Abstract
Did Jesus have a house in Capernaum? In this article I revisit the proposal that the earliest Gospel tradition knew of Jesus being ‘at home’, and suggest that only a particular exegetical inference from the narratives of the Gospels of Mark and Matthew lead to the view that Jesus is staying in Simon Peter’s house. The Gospel tradition developed ideas of Jesus as itinerant and ‘homeless’, or as the constant dinner guest or otherworldly visitor to earth. Jesus was by no means a wealthy property-owner, but he did have a place to live in Capernaum, where he brought people and where others came to see him. The beginnings of the Jesus ‘movement’ were actually stationary, based for the most part in Jesus’s house in Capernaum.
Coming Home
In 2017 I published an article in which I argued that the house in Capernaum where Jesus is to be found in the Gospel tradition was Jesus’s own house (Doole 2017). The article you are now reading is a restatement of my thesis and a refinement of my argument. I remain convinced that the house in Capernaum is Jesus’s house and not that of Simon Peter (and his mother-in-law and his brother Andrew) as most exegetes conclude based on a certain understanding of the narrative progression of Mark. The house in Capernaum where so much happens in the Gospels is Jesus’s house in the village.
The Homeless Itinerant on the Move or the Family Man at Home?
In popular imagination Jesus clearly isn’t remembered as a stay-at-home family man. He demands that the disciples leave everything to join him (Mk 10.28; Mt. 19.27; Lk. 18.28; Jn 6.66–69), abandoning loved ones and dependents (Mk 10.29 // Mt. 19.29 // Lk. 18.29), 1 and not even affording abandoned wives the option of divorce (Mk 10.2–12 // Mt. 19.3–12 // Lk. 16.18; 1 Cor. 7.10). 2 Jesus himself leaves home (Mt. 4.13 // Lk. 4.31), 3 disowns his family (Mk 3.31–35), and foresees disputes among the families of his followers (Mt. 10.35–37 // Lk. 12.52–53 and 14.26). On the other hand, he encourages filial piety (Mk 7.10 // Mt. 15.4; Mk 10.19; Mt. 19.19; Lk. 18.20) and contact with family members continues (Mk 1.29–31 // Mt. 8.14–15 // Lk. 4.38–39; Mt. 20.20–21; 27.56; cf. 1 Cor. 9.5). Jesus claims to be homeless himself (Mt. 8.20 // Lk. 9.58), wanders all over Galilee and to the north, west, and east (Mk 4.35–10.31), and sends the disciples out with the bare minimum (Mk 6.8–9; Mt. 10.9–10; Lk. 9.3; 10.4). But he does not expect them to sleep rough; rather, they are to find a house that will take them in (Mk 6.10 // Mt. 10.11; Lk. 9.4; Mt. 10.12 // Lk. 10.5), and in any case this mission is temporary as they soon return ‘home’ to Jesus (Mk 6.30; Lk. 9.10; 10.7). The Gospels include the radical claim to abandon everything to follow Jesus and at the same time preserve traditions that show that this was by no means always the case (Moxnes 2003: 57). 4
The idea that Jesus was homeless has as its cornerstone the saying regarding the Son of Man in Mt. 8.20 and Lk. 9.58: Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.
5
The identical wording of this saying in Matthew and Luke means that advocates of the Two Document Hypothesis attribute the phrasing of this double-tradition saying to Q, a hypothetical document linked to a hypothetical group of itinerant missionaries (see especially Theissen 1973; 1977: 14–21; Tiwald 2002). But Gerd Theissen has more recently asked (though not answered!) to what extent they were actually homeless: ‘Were the original Christian wandering charismatics homeless, or were they able to return in the evening to their hometown in the small country of Galilee?’ (Theissen 2020: 185). I will attempt to answer this question for one allegedly itinerant wandering charismatic in Galilee: Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus did indeed have a house in Capernaum, and the evidence for this is found within the Gospel tradition itself.
