In Israel's El-Araj, on the northern shore of Lake Tiberias, archaeologists have discovered the baths of the Roman city of Juliades, which was built on the site of the fishing village of Bethsaida, where three of the twelve apostles lived: Philip, Peter and Andrew the First-Called. The find, reported by Haaretz, is one of the world's top archaeological discoveries in 2017. The fact that Herod Philip (son of Herod the Great) gave Bethsaida of Galilee the status of a polis and a new name Juliades (in honor of the mother of Emperor Tiberius Julia Augusta) is reported by the ancient historian Josephus Flavius. There are simply no mentions of other cities in this area that existed in the era of Roman rule - with baths and other attributes. As there is no doubt about the dating of the finds made here: fragments of ceramics, Roman mosaics, a bronze coin from the end of the second century BC and a silver coin from the first century AD, with the profile of the emperor Nero. “Joseph (Flavius) writes that the monarch transformed Bethsaida from a village into a polis, a real city. And in fact, all this time we did not know where he was. But the baths testify to the existence of urban culture, ”says Dr. Mordechai Aviam of Kinneret College.
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