What happened in Capernaum in the Bible?

Capernaum, in Hebrew Kefar Nahum, the village of Nahum, lay on the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee, a few kilometers west of where the Jordan flows into the lake. It was a working Jewish village of fishermen and farmers, with houses of dark local basalt built around shared courtyards. It sat on a road running north and east, close to the border between the territory of Herod Antipas and that of his brother Philip, which explains why it had a customs post and Roman soldiers nearby.

It was not a city of marble. It was a place where people mended nets, pressed olives and paid tolls. And for about three years it was where the Son of God lived.

Jesus moves in. After leaving Nazareth, Jesus settled in Capernaum by the lake, and Matthew saw in this the light Isaiah promised to Galilee of the nations (Matthew 4:13). Matthew later calls it simply his own town (Matthew 9:1).

A day in Capernaum. Mark describes one Sabbath there. Jesus taught in the synagogue with an authority that astonished everyone and freed a man from an unclean spirit (Mark 1:21). Then he went to the house of Simon Peter and Andrew, took Peter's feverish mother-in-law by the hand and raised her up, and by sunset the whole town was crowded at the door with the sick (Mark 1:29).

Through the roof. On another day the house was so packed that four friends dug through the roof to lower a paralyzed man to Jesus. Jesus first forgave his sins, then told him to get up and walk home, and he did (Mark 2:1).

At the tax booth and the city gate. By the lake Jesus called Levi, also called Matthew, away from collecting taxes (Mark 2:13). A Roman centurion, whom the Jewish elders praised for building their synagogue, asked Jesus to heal his servant with only a word, and Jesus marveled at his faith (Luke 7:1).

Bread of life. After feeding the five thousand, Jesus taught in the Capernaum synagogue that he is the bread of life. Many disciples left, and Peter answered that there was no one else to go to (John 6:66).

A warning. For all it saw, Capernaum did not repent, and Jesus warned that even Sodom would fare better on the day of judgment (Matthew 11:23).

Capernaum is one of the most rewarding Gospel sites for archaeology. The ruins, long known as Tell Hum, were identified in the nineteenth century, and the Franciscans who own most of the site have excavated it from 1968 onward under Virgilio Corbo and Stanislao Loffreda; the Greek Orthodox side to the east has also been dug.

The most striking building is the white limestone synagogue, which visitors often assume Jesus knew. He did not. Based on coins and pottery sealed beneath its floor, the excavators date it to the late fourth or fifth century, though some scholars prefer an earlier date. Underneath it runs a foundation of black basalt on a different line, and beneath its floor the excavators found a basalt pavement and remains they interpret as an earlier synagogue from the first century. If they are right, this is very likely the place where Jesus taught. Others are more cautious, but the later builders do seem to have deliberately kept the same sacred spot.

A short walk south stands the modern church raised over an octagonal Byzantine church of the fifth century. Below the octagon, the excavators traced earlier phases: an ordinary first-century house around a courtyard, one room of which was later plastered and set apart for gatherings, its walls scratched with graffiti that include Christian prayers and, by some readings, the name of Jesus. By the late fourth century the pilgrim Egeria reported that the house of Peter had been turned into a church. Many scholars think it is reasonable that this was the house Christians remembered as Peter's. It cannot be proven, but few traditions in the Holy Land rest on such early and continuous evidence of veneration.

Capernaum shows where Jesus chose to do his work: not in a palace or a temple court, but in a fisherman's crowded house, among neighbors with fevers and debts. Faith in that town looked like friends carrying a friend, and a foreign officer trusting a word.

It also carries a sober lesson. A town can live next door to Jesus, see his miracles and hear his teaching, and still not turn to him. Being close to holy things is not the same as receiving him.