Jesus Boat

Jesus stepped into a boat, crossed over and came to his own town. Matthew 9:1In1986 Moshe and Yuval Lufan, fisherman brothers from kibbutz Ginosar, discovered the remains of a boat that was later dated as from the first century. Dubbed “the Jesus Boat,” or “the Galilee Boat,” the remnants were carefully extracted and preserved and can be viewed at the Ginosar museum on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee along with a recreation of what the complete boat would have looked like.

The extraction of the boat from the mud of the lake took 12 days of painstaking work. The boat had been cocooned in mud for about 2,000 years, an the majority of the structure of the wood had been replaced by water. To excavate the boat, researchers built a special hanging platform over the boat to avoid any contact with the wood. After clearing the mud, the boat was encapsulated in polyurethane foam and floated out to see to transport to reconstruction facilities. The further preservation efforts included seven years in a chemical bath that gradually replaced water in the wood with synthetic wax.

The boat was most likely used for fishing and transportation, leading to speculation that it may have been the boat of one of Jesus’ disciples and could have served as his transportation as some point during his life. The boat is made up of 12 different types of wood, leading scholars to speculate that it was repaired repeatedly before being sunk after it was no longer seaworthy. The boat measured 8.2 meters by 2.3 meters wide with a height of 1.2 meters.

Kibbutz Ginosaur and the Jesus Boat are a short detour from the main Jesus Trail route. From the Migdal bus stop, follow Rt. 90 east and enter Kibbutz Ginosar where the museum and boat are located (2km).

Additional information: Jesus Boat Museum, Jesus Boat website, Wikipedia