So what do we have, according to Notley? Around 2,000 years ago, Jesus healed a lame man in a pool in Jerusalem called Beth-zatha or Bethesda, and then went north to the Sea of Galilee, where there was a fishing village named Bethsaida. Both locations were lost to memory thanks to the violence of Man and Nature. Meanwhile, the New Testament was written in Greek, the name Bethesda in Jerusalem was “corrected” to read Bethsaida – and at some point in the Ottoman period, the fishing village of Bethsaida was mistakenly identified as the place where Jesus healed the lame man.I can't say I find the argument compelling, at least as presented in this article. John 5:1-2 explicitly presents the healing at the pool as taking place in Jerusalem. Granted the phrase "to the other side of the sea of Galilee: in 6:1 is a bit confusing. It could seem to imply that Jerusalem was in Galilee on one side of the sea. But it would require some poor reader comprehension to mix up the site in Jerusalem with the site of Bethsaida in Galilee.
It's true that poor reader comprehension of the Bible is not unprecedented. But the argument is weakend by the need to assume it.
I don't have ready access to the IEJ article, which may present the case more persuasively.
I do think the current weight of evidence is in favor of el Araj as the site of New Testament Bethsaida rather than the rival site of et-Tell/e-Tell. But I am not an archaeologist. I have discussed the question here. Follow the links from there for many posts on both sides of the debate.
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