Tel Hadar: Identifying the site of the feeding of the multitudes By YADIN ROMAN ON TOUR An old Byzantine manuscript enumerates the Christian holy sites around Tiberias and its lake. The ancient text mentions familiar sites such as Capernaum, and the Jordan River, but also a hill "called Dodekathronon (twelve seats)," where Christ sat down and taught and where, as tradition has it, he also multiplied the seven loaves and fed the four thousand. A number of noted modern day New Testament scholars today believe that the most likely site of this feeding is Tel Hadar, a little knoll rising out of the sands of the present-day Dugit and Golan swimming beaches. The Tel Hadar site lies just off of the main road running alongside the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee, north of the Byzantine church ruins of Kursi. Although no Roman-era or Byzantine archeological ruins are to be found here, the site best fits the geography of the gospel stories as related by Matthew and Luke, according to Prior Bar-Gil Pixner, a reputed scholar of the Sea of Galilee areas which are related to Jesus' ministry. Tel Hadar is the only hillside area near the lake and along the Roman road that Jesus could feasibly have passed along his descent from the Hippene plateau of the present day Golan Heights, to the seashore, and north towards Bethsaida. Father Pixner (the man on the right, in the simple monks robe) standing by the rock inscribed with New Testament verses relating the miracle of the feeding. Archeological excavations that were undertaken at the site in the early 1970s and 1980s unearthed six archeological layers at Tel Hadar, beginning in the 15th and 16th centuries BCE and ending in the eighth and ninth centuries BCE, with the destruction of a Canaanite city. From there, any record of settlement disappears. But in the excavations, a prominent circle of stones was discovered on the hill - placed there perhaps by pilgrims of a bygone era to the site, perhaps in reverence to the site considered by many as this place of the Dodekathronon. In the time of Jesus, Tel Hadar was probably only a grassy knoll, looking much the way it does today, a suitable picnic site for the feeding of a large number of people. In 1969, Pixner first identified and marked the Tel Hadar site. More recently, an enormous two-ton rock, inscribed with New Testament verses relating the miracle of the feeding, was moved to the hilltop. The site was dedicated and opened to the public as a park and pilgrimage site on October 23, 1999. The journey to Caesarea Philippi: "Who Do People Say the Son of Man Is?" Banias and Caesarea Philippi of the Roman period Jesus' Mission to the Golan: Feeding the Multitudes and healing the Gentiles Tel Hadar: Identifying the site of the feeding of the multitudes The Golan Heights and Sea of Galilee: Syria's Holy Land claims Bethsaida - A Biblical tradition comes alive again Bethsaida in New Testament tradition More QuickTime VR Panoramic Views Back to Index - Digital Holyland Back to Main © Copyright - Eretz Magazine