The House in Capernaum
If you visit Capernaum today you can see ‘Peter’s house’. This is marketed
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as ‘the house where Jesus stayed in Capernaum’ (Strange and Shanks 1982: 26). It is identified as Peter’s house on the narrative assumption that Jesus used Peter’s house as a base following his healing of Peter’s mother in-law (Mk 1.29–31// Mt. 8.14–15 // Lk. 4.38–39): Capernaum was not only the center of Jesus’s Galilean ministry, but it was also the place of his longest residence. Where did Jesus live in Capernaum? While we are not told specifically, the fair inference seems to be that he lived in Peter’s house. (Strange and Shanks 1982: 28)
The house is located in a poorer area of the village and thus is ‘precisely the area in which we would expect Jesus to have lived and worked’ (Taylor 1993: 278, cf. 294). Strange and Shanks (1982: 34) describe the building as ‘indistinguishable from all other houses of ancient Capernaum’, but claim that ‘a considerable body of circumstantial evidence does point to its identification as St. Peter’s house’ (Strange and Shanks 1982: 37; cf. especially Corbo 1969; Loffreda 1993). The building is very close to the site of the Capernaum synagogue and may well have been venerated as Peter’s house from the fourth century CE as a pilgrimage site, though probably not by a local Christian community (see Taylor 1989/1990; 1993: 268–94; Gehring 2000: 60–63; Runesson 2007; Bosenius 2014: 157–69). The travels of Egeria (CSEL 39: 112–13 // CCSL 175: 98–99), who visited Galilee around 381–384 CE (Wilkinson 1999: 1), report of a church in Tiberias on the site of the house of James and John, and of a visit to Capernaum where ‘the house of the prince of the apostles has been made into a church, with its original walls still standing’ (trans. Wilkinson 1999: 97). An unnamed pilgrim from Piacenza later travelled to the Holy Land around 570 CE (Wilkinson 1977: 6–7) and visited Capernaum and ‘the house of Blessed Peter, which is now a basilica’ (CSEL 39: 197 // CCSL 175: 132; trans. Wilkinson 1977: 81). Yet, as Bärbel Bosenius (2014: 125) points out, there is no evidence for the first century CE, and the Gospel tradition and archaeological evidence lead to a chicken-and-egg problem, as it remains unclear whether the identification of the site is itself based on reception of the Gospel narrative (Bosenius 2014: 169). Certainly, there was a building in Capernaum that was venerated by Christians as Peter’s house from the fourth century CE.
However, there is only one explicit reference to Peter’s house in the Gospels (Mk 1.29 // Mt. 8.14 // Lk. 4.38) and the remaining references refer to Jesus being either in ‘his’ house or simply in ‘the’ house. It seems that there was an indeterminate ‘house’ in the Gospel tradition 7 that became Peter’s house only in the context of an inference from the narrative progression of Mark (Maisch 1971: 13). A canonical combination of (1) a particular view of Jesus’s lifestyle, (2) a single Son-of-Man saying, and (3) a visit Jesus made to Peter’s house at the beginning of the Gospel of Mark has led to the conclusion that when Jesus is ‘in his house’ or ‘at home’ in the Gospels, he must be in Peter’s house. But could it be Jesus’s house?
Jesus ‘at Home’ in the Gospels
Ernest Best (1981: 175) states explicitly that ‘there is no evidence that Jesus possessed a house’. Yet in the Gospel tradition there are many scenes framed by Jesus being ‘in the house’ or ‘at home’. It is only by inference that this house is identified as the house of Simon Peter. In what follows I will attempt to demonstrate at a minimum that this idea of Jesus as a guest or tenant in Peter’s house is by no means implicit in the Gospels and indeed that there is much evidence that makes this argument difficult. A simpler, more immediate solution is to understand references to Jesus being ‘at home’ as part of the earliest, pre-Markan tradition, as the idea that Jesus lives with Peter can only result from a synchronic reading of Mark paired with the assumption that the undesignated house where Jesus is to be found again and again is actually still Peter’s house. Otherwise Jesus, who redefines household and family in his teaching, appears also to have silently usurped Peter’s role as the head of the household and become host to crowds of various visitors, some of whom even damage the roof! The fact that neither Peter, Andrew, nor the mother-in-law appear as residents of this house is because it all took place in Jesus’s house.
Jesus at Home in the Gospel of Mark
The motif and vocabulary of ‘house’ and ‘home’ play a significant role in Mark (see especially May 1987). 8 While in Luke ‘Jesus is either going to a meal, at a meal, or coming from a meal’ (Karris 1985: 47), for Mark, ‘Jesus is either going to a house, at a house, or talking about a house’ (May 1987: 5). Is the ‘house’ in Mark of any historical relevance or is it merely a literary motif? 9 The first ‘house’ appears in Mark long before any information about Jesus’s family and background other than that he was from Nazareth (Mk 1.9). The ‘house’ of Jesus in Capernaum therefore appears not to be a family home; Jesus is from Nazareth. 10
The house in Capernaum is of particular significance in terms of space in Mark (Malbon 1986; Bosenius 2014). 11 It is in this house that ‘the scribes, the disciples, the sick, those in need, and others gathered around for a chance to interact … with Jesus’ (May 1987: 184). It seems that everyone knows where Jesus is to be found. Furthermore, the house is ‘a setting for pronouncements related to reorientation of norms and new styles of life’ (May 1987: 184). The ‘house’ as a location in Mark also comes to reflect secrecy, not only in the references to private instruction (e.g., Mk 7.17, 24; 12 9.28, 33; 10.10), 13 but also in Jairus’s house where a miracle takes place (Mk 5.37–43). Yet earlier in the Gospel narrative, when Jesus is at home, there are crowds of visitors gathered at the door (Mk 2.1–2; 3.19b–20), and the house ‘is not a place of withdrawal from the people’ (Malbon 1985: 285). There is plenty of activity at this house in Capernaum.
