Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ

by David Francis Bacon

It should be remarked, moreover, that, at the same time when Philip enlarged Bethsaida, in this manner, and gave it the name of Julia, the daughter of Augustus Caesar, his brother Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee and Peraea, with a similar ambition to exalt his own glory, and secure the favor of the imperial family, rebuilt a city in his dominions, named Betharamphtha, to which he gave the name Julias also; but in honor, not of the daughter, but of the wife of Augustus, who bore the family name, Julia, which passed from her to her daughter. This multiplication of namesake towns, has only created new confusion for us; for the learned Lightfoot, in his Chorographic century on Matthew, has unfortunately taken this for the Julias which stood on the Jordan, at its entrance into the lake, and accordingly applies to Julias-Betharamphtha, the last two quotations from Josephus, given above, which I have applied to Julias-Bethsaida. But it would seem as if this most profound Biblical scholar was certainly in the wrong here; since Julias-Betharamphtha must have been built by Herod Antipas within his own dominions, that is, in Galilee proper, or Peraea proper, as already bounded; and Josephus expressly says that this Julias was in Peraea; yet Lightfoot, in his rude little wood-cut map, (Horae Hebraica et Talmudicae in Marci, Decas Chorographica chapter v.) has put this in Gaulanitis, far north of its true place, at the influx of the Jordan into the lake, (“ad ipsissimum influxum Jordanis in lacum Gennesariticum,”) and Julias-Bethsaida, also in Gaulanitis, some miles lower down, at the south-east corner of the lake, a position adopted by no other writer that I know of. This peculiarity in Lightfoot’s views, I have thus stated at length, that those who may refer to his Horae for more light, might not suppose a confusion in my statement, which does not exist; for since the Julias-Betharamphtha of Herod could not have been in Gaulanitis, but in Peraea, the Julias at the influx of the Jordan into the lake, must have been the Bethsaida embellished by Philip, tetrarch of Iturea and Trachonitis, (Luke iii. 1,) which included Gaulanitis, Batanea, &c. east of Jordan and the lake, and north of Peraea proper. The substance of Josephus’s information on this point, is, therefore, that Bethsaida stood on the eastern side of the Jordan, just where it enters lake Gennesar, or Gennesaret, (otherwise called lake Tiberias and the sea of Galilee,)——that it stood in the province of Gaulanitis, within the dominions of Philip, son of Herod the Great, and tetrarch of all that portion of Palestine which lies north of Peraea, on the east of Jordan, and the lake, as well as of the region north of Galilee, his tetrarchy forming a sort of crescent,——that this prince, having enlarged and embellished Bethsaida, raised it from a village to the rank of a city, by the name of Julias, in honor of Julia, daughter of Augustus Caesar. This was done during the reign of Augustus, (Josephus, in Jewish Antiquities book i. chapter 2, section 1,) and of course long before Jesus Christ began his labors, though after his birth, because it was after the death of Herod the Great.

The question now is, whether the Bethsaida mentioned by the evangelists is by them so described as to be in any way inconsistent with the account given by Josephus, of the place to which he gives that name. The first difficulty which has presented itself to the critical commentators, on this point, is the fact, that the Bethsaida of the gospels is declared in them to have been a city of Galilee, (John xii. 21,) and those who were born and brought up in it are called Galileans, (Mark xiv. 70, Luke xxii. 59, Acts i. 7, ii. 7.) Yet Josephus expressly tells us, that Bethsaida was in Gaulanitis, which was not in Galilee, as he bounds it, but was beyond its eastern boundary, on the eastern side of the river and lake. (Jewish war, book xviii. chapter 2, section 1.) This is therefore considered by many, as a diversity between the two accounts, which must make it impossible to apply them both to the same place. But there is no necessity for such a conclusion. The different application of the term Galilee, in the two books, must be noticed, in order to avoid confusion. Josephus is very exact in the use of names of places and regions, defining geographical positions and boundaries with a particularity truly admirable. Thus, in mentioning the political divisions of Palestine, he gives the precise limits of each, and uses their names, not in the loose, popular way, but only in his own accurate sense. But the gospel writers are characterized by no such minute particularity, in the use of names, which they generally apply in the popular, rather than the exact sense. Thus, in this case, they use the term Galilee, in what seems to have been its common meaning in Judea, as a name for all the region north of Samaria and Peraea, on both sides of the Jordan, including, of course, Gaulanitis and all the dominions of Philip. The difference between them and Josephus, on this point, is very satisfactorily shown in another passage. In Acts v. 37, Gamaliel, speaking of several persons who had at different times disturbed the peace of the nation, mentions one Judas, the Galilean, as a famous rebel. Now this same person is very particularly described by Josephus, (Jewis Antiquities book xv. chapter 1, section 1,) in such a manner that there can be no doubt of his identity with the previous description. Yet Josephus calls him distinctly, Judas the Gaulanite, and only once Judas the Galilean; showing him to have been from the city of Gamala, in the country east of Jordan and the lake; so that the conclusion is unavoidable, that the term Galilee is used in a much wider sense in the New Testament than in Josephus, being applied indiscriminately to the region on both sides of the lake. The people of southern Palestine called the whole northern section Galilee, and all its inhabitants, Galileans, without attending to the nicer political and geographical distinctions; just as the inhabitants of the southern section of the United States, high and low, call every stranger a Yankee, who is from any part of the country north of Mason and Dixon’s line, though well-informed people perfectly well know, that the classic and not despicable name of Yankee belongs fairly and truly to the ingenious sons of New England alone, who have made their long-established sectional title so synonymous with acuteness and energy, that whenever an enterprising northerner pushes his way southward, he shares in the honors of this gentile appellative. Just in the same vague and careless way, did the Jews apply the name Galilean to all the energetic, active northerners, who made themselves known in Jerusalem, either by their presence or their fame; and thus both Judas of Gaulanitis, and those apostles who were from the eastern side of the river, were called Galileans, as well as those on the west, in Galilee proper. Besides, in the case of Bethsaida, which was immediately on the line between Galilee and Gaulanitis, it was still more natural to refer it to the larger section on the west, with many of whose cities it was closely connected.

