Following in Jesus’ Footsteps: Capernaum, the Town of Jesus

Still today, pilgrims who visit Capernaum on the shores of Lake Tiberias can have the extraordinary experience of seeing the city where Jesus spent most of the three years of his ministry in Galilee. This is where he called his Apostles, where he preached, healed the sick and carried out the powerful signs that reveal his profound identity as Messiah and Son of God. Fr Stanislao Loffreda, Franciscan archaeologist of the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum (SBF) in Jerusalem dedicated his entire life to this site, and was Fr Virgilio Canio Corbo’s chief assistant in the 19 [excavation] campaigns carried out here between 1968 and 1986. In his guide on Capernaum, which is the main source of this article, he recalled the real objective of archaeology.“We archaeologists exhume material remains from the past, but we are actually searching for something more. Our ultimate goal is, as far as possible, to establish contact with past generations, to speak with them and to allow them to speak to the current generations” (cf. S. Loffreda, Cafarnao, Jerusalem, 1995, p. 7). When we think of Capernaum as “the city of Jesus” and of the first Apostles, we immediately grasp the importance of its ancient remains for all humanity. For the friars of the Custody of the Holy Land, who are the guardians of this place, and live here as a praying and welcoming fraternity, Capernaum is much more than an archaeological site: it is the city of Jesus, the house of the Lord. In Jesus’ days, Capernaum was a frontier city equipped with a tax collection booth (cf. Mk 2:13-15), located on the imperial road that led to Damascus. The only town on the northwestern bank of the Lake, it was five kilometres away from Upper Jordan, which marked the boundary between the tetrarchy of Herod Antipas and the Golan that had been assigned to his brother Philip (both sons of Herod the Great). In 1975, a milestone bearing the name of Emperor Hadrian was found roughly 100 metres northwest from the synagogue, confirming that there had been an imperial road there (cf. S. Loffreda, op. cit., pp. 18-19). The presence of a detachment of Roman soldiers, documented in the Gospels (cf. Lk 7:1-10; Mt 8:5-13), indicated the village’s importance as a place of transit. Capernaum had commercial relations with Upper Galilee, the Golan, Syria, Asia Minor, Cyprus, Africa and the Phoenicians, as confirmed by recovered coins and ceramics. What Fr Loffreda found surprising was the lack of contact with central and southern Palestine (cf. S. Loffreda, op. cit., p. 19). Jesus leaves Nazareth and goes to live in Capernaum As we mentioned earlier, Jesus left Nazareth and went to live in Capernaum. The decision was not by chance. Nazareth “was a mountainous district, cut off from the main roads of communication”, whereas Capernaum was located on a strategic road and “was distant enough from large urban centres, especially from Tiberias where Herod Antipas had established his capital”. Thus, Jesus could “spread his messianic message widely, without causing an immediate reaction from political and religious leaders”. Moreover, Capernaum had a diverse population: fishers, farmers, artisans, merchants, publicans. Its relations with the Romans were marked “by a unique cordiality, to the point that a Roman centurion had built the synagogue for the Jewish community” (cf. S. Loffreda, op. cit., pp. 68-69). Hence, it is no wonder that Jesus called his first disciples from this community: fishermen Peter, Andrew, James and John, and publican Matthew.