A handout picture released on September 11 by the Israel Antiquities Authority shows a stone engraved with a seven-branched menorah (candelabrum) at the site where a synagogue from the Second Temple period (50 BC-100 AD) was discovered at Migdal beach, near Nazareth on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Jesus may have preached at the synagogue, archaeologists said on Friday.
JERUSALEM (AFP) - – The remains of a 2,000-year-old synagogue where Jesus may have preached were found on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, archaeologists said on Friday.
The synagogue, one of the oldest ever found, was unearthed at Migdal, which Christians believe to be the birthplace of Mary Magdalene, a leading follower of Jesus.
"It is possible that Jesus had preached in this synagogue since Migdal was an important Jewish city at the time," excavations director Dina Abshalom-Gorni, who led the dig, told AFP.
Jesus did much of his preaching on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, also known as Lake Kinneret, where Christians believe he performed several miracles.
Archaeologists were particularly excited by the discovery of an imprint depicting the menorah -- a seven-branched candelabrum -- from the Jewish Second Temple destroyed in 70 AD during the Roman siege of Jerusalem.
Abshalom-Gorni said the imprint was one of only four such reproductions known to exist.
"The artist apparently went to Jerusalem to see with his own eyes this sacred candelabra," she said.
The synagogue built sometime between 50 BC and 100 AD is one of only seven known to date back to the Second Temple period.
Its 120-square-metre (143-square-yard) main hall has a mosaic floor and a square stone adorned with the menorah set atop a pedestal with a triangular base, which is flanked on either side by amphoras, the antiquities department said.
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