A Sea of Galilee town dating back more than 2,000 years may have been found in Israel’s Ginosar valley, according to reports this week. Researchers say the town might be Dalmanutha (also spelled Dalmanoutha), referenced in the Gospel of Mark in the Bible.
It might be the place where Jesus sailed to after feeding 4,000 people with fish and loaves of bread, Ken Dark, with the University of Reading in the U.K., told LiveScience.com.
Archaeologists said that a famous boat which dated back 2,000 years ago was found in 1986 near the town. The boat’s discovered was reported on in the 1980s but its significance was not noted until recently.
“Vessel glass and amphora hint at wealth,” Dark wrote, according to LiveScience, and added that “weights and stone anchors, along with the access to beaches suitable for landing boats — and, of course, the first-century boat … all imply an involvement with fishing.”
Dark gave a lecture at the University of Edinburgh in June on the process. “ It is hard to imagine that a Roman-period coastal community of this size is nowhere mentioned in textual sources, and the site might be identified with one of the unlocated toponyms known from the Bible, perhaps the Dalmanutha of Mark 8:10,” reads a summary of his speech, according to a blog posting.
“While there has been much archaeological work on Roman-period and Byzantine settlement around the Sea of Galilee, little synthesis of this has taken place. Both material and written evidence suggest a distinctive economic system, in which local communities developed a specialized fishing ‘industry’ alongside agricultural production, but this has seldom been studied in its own right,” it continues.
