To date, about ten first-century synagogues have been confirmed across the southern Levant. One of them, located about 10 miles from Magdala on a rural mound called Tel Rekhesh, seems to tell a different version of the same story. As opposed to a bustling lakeside town like Magdala, Tel Rekhesh is a small, rural settlement. Its synagogue is smaller, more plain, and tucked into the edge of a modest farmstead. Yet both buildings come from the decades and region where Jesus of Nazareth—itself a small town in the Galilee—was said to preach in “synagogues throughout all Galilee” (Mark 1:39).
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