2.03 Tabgha — Loaves and Fishes Church

Summary information

• Location

  GPS coordinates: 32.87326, 35.54955

  Structure is visible in Google maps.

• Description

  The length of the church, court, and hospice complex was 56 m from north to south, 33 m on the west, and 24.3 m on the east. The church (25 by 19 m) was a basilica with a transept. The level of the prayer hall was 0.3 m above the narthex and 0.5 m above the atrium. The walls (0.6-0.95 m thick) are built on foundations 0.8-0.95 m wide and preserved to a height of 1.45 m. Except for the sills and stylobates (which were of white mizzi limestone), the complex was built of local, roughly dressed basalt, covered on the interior with mortar (a mixture of cement and lake sand), in which ribbed potsherds were set. The top layer was plaster mixed with straw and was painted red.

  The church had a straight eastern wall. Between the eastern wall and the rear wall of the apse (1.2 m wide with a radius of 3.3 in) was a narrow corridor. The apse was flanked by two rooms. The presbytery (6.9 by 6 m) extended in front of the apse and was separated from the nave and transept by a chancel screen. The altar stands in front of the chord of the apsidal arch. It was shaped like a table, resting on four square legs. According to Peter the Deacon (who reports Egeria’s description), the stone on which the Lord placed the bread had been made into an altar. People who went there took away small pieces of the stone to bring them prosperity. Below the table was a block of undressed limestone (1 by 0.6 by 0.14 m). Traces of a metal cross and the limestone’s chipped appearance mark it as the traditional “mensa (table) of the Lord.” Behind the altar, a semicircular seat (1.1 m wide) served as a synthronos for the clergy.   

  A transept projected 1.75 m on either side of the front of the presbytery. A row of four pillars separated the transept from the nave (7.9 m wide). The central two pillars bore an arch that collapsed in an earthquake. The central pillars were reset, with a narrower range for the two supporting the arch in the nave. This, and the enlarged chancel screen, were the main later additions.

  Two aisles (each 3.58 m wide) were separated from the nave by two rows of five columns each, set 3. 3 m apart. The main entrance was probably 3.2 m wide, and the aisle en trances, 1.85 m. A narthex (3.3 m wide) led to an atrium in the form of a rough trapezoid (23 by 13 m) surrounded by the rooms of a hospice on the east, south, and west. A diagonal wall, slightly below the level of an ancient road, closed the complex on the north. A cantharus (diameter, 5 m) stood in the center of the atrium.

  Subsequent excavations showed that the step crossing the bema from north to south was apparently not from antiquity, but was created when the mosaics were extracted from the church in the 1930s. In clearing the apse of the earlier chapel. it became evident that the holy rock on which the altar of the later chapel was built was not part of the bedrock.

  Michael Avi-Yonah, “Heptapegon,” in The New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land, ed. Ephraim Stern, Ayelet Lewinzon-Gilboa, and J. Aviram (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society & Carta, 1993), 614–15.

  Renate Rosenthal and Malka Hershkovitz, “Tabgha,” Israel Exploration Journal 30 (1980): 207.

• Phasing

  An earlier chapel, orientated 28 degrees more to the south, was found below the basilical church. It measured 15.5 by 9.5 m, with an apse 2.6 m deep. This single room was roofed with beams from attached pillars 3 m apart and 1 m wide. Smaller finds included coins of Justin II (from 565 and 578), a fragment of a chancel screen, sixth-century clay lamps, and a reused Jewish epitaph of a certain Joseph.  The excavators suggested a date in the late fourth or early fifth century, basing their estimates on stylistic grounds. In view of the stylistic similarity with the mosaics in the Great Palace in Constantinople, dated to the mid-fifth century, a similar date seems reasonable for the upper church at Heptapegon. The pottery finds for later excavation indicate that the upper church was built in the second half of the fifth century. The presbytery mosaics and inscription seem to belong to a sixth-century repair.

• Bibliogaphy

  Schneider Alfons Maria and Archibald Alexander Gordon. 1937. The Church of the Multiplying of the Loaves and Fishes at Tabgha on the Lake of Gennesaret and Its Mosaics. London: A. Ouseley.

  Renate Rosenthal and Malka Hershkovitz, “Tabgha,” Israel Exploration Journal 30 (1980): 207.

  Bron, Hendrik (Enno). “Ṯabẖa: Final Report.” Hadashot Arkheologiyot: Excavations and Surveys in Israel / חדשות ארכיאולוגיות: חפירות וסקרים בישראל 121 (2009). http://www.jstor.org/stable/26579351.