The Sea of Galilee, a freshwater lake in the north of the Jordan valley, is where the Gospels set most of the public ministry of Jesus, and for Christian pilgrims the value of visiting lies in seeing the scenes against the actual water.
A lake below the sea
Called Kinneret in Hebrew and known in antiquity as the lake of Tiberias or Gennesaret, it is Israel's largest freshwater body and its lowest, some two hundred metres below sea level, ringed by hills and subject to the sudden squalls the Gospels describe. It was a working fishing lake in the first century, and the towns around it were the setting of much of the Gospel narrative.
The Gospel shore
The northern shore holds a chain of Christian holy places within a few kilometres of one another. Capernaum, which the Gospels call Jesus' own town, preserves a synagogue and a house venerated as Peter's; Tabgha marks the traditions of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes and of Jesus' appearance to his disciples after the resurrection; and the Mount of Beatitudes commemorates the Sermon on the Mount. The lake itself is where the Gospels place the calling of the fishermen, the calming of the storm and the walking on water.
A working lake under strain
Pilgrims sail the lake and visit its shore sites, and a first-century boat recovered from the mud, sometimes called the Jesus Boat, is displayed nearby. It remains a working lake, fished and, increasingly stressed, drawn on for drinking water, so that its ecological pressures run alongside its role as one of the central landscapes of the Christian imagination.