town or village

Chorazin

Today Khirbet Karraza
Most likely location

History

Chorazin stood on the basalt hills above the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee, about 3 km north of Capernaum, at the ruin called Khirbet Karazeh, where the old name survives. H. Kohl and C. Watzinger studied its synagogue from 1905, and Ze'ev Yeivin excavated the site in 1962–1964 and 1980–1987. The town uncovered belongs mostly to the third and fourth centuries AD: houses, streets, a ritual bath and olive presses, all built of the local black basalt around the synagogue.

Chorazin is named in the Gospels only once, in a saying given by both Matthew and Luke. Matthew sets it among the cities "wherein most of his mighty works were done, because they repented not": "Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida!" Had those works been done in Tyre and Sidon, Jesus said, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes, and it would be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment. The Gospels describe no particular event at Chorazin.

A teaching in the Babylonian Talmud says that the grain of Kerazayim, usually taken to be Chorazin, would have been brought for the omer offering if the place had been nearer Jerusalem. In the early fourth century Eusebius described Chorazin as a village of Galilee, now deserted, two miles from Capernaum. Its basalt synagogue, decorated with carved reliefs, is dated by its excavator to the late third or early fourth century; it seems to have been damaged in the fourth century and later restored, but its dates remain debated.

Scripture: Matt 11:20–22; Luke 10:13–14

Sources

Eusebius, Onomasticon, s.v. Chorazein (C. U. Wolf's translation, no. 976)
Babylonian Talmud, Menahot 85a (the grain of Kerazayim)
H. Kohl and C. Watzinger, Antike Synagogen in Galilaea (1916)
Z. Yeivin, The Synagogue at Korazim: The 1962-1964, 1980-1987 Excavations (Israel Antiquities Authority Reports, 2000)
A. Negev and S. Gibson (eds.), Archaeological Encyclopedia of the Holy Land (2005), s.v. Chorazin

Checked against its sources; not yet read by a historian.

Verses (2)

Matt 11:21: Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works, which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.
Luke 10:13: Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works had been done in Tyre and Sidon, which have been done in you, they had a great while ago repented, sitting in sackcloth and ashes.

King James Version