According
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, many scholars maintain that all the
New Testament references to Bethsaida apply to one place, namely, Bethsaida Julias. The arguments for and against this view may be summarized as follows.
Galilee ran right round the lake, including most of the level coastland on the east. Thus
Gamala, on the eastern shore, was within the jurisdiction of
Josephus, who commanded in Galilee. Judas of Gamala is also called
Judas of Galilee. If Gamala, far up the slope towering over the eastern shore of the sea, were in Galilee,
a fortiori Bethsaida, a town which lay on the very edge of the Jordan, may be described as in Galilee. Josephus makes it plain that Gamala, while added to his jurisdiction, was not in Galilee, but in
Gaulanitis. Even if Judas were born in Gamala, and so might properly be called a Gaulanite, he may, like others, have come to be known as belonging to the province in which his active life was spent. "Jesus of
Nazareth" for instance was said to be born in
Bethlehem in
Judaea. Josephus also explicitly says that Bethsaida was in Lower Gaulanitis . Further, Luke places the country of the
Gerasenes on the other side of the sea from Galilee (
Luke 8:26) –
antipéra tês Galilaías ("over against Galilee"). • To go to the other side –
eis tò péran (
Mark 6:45) – does not of necessity imply passing from the west to the east coast of the lake, since Josephus uses the verb
diaperaióō of a passage from
Tiberias to
Taricheae. But • this involved a passage from a point on the west to a point on the south shore, "crossing over" two considerable bays; whereas if the boat started from any point in el-Baṭeiḥah, to which we seem to be limited by the "much grass", and by the definition of the district as belonging to Bethsaida, to sail to et-Tell or el-Araj, it was a matter of coasting not more than a couple of miles, with no bay to cross. have been too strictly interpreted: as the Gospel was written probably at Rome, its author not being a native of Galilee. Want of precision on topographical points, therefore, need not surprise us. But as we have seen above, the "want of precision" must also be attributed to the writer of . The agreement of these two favors the strict interpretation. In support of the single-city theory it is further argued that • Jesus withdrew to Bethsaida as being in the jurisdiction of Philip, when he heard of the murder of
John the Baptist by
Herod Antipas, and would not have sought again the territories of the latter so soon after leaving them. • Medieval works of travel notice only one Bethsaida. • The east coast of the sea was definitely attached to Galilee in AD 84, and
Ptolemy (c. 140) places Julias in Galilee. It is therefore significant that only the Fourth Gospel speaks of "Bethsaida of Galilee". • There could hardly have been two Bethsaidas so close together. But: • It is not said that Jesus came hither that he might leave the territory of Antipas for that of Philip; and in view of , and
Luke 9:10, the inference from
Matthew 14:13 that he did so, is not warranted. • The Bethsaida of medieval writers was evidently on the west of the Jordan River. If it lay on the east, it is inconceivable that none of them should have mentioned the river in this connection. • If the
Gospel of John was not written until well into the 2nd century, then
John the Apostle was not the same person as the author
John the Evangelist. But this is a very precarious assumption. John, writing after AD 84, would hardly have used the phrase "Bethsaida of Galilee" of a place only recently attached to that province, writing, as he was, at a distance from the scene, and recalling the former familiar conditions. • In view of the frequent repetition of names in
Palestine the nearness of the two Bethsaidas raises no difficulty. The abundance of fish at each place furnished a good reason for the recurrence of the name. ==Fifth Crusade (1217)==