In the year 725 AD, a Bavarian bishop named Willibald toured the Holy Land and later reported having seen the church of Apostle Peter and his brother Andrew.
In the account of his travels, written by Hunenbreg, an Anglo-Saxon nun who knew Willibald personally, it is said of the pilgrims’ itinerary:
Then they went to Bethsaida, the native place of Peter and Andrew. A church now occupies the site where their home once stood. They passed the night there, and on the following morning set off for Corazain, where our Lord cured the man possessed of the devil and drove the demons into a herd of swine.
For centuries, this account has formed the basis of the Christian tradition that holds that a church was built over the homes of Jesus’ Apostles.
Now, as reported in an article at Haaretz, archaeologists from the Kinneret Academic College and Nyack College of New York, USA, think they have found the legendary Church of the Apostles, which Christian tradition states was built over the home of some of Jesus’ disciples.
The discovery was first discovered in 2017 and is believed by archaeologists to be the remains of an ancient Roman city believed to have once been the fishing village of Bethsaida, known from the Gospels as the home to the apostles Peter, Andrew and Philip.
The archaeologists said that the ancient Jewish village of Bethsaida, which is mentioned in the Bible’s New Testament, was much larger than experts had previously thought.
Some people believe it could be the site referred to in the “Feeding of the 5,000” miracle when Jesus is said to have fed a large crowd with five loaves of bread and two small fishes.
What is known for certain is that the recent excavation at the suspected site of the biblical village in modern-day Beit Habek, also known as El-Araj, has uncovered the remains of a large Byzantine-era church.
Some of the most notable evidence includes mosaic titles which Professor R. Steven Notley from the private Christian college in New York told Haaretz “are for wall mosaics and only appear in churches.”
Other finds at the site include marble fragments, two aisles, roof tiles designed for a big building and a cross carved into stone.
Historical texts have referred to this area as being home to the church which was built on top of Peter and Andrew’s old house but no one has found it before.
The ruins haven’t been scientifically dated yet, but experts think it was built in the fifth century, 500 years after the apostles are said to have lived.
They also think it was later abandoned in either the seventh or the eighth century because of the rise of the Umayyad caliphate and Islamic presence in the land.
The theory that el-Araj is the long-lost Bethsaida and once home to the disciples Peter, Andrew and Philip is supported by the archaeologists who have been excavating the church.
However, some people believe that the nearby site of e-Tell is actually Bethsaida.
More evidence, such as an inscription, is needed to say for sure whether this church is officially the Church of the Apostles.
Notley told Haaretz:
“It would be normal to find an inscription in a church of the Byzantine period, describing in whose memory it was built, for instance.”
To read more about the discovery of the Church of the Apostles, read the rest of the story at Haaretz.
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