Sea of Galilee
The Sea of Galilee, also called Lake Tiberias, Genezareth Lake or Kinneret, is a freshwater lake in Israel. It is the lowest freshwater lake on Earth and the second-lowest lake in the world, with its elevation fluctuating between below sea level. It is approximately in circumference, about long, and wide. Its area is at its fullest, and its maximum depth is approximately. The lake is fed partly by underground springs, but its main source is the Jordan River, which flows through it from north to south with the outflow controlled by the Degania Dam.
Geography
The Sea of Galilee is situated in northeast Israel, between the Golan Heights and the Galilee region, in the Jordan Rift Valley, formed by the relative motion of the African and Arabian plates. Consequently, the area is subject to earthquakes, and in the past, volcanic activity. This is evident from the abundant basalt and other igneous rocks that define the geology of Galilee.Names
The lake has been called by different names throughout its history, usually depending on the dominant settlement on its shores. With the changing fate of the towns, the lake's name also changed.The modern Hebrew name Kineret comes from the Hebrew Bible, where it appears as the "sea of Kineret" in Numbers 34:11 and Joshua 13:27, and spelled כנרות "Kinerot" in Hebrew in Joshua 11:2. This name was also found in the scripts of Ugarit, in the Aqhat Epic. As the name of a city, Kinneret was listed among the "fenced cities" in. A persistent, though likely erroneous, popular etymology presumes that the name Kinneret may originate from the Hebrew word kinnor, because of the shape of the lake. The scholarly consensus, however, is that the origin of the name is derived from the important Bronze and Iron Age city of Kinneret, excavated at Tell el-'Oreimeh. The city of Kinneret may have been named after the body of water rather than vice versa, and there is no evidence for the origin of the town's name.
All Old and New Testament writers use the term "sea", with the exception of Luke, who calls it "the Lake of Gennesaret", from the Greek λίμνη Γεννησαρέτ, the "Grecized form of Chinnereth". The Babylonian Talmud as well as Flavius Josephus mention the sea by the name "Sea of Ginosar" after the small fertile plain of Ginosar that lies on its western side. Ginosar is yet another name derived from "Kinneret".
The word Galilee comes from the Hebrew Haggalil, which literally means "The District", a compressed form of Gelil Haggoyim "The District of Nations". Toward the end of the 1st century CE, the Sea of Galilee became widely known as the Sea of Tiberias after the city of Tiberias founded on its western shore in honour of the second Roman emperor, Tiberius. In the New Testament, the term "sea of Galilee" is used in the Gospel of Matthew 4:18; 15:29, the Gospel of Mark 1:16; 7:31, and in the Gospel of John as "the sea of Galilee, which is of Tiberias", the late 1st century CE name. Sea of Tiberias is also the name mentioned in Roman texts and in the Jerusalem Talmud, and it was adopted into Arabic as , "Lake Tiberias". Some writers use the spelling "Gallilee", for example Selah Merrill in a nineteenth century journal article.
From the Umayyad through the Mamluk period, the lake was known in Arabic as Bahr al-Minya, the "Sea of Minya", after the Umayyad qasr complex, whose ruins are still visible at Khirbat al-Minya. This is the name used by the medieval Persian and Arab scholars Al-Baladhuri, Al-Tabari and Ibn Kathir.
History
Prehistory
In 1989, remains of a hunter-gatherer site were found under the water at the southern end. Remains of mud huts were found in Ohalo. Nahal Ein Gev, located about east of the lake, contains a village from the late Natufian period. The site is considered one of the first permanent human settlements in the world from a time predating the Neolithic Revolution.Early Iron Age
According to Sugimoto, the Iron Age IB cities in the northeastern region of the Sea of Galilee likely reflect the activities of the Kingdom of Geshur, mentioned in the Bible. Also, the later Iron Age IIA–B cities here are linked with the southern expansion of the Aram-Damascus kingdom. Among these Galilean cities are Tel Dover, Tel 'En Gev, Tel Hadar, Tel Bethsaida, and Tel Kinrot.Hellenistic and Roman periods
The Sea of Galilee lies on the ancient Via Maris, which linked Egypt with the northern empires. The Greeks, Hasmoneans, and Romans founded flourishing towns and settlements on the lake including Hippos and Tiberias. Contemporary Roman–Jewish historian Flavius Josephus was so impressed by the area that he wrote, "One may call this place the ambition of Nature"; he also reports a thriving fishing industry at this time, with 230 boats regularly working in the lake. Archaeologists discovered one such boat, nicknamed the Jesus Boat, in 1986.File:Petri Fischzug Raffael.jpg|thumb|Jesus and the miraculous catch of fish, in the Sea of Galilee, by Raphael
In the New Testament, much of the ministry of Jesus occurs on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. In those days, there was a continuous ribbon development of settlements and villages around the lake and plenty of trade and ferrying by boat. The Synoptic Gospels of Mark 1:14–20), Matthew 4:18–22), and Luke 5:1–11) describe how Jesus recruited four of his apostles from the shores of the Kinneret: the fishermen Simon and his brother Andrew and the brothers John and James. One of Jesus' famous teaching episodes, the Sermon on the Mount, is supposed to have been given on a hill overlooking the Kinneret. Many of his miracles are also said to have occurred here including his walking on water, calming the storm, the disciples and the miraculous catch of fish, and his feeding five thousand people. In John's Gospel the sea provides the setting for Jesus' third post-resurrection appearance to his disciples.