The idea that the house in Capernaum is Peter’s house is based on the assumption that all references to Jesus being ‘at home’ or ‘in the house’ that follow Mk 1.29 refer to Peter’s house, which has now become a base for Jesus’s mission. 14 Jesus then sneaks out of Peter’s house early in the morning while it is still dark in a bid to escape attention (Mk 1.35–37). 15 He then tours Galilee (Mk 1.38–39) and is soon unable to enter any town due to his increased fame (Mk 1.45). After a few days Jesus returns to Capernaum and is to be found ἐν οἴκῳ, where there is once again a crowd gathering at the door (Mk 2.1–2). Is he back at Peter’s house, the crowd at Peter’s door (as, e.g., Ravarotto 1967: 408–9)? The removal of the roof above Jesus (Mk 2.4) does not result in any protest from Peter, his mother-in-law, or Andrew, and there is nothing in the scene to suggest that this is Peter’s house. 16
Jesus then goes out for a walk by the sea (Mk 2.13) and on his way (home?) he spots a toll-collector called Levi, who follows Jesus when called, just as Simon and Andrew, James and John had done. If Levi brings Jesus to his house, then Jesus now appears to have two houses in Capernaum of which he can make use. 17 But whose house do they go to? Is it Jesus’s house or Levi’s house? The ambiguity arises from the use of personal pronouns in Mk 2.14c–15.
14c καὶ ἀναστὰς ἠκολούθησεν αὐτῷ. 15 Καὶ γίνεται κατακεῖσθαι αὐτὸν ἐν τῇ οἰκίᾳ αὐτοῦ, καὶ πολλοὶ τελῶναι καὶ ἁμαρτωλοὶ συνανέκειντο τῷ Ἰησοῦ καὶ τοῖς μαθηταῖς αὐτοῦ· ἦσαν γὰρ πολλοὶ καὶ ἠκολούθουν αὐτῷ.
The argument that the meal takes place in Levi’s house is based not on the pronouns but on the narrative sequence of two separate form-critical genres: the call of a disciple and a dispute with Pharisees. If the dispute tradition were originally independent, the logical inference would be to see Jesus eating at his own home with tax collectors and not at the home of a particular tax collector (see especially van Iersel 1967). The ambiguity raised by the use of pronouns and thus the lack of specificity indicate—I would argue—that it is probably the same house where Jesus has been since Mk 2.1. Moreover, the reference to ‘his house’ comes immediately after ‘followed him’, which refers to Jesus, depicting Jesus as leading the way. And Jesus had been ‘going along’ (παράγων) when he saw Levi, so he was already on his way somewhere, unless wandering aimlessly looking for a place to have lunch (as in Lk 19.5). Levi is also not the only guest: a great many tax-collectors and sinners have followed ‘him’, and Jesus eats with them, reclining apparently as host (see Malbon 1985: 282–83). 18 The scribes of the Pharisees then arrive and witness this scandal. How do they know where to find Jesus? Either they have followed the tumult in the village or—I suggest—they know where Jesus lives. The episode concludes with Jesus saying he has come ‘to call’ sinners, perhaps by inviting them to his house (and not to Levi’s). 19
Yet even those who imagine Levi following Jesus to his house still assume that it is actually Peter’s house (see Doole 2017: 50 n. 80). This produces ambiguities as the narrative progresses. Jesus appoints twelve disciples on a mountaintop (Mk 3.13–14) and then returns ‘home’ (καὶ ἔρχεται εἰς οἶκον), where there is such a problem with overcrowding that they can’t even eat (Mk 3.19b–20). Jesus is then visited by (a) οἱ παρ’ αὐτοῦ who think he is mad (Mk 3.21), (b) scribes from Jerusalem who claim he has Beelzebul (Mk 3.22), and (c) his mother and his brothers (and possibly sisters) (Mk 3.31–32). All these people know where to find Jesus in Capernaum. The simplest explanation is that—as it says in Mk 3.19b—Jesus was ‘at home’.
As the Gospel narrative proceeds, again and again Jesus and his disciples are said to be in a house. Jesus is alone with the disciples, implicitly in a house (Mk 4.10, 34). 20 Jesus then sends the disciples (including Simon Peter and Andrew) away while he appears to remain in the house to which they later return (Mk 6.30–31). Jesus later teaches the disciples in private in a house (Mk 7.17; 9.28; 10.10 21 ), and it is in a house where children are present (Mk 9.36) that he asks the disciples a question (Mk 9.33). 22 Bosenius (2014: 140–42) even argues that Jesus sends the previously blind man to his own [i.e. Jesus’s] house (Mk 8.26). In all these instances where Jesus is ‘in the house’ in Capernaum there is no indication that he is in Peter’s house. Indeed, this would produce a very odd dynamic, as Jesus usurps the role of host in this house (Gehring 2000: 79, 92; Bosenius 2014: 276–309). Bosenius (2014: 274–75) describes Jesus as the guest who leaves but keeps coming back, and follows Fander (1989: 32–34) and Hentschel (2007: 200–2) in inferring that the imperfect form διηκόνει implies that Simon’s mother-in-law continued to serve Jesus throughout his stay in Capernaum. Nevertheless, she is completely absent from the narrative. Simon’s mother-in-law is not in this house because it is Jesus’s house.
