesaret, perhaps in the inlet that the lake forms at Hán Minjah and at Tábjah. The principal reason for the supposition of this second B. was the difficulty of explaining Mk. 6:45 (Jesus, to the east of the Jordan, orders the Apostles to "precede him" by sailing toward B.), if one supposes that the Gospels speak of Iulias alone; but Jesus' order can be explained as an indication of the generic direction that those who were with him were to take, since what was involved was making a "reverse march," and in coming the disciples had passed near Iulias. A B. on the western shore of the lake is never named in antiquity. Perhaps it was transferred there ideally in Byzantine times, when it began to be difficult for Christians to visit the Gospel localities beyond the lake.
B. is to be identified with et-Tell, an uninhabited hill with ruins, or more precisely with Hírbet el-'Arağ, south of et-Tell.
Bibliography4 works
Domenico Trisoglio