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In 1969 the Israelis were building a road along the Sea of
Galilee's eastern shore, three miles north of Kibbutz Ein Gev. Kibbutz
member Mendel Nun, an avid student of the lake's traditions and
archaeology, was trailing one of the bulldozers on his bicycle, when he
noticed that the "new roadbed was covered with earth mixed with fragments
of Byzantine pottery and building stones... At both sides of the roadbed
the tops of walls protruded from the ditches. I reported this immediately
to the Department of Antiquities." (Nun, Gergesa... p. 17.)
Work was halted and an exploration ensued. Archaeologists
discovered a large monastery and pilgrims' center from the 5th or 6th
century AD, including a basilica. The road was shifted closer to the lake.
What were Christians remembering when they built this
center?
First, it lies on the south side of a valley coming down
from the Golan Heights. The valley continues beneath the sea as a bank,
which the local people, through the centuries, have called "the bank of
Kursi." "Kursi" may be echoed in the "Gergesa" of Matthew's Gospel, where
the evangelist locates the miracle of the swine.
Most likely, that is what early Christians were commemorating. The miracle
fits the lake's eastern, most swine-consuming (Gentile)
shore.
Gergesa may not sound much like Kursi, but if you say it
often and fast enough, you can hear a possible connection. (For that
matter, Heptapegon doesn't sound a lot like Tabgha at first, but in
that case the derivation is sure.) The name Gergesa (or close relatives)
also appears elsewhere to designate this region. The Septuagint,
reflecting an ancient textual family
different from the traditional Hebrew Bible, names the kingdom
mentioned in Joshua 12:5 as that of the "Girgesi," instead of the Hebrew "Geshuri."
The Jerusalem Talmud (written in Tiberias!) connects this area with a
people called the Girgashites. Ancient Rabbinical commentary also refers
to "Gergeshta on the eastern shore of the Sea of Tiberias." For a full
discussion, see Nun, p. 14.
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 The
name Kursi, however, may be the original one, derived, from the shape of
the broad valley that runs from here eastward, till it is abruptly cut off
(as the seat of a chair by its back) by the steep slope of the Golan
Heights. Viewed from above, the formation appears like a chair: kursa
or kursi in Semitic tongues.
Through the valley runs the Samakh (fish) River. "During
the breeding season in winter nights, enormous schools of sardines swim to
the bank of Kursi to deposit their eggs on the stones." (Nun
p. 6.) By day come barbel, eager to eat the breeding sardines. For the
fishermen, this would have been "the other side" of the lake from
Capernaum, as in Matthew 8:28.
The breakwaters of an anchorage were discovered beneath the
water. (The lake's level has risen in the
last thousand years.) Beside it was a fishing village, as indicated by
more than a hundred lead sinkers, as well as a plastered storage tank,
roughly ten feet on each side, used to keep fish alive. The pottery found
in a surface survey indicates the Roman and Byzantine periods. The area
awaits excavation.
A paved road connected it with the monastic and pilgrimage
center to the east.
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 The
archaeologists focused their work on this center, the largest of its kind
in the country. Its stone walls measure 145 by 123 meters. It included
"streets and sewage facilities. Public buildings, private homes,
agricultural and fishing facilities, and particularly guest houses for
pilgrims, were all crowded within the enclosure." (Nun
p. 20.)
The basilica stood a bit off center. It has been partly
restored, using basalt as in the original.
We enter the atrium. (Were it not for Nun on his bicycle,
the modern road would have cut through it.) It includes two holes leading
down to a long cistern, about 18 feet deep. Rainwater flowing from the
roofed porticoes ran into this cistern. We can peek into the auxiliary
wings to the north and south. The northern contains an olive press. The
southern has a small chapel, beneath which a crypt contained thirty male
skeletons, laid out in stone enclosures.
 Through
the main gate we enter the nave, which was separated from the two
side aisles by limestone columns. Ahead is the single apse, on whose
curved bench sat the clergy. Even in partial reconstruction, the
church still makes a majestic impression.
The altar was not found. Beneath the place where
it would have been, however, the diggers discovered a stone
reliquary, which would have held something associated with a saint,
for example the bones or clothing.
Mosaics once covered the church's entire floor,
but now we seem them mainly in the side aisles. Amid the geometric
designs are depicted the fruits of the land. Nun identifies several
that one would not expect to find here in antiquity: an orange,
watermelon, and bananas. There were also pictures of animals, but
the iconoclasts of the 8th century effaced most of them. (These
iconoclasts were Muslims who interpreted the ban on graven images
very strictly.) It would have been helpful to find a portrait of a
pig or two!
The room just south of the apse includes a mosaic
inscription: "In the time of Stephanos the priest and abbot, most
beloved of God, the mosaic of the Photisterion was made..." The
Apostle Paul uses this word, meaning illumination, to
refer to baptism. In fact, a baptismal font for infants was found
here. The mosaic gives the date as well: "in the time of King
Mauricius." That would put it at about 585 AD. |
| Passers-by had always noticed a
large rock jutting up in front of the cliff to the south. Long ago
someone built a wall around its base, presumably to keep it from
falling. Behind it, in 1980, archaeologists discovered a chapel
whose apse reached into a cave. The builders perhaps identified this cave with one of
the tombs from which the demoniacs emerged. There must have been a
strong tradition, for otherwise no one would have chosen to build on
so awkward a site. This chapel may have been the first church at Kursi, for its mosaic floor includes crosses. (In 427 a Christian
emperor, Theodosius II, forbade the depiction of Christian symbols in floors). If so, it would
have been here that St. Sabas prayed in 491, as reported by his
6th-century biographer. Sabas and a disciple, heading north from
Scythopolis, walked along the eastern shore of the Sea of
Galilee to "Chorsia," where they prayed. (St. Sabas is also called
Mar Saba; he founded a famous monastery in the Judean desert that
today bears his name.)
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In the
excavations of 2001
and 2002, just northwest of the basilica and contemporary with it, the
diggers found thehot and cold rooms of a bathhouse. No doubt this added to the attractions
of the place. Dependent on pilgrims for their sustenance, the monks would
have needed to draw them to this eastern shore, which was otherwise devoid
of traditions.
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