The house in Mark shifts from a place of overcrowding and lack of privacy to a safe space for private discussions. This house in Capernaum that Mark knows from his traditions is apparently deeply embedded in his understanding of Jesus’s activity. A form-critical approach would suggest that references to a ‘house’ within previously independent traditions have been brought together by the evangelist with varying degrees of success. 23 There are traditions of Jesus being ‘at home’ where he is visited by crowds, the sick, scribes, and his own family. Either the traditions themselves or the evangelist Mark—or both—ended up imagining a house that became so busy that Jesus and his friends couldn’t even eat. The house was so anchored in the tradition that it is often simply assumed. At the same time, a redaction-critical approach will note the importance of ‘the house’ as a place for private teaching in Mark. Clearly the idea of Jesus ‘at home’ was both well established in Mark’s traditions and influential in his own portrayal of Jesus’s interaction with the disciples. In Mark, Jesus can stay at home, leave home, return home, and be found at home, and his home appears to be his house in Capernaum. 24
Jesus at Home in the Gospel of Matthew
Matthew’s Jesus is equally ‘at home’ as Mark’s Jesus.
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But first he has to explain how ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ could have been born in Bethlehem (cf. Lk. 2.4 and Jn 7.42). Jesus is born in a house (οἰκία) in Bethlehem (Mt. 2.11) but is soon forced to flee to Egypt and then to re-settle (κατῴκησεν) in Nazareth (Mt. 2.23). In Mark, following his baptism by John in the River Jordan, Jesus proceeds to the Sea of Galilee (Mk 1.14–16) and enters Capernaum (Mk 1.21). Matthew clarifies this with a summary statement: Now when Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee. He left Nazareth and made his home (κατῴκησεν) in Capernaum by the sea. (Mt. 4.12–13)
In Matthew, Jesus takes up residence (κατῴκησεν) in Capernaum before the call of any disciples with whom he might stay. 26
Matthew drops several of the references to Jesus being ‘at home’ that he may have read in Mark. There is no house and thus no roof in Matthew’s account of the healing of a paralyzed man in Capernaum (Mt. 9.1–8), which takes place merely in ‘his own city (πόλις)’; for Matthew, Jesus of Nazareth is now essentially Jesus of Capernaum. Matthew then provides no specific location for the subsequent debate about Jesus casting out demons (Mt. 12.15: ‘he departed from there’, namely the synagogue of Mt. 12.9), which means that when Jesus’s family arrives, they are said to be standing ‘outside’ (Mt. 12.46) without any indication as to outside where. The disciples later ‘approach’ Jesus for private instruction, with no mention of a house (Mt. 15.12; 18.1). There is also no mention of a house where Jesus stays in Tyre (Mt. 15.21); rather, Jesus is merely ‘alone’ (κατ’ ἰδίαν, Mt. 17.19) following an exorcism, and he explains his teaching on divorce to his disciples without any explicit change of scene (Mt. 19.3–12).
Matthew, however, does keep a reference to a house in his account of the calling of the tax collector (now called ‘Matthew’). He also does little if anything to smooth over the ambiguity in Mark (Theobald 1978: 168, 178; Malbon 1985: 284; May 1993: 147 n. 2), with the result that it appears even more likely to be Jesus’s house (Mt. 9.9b–10): 9b καὶ ἀναστὰς ἠκολούθησεν αὐτῷ. 10 καὶ ἐγένετο αὐτοῦ ἀνακειμένου ἐν τῇ οἰκίᾳ, καὶ ἰδοὺ πολλοὶ τελῶναι καὶ ἁμαρτωλοὶ ἐλθόντες συνανέκειντο τῷ Ἰησοῦ καὶ τοῖς μαθηταῖς αὐτοῦ.
In the scenes that follow, Jesus is still in the house as several different groups of visitors arrive. In Mt. 9—as in Mk 3—people know where Jesus is to be found: Pharisees (Mt. 9.11), disciples of John (Mt. 9.14), and a bereaved father (Mt. 9.18) all come in turn to find Jesus at home in his house.
