Endnote 1 – Searching for Bethsaida: The Case for El-Araj
This second point is particularly important in light of Rami Arav’s recent claim that the remains of a Roman period bathhouse unearthed in 2017 at el-Araj belonged to the camp of Agrippa’s army. If Sulla and his men had indeed encamped at el-Araj, then Julias could not have been on the lakeshore as Josephus describes it elsewhere (Antiquities 18:26), and the Jewish reinforcements could not have arrived there, since they would have been intercepted by Agrippa’s troops. No such problem exists, however, if Julias was instead located at el-Araj, which in the first century was on the lakeshore, just as Josephus describes it near the estuary of the Jordan River. Contrary to Arav’s claim that the bathhouse unearthed in 2017 at el-Araj belonged to the camp of Agrippa’s army, this urban feature is indicative of Herod Philip’s transformation of the Jewish fishing village of Bethsaida into a small Roman polis.