The
names of places change – even in the
Bible -- and unless you are aware of those changes you may not know that different
names ion the Bible are references to the same place. A good example is a very
well-known body of water in the Bible.
Sea of
Chinnereth
In
Numbers 34:11 & Joshua 13:27, YAHWEH and Moses called it the Sea of Chinnereth. A Canaanite
fortified village called Chinnereth
was located on northwestern shore of that body of water. It had been there long
before the Israelites settled there. The body of water was named after the
village.
Today
that village is called Tell Kinneret.
Lake of
Gennesaret
The name of the village above is also spelled Kinnereth and it gradually changed over
the years to Genezareth, Genezar and Gennesaret.[i]
The Sea of
Galilee
In
Joshua 20:7 we read: “And they appointed Kedesh in Galilee in mount Naphtali, and Shechem in
mount Ephraim, and Kirjatharba, which is Hebron, in the mountain of Judah.” Galilee was an area in the area given to
the tribe of Naphtali. The name “Sea of Galilee” doesn’t appear in the
Hebrew Bible. It appears that the body of water acquired the name Galilee from
the name of the surrounding area after being known as the Sea of Chinnereth. In Matthew 4:18, it is called the
Sea of Galilee.
Sea of Tiberias
The city of Tiberias
was founded sometime around 20 CE by the Roman client king Herod
Antipas, son of Herod the Great. The city was built as a spa and developed around 17
natural mineral hot springs and was populated mainly by Jews. It was place with a growing spiritual and
religious status, which exerted a strong influence on health practices
associated with bathing in the natural springs.[ii]
Sea or Lake?
When
we look up the definitions of “lake” and “sea” in an English dictionary we find
the following:
● lake – a body of fresh or salt water of considerable size, surrounded by land.
● sea
– the salt
waters that cover the greater part of the earth's surface.
The
Sea of Galilee is an inland body of fresh water 13 miles long x 8 miles wide x
150 feet deep. Based on the English definitions above, the Sea of Galilee is a
lake. Of course, that means that the “Dead Sea” is one too.
The
next time you find the Sea of Chinnereth, Sea of Tiberias, Lake of Gennesaret,
Sea of Galilee or Lake of Galilee you will realize that they are all names of the
same body of water.
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