Indeed, although Matthew drops references to Mark’s house-setting in several scenes, he maintains and develops the idea that Jesus had a house in Capernaum, adding references to Jesus’s house that are not found in Mark. Two blind men follow Jesus home (Mt. 9.27–28), Jesus leaves his house to go and sit by the sea (Mt. 13.1), returning home where the disciples approach him for an explanation of his teaching (Mt. 13.36). 27 Jesus is in Capernaum where Peter finds him in the house when men come to collect the temple tax (Mt. 17.24–27). 28 Matthew follows Mark in placing Jesus in a house in Capernaum, which is now Jesus’s ‘hometown’ (Mt. 9.1).
However, Matthew also includes the double-tradition saying on the homelessness of the Son of Man (Mt. 8.20), and subsequent popular imagination has taken up this image of a homeless Jesus, despite the fact that ‘the Matthean Jesus is clearly not literally homeless’ (Nolland 2005: 366; cf. also Carter 2000: 208; Gehring 2000: 80 n. 133). Robert Myles (2014) looks particularly at the homeless Jesus in Matthew, whose childhood and early adulthood are characterized by resettlement, from Bethlehem to Egypt to Nazareth to Capernaum. Even in Capernaum, Jesus remains ‘home’-less: Capernaum does not function as a site of permanence with a sense of enduring residence nor does it feature as a point of orientation. … The Matthean Jesus resides in Capernaum but does not come to inhabit it as a home place. (Myles 2014: 91 [italics original])
Myles accepts that Jesus is associated with a house in Capernaum in Matthew, but stresses that his accommodation was by no means assured: So while Jesus might be connected to a house in Capernaum, or have precarious accommodations and so on, he does not necessarily have a permanent home, at least not for the entirety of Matthew’s Gospel. … Matthew’s Jesus is both connected in some transitive sense to a house and/or household (οἶκος/οἰκία) but is also at times homeless with nowhere to lay his head. (Myles 2014: 125)
The Son of Man saying in Matthew (see especially Myles 2014: 118–23) would thus be the first indication that the early Gospel references to Jesus being ‘at home’ in Capernaum are already beginning to lose out to the idea that Jesus was constantly on the move, at times as a guest in someone else’s house but for the most part in a precarious situation bordering on destitution. For Myles, Matthew’s Jesus is not guaranteed a place to sleep.
Nevertheless, I would contend that this is to overemphasize the Son of Man saying over against the several unproblematic references in Matthew to Jesus being in a house in Capernaum. In Matthew, Jesus moves to Capernaum (Mt. 4.12–23), can be easily found at home (Mt. 9), can leave his house to go for a walk and return to explain things to his disciples in private (Mt. 13), and is at home when Peter comes to find him (Mt. 17.24–27). Matthew’s Jesus is very much ‘at home’ in Capernaum (cf. Glaser 2026: 639–43
The Cosmopolitan Jesus in the Gospel of Luke
Luke’s Jesus is never at home. 29 He had a home when growing up in Nazareth (Lk. 2.39, 51), but was born temporarily homeless (Lk. 2.6–7). Luke has none of the references to private instruction of the disciples in a house in Galilee as in both Mark and Matthew. In Luke, Jesus is much more likely to be the guest at a party 30 than the host: Pharisees (Lk. 7.36–50; 14.1) and Mary and Martha (Lk. 10.38–42) welcome Jesus into their houses. 31 The call of Zacchaeus parallels that of Levi in Luke, and both tax collectors host Jesus in their own houses (Lk. 5.29; 19.1–10). Indeed, Malbon (1985: 284) contends that Luke intentionally relocated the meal from Jesus’s house to Levi’s house. For Luke, Jesus is the honoured guest of ancient Greek culture.
Luke includes the double-tradition saying on the homelessness of the Son of Man (Lk. 9.58) and the triple-tradition saying on leaving homes for Jesus’s sake (Lk. 18.29–30). To these he adds the request of a would-be disciple to take leave of his family, which Jesus refuses (Lk. 9.61–62). Jesus and his group are not to be found at home in Luke, for they are always guests at someone else’s house. Thus, Jesus’s house in Capernaum is conspicuously absent in Luke, but Luke’s Jesus, though home-less, is not homeless, sleeping in the open, rather moving from meal to meal as guest of honour until he himself becomes host for meals in other people’s houses in Jerusalem (Lk. 22.7–38; 24.33–49) and Emmaus (Lk. 24.28–31).
