Magdala’s Mistaken Identity

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Visitors to Israel today regularly make a stop at Magdala, a site located about 4 miles north of Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee. Excavations in recent decades have revealed an ancient port city with remarkable remains from the Hellenistic and Roman periods, including two of the earliest and best-preserved synagogues ever uncovered in Israel. Many have even suggested that this impressive Jewish city was the hometown of Mary Magdalene,^a Jesus’s famous disciple, and that Jesus may have first encountered Mary at one of the site’s synagogues.

Many scholars agree, however, that in the first century, the Galilean port city now under excavation was actually called Taricheae, a city best known from the writings of the Jewish historian Josephus, who was frequently based at the port while serving as a general during the First Jewish Revolt (66–70 C.E.).¹

So how did Taricheae, one of the largest Jewish cities on the shores of the Galilee, come to be called Magdala? Before answering this question, let’s first examine what we know of both Taricheae and places called Magdala in Roman Galilee.

Taricheae is mentioned by several Roman authors of the first centuries B.C.E. and C.E., as well as by Josephus.² According to Josephus, the city, which had a population of 056about 40,000, was protected by walls and secure gates and even had a hippodrome. He gives its location as 30 stadia (about 4 mi) from Tiberias (Life 157). As such, we can almost certainly locate Taricheae 4 miles north of Tiberias at the archaeological site known today as Magdala.³

And, indeed, what we know of Taricheae does correspond with what has been uncovered during the recent excavations.⁴ It was a large and wealthy city, with two synagogues, significant commercial operations, and a large harbor. The harbor appears to have been established in the second century B.C.E. and thrived for several hundred years until the site was largely abandoned by c. 270 C.E. The earthquake of 363 C.E. further devastated what remained of the town, and, as we will see, its fortunes revived only a century or more later when Christian pilgrims began flocking to Galilee in search of holy places.

But while history and archaeology tell us a great deal about Taricheae, we know very little about a Galilean town or village that would have been known as Magdala in the first century. Indeed, Magdala (Hebrew: Migdal), which simply means “the tower” in Aramaic, was a common place name in the lands of the Bible, typically given to places that local tradition associated with towers or fortifications. Both in the Bible and in later Christian and rabbinic literature, we find many towns and locations named for towers: Migdal Eder (“Tower of the Flock”), Migdal Tsebayya (“Tower of the Dyers”) and Migdal El (“Tower of God”), to name a few. Given that 057such names were often shortened to Magdala (or Mugdal or Mogdala, depending on local pronunciation), there was understandably much confusion when it came to identifying and differentiating between them in ancient writings.

No contemporary early Roman sources mention a town called Magdala on the western shores of the Sea of Galilee. However, both the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds—the two major collections of Jewish oral law and commentary written down between the third and sixth centuries—do reference the existence of one Magdala—Migdal Nunayya, or “Tower of the Fish”—in very close proximity to Tiberias. In the Babylonian Talmud, for example, Migdal Nunayya is located precisely one mil (2,000 cubits, or the allowable distance of a Sabbath day’s journey, just over half a mile) from Tiberias (b.Pesahim 46a). In the Jerusalem Talmud, this village, shortened to Magdala, is similarly located on the immediate outskirts of Tiberias. In one story, the second-century rabbi Shimon bar Yohai is said to have “passed in front of the synagogue of Magdala” immediately after his departure from Tiberias (Pesiqta of Rab Kahana 11.16), while a story in the Jerusalem Talmud notes that the two locations were so close that their courtyards were even connected (y.Ma‘aserot. 3.1 [50c]).

What do we take from all this? During the first few centuries C.E., the only “Magdala” recorded along the shores of the Sea of Galilee was Migdal Nunayya, a village located about half a mile from ancient Tiberias. This village was clearly not Taricheae, a significant port city situated 4 miles north of present-day Tiberias at the site we know today as Magdala.

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To return to our initial question, when and how did ancient Taricheae come to be known as Magdala?

In the fourth century, Roman Palestine came under the dominion of the Christian emperors of Byzantium who identified and developed the region’s holy sites for pilgrimage.^b Numerous tourists came to Palestine looking for places where they could pray and remember biblical people and events. Pilgrimage routes were established and many churches built.

At about this time, we see a curious shift in some early copies of the Gospel of Matthew, where a place called “Magadan” along the shores of the Sea of Galilee (see Matthew 15:39) gets changed to “Magdala.” This shift seems to have been fueled by a growing acceptance among some early Christians that Mary Magdalene must have come from a place called Magdala (see “Mary’s Towering Nickname,” sidebar). By the sixth century, this “Magdala” had been identified and developed as a pilgrimage destination. A German pilgrim named Theodosius, for example, indicates that Magdala was equidistant between Tiberias and Heptapegon (identified in the fourth century as the site of the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, known today as At-Tabgha). This is where the modern site of Magdala is located. Indeed, this Magdala is frequently mentioned in Christian pilgrimage accounts from the Byzantine through Crusader periods.

This literary testimony of the site as a pilgrimage destination correlates well with Magdala’s archaeology and later history. Excavations have revealed the remains of a Byzantine monastery and associated bathhouse, an eighth-century church with mosaic floors, and a later Crusader church dated by an inscription to 1389. The site’s harbor was also rebuilt during the Byzantine period and subsequently reused and refurbished in the early Islamic and Crusader periods. The site eventually became known by the Arabic name Al-Majdal and continued to exist as a small fishing village on the shores of the Sea of Galilee into the 20th century.

The site we know today as Magdala, therefore, surely traces its name to the fifth or sixth century, when the site was resettled and developed as a Byzantine monastery and destination for Christian pilgrims seeking the birthplace of Mary Magdalene. Exactly how and why ancient Taricheae came to be known as Magdala remains unclear. It seems plausible that early Christians borrowed the name Magdala from the Jewish village of Migdal Nunayya just north of Tiberias, perhaps in an effort to link their newly established monastic community to a well-known and revered figure from the life of Jesus.

The site of Magdala on the shores of the Sea of Galilee is associated by many with Jesus’s famous disciple, Mary Magdalene. Ancient sources, however, indicate that the site’s first-century remains are likely those of the Galilean harbor city of Taricheae. Explore what we know of this ancient Jewish town and how it came to be mistakenly identified with Magdala.