Tent Work in Palestine: A Record of Discovery and Adventure

by C. R. Conder

In addition to the Jewish tradition connecting Minieh with Capernaum, there is a second indication which favours that identification. Josephus speaks of the fountain which watered the plain of Gennesaret, and which was called Capharnaum. It contained a fish named Coracinus, which was also found in the Nile. There are two springs to which this account has been supposed to apply, the one two and a half miles south of Minieh, the other scarcely three quarters of a mile east of the same site. The first irrigates a great part of the plain of Gennesaret; the Coracinus has been found in it, and the waters are clear and fresh; this is called ’Ain-el-Madowerah, “the round spring.” The second is called ’Ain Tâbghah, and Dr. Tristram points out that the water being warm, brackish, and muddy, is unfit for the Coracinus, which has never as yet been found in it.

’Ain Tâbghah is not in the plain of Gennesaret. It is a spring surrounded by an octagonal reservoir, which was built up to its present height by one of the sons of the famous Dhahr-el-’Amr in the last century, and the water is thus dammed up to about fifty-two feet above the lake. An aqueduct, of masonry apparently modern, leads from the level of the reservoir to the cliff at Minieh, where is a rock-cut channel three feet deep and broad, resembling more the great rock-cutting of the Roman road at Abila, than any of the rock-cut aqueducts of the country. The water was conducted through this channel to the neighbourhood of the Khân, or just to the edge of the plain of Gennesaret. It is important to notice that the spring can only have watered the neighbourhood of Minieh after the reservoir had been built, and that it was probably always unfitted for the presence of the Coracinus.

As ’Ain Tâbghah is not in the plain of Gennesaret, and as it does not irrigate that plain—the modern aqueduct being apparently constructed to supply some mills near Minieh—it seems impossible to identify this spring with that mentioned by Josephus as the abode of the Coracinus. And even if the Tâbghah spring were that of Capharnaum, the case for Tell Hûm is not thereby strengthened, the distance from the spring to that ruin (nearly two miles) being double that from the spring to Minieh—scarcely three quarters of a mile.

In favour of the Minieh site we have then Jewish tradition, and the existence of a spring fulfilling the description of Josephus; but it must not be denied that in favour of Tell Hûm we have a Christian tradition from the fourth century downwards.

Jerome places Capernaum two miles from Chorazin. If, as seems almost certain, by the latter place he means the ruin of Kerâzeh, the measurement is exactly that to Tell Hûm.

The account of Theodorus (532 A.D.) is more explicit, and seems indeed almost conclusive as to the site of his Capernaum. Two miles from Magdala he places the Seven Fountains, where the miracle of feeding the five thousand was traditionally held to have taken place; these, as will presently appear, were probably close to Minieh; and two miles from the fountains was Capernaum, whence it was six miles to Bethsaida, on the road to Banias. These measurements seem to point to Tell Hûm as the sixth-century Capernaum.

Antoninus Martyr (600 A.D.) speaks of the great basilica in Capernaum, which it is only natural to identify with the synagogue of Tell Hûm, which seems probably (by comparison with those at Meirûn) to be the work of Simeon Bar Jochai, the Cabbalist, who lived about 120 A.D.

Arculphus (700 A.D.) visited the fountain where the five thousand were fed, and from the hill near it he saw Capernaum at no great distance on a narrow tract between the lake and the northern hills. His account thus agrees with that of Theodorus, though in itself so indefinite, that it has been brought as evidence in favour of both the sites advocated for Capernaum.

Sæwulf (1103 A.D.) proceeded along the shore for six miles, going north-east from Tiberias, to the mountain where the five thousand were fed, then called Mensa, or “table,” which had a church of St. Peter at its feet. It is evident, from the measurements, that this hill was in the neighbourhood of Minieh, where Theodorus also seems to place the scene of the miracle, as above noticed.

John of Würtzburg (about 1100 A.D.) speaks of the mountain called Mensa, with a fountain a mile distant, and Capernaum two miles away.