Has the House of Peter and Andrew Been Discovered in Capernaum?
It appears that they’re deciding the home belonged to Peter and Andrew because they found fishhooks there. Are we to believe that fishhooks would be a rare find in a town along the Sea of Galilee? You may as well argue Peter owned my home because you’ll find fishhooks there, too.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
I’m not expert in the knowledge of fishing in any century or location, but didn’t they use nets instead of hooks?
“Net fishing was the stock-in-trade of the people who lived on the lake, and the Gospels point to Jesus’ knowledge of this. Hook-and-line fishing was known but used far less since it yielded fewer fish, but Jesus once told his followers to catch a fish using a single line (Matt. 17:24-27). Mendel Nun, a lifelong fisherman at the Israeli kibbutz Ein Gev, and a student of ancient fishing practices, argues that there were three types of net fishing in the first century: the drag net, the cast net, and the trammel net.”
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ch/1998/issue59/59h036.html
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“Fishermen used bone or iron fish-hooks, though fishing by hand was not much in use since it only yielded a small amount of fish.”
http://www.bible-archaeology.info/work.htm
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“The type of fishing that many people today are familiar with is the hook and line method. Today this type of fishing is mainly used for recreational purposes. Hook and line fishing is used to catch nearly any fish that will bit, from sharks to blue gills. In the ancient near east, fishing was not seen as a recreational activity rather a source of food to sustain the body and the family. Though this was not a very popular method of fishing during the time of the Bible it is mention once in the Gospels and would not be much different than what we do today. There would have been a metal hook of some sort on the end of a line, and on that hook would have been the bait. The bait that would have been used was probably one of the sardines mentioned above. Some Biblical occurrences of this method are found in: Eze. 29:4, and Matt. 17:27.”
http://thewikibible.pbworks.com/w/page/22174694/Fishing%20in%20the%20Bi…
I believe they have found fishhooks in some of the oldest discovered human settlements, made out of bone and the like. So that’s not an issue. The big issue I’ve got with the logic is that there is nothing remarkable about finding fishing equipment in any building built along a lake, river, sea, or ocean.
The exception to this would be if the fish hooks are stylized and have incriptions on them referring to Peter, etc.. But the article doesn’t appear to say this as far as I can tell.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
Discussion