Besides, that the Jews considered Galilee as extending beyond Jordan, is most undeniably clear from Isaiah ix. 1, where the prophet plainly speaks of “Galilee of the nations, as being by the side of the sea, beyond Jordan.” This was the ancient Jewish idea of the country designated by this name, and the idea of limiting it to the west of Jordan, was a mere late term introduced by the Romans, and apparently never used by the Jews of the gospel times, except when speaking of the political divisions of Palestine. The name Gaulanitis, which is the proper term for the province in which Bethsaida was, never occurs in the bible. Kuinoel, Rosenmueller, &c. give a different view, however, of “beyond Jordan,” on Matthew iv. 15.

But a still more important difficulty has been suggested, in reference to the identity of the place described by Josephus, with that mentioned in the gospels. This is, the fact that in the gospels it is spoken of in such a connection, as would seem to require its location on the western side. A common, but very idle argument, in favor of this supposition, is, that Bethsaida is mentioned frequently along with Capernaum and other cities of Galilee proper, in such immediate connection as to make it probable that it was on the same side of the river and lake with them. But places separated merely by a river, or at most by a narrow lake, whose greatest breadth was only five miles, could not be considered distant from each other, and would very naturally be spoken of as near neighbors. The most weighty argument, however, rests on a passage in Mark vi. 45, where it is said that Jesus constrained his disciples to “get into a vessel, to go before him to the other side unto Bethsaida,” after the five thousand had been fed. Now the parallel passage in John vi. 17, says that they, following this direction, “went over the sea towards Capernaum,” and that when they reached the shore, “they came into the land of Gennesaret,” both which are understood to be on the western side. But on the other hand, we are distinctly told, by Luke, (ix. 10,) that the five thousand were fed in “a desert place, belonging to (or near) the city which is called Bethsaida.” On connecting these two passages, therefore, (in John and Mark,) according to the common version, the disciples sailed from Bethsaida on one side, to Bethsaida on the other, a construction which has been actually adopted by those who maintain the existence of two cities of the same name on different sides of the lake. But what common reader is willing to believe, that in this passage Luke refers to a place totally different from the one meant in all other passages where the name occurs, and more particularly in the very next chapter, (x. 13,) where he speaks of the Bethsaida which had been frequented before by Jesus, without a word of explanation to show that it was a different place? But in the expression, “to go before him to the other side, TO Bethsaida,” the word “TO” may be shown, by a reference to the Greek, to convey an erroneous idea of the situation of the places. The preposition προς, (pros,) may have, not merely the sense of to, with the idea of motion towards a place, but in some passages even of Mark’s gospel, may be most justly translated “near,” or “before,” (as in ii. 2, “not even about” or “before” the door, and in xi. 4, “tied by” or before “the door.”) This is the meaning which seems to be justified by the collocation here, and the meaning in which I am happy to find myself supported by the acute and accurate Wahl, in his Clavis Novi Testamenti under προς, which he translates in this passage by the Latin juxta, prope ad; and the German bey, that is, “by,” “near to,” a meaning supported by the passage in Herodotus, to which he refers, as well as by those from Mark himself, which are given above, from Schleusner’s references under this word, (definition 7.) Scott, in order to reconcile the difficulties which he saw in the common version, has, in his marginal references, suggested the meaning of “over against,” a rendering, which undoubtedly expresses correctly the relations of objects in this place, and one, perhaps, not wholly inconsistent with Schleusner’s 7th definition, which is in Latin ante, or “before;” since what was before Bethsaida, as one looked from that place across the river, was certainly opposite to that city. I had thought of this meaning as a desirable one in this passage, but had rejected it, before I saw it in Scott, for the reason, that I could not find this exact meaning in any lexicon, nor was there any other passage in Greek, in which this could be distinctly recognized as the proper one. The propriety of the term, however, is also noticed, in the note on this passage in the great French Bible, with commentaries, harmonies, &c. (Sainte Bible en Latin et Francois avec des notes, &c. Vol. xiv. p. 263, note,) where it is expressed by “l’autre cote du lac, vis-a-vis Bethsaide: c. a. d. sur le bord occidental opposé a la ville Bethsaide que etait sur le bord oriental,” a meaning undoubtedly geographically correct, but not grammatically exact, and I therefore prefer to take “near,” as the sense which both reconciles the geographical difficulties, and accords with the established principles of lexicography.

