Chorazin was a small village 2 1/2 miles
north of Capernaum and the north shore of the Sea of Galilee, settled
about the beginning of the first century C.E. Built on a large hill, the
Sea of Galilee can be seen in the distance (below). Chorazin's chief claim
to fame is that Jesus cursed the town (along with Bethsaida and Capernaum)
for not responding to his miracles with belief (Luke 10:13-15; Matt 11:20-24),
a passage from the Q source.
Archaeological excavations at Chorazin have found no traces of the first century village. Most of the remains are from the thriving Jewish village of the third and fourth centuries C.E.
The village is built almost entirely of black basalt, a stone found in abundance in the area. The center of the village was the village square, just east of the synagogue (below left and right).
The center of Chorazin was occupied by this third century synagogue (there was no evidence under it of any earlier construction). It was destroyed sometime in the fourth century C.E.
The conch-shell shape carved
in basalt formed the top of the torah shrine, while the pedestal was probably
located in the shrine serving to hold the holy books. The seat of Moses
is the place where the rabbi or another speaker, would sit and discuss
the torah and haphtarah readings of the day.
Like many Jewish villages, Chorazin had
a mikvah (below left), a ritual bath where people would go for temporary
cleansing from a variety of pollutions (child birth, menstration, touching
something unclean, etc.).
Below is a drawing of the
Chorazin synagogue as reconstructed by archaeologists. This reconstruction
assumes that there was no second floor gallery for women. Even though
some scholars have assumed that the separation of men from women in Jewish
synagogues occurred very early, there is no evidence for this in the Chorazin
synagogue. It now seems likely that the separation of men from women first
occurred in medieval synagogues.
Picture credit: Ze'ev Yeivin, The Synagogue at Korazim (Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority, 2000) p. 57.
Picture credit: Ze'ev Yeivin, The Synagogue at Korazim (Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority, 2000) p. 57.
Like most villages in the north Galilee,
Chorazin was dependent on the olive. Here is one of several olive mills
in which the olives were mashed (below left). A pole was inserted in the
hold in the millstone and a donkey or camel pobably pulled it around and
around. After the olives were mashed, they had to be pressed to squeeze
all the liquid out of them. This is the base of an olive press (below
right), probably worked with a large screw. The last step in the process
is to separate the oil from the watery liquid.
