GENNESARETH, THE LAND OF (* ev vocrape r • Josephus, remp-cip • later Hebrew, IDM). 'A small district of Galilee lying on the western shore of the lake, near Capernaum. Its situation is indicated by the narmtives in John vi. 15-25, a.nd Mark vi. 45-56. Jesus sent away the disciples from the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee to Capernaum. When on their passage He came up with them walking on the sea ; they land about dawn (the fourth watch) on the plain of Gen nesaretk; and that morning the multitudes follow him in boats to Capemaum, and find him there. Josephus gives so gmphic a description of Gen nesareth that we have no difficulty in identifying it, though the name has long disappeared. Extend ing along the Lake of Galilee, and bearing also its name, lies a tract of country admirable both for its natural properties and its beauty. Such is the fer tility of the soil that it rejects no plant, and accord ingly all are here cultivated by the husbandman; for so genial is the air that it suits every variety. The walnut grows luxuriantly, together with the palm; and here there are figs and olives. It pro duces the grape and the fig during ten months without intermission, while the other varieties ripen the year round; for besides being favoured by the genial temperature of the air, it is irrigated by a highly fertilising spring called Capernaum. The tract extending along the shore of the lake which bears its name is thirty furlongs in length and twenty irt breadth (Bell. yud.iii. so. 8).
On the west side of the Sea of Galilee is a cres cent-shaped plain, extending along the shore from the cliffs at Ain et-Tin, the site of Capernaum, upon the north, to the hill behind Mejdel, the ancient Magdala, on the south, a distance of about three geographical miles. Its greatest breadth is nearly
two. It is shut in by a semicircle of steep and rugged hills. Its soil is of extraordinary fertility ; but only sma]] patches of it here and there are cul tivated. The rest is covered with tangled thickets of lote-trees oleanders, dwarf palms, and gigantic thistles and 'brambles. The melons and cucumbers grown on the plain are still the best and earliest in Palestine. They are always the first in the markets of Damascus, Acre, and Beyrout. This may be accounted for by the great depression of the plain, it being almost on the level of the adjoining lake, and thus more than 600 feet below the ocean. (Robinsont B. R. ii. 400, seq.; Wilson, Lands of the Bible, 136, seq.; Thomson, The Land and the Book, 347 ; Stanley, S. ana' P. 368).
Various conjectures have been made regarding the origin of the name Gennesareth. Some affirm that it is a corruption of the ancient Hebrew Chin nereth (111n), the 7 being changed to and ID in serted by the Chaldee pamphrasts. Hence in the Targums we find 1r.rn used instead of rrn: (Light foot, Oisp. ii. 222); and in the Apocrypha] books and Josephus revyncdp (t Maccab. xi. 67). Others derive the name from N4:,, a valley,' and nyl, a flower or shoot ;' and it would thus signify valley of flowers' (Hieronym. opp., vii. p. zo3, ed. Migne). Others ag,ain, and perhaps with more probability, derive it from and it?, the ordens of tLe prince' (Lightfoot, i. 498).—J. L. P.