Episode: In this on-location episode, Chris McKinny interviews Steven Notley about identifying and exploring the ancient city of Bethsaida/Julias. This is a crossover episode with OnScript and the new In Context university from Lipscomb University where Chris McKinny teaches.

Guest: Dr. R. Steven Notley is Dean of the School of Religious Studies at Pillar College. He was Distinguished Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins on the New York City campus of Alliance University (2001-2023). He received his Ph.D. from the Hebrew University, where he studied with David Flusser. Notley lived sixteen years in Jerusalem with his wife and four children, during which time he was the founding chair of the New Testament Backgrounds program at the Jerusalem University College. He has been leading groups of students and laypeople to Israel and the eastern Mediterranean region for over 35 years. He is the author of many books and articles. He continues collaborative research and publication with Israeli scholars in the fields of historical geography, ancient Judaism and Christian origins. Among his list of publications, he collaborated with Flusser on the historical biography, The Sage from Galilee: Rediscovering Jesus’ Genius (Eerdmans 2007); with Anson Rainey (Tel Aviv University) the monumental biblical atlas, The Sacred Bridge: Carta’s Atlas of the Biblical World (Carta Publishing 2005); with Ze’ev Safrai (Bar Ilan University) an annotated translation of Eusebius’ important description of Roman Palestine, Eusebius, Onomasticon: A Triglott Edition with Notes and Commentary (Brill 2005). He rejoined Safrai for their second work, a pioneering collection and translation of the earliest rabbinic parables that provide the literary and religious context for the parables of Jesus, The Parables of the Sages (Carta 2011). Since 2016 he has served as the Academic Director of the El Araj Excavation Project in its search for first-century Bethsaida-Julias, the lost city of the Apostles. (from the Pillar College website - https://www.pillar.edu/team-members/r-steven-notley-phd)

Photo Attribution: The “chief of the apostles” invoked in this mosaic inscription from biblical Bethsaida—being cleaned by Professor Notley and his wife, Sunya—must refer to Saint Peter the Apostle, indicating a special connection between the site and the saint. Photo from BAR website, https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/archaeology-today/where-is-the-house-of-saint-peter-the-apostle/.

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