After all, the sense “to” is not needed in this passage, to direct the action of the verb of motion (προαγειν, proagein, “go before,”) to its proper object, since that is previously done by the former preposition and substantive, εις το περαν, (eis to peran.) That is, when we read “Jesus constrained his disciples to go before him,” and the question arises in regard to the object towards which the action is directed, “Whither did he constrain them to go before him?” the answer is in the words immediately succeeding, εις το περαν, “to the other side,” and in these words the action is complete; but the mere general direction, “to the other side,” was too vague of itself, and required some limitation to avoid error; for the place to which they commonly directed their course westward, over the lake, was Capernaum, the home of Jesus, and thither they might on this occasion be naturally expected to go, as we should have concluded they did, if nothing farther was said; therefore, to fix the point of their destination, we are told, in answer to the query, “To what part of the western shore were they directed to go?” “To that part which was near or opposite to Bethsaida.” The objection which may arise, that a place on the western side could not be very near to Bethsaida on the east, is answered by the fact that this city was separated from the western shore, not by the whole breadth of the lake, but simply by the little stream of Jordan, here not more than twenty yards wide, so that a place on the opposite side might still be very near the city. And this is what shows the topographical justness of the term, “over against,” given by Scott, and the French commentator, since a place not directly across or opposite, but down the western shore, in a south-westerly direction, as Capernaum was, would not be very near Bethsaida, nor much less than five miles off. Thus is shown a beautiful mutual illustration of the literal and the liberal translations of the word.

Macknight ably answers another argument, which has been offered to defend the location of Bethsaida on the western shore, founded on John vi. 23. “There came other boats from Tiberias, nigh unto the place where they did eat bread,” as if Tiberias had been near the desert of Bethsaida, and consequently near Bethsaida itself. “But,” as Macknight remarks, “the original, rightly pointed, imports only, that boats from Tiberias came into some creek or bay, nigh unto the place where they did eat bread.” Besides, it should be remembered that the object of those who came in the boats, was to find Jesus, whom they expected to find “nigh the place where they ate bread,” as the context shows; so that these words refer to their destination, and not to the place from which they came. Tiberias was down the lake, at the south-western corner of it, and I know of no geographer who has put Bethsaida more than half way down, even on the western shore. The difference, therefore, between the distance to Bethsaida on the west and to Bethsaida on the east, could not be at most above a mile or two, a matter not to be appreciated in a voyage of sixteen miles, from Tiberias, which cannot be said to be near Bethsaida, in any position of the latter that has ever been thought of. This objection, of course, is not offered at all, by those who suppose two Bethsaidas mentioned in the gospels, and grant that the passage in Luke ix. 10, refers to the eastern one, where they suppose the place of eating bread to have been; but others, who have imagined only one Bethsaida, and that on the western side, have proposed this argument; and to such the reply is directed.

For all these reasons, topographical, historical and grammatical, the conclusion of the whole matter is——that there was but one Bethsaida, the same place being meant by that name in all passages in the gospels and in Josephus——that this place stood within the verge of Lower Gaulanitis, on the bank of the Jordan, just where it passes into the lake——that it was in the dominions of Philip the tetrarch, at the time when it is mentioned in the gospels, and afterwards was included in the kingdom of Agrippa——that its original Hebrew name, (from בית beth, “house,” and צדה, tsedah, “hunting, or fishing,” “a house of fishing,” no doubt so called from the common pursuit of its inhabitants,) was changed by Philip into Julias, by which name it was known to Greeks and Romans.

By this view, we avoid the undesirable notion, that there are two totally different places mentioned in two succeeding chapters of the same gospel, without a word of explanation to inform us of the difference, as is usual in cases of local synonyms in the New Testament; and that Josephus describes a place of this name, without the slightest hint of the remarkable fact, that there was another place of the same name, not half a mile off, directly across the Jordan, in full view of it.

The discussion of the point has been necessarily protracted to a somewhat tedious length; but if fewer words would have expressed the truth and the reasons for it, it should have been briefer; and probably there is no reader who has endeavored to satisfy himself on the position of Bethsaida, in his own biblical studies, that will not feel some gratitude for what light this note may give, on a point where all common aids and authorities are in such monstrous confusion.

For the various opinions and statements on this difficult point, see Schleusner’s, Bretschneider’s and Wahl’s Lexicons, Lightfoot’s Chorographic century and decade, Wetstein’s New Testament commentary on Matthew iv. 12, Kuinoel, Rosenmueller, Fritzsche, Macknight, &c. On the passages where the name occurs, also the French Commentary above quoted,——more especially in Vol. III. Remarques sur le carte geographique section 7, p. 357. Paulus’s “commentar ueber das neue Testament,” 2d edition, Vol. II. pp. 336–342. Topographische Erlaeuterungen.