In 135 CE, Bar Kokhba's revolt was put down which was part of the Jewish–Roman wars. The Romans responded by banning all Jews from Jerusalem. The center of Jewish culture and learning shifted to the region of Galilee and the Kinneret, particularly Tiberias. It was in this region that the Jerusalem Talmud was compiled.
Middle Ages
The Sea of Galilee's importance declined when the Byzantine Empire lost control, and the area came under the control of the Umayyad Caliphate and subsequent Islamic empires. The palace of Minya was built by the lake during the reign of al-Walid I. Apart from Tiberias, the major towns and cities in the area were gradually abandoned. In 1187, Sultan Saladin defeated the armies of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem at the Battle of Hattin, largely because he was able to cut the Crusaders off from the valuable fresh water of the Sea of Galilee.The lake had little importance within the early Ottoman Empire. Tiberias did see a significant revival of its Jewish community in the 16th century but had gradually declined until the city was destroyed in 1660. In the early 18th century, Tiberias was rebuilt by Daher al-Umar, becoming the center of his rule over Galilee, and seeing also a revival of its Jewish community.
Early 20th century
In 1908, Jewish pioneers established the Kinneret Farm at the same time as and next to Moshavat Kinneret in the immediate vicinity of the lake. The farm trained Jewish immigrants in modern farming. One group of youth from the training farm established Kvutzat Degania in 1909–1910, popularly considered as the first kibbutz, another group founded Kvutzat Kinneret in 1913, and yet another the first proper kibbutz, Ein Harod, in 1921, the same year when the first moshav, Nahalal, was established by a group trained at the farm. The Jewish settlements around Kinneret Farm are considered the cradle of the kibbutz culture of early Zionism; Kvutzat Kinneret is the birthplace of Naomi Shemer, buried at the Kinneret Cemetery next to Rachel—two prominent national poets.In 1917, the British defeated Ottoman Turkish forces and took control of Palestine, while France took control of Syria. In the carve-up of the Ottoman territories between Britain and France, it was agreed that Britain would retain control of Palestine while France would control Syria. This required the allies to fix the border between the Mandatory Palestine and the French Mandate of Syria. The boundary was defined in broad terms by the Franco-British Boundary Agreement of December 1920, which drew it across the middle of the lake. However, the commission established by the 1920 treaty redrew the boundary. The High Commissioner of Palestine, Herbert Samuel, had sought full control of the Sea of Galilee. The negotiations led to the inclusion into the Palestine territory of the whole Sea of Galilee, both sides of the River Jordan, Lake Hula, Dan spring, and part of the Yarmouk. The final border approved in 1923 followed a 10-meter wide strip along the lake's northeastern shore, cutting Mandatory Syria off from the lake. Geographer Gideon Biger suggests that the three factors determining the position of these boundaries were "biblical-historical", Zionist pressure to include as many water resources as possible in Mandatory Palestine, and the human and physical landscape.
The British and French Agreement provided that existing rights over the use of the waters of the River Jordan by the inhabitants of Syria would be maintained; the government of Syria would have the right to erect a new pier at Semakh on Lake Tiberias or jointly use the existing pier; persons or goods passing between the landing-stage on the Lake of Tiberias and Semakh would not be subject to customs regulations, and the Syrian government would have access to the said landing-stage; the inhabitants of Syria and Lebanon would have the same fishing and navigation rights on Lakes Huleh, Tiberias and River Jordan, while the government of Palestine would be responsible for policing of lakes.