November 10, 1999
Tourists invited to believed
site of Jesus feeding 4,000
___By Elaine Ruth Fletcher
___Religion News Service
___TEL HADAR, Israel (RNS) --For hundreds of years, Christian pilgrims have journeyed to the area near Capernaum on the western side of the Sea of Galilee to celebrate the miraculous feeding of the multitudes where the New Testament says Jesus fed 5,000 Jews with just five loaves of bread and two fishes.
___Recently, however, a group of leading regional church figures gathered along with Israeli tourism officials to dedicate a new holy site for the upcoming millennium along the Sea of Galilee's eastern shore. The site, Tel Hadar, is the place where a noted biblical geographer believes a second feeding of the multitudes occurred involving Greek-speaking pagans.
___The miracle of the feeding of the 4,000 on the Galilee's eastern shores is recounted in the New Testament books of Matthew and Mark. Unlike Jesus' earlier feat at Capernaum, the people who gathered here were predominantly residents of the towns of the "Decapolis"--the sophisticated Greek-speaking cities of the Golan Heights, the eastern Galilee and parts of what are now Jordan and Lebanon that maintained an informal alliance in the first century period.
___The feeding of the multitudes on the Sea of Galilee's eastern shore has long been seen in Christian tradition as a turning point in Jesus' career, when his ministry to the Jews was expanded to include gentiles as well.
___"Two thousand years ago, the ethical values of Torah-Israel were infused into the Greco-Roman world. And where was the point of the needle of the infusion? I believe we can say: It happened right here," said Prior Bar-Gil Pixner, a German-born Benedictine monk, speaking at the late October dedication of the Tel Hadar site.
___Pixner, a resident of the Capernaum-area monastery of Tabgha, has devoted his life to identifying the sites around the Galilee that are noted in New Testament accounts of Jesus' ministry.
___The site of the miracle, according to Pixner, is identified in the New Testament as a hill on the eastern shore of Galilee, near the first century Greek town of the Decapolis known as Hippos, or Susita. Jesus visited Hippos on his return to Galilee from a journey through Lebanon, to Tyre and Sidon.
___Pixner identified the Tel Hadar site, situated near a popular Israeli beach, in 1969 as the probable locale of the miracle. It was the only hilltop on the eastern Galilee that matched the biblical description of the site, Pixner said.
___The site also happens to be situated on the old Roman road that headed north from Greek-speaking Hippos toward the first century Jewish towns of the northern and western Galilee shore, such as Capernaum, where Jesus and his disciples lived and directed most of their ministry.
___At the time of his 1969 explorations, Pixner marked the Tel Hadar site with a few small stones that were later removed. Only recently, an enormous two-ton rock, decorated with Bible verses and a modern rendition of early Christian inscriptions, was moved to the hilltop to become the centerpiece of a new park created for millennial Christian tourists.
___Archeological excavations that were undertaken at the site in the 1970s and 1980s unearthed six archeological layers at Tel Hadar, starting with the late bronze, or Canaanite, period of the 15th-16th centuries B.C., and ending in the 8th century B.C. There, the record of settlement mysteriously disappears.
___In the time of Jesus, Tel Hadar was probably a grassy knoll looking much the way it does today. It was, indeed, a perfect picnic site for the feeding of a great multitude of people, observed Israeli publisher Yadin Roman.
___Roman, author of a popular "Pilgrim's Companion" series of tour guide books for Christians, was instrumental in persuading Israel's Ministry of Tourism to designate the park and memorial site.
___"If you read the New Testament, you find that Jesus did a lot of picnicking. In this particular feast, a lot of gentiles came and they glorified the name of the God of Israel," he said.
___According to the New Testament chronology, Jesus apparently entered the area from Hippos, probably en route north to Beit Saida near the Galilee shore, the hometown of five of his disciples. He was followed by Greek-speaking pagans who had heard of his miracles and welcomed him enthusiastically.
___Surrounded by the multitudes, he spent three days healing and preaching--and the crowd "gave glory to the God of Israel," according to the Gospel of Matthew. Then, seeing that the crowd was out of food, Jesus gathered seven loaves of bread and a few fish from among his disciples and fed the 4,000 who had gathered.
___"The birth and expansion of Christianity was a unique historical moment when Jewish thought and beliefs were injected into the Hellenistic world," said Israeli Tourism Minister Amnon Lipkin Shahak, speaking at the Tel Hadar site.
___"Here Jewish villagers and Greek townspeople shared common ground. The parables, the healings and the message of Jesus were understandable to both Jew and Gentile."
___The cities of the Decapolis in relatively close proximity to Tel Hadar were some of the most "sophisticated and cultured" cities of the Greek-speaking world, Roman said.
___"Their proximity to Jewish areas of the Galilee helps explain why 50 years after the Crucifixion, Christianity became the fastest growing movement in the Hellenistic world."
___The Tel Hadar park, until recently a neglected hillside bordering a litter-strewn beach-front, is now destined to become part of a Sea of Galilee "Historical Heritage Region"--the first area in Israel to obtain such a designation.
Contents/ Masthead / Why We're Here / Links / Archive / E-mail us/ SUBSCRIBE!