Wayne Stiles has never recovered from his travels in the Holy Land. Follow him on Twitter (@WayneStiles) or on his blog at www.waynestiles.com.Chunks of basalt emerge from the northern slopes above the Sea of Galilee.
Clumps
of grass and volcanic rock offer a variegated green and gray to the
hillside. From a distance, the basalt ruins of Chorazin appear little
more than a pile of rocks among so many thousands of others. Unless you
look carefully, you may miss it.
Chorazin holds the nickname,
“Capernaum with a view.” The site rests about two miles north of
Capernaum and the Sea of Galilee. Its view is indeed lovely.
Like
most Galilean cities, Chorazin had a synagogue. But unlike most
excavated ruins today, Chorazin’s synagogue has been found.The remains
of the synagogue date to the second century (some suggest it dates to
the 4th-century). Galilean synagogues typically had three doorways
leading from the outer courtyard into the main area. The open layout had
two rows of pillars that formed three walk ways with benches
surrounding the walls. Likely destroyed by an earthquake, the
synagogue’s ruins betray the compromise of carved images, including
patterns of animals, flora, and people.
The
archaeologist’s spade at Chorazin has unearthed numerous houses near
the synagogue and a ritual bath adjoining a sizable oval cistern. In the
1920s, excavators found a decorated stone seat, referred to as, “the
Seat of Moses,” which served as the place where an authoritative teacher
would sit in the synagogue to read the Torah. The Israel Museum in
Jerusalem houses the original seat today, but a replica sits beside the
synagogue’s doorway in Chorazin. Jesus referred to this seat of
authority when he said: “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit
in Moses’ seat. So you must obey them and do everything they tell you.
But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach”
(Matthew 23:2–4).
Chorazin
was one of the three Galilean cities rebuked by Jesus for refusing to
respond to his miracles (Luke 10:13-15). All three cities—Chorazin,
Bethsaida, and Capernaum—remain in ruins, with only Capernaum revealing
any first-century excavations. Bethsaida’s precise location remains
debatable.
After Hadrian’s paganizing of Jerusalem in AD 135,
Jews flooded into the Galilee. The ruins we see today in Chorazin date
from this century in which the city expanded to more than 80 acres. Both
Eusebius and Jerome refer to the site in various states of ruin and
reconstruction.
The fertile volcanic soils surrounding Chorazin
yielded an excellent quality of wheat. The Talmud refers to Chorazin’s
wheat as worthy of providing the omer, or first fruits offering, but the
city’s distance from Jerusalem proved prohibitive (see Menahot, 85a).
Most
Jewish settlements in the Galilee suffered greatly following the Arab
conquest. But during the Middle Ages (12th- to 14th- centuries),
Chorazin enjoyed a revival of reoccupation. A house with impressive
arches from this period still stands and provides a fine example of the
construction in the medieval period.
Chorazin remains an excellent example of a Galilean city during the Roman period.
Wayne Stiles has never recovered from his travels in the Holy Land. Follow him on Twitter (@WayneStiles) or on his blog at www.waynestiles.com.