The shores of the Sea of Galilee had been surveyed and thoroughly explored by Sir Charles Wilson before the Survey reached this region, and no important discovery was added to his exhaustive account. The sites of several important places, such as Magdala, Chorazin, Tiberias, Taricheæ, and Sinnabris, with Gamala on the east, are certainly fixed. Hippos (now Susieh) may now be added to these, with Hammath and Rakkath.[43]
The three sites on the shore of the lake which are most discussed represent three conditions of our knowledge of ancient Palestine topography. Bethsaida is practically unknown. Capernaum is the subject of controversy, and Chorazin is certain. In the latter case the name survives at Kerâzeh; in the other two the modern ruins do not preserve in recognisable form the Hebrew titles.
As regards Bethsaida, a city of that name existed at the mouth where the Jordan entered the lake; and the point which struck me most on visiting the ground was that this spot cannot be supposed to be the same at which the river now opens into the Sea of Galilee. Most rivers, and especially those like the Jordan, which flow through soft soil, have within historic times lengthened themselves by the formation of deltas at their mouths. There is a Jordan delta in the Dead Sea very distinctly marked, and the north shore of the Sea of Galilee must also have been widened by Jordan river deposits. Since the time of Ptolemy the Nile Delta has grown considerably, and since the days of Sennacherib the Euphrates has become nearly one hundred miles longer. For this reason Bethsaida Julias must be sought somewhere, as placed by Robinson, near Et Tell.
As regards Capernaum, Sir Charles Wilson has clearly shown that the site of Tell Hûm has been regarded by all the pilgrims, from the fourth century downwards, as representing the celebrated city of the Gospels. Yet, as we have had occasion to remark on previous pages, Christian tradition is not invariably a safe guide; and, after reading all the chief discussions of the question, and visiting all the sites, it seems to me impossible to fix on Tell Hûm as being the place intended by Josephus or by the Evangelists. I think, rather, that Robinson’s view is correct, and that the ruin of Minieh not only represents Capernaum, but preserves the contemptuous Jewish appellation for that town, “The city of the Minai” or “heretics”--a term by which the Christians were intended. Within the limits of this volume it is, however, impossible to detail the reasons which have led me to this view, and which I have fully explained in previous works.