Capernaum (Kfar Nahum) was a settlement on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. The site is a ruin today, but was inhabited from 150 BC to about AD 750.The town is mentioned in the New Testament: in the Gospel of Luke it was reported to have been the home of the apostles Peter, Andrew, James and John, as well as the tax collector Matthew. In Matthew 4:13 the town was reported to have been the home of Jesus himself. According to Luke, Jesus taught in the synagogue in Capernaum, and a building which may have been a synagogue of that period has been found beneath the remains of a later synagogue.
T h e S e m i t i c n a m e o f t h e s m a l l c i t y w a s K f a r N a h u m ( N a h u m ' s v i l l a g e ) , N a h u m b e i n g a p r o p h e t . I n t h e w r i t i n g s o f F l a v i u s J o s e p h u s , t h e n a m e i s r e n d e r e d i n G r e e k a s K a p h a r n a u m " . I n A r a b i c , i t i s c a l l e d T e l l H u m , i e t h e r u i n ( T e l l ) o f H u m ( a n a b b r e v i a t e d f o r m o f N a h u m ) .
In 1838, the American explorer, Edward Robinson discovered the ruins of the ancient Capernaum. The city appeared to the first explorers to be a sad and desolate place.
In 1866, British Captain Charles W. Wilson identified the remains of the synagogue, and in 1894, Franciscan Friar Giuseppe Baldi of Naples, the Custodian of the Holy Land, was able to recover a good part of the ruins from the Bedouins.
The Franciscans raised a fence to protect the ruins from frequent vandalism, and planted palms and eucalyptus trees brought from Australia to create a small oasis for pilgrims. They also built a small harbor. These considerable labors were directed by the Franciscan Virgilio Corbo.
The most important excavations began in 1905 under the direction of the Germans Heinrich Kohl and Carl Watzinger. They were continued by the Franciscans Fathers Vendelin von Benden (1905-1915) and Gaudencio Orfali (1921-1926).
The excavations resulted in the discovery of two public buildings, the synagogue (which was partially restored by Fr Orfali), and an octagonal church. Later, in 1968, the excavations were restarted by Corbo and Stanislao Loffreda, with the financial assistance of the Italian government. During this phase, the major discovery was Saint Peter's house, in a neighborhood of the town from the evangelical era. These excavations continued until 1986.
The excavations revealed that the site was established at the beginning of the Hasmonean Dynasty, roughly in the second century B.C., and was abandoned in the eleventh century A.D.
Drawing upon literary sources and the results of the excavations, it has been possible to reconstruct a part of the town's history.
The town is not mentioned in the Old Testament. Archaeological evidence demonstrates that the town was in existence in the second century B.C., in the Asmonean period. The site had no defensive wall and extended along the shore of the nearby lake (from east to west).
The cemetery zone is found 200 meters north of the synagogue, which places it beyond the inhabited area of the town. It extended 3 kilometers to Tabgha, an area which appears to have been dedicated to agriculture, judging by the many oil and grain mills which were discovered in the excavation. Fishing was also a source of income; the remains of another harbor were found to the west of that built by the Franciscans.
Capernaum is situated near one of the main highways connecting Galilee with Damascus.
Jesus selected this town as the center of his public ministry in Galilee after he left the small mountainous hamlet of Nazareth.
No sources have been found for the belief that Capernaum was involved in the bloody Jewish revolts against the Romans, the First Jewish-Roman War (6673 CE) and Bar Kokhba's revolt (132135).
The layout of the town was quite regular. On both sides of an ample north-south main street arose small districts bordered by small cross-sectional streets and no-exit side-streets. The walls were constructed with coarse basalt blocks and reinforced with stone and mud. The most extensive part of the typical house was the patio, where there was a circular furnace made of refractory earth, as well as grain mills and a set of stone stairs that led to the terrace.
The floors of the houses were cobbled. Around the open patio, modest cells were arranged which received light through a series of openings or low windows. The discovery of the stairs to the terrace clarifies the passage in Chapter 2 of the Gospel of Mark in which a palsied man is brought to Jesus, who heals him. Mark 2:4, "And when they could not come nigh unto him for the press, they uncovered the roof where he was: and when they had broken it up, they let down the bed wherein the sick of the palsy lay" (KJV). With the type of construction seen in Capernaum, it would not have been difficult to raise the ceiling by the patio stairs and to remove a part to allow the bed to be brought down to where Jesus stood.
