The Greek Inscriptions from ‘The Church of St. Peter’ at Bethsaida (el-‘Araj)

In 725 CE Willibald bishop of Eichstätt in Bavaria visited and stayed overnight at a place called Bethsaida, where he visited a church said to have been built on the location where the house of Peter and Andrew had formerly stood. In 2021 a Byzantine basilica was discovered at the site of el-‘Araj, on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee. Three Greek inscriptions adorned the mosaic floor of the church, one of which mentions ‘The chief of the apostles and the keeper of the keys of the heavenly spheres’, titles referring to St. Peter. This helps to identify the church with the one visited by Willibald and linked to St. Peter by the tradition the pilgrim heard. Thus it appears that, in the Byzantine period, Second Temple Bethsaida was identified with el-‘Araj. Excavations beneath the church and in other parts of the site have uncovered remains from the Roman period, spanning from the 1st century BCE to the 3rd century CE. The continuity between the Roman and Byzantine phases, despite the two-century gap, supports our identification that this is the location of the fishermen’s village of Bethsaida, which was upgraded to a polis named Julias during the reign of Herod Philip.