No one would make up fishing villages as sites of a great person’s ministry. Granted, they had at least more strategic value than most Galilean villages, but this is not saying much. Capernaum proved a more suitable site for Jesus’ ministry than smaller Nazareth would have. Capernaum was walking distance from both Perea and Philip’s territories across the Jordan.60 But while Capernaum may have been locally significant, it would not appear particularly significant to urban audiences elsewhere in the Roman Empire. Estimates for Capernaum’s population have ranged as high as 12,000,61 but the current estimate is closer to 1000-2000 people.62 No one in either Jerusalem or the Diaspora would make up such a town as a strategic site for the Messiah’s ministry.63
That Capernaum appears so often in stories about Jesus (e.g., Matt 8:5//Lk 7:1; Mk 2:1) may suggest that someone was interested in preserving tradition about this small town — perhaps some of Jesus’ own disciples who lived there.64 Jesus’ denunciation of Capernaum’s limited responsiveness in “Q” (Matt 11:23// Lk 10:15) would also hardly appear relevant to later believers and is unlikely to have been invented.
Jesus’ association with Capernaum is multiply attested in various strata of tradition (e.g., Mk 1:21; 2:1; Matt 4:13; Lk 4:31; Jn 2:12), including “Q” (Matt 8:5//Lk 7:1). Although Jesus continued to be identified by his place of reputed origin (Nazareth), as was customary, Jewish tradition supports the notion that even outsiders could also come to view him as a resident of Capernaum in time.65 That Capernaum appears in later rabbinic accounts solely in connection with “schismatics,” presumably in this case Jesus’ followers, 66 suggests that Jesus’ missionary strategy there was ultimately successful. Archaeology attests the early Christian presence there, including a house that many scholars believe is the actual house of Peter that figures in the Gospels.67
In “Q,” Jesus denounces “Chorazin” and “Bethsaida” (Matt 11:21; Lk 10:13).68 Theissen69 notes that whereas Bethsaida was well known,70 Chorazin is otherwise barely known apart from modern excavations there.71 Some argue that few Greek and Roman authors except Pausanias knew much of the cities around the Lake of Galilee, including Bethsaida;72 others contend that Bethsaida was forgotten after the Roman destruction in 70.73 Later Christians would lack incentive to invent such a tradition about either site.
Moreover, Bethsaida was renamed “Julia” after 30 CE. Whereas Josephus in the late first century calls it by both names, the Gospels call it only “Bethsaida,” its name during Jesus’ public ministry. That is, the Gospels do not switch to the name current in the period when the tradition was being passed on, but preserve only and precisely the name that was used during Jesus’ Galilean ministry, which ended about 30 CE.74
Nor is the oracle against these villages easily attributed to the later church on other grounds. The prophecy does not reflect later Christian preaching75 and may reflect signs of an Aramaic origin.76 Because the same oracle claims that Tyre and Sidon would have repented had they had the same opportunities as these villages, it may presuppose lack of Christian communities in Tyre and Sidon, in contrast to the situation that obtained by the late 50s at the latest.77 That Jesus uttered such oracles against these Galilean fishing villages seems the most logical conclusion.
Returning to Capernaum: what is true of these villages is also true of the oracle against Capernaum in the same context in “Q” (Matt 11:23//Lk 10:15). Later Christians probably would have been loath to fabricate opposition to Jesus’ ministry in his adopted town.78 Indeed, far from testifying that the saying is a later Christian invention,79 Capernaum’s unrepentance suggests that the saying dates to Jesus’ lifetime, since, as we have noted, Capernaum later became a center of Galilean Christianity.
