Bethsaida
archaeological site in Israel
Bethsaida ( beth-SAY-id-ə; from Koine Greek: Βηθσαϊδά, romanized: Bēthsaïdá; from Aramaic and Hebrew: בֵּית צַידָה, romanized: Bēṯ Ṣayḏā, lit. 'House of Fishing, or House of the Hunt', from the Hebrew root צ-י-ד; Arabic: بيت صيدا, romanized: Bayt Ṣaydā), also known as Julias or Julia (Ancient Greek: Ἰουλία, romanized: Ioulía), is a place mentioned in the New Testament. Julias lay in an administrative district known as Gaulonitis, now the Golan Heights.
Historians have suggested that the name is also referenced in rabbinic literature under the epithet Ṣayḏān (Hebrew: צַידָן).
The location of ancient Bethsaida or Julias has not been positively identified by modern researchers, of the three original candidates el-Araj being lately favoured due to the most recent discoveries, displacing et-Tell as the front-runner.
New Testament
According to John 1:44, Bethsaida was the hometown of the apostles Peter, Andrew, and Philip. Jörg Frey finds this attribution credible. In Mark 8:22–26, Jesus restored a blind man's sight at a place just outside the ancient village of Bethsaida. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus miraculously fed a multitude of people near Bethsaida.
History
Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History (77–79 CE), places Bethsaida on the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee. The Jewish historian Josephus says Bethsaida, at that time called Julia, was situated 120 stadia from the lake of Semechonitis, which is now the much drier Hula Valley not far from the Jordan River as it passes into the middle of the Sea of Galilee.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Bethsaida” is archaeological site in Israel. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Bethsaida, archaeological and site, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q501773. Authority coordinates are 32.910, 35.631. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bethsaida” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.