“So He went throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons” (Mark 1:39) long drew the objection that no 1st-century Galilean synagogue building was known. Magdala answered in masonry: a 2009 Israel Antiquities Authority salvage dig ahead of hotel construction (Dina Avshalom-Gorni) struck, less than a meter down, a synagogue in use in the 1st century, frescoed walls, mosaic floor, stone benches, and at its center the “Magdala Stone,” carved with one of the earliest known images of the Temple’s seven-branched menorah, cut while the Temple still stood (its exact function is debated). In 2021 the IAA announced a second 1st-century synagogue a hundred meters away, two in one lakeside town, a few miles from Capernaum, in Jesus’ exact decades, and Magdala itself is the hometown of Mary Magdalene.
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- Mark 1:39bsb
So He went throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons.
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