Bible Synapse
Capernaum
Site · 1st century BC – 5th century AD · Time of Jesus · also called Kfar Nahum, Tell Hum
See it on the map and timeline
- Date
- 1st century BC – 5th century AD (the excavated village, synagogue and church)
- Found
- Capernaum (Tell Hum), north shore of the Sea of Galilee, 1866. Charles Wilson identified the ruins as Capernaum in 1866. Excavation of the Franciscan-owned western part began in 1905 and was resumed by Virgilio Corbo and Stanislao Loffreda from 1968; Vassilios Tzaferis dug on the Greek Orthodox side.
- Now
- At the site
- Passages
- Matthew 4:13, Mark 1:21, Mark 2:1, Luke 7:1–5, John 6:59
What it is
The remains of a lakeside village of black basalt houses, built in small rooms around open courtyards. Its best-known building, a white limestone synagogue, dates from the 4th or 5th century AD. Nearby, an octagonal 5th-century church stands over a house whose main room was plastered and used for gatherings from the later 1st century, and whose walls later visitors covered with prayers scratched in Greek, Syriac and Hebrew.
How it connects to the Bible
The Gospels make Capernaum Jesus' base in Galilee: leaving Nazareth, he “came and dwelt in Capernaum”, taught in its synagogue and healed there, and Luke says a centurion had built the town's synagogue. The excavated village shows the setting of that ministry. The visible synagogue is later than Jesus' time, though its excavators think its basalt foundations belong to an earlier one.
What scholars debate
The basalt foundations under the synagogue may belong to an older building or to an open market area. The excavators identified the venerated house as Peter's, and read his name in some graffiti; many scholars dispute those readings.