Fishing on the Sea of Galilee in Jesus's Time

At least four of Jesus's twelve disciples were fishermen: Peter, Andrew, James and John. To understand their stories, it helps to know how fishing on the Sea of Galilee worked.

A lake full of fish

The "Sea" of Galilee is really a large freshwater lake. The ancient historian Josephus wrote that its water was sweet and good to drink, and that it held kinds of fish found nowhere else. Fishing villages ringed its shores, including Capernaum, where Jesus made his home base, and Bethsaida.

Fishing all night

The fishermen's working day happened in the dark. One of the main nets used on the lake was the trammel net: three layers of netting hung on a rope with floats on top and weights on the bottom. Fishermen set it at night in a wide curve and marked the ends so they could find them in the dark. In Jesus's time these nets were made of linen.

The biggest net was the dragnet, a long net pulled through the water toward the shore. It was one of the oldest and most important ways of fishing on the lake, and it was still used there into the twentieth century.

So when Peter tells Jesus, "Master, we worked all night, and caught nothing" (Luke 5:5), you can picture the long, cold, empty night he means. And when Jesus tells them to let down the nets one more time, in daylight, it's a big ask.

A real boat from the time

In 1986 a drought lowered the lake, and two fishermen spotted the outline of an old wooden boat in the mud near Ginosar. It was about 8.2 meters long and 2.3 meters wide, and carbon dating places it roughly between 120 BC and AD 40. Nothing connects it to Jesus or his disciples, but it shows the kind of boat they would have used: big enough for a crew and a catch, small enough to row.

Magdala: the fish-salting town

Fresh fish spoils quickly in a hot climate. So fish were salted, dried or pickled to last. The lakeside town of Magdala (home of Mary Magdalene) was famous for it. Its Greek name, Taricheae, refers to salting or pickling fish, and the geographer Strabo, writing shortly before Jesus was born, said the lake there supplied "the best fish for curing." Excavations at Magdala found a harbor, a market and hundreds of fishing weights.

Tiny fish like the Kinneret sardine were pickled and sold, possibly far from Galilee (scholars debate how big that trade was).

Breakfast on the shore

One of the most beautiful scenes in the Gospels comes after another night with no catch. The risen Jesus calls from the shore, the nets fill, and when the disciples come in they find "a charcoal fire there, with fish on it, and bread" (John 21:9). After a long, cold night on the water, Jesus had made them breakfast.

How to use this with kids

• Make a "net" from string or a mesh produce bag and let kids try to catch paper fish.
• Ask: why do you think Jesus chose fishermen as some of his first followers?
• Read Luke 5:1-11 and talk about what it took for Peter to try one more time.