The Village of Comfort
After being cast out of Nazareth, Jesus relocated to a humble fishing village called Capernaum. The Hebrew name, Kfar Nahum, meaning “village of comfort,” is fitting because it was there that Jesus performed his first acts of healing. During his public ministry, Capernaum served as Jesus’s headquarters, so much so that the Gospel refers to it as “his own town” (Matthew 9:1). But where exactly in Capernaum could Jesus be found?
The Heart of the Movement
The epicenter of Jesus’s activity was the Capernaum synagogue. A synagogue, or beit knesset in Hebrew, means “meeting house.” This is where Galilean Jews would congregate to pray, as the journey to the Temple in Jerusalem was long. It was there that Jesus performed his many miracles, including the healing of a man with an unclean spirit (Mark 1:21-8). Amazingly, archaeologists have discovered the very building where all this happened!
A Virtual Synagogue
The synagogue was not just a place of worship, it was also school: a place to teach Torah and to hear words of moral instruction from charismatic preachers like Jesus. At the Israel Institute of Biblical Studies, we have taken this one step further. Enroll in our live, online classroom, using it as your virtual bet knesset. Learn Scripture, just as Jews did 2000 years ago.