A study of the district located between the synagogue and the octogonal church showed that several families lived together in the patriarcal style, communally using the same patios and doorless internal passages. The houses were, in general, quite poor. There were no hygienic facilities nor drainage; the rooms were narrow and not very comfortable. Most objects found were made of clay: pots, plates, amphoras and lamps. Fish hooks, striker pins, weaving bobbins, and basalt mills for milling grain and pressing olives were also found. The mill was a true heirloom that was passed on from generation to generation during many centuries. As of the 4th century, there was an improvement in the quality of life: the houses were constructed with good quality mortar and fine ceramics were also used. Differences in social class were not noticeable. Buildings constructed at the founding of the town continued to be in use until the time of the abandonment of the town.
The sacred island in which the house of Saint Peter is found has a complex history. It was found near the front of a labyrinth of houses from many different periods. Three principal layers have been identified:
2. The great transformation in the fourth century
3. The octagonal church in the middle of the fifth.
One house in the village was venerated as the house of Peter the fisherman as early as the 2nd century AD, with two churches having been constructed over it.
The city's basalt houses are grouped around two large patios, the north patio and the south patio. The house of Saint Peter, roughly square and with sides approximately 7.50 meters long, joined both patios. An open space on the eastern side contained a brick oven. A threshold which allowed crossing between the two patios remains well-preserved to this day.
The house of Saint Peter, sanctified by the presence of Jesus, soon became a religious gathering place (domus-ecclesia) for the Christian community.
Beginning in the second half of the first century A.D., the house of Saint Peter displays markedly different characteristics than the other excavated houses. The rough walls were reworked with care and were covered with inscriptions; the floor was covered with a fine layer of plaster. Furthermore, almost no domestic ceramics are recovered, but lamps abound.
In this period, the "sacred island" acquired a new appearance. First, a thick-walled, slightly trapezoidal enclosure was built; its sides were 27-30 meters long. Made of plaster, they reached a height of 2.3 meters on the north side. The purpose of this wall was twofold: to frame the house of Saint Peter as a focal point of the "sacred island", and to accentuate its sacredness. It had two doors, one in the southwest corner and the other in the northeast corner.
Although the private houses remained in use after the transformation, the house of Saint Peter was profoundly altered and expanded. The venerated building, originally square, was divided into two rectangular spaces joined by a central archway.
This domus-ecclesia persevered until the middle of the fifth century when the Byzantines dismantled the sacred island in order to construct the church above.
The church consists of a central octagon with eight pillars, an exterior octagon with thresholds still in situ, and a gallery or portico that lead both into the interior of the church as well as into a complex of associated buildings to the East, a linkage achieved via a short passageway. Later, this passage was blocked and an apse with a pool for baptism was constructed in the middle of the east wall. From this wall ascended two stairs on either side of the baptistry, and the excess water from the rite would have escaped along this path.
A mosaic covered the floor of the church. In the portico the pattern was purely geometric, with four rows of contiguous circles and small crosses. In the zone of the external octagon, the mosaics represented plants and animals in a style similar to that found in the Basilica of the Feeding of the Five Thousand, in Taghba. In the central octagon, the mosaic was composed of a strip of calcified flowers, of a field of schools of fish with small flowers, and of a great circle with a peacock in the center.
It is important to note the close relationship between the octagonal church and the house of Saint Peter. The Byzantines, upon constructing the new church, placed the central octagon directly on top of the walls of the house, with the aim of preserving its exact location. From that moment on, it became impossible to see the humble house by virtue of its being covered by the mosaics of the new structure.
The ruins of this building, discovered by Wilson, stood out prominently among the humble dwellings of the population. It was built almost entirely of white blocks of calcareous stone brought from distant quarries.
The building consists of four parts: the praying hall, the western patio, a southern balustrade and a small room at the northwest of the building. The praying hall measured 24.40 ms by 18.65 m, with the southern face looking toward Jerusalem.
The internal walls were covered with painted plaster and superbly well-done stucco work found during the excavations. Watzinger, like Orfali, believed that there had been an upper floor reserved for women, with access by means of an external staircase located in the small room. But this opinion was not substantiated by the later excavations of the site.
The ancient synagogue still has two inscriptions, one in Greek and the other in Aramaic, that remember the benefactors that helped in the construction of the building.
In 1926, the Franciscan Orfali began the restoration of the synagogue. After his death, this work was continued by Virgilio Corbo beginning in 1976.
In 1986 the water of the lake reached an unusually low point. At that time, an ancient fishing boat was discovered that dated from the first century B.C. The vessel was 8 meters long and was preserved in the mud of the lake. After a difficult un-earthing process that had to be completed before the water rose again, the excavated boat was put on display in its modern-day position near the kibbutz Ginosar.
In March 2000, John Paul II, visited the ruins of Capernaum, as well as other cities, during his visit to Israel.
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