The Extra-Terrestrial Jesus in the Gospel of John
John’s Jesus is not of this world. It is thus perhaps inevitable that he is never ‘at home’ in John. Jesus calls his first disciples in Judea and they see where he was staying (ποῦ μένει) and remain with him (καὶ παρ’ αὐτῷ ἔμειναν) for the night (Jn 1.35–39). But John never tells us where Jesus is staying, and the next day when Jesus heads to Galilee we again are not told where. Although the episode recounts the calling of Nathanael who was an acquaintance of Philip from Bethsaida, the only location given is ‘under a fig tree’ (Jn 1.43–51). The following day Jesus is at a wedding in Cana with his disciples, his mother, and his brothers (and possibly sisters) (Jn 1.1–2). The scene ends with the comment that all of them moved to Capernaum, apparently their first arrival in the village and only for a few days (Jn 2.12). It is thus unclear as to whether Jesus and his family live here (Kopp 1959: 212) or whether they just make an otherwise unexplained visit (see especially Buzy 1957). The next time Jesus has an interaction with his brothers it is merely ‘in Galilee’, where it is apparently relatively safe (Jn 7.1–10). Capernaum is nonetheless the location for the healing of the son of a royal official (Jn 4.46–54; cf. Mt. 8.5–13 // Lk. 7.1–10) and the ‘bread of life’ discourse in the synagogue (Jn 6.16–59). There is no ‘house’ in Capernaum in John.
John’s Jesus is also a guest, most notably in a house in Bethany (Jn 11.1–12.11). He is constantly on the move and may prove difficult to find (Jn 7.35). Only the Gospel audience understands what Jesus means when he says he must return ‘to him who sent me’ (Jn 7.33). Jesus does not live in a house in Capernaum, rather, he is at home in his father’s house with many rooms (Jn 14.2a).
Conclusion: Home Truths
There is an undeniable tension in Gospel tradition about a homeless Jesus being at home in Capernaum. This was surely not a ‘construction’ of the evangelist Mark, for he sees the house as both a place of overcrowding and a refuge for private instruction. Rather, the house was simply one aspect of the earliest portrayal of Jesus’s activity in Galilee and may even reflect historical reality. In Mark, Jesus is often ‘at home’. He certainly travels around, but if you want to find him, the best place to try is his house in Capernaum. Matthew’s Jesus is also ‘at home’ in Capernaum, and, although he omits many of Mark’s framing references to a house, he still has people looking for Jesus where he is most likely to be found, at his house in Capernaum, indeed even adding references to Jesus ‘at home’ not found in Mark. According to Matthew, Jesus was born in a house in Bethlehem, lived in a house in Nazareth, and settled in a house in Capernaum, which thus became ‘his own city’ (Mt. 9.1). Luke prefers a travelling Jesus, a Jesus not to be found at home but as a guest at meals in other people’s homes. John’s Jesus is constantly on the move but knows—as does the Gospel audience—that his real ‘home’ is not of this world.
There is thus clearly a memory of Jesus being ‘at home’ within the Gospel tradition, maintained in both Mark and Matthew, though this faded with time as Luke sought to portray a cosmopolitan Jesus and John an extra-terrestrial Jesus. This tradition of Jesus having a house in Capernaum stood in tension with memories of Jesus as a homeless itinerant preacher. Jesus certainly travelled in and around Galilee and to Jerusalem, but when he was in Capernaum he could be found in his own house. Peter’s statement on behalf of the disciples that they have left everything to follow Jesus (Mk 10.28) is true when they are setting off for Jerusalem (Mk 10.32–34). Until then they clearly had not yet abandoned everything, as they even had continued use of a boat (Guijarro 2001: 236–37). Frederick Borsch argued in 1975 that Jesus’s ministry may have been far more localized than the popular imagination allows. Peter’s claim and Jesus’s demands may be exaggerations reflecting idealized and heroic commitments to a cause (Borsch 1975: 48). The image of the group journeying to Jerusalem may have coloured stories of Galilee (Borsch 1975: 50), and the journeys of Christian missionaries like Paul and Apollos may have been retrojected onto a less mobile Jesus (Borsch 1975: 55). Indeed, the idea that Jesus spent most of his time on the shore of the Sea of Galilee may have been a cause for embarrassment for the early Christian message (Borsch 1975: 58–59), a ‘local’ Jesus whose work in Capernaum clearly failed, and who therefore curses the village down to Hades (Mt. 11.23–24 // Lk. 10.15).
Strack and Billerbeck (Str-B 1:493–494) point out that according to the Mishnah and the Talmud, Jesus would qualify as a citizen of Capernaum after 12 months—or indeed immediately if he bought property—(m. B. Bat. 1.5), and as a ‘resident’ of Capernaum after 30 days (b. B. Bat. 8a). These rabbinic discussions concerning legal issues point to one final question: Does Jesus being ‘at home’ in Capernaum mean that he owned a house? Most people in ancient Galilee lived in shared accommodation, and in both urban and rural settings a house was as likely to be shared by coworkers as by a family (Galor 2000: 110). So not all houses were family affairs with a pater familias and extended relatives and children in various constellations. Furthermore, the (perhaps inappropriately named; see Galor 2000: 115) insula architectural design meant that for the lower classes the shared inner courtyard with its cistern provided a common space for various activities such as cooking, baking, laundry, meals, and keeping animals (see Hirschfeld 1995: 272–81; Galor 2000: 117; 2003: 56). The courtyard served as the living area, with indoor areas dark and cramped and used primarily for storage and shelter from inclement weather (Fiensy 2014: 238). 32 When we read that Jesus was ‘at home’ we should not imagine a lavish, freestanding Roman villa but humble and overcrowded shared accommodation with many other labourers, children, and animals living in cramped, unhygienic, and often uncomfortable conditions. The contrast between a homeless Jesus and a Jesus ‘at home’ does not mean the difference between absolute destitution on the one hand and a life of luxury on the other. Jesus was poor, but he was not homeless.
