Bethsaida

Bethsaida (bɛθˈseɪ.ɪdə; from Βηθσαϊδά from Hebrew/Aramaic beth-tsaida, lit. "house of hunting" from the Hebrew root ; بيت صيدا), also known as Julias, is a place mentioned in the New Testament. Julias lay in an administrative district known as Gaulonitis. Historians have suggested that the name is also referenced in rabbinic literature under the epithet Ṣaidan (צַידָן). In Hebrew beit means house, and tzed means both hunting and fishing. The resulting name means either "house of the fisherman" or "house of the hunter". The Hebrew Beit-tzaida, adapted to Greek phonetics (the New Testament was written in Greek) and transliterated to Latin, yields Bethsaida. According to , Bethsaida was the hometown of the apostles Peter, Andrew, and Philip. In the Gospel of Mark (), Jesus reportedly restored a blind man's sight at a place just outside the ancient village of Bethsaida. In , Jesus miraculously feeds five thousand near Bethsaida. Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History, places Bethsaida on the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee. The historian Josephus says that the town of Bethsaida (at that time called Julia, Ἰουλία), was situated 120 stadia from the lake Semechonitis, not far from the Jordan River as it passes into the middle of the Sea of Galilee. De Situ Terrae Sanctae, a 6th-century account written by Theodosius the archdeacon describes Bethsaida's location in relation to Capernaum, saying that it was distant from Capernaum. The distance between Bethsaida and Paneas is said to have been . Although Bethsaida is believed to be located on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee, within the Bethsaida Valley, there is disagreement among scholars as to precisely where. Since the nineteenth century, three places have been considered as the possible location of Biblical Betsaida: the Bedouin village of Messadiye; the small, deserted settlement of El-Araj (Beit HaBek, "House of the Bey"); and the archaeological site (tel) of Et-Tell. Over time, the latter two locations have come to appear more likely.