Religion Briefs : Location of Bethsaida Reportedly Uncovered

Archeologists say they have settled a centuries-old debate over the location of Bethsaida, the third-most mentioned place name in the New Testament Gospels after Jerusalem and Capernaum.

“There is no doubt now that this is Bethsaida,” said archeologist Rami Arav of the Golan Research Institute, who headed the excavation last April. Et Tell, in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights, is a small mound just north of where the Jordan River empties into the Sea of Galilee. It sits among abandoned Syrian bunkers and exploded 52-millimeter mortar shells.

A complete kitchen from the time of Jesus with many of its vessels intact and boxes of pottery have been unearthed at Et Tell, one of two sites long believed by scholars to be the biblical city. Arav said in an interview that the second site, pinpointed in the mid-19th Century, was a nearby ruin called El-Araj, but test digs at the two sites yielded only what he sought at Et Tell.

He said four periods of settlement at Et Tell were found. The first two date to the early Canaanite period, from 3100 BC to 2850 BC, the third to the Israelite occupation in 1000 BC and the final to Jesus’ time, from around 100 BC until AD 67.