I have thus sought to demonstrate that the house in Mark and Matthew should be understood as Jesus’s house, and only the placement of a visit to Peter’s house at the beginning of the narrative leads to the inference that from this point on ‘the house’ in the Gospels is Peter’s house. 33 The evidence in the Gospels thus suggests that the earliest days of the Jesus ‘movement’ were stationary, based in a house in Capernaum where Jesus lived. He called some to ‘follow’ him to this house, while others came on their own to seek healing or to ask questions. Although he journeyed across Galilee and beyond, Jesus could mostly be found at home, in his own house in Capernaum.
Footnotes
1.
Guijarro (2001: 232) sees Jesus’s homelessness as one aspect of ‘the counter cultural behaviour of Jesus which provoked scandal and rejection’. However, Myles (2019) criticizes the anachronistic, modern idea that Jesus and the disciples abandoning their families was some sort of lifestyle choice, rather that it may reflect difficult economic circumstances (cf. also Theissen 2020: 185).
2.
See Sim 1994; Jensen 2011; Doole 2017: 37–42. Abandoned families—like Jesus’s own family—might have considered this to be madness (Theissen 1977: 17) or demon possession (Guijarro 2001: 234).
3.
Frenschkowski 2020 draws on a wealth of ancient evidence to suggest that Jesus as a young artisan would have had to move around for work, so that was the lifestyle he was used to (cf. already Kennard 1946: 138).
4.
Guijarro (2001: 238) attempts to solve the tension between pro- and anti-family rhetoric in the Gospels by arguing that it all depended on whether family members also accepted Jesus, and that only disciples whose families did not accept Jesus would have been forced to leave home. Evidence in the Gospels does not support this proposed division: James and John abandon Zebedee without the slightest indication that he disapproved of Jesus (Mk 1.19–20 // Mt. 4.21–22), and indeed in Matthew their mother travels to Jerusalem with them (Mt. 20.20–21; 27.56). In Luke a would-be disciple is not even allowed to inform his family of his decision (Lk. 9.61–62).
5.
It is fortunate—or a sign of editorial accuracy—that neither Matthew nor Luke refers to the cushion on which Jesus is to be found sleeping in Mk 4.38!
6.
Strange and Shanks (1982: 31) refer to the long tradition of ‘local guides’ and ‘gullible tourists’.
7.
Ravarotto 1967 refers to it repeatedly as ‘una casa innominata’ and as ‘una casa ospitale fissa’ and argues that it forms part of Peter’s own memory of Jesus’s ministry as recorded in Mark, which was then viewed as an unnecessary detail by Matthew and Luke.
8.
Jesus uses the image of a house in his teaching in Mark: a house divided (Mk 3.25), a strong man’s house (Mk 3.27), and a home-owner going on a journey (Mk 13.34–36). As Guijarro (1997: 48–49) points out, throughout the Gospels Jesus makes reference not only to poor households, but also to elite households.
9.
Stemberger (1974: 419) describes the house in Mk 9.28 as ‘more a literary-theological idea than a real house’. Cf. similar interpretations in, e.g., Schreiber 1969: 162–64; Best 1981: 226–29.
10.
Kennard (1946) proposed the theory that Jesus was actually Jesus of Capernaum, and that the Nazareth association was created in order to distance Jesus from John the Baptist’s nazirite movement. He points to the fact that the scene in Mk 6.1–6 takes place not in ‘Nazareth’ but in ‘his hometown’ and that a similar scene in Jn 6.22–59 is explicitly located in Capernaum. The ‘prophet’ comment in Jn 4.43–47 implies that Jesus was a Galilean, but in Jn 8.48 he can be mistaken for a Samaritan. Nevertheless, the idea that Jesus was from Nazareth is well established across the Gospel tradition. Harris (1922: 451–52) criticized ‘modern students’ who ‘try to find a birthplace as well as a home for our Lord in Capernaum or in some neighbouring town on the Lake, so that for them the historical descent from the highland village to the Lake has no historical value’, but he unfortunately does not provide any references.
11.
The house and the synagogue set the scene for many episodes (Malbon 1985: 285, 288; 1986: 117–20, 131–36).
12.
Lloyd (2022: 334) argues that the house in Tyre where Jesus is approached by a Gentile woman in Mk 7.24–30 must be a Jewish house, as Jesus does not accompany her to her house; he also does not visit the Gentile house in Mt. 8.5–13 // Lk. 7.1–10.
