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CHAPTER 1
Lakeside Galilee and the Essene Caves Hypothesis
Arbela, Mount Arbel and the Caves
In the Book of Enoch (1Enoch), the Parables of Enoch (1Enoch
37-71) are preceded by an older work called the Book of Watchers
(1Enoch 1-36), whose narrative is set on top of, and at the foot of,
Mount Hermon in north-eastern Galilee, a mere 50-60 kms due north
of Magdala. However, because of its low level by the lake, Mt. Hermon
is barely visible from this town. Nevertheless, wonderful views of
Mount Hermon can be seen only 2 kms to the west of Magdala, from
the summit of the mountain with a very distinctive profile, aptly called
Mount Arbel. This mountain is famous for its long range of cliffs, which
tower 300 meters above the ancient route (a side branch of the Via
Maris) that runs along Wadi Arbel ( נחל ארבל ), before entering the
Ginnosar plain and arriving at Magdala by the Sea of Galilee.
The name Arbel is derived from the biblical ‘Beit Arv’el’ ( בית
ארבאל; Hos 10,14), composed of the word ‘arav’ which means ‘a place
of ambush’ and ‘El’ who is God. So Arbel literally means ‘a place where
God waits in ambush’ or, in other words, ‘a place of divine judgment’.
As divine judgment for some means divine redemption for others, it is
surely no coincidence that an ancient tradition claims that divine re-
demption will begin on the plateau above the mountain, called the
‘plain of Arbel’ (בקעת ארבל). On this plain, a few hundred meters south-
west of the northern-most tip of Mount Arbel, a town called Arbela in
Aramaic (Arbel in Hebrew) was established in ancient times, some-
time between 120-100 BCE. The town had an impressive synagogue
at its centre and grew to a population of about 2,500 souls, until it was
destroyed by a powerful earthquake in 747 CE. It is now an archaeo-
logical site (חורבת ארבל) adjacent to a modern farming community, or
‘moshav’, of the same name.
An archaeological investigation of the area from 1987-1989,
conducted by the archaeologist Dr. Zvi Ilan, included a survey of the
innumerable caves etched into Mt. Arbel’s range of cliffs, a few hun-
dred meters to the north and east of Arbela.9 The topography is im-
portant because the archaeologist concluded that there appeared to
be a temporal relationship between the ancient town above and the
caves in the cliff, which he calls a “cave-village”. Noting that some of
the caves were hewn and adapted for human inhabitation at about the
same time as the town was built, sometime during the Hasmonean era
(167–63 BCE), he wrote: “The archeological finds indicate that the
built and hewn settlements existed simultaneously: the built settle-
ment may have been founded a short time prior to the cave village,
and its inhabitants may have been the hewers of the stone shelters”.10
In all, he found evidence of human habitation in about 100-120 caves
along the cliffs of Mt. Arbel, dating from the Hasmonean era and con-
tinuing up until the early 17th century, when the Druze overlord of
Lebanon and Galilee, Fahr a-Din II, built many of the previously inhab-
ited caves into a walled fortress known as Qala’at Ibn Ma’an.
The archaeologist reports two striking discoveries in his survey
of the ‘cave-village’. The first was the finding of at least “twenty plas-
tered structures: most of them were used for storing water, but at
9 The survey is amply described by Zvi Ilan, in English, in ‘Reviving a 2,000-Year-
Old Landmark’, Eretz Magazine, Winter 1988/1989; 61-69, and briefly also in Ex-
cavations and Surveys in Israel, 1989, in Hebrew:
14-15 1989, "ארבל-סקר בכפר המערות", חדשות ארכיאולוגיות צד, ירושלים, .
10 Eretz Magazine, Winter 1988/1989; 68.