13.
Klauck (1981: 62) suggests that this reflects household catechesis, as the Markan audience or community feels it too is in Jesus’s ‘Lehrhaus’, just as the disciples had been.
14.
This is a common assumption and the number of commentators who adopt this position is too long to list; for more explicit and detailed discussion of the issue, see, e.g., Bishop 1953; Ravarotto 1967; Theobald 1978: 169; Zwick 1989: 299; Kuhn 1995: 74–82; Gehring 2000: 57–93; Bosenius 2014: 134–69.
15.
It is here that Peter tells Jesus that everyone is looking for him, which, as Ravarotto (1967: 407) concludes, implies that they are looking for him at Peter’s house.
16.
Schmidt (1919: 79 n. 1) and Bosenius (2014: 136 n. 80) both point to ἐν οἴκῳ meaning ‘at home’ in 1 Cor. 11.34 and 14.35. Gehring (2000: 66 n. 77) prefers the ambiguous formulation ‘in dem ihm üblicherweise zur Verfügung stehenden Haus’. Buzy (1957: 419) refers simply to ‘sa maison’.
17.
For examples of commentators who read the house as Levi’s house, see Doole 2017: 50 n. 77 and Ålöw 2026: 569, n. 7. May (1993: 147 n. 1) notes that there are some who prefer ‘not to choose an option’, himself arguing (May 1993: 149) that the house was that of Levi, who has ‘a social obligation to reciprocate’ within ‘a dyadic relationship’ in parallel to the calling of Peter and Andrew, though I would note that James and John appear to be exempt from this social obligation, unless it is assumed that they provide the boat that Jesus will later use.
18.
Cf. Ålöw 2026: 582–84.
19.
On “to call” and “to invite”, see Ålöw 2026: 578–82.
20.
See Guelich 1989: 203 and Bosenius 2014: 146–51 for the difficulties caused by the changes of scene in this episode.
21.
Bosenius (2014: 144) argues that despite reference to Judea and Transjordan in Mk 10.1, the house which he enters in Mk 10.10 is back in Capernaum.
22.
See Doole 2017: 53–54 for discussion of the private teaching motif in Mark.
23.
Both Kuhn (1995: 74–75) and Gehring (2000: 59, 67 n. 85) note the presence of a house in Capernaum in the earliest Gospel tradition, which Mark often clumsily integrates into his narrative.
24.
Thus I reach the opposite conclusion to Glaser 2026: 632–39.
25.
Matthew’s Jesus also teaches about houses: e.g., a lamp on a lampstand provides light for the whole house (Mt. 5.15), a wise man builds his house on rock (Mt. 7.24), a demon returns to a tidy house (Mt. 12.43–45), the head of a household brings both old and new from his store (Mt. 13.52). When you pray, you should not do so in public, but in a private room with the door closed (Mt. 6.6).
26.
Strange and Shanks (1982: 28) do not discuss the issue that this raises for their thesis. Marcion’s Gospel begins with Jesus ‘descending’ to Capernaum (as already noted by Kennard 1946: 141); for reconstructions see, e.g. BeDuhn 2013: 99, 129; Roth 2015: 412; Klinghardt 2021: 513–16.
27.
Buzy (1950: 167) sees this as Jesus’s house (‘sa maison à lui’).
28.
Gehring (2000: 59, 66–67) argues that the wording of the pericope indicates that this is Peter’s house. Ravarotto (1967: 416–17) allows that while it is probably Peter’s house where Jesus was resident as a guest, it could equally be Matthew’s house. Buzy (1950: 232) and Prete (1957: 167) read it as Jesus’s house.
29.
There are nonetheless examples of the ‘home/house’ motif in Jesus’s teaching in Luke, most famously in the parables of the lost sheep, coin, and son (Lk. 15), which Jesus appears to tell while hosting a party (Lk. 15.1–2).
30.
As quoted above, in Luke ‘Jesus is either going to a meal, at a meal, or coming from a meal’ (Karris 1985: 47).
31.
Thus, the instruction Jesus gives to the 72 in Lk. 10.7b (‘Do not move about from house to house.’) proves rather ironic, given his social lifestyle in this Gospel.
32.
Josephus (Ant. 14.15.12) reports how Herod Antipater’s troops removed the roofs of Judean houses in order to find rebel soldiers piled on top of one another in hiding before dropping stones on them to kill them. That indoor areas were so cramped leads to the question how Jesus is to be imagined to be preaching to crowds indoors in Mk 2.4. I would suggest that we should not overestimate the term ‘many’, as the stairway to the roof will itself have been in the inner courtyard and Jesus himself thus in one of the small apartments.
33.
Admittedly, this would fit well with Jesus’s instructions to stay in one house per town (Mk 6.10 // Lk. 9.4; cf. Lk. 10.7b), but does not conform with the portrayal of a ministry headquartered in Capernaum.