Chorazin
CHORAZIN(Χορασίν), mentioned only in St. Matthew (11.26), and the parallel passage in St. Luke (10.13), in our Lord's denunciation. This site had strangely baffled the inquiries of travellers (Lord Lindsay's Travels, vol. 2. p. 91; Robinson, B. R. vol. 3. p. 295), until it was recovered and identified by the writer and a friend in 1842. In the hills on the north of the Sea of Tiberias, about two miles north-west of Capernaum ( Tell-Hum) is a ruined site still called by the Bedouins who pasture it Gerazi:in a small plain to the east of the ruins is a fountain called by the same name. It is utterly desolate; a fragment of a shaft of a marble column alone standing in the midst of universal ruin.
[G.W]Town in Galilee, 4.8 km N of Capernaum, mentioned in Matt. 11:20-24 together with Beth-Saida. Wheat for the service of the Temple in Jerusalem was brought from here. By the time of Eusebius (Onom. 174.23) it lay in ruins.
A synagogue of the Galilean type was discovered in the 19th c. and has been partly excavated: it is 20.7 by 15.3 m, built of basalt ashlar on the highest spot in the town among other public buildings. From an open court in front a grand staircase led up to three portals facing S towards Jerusalem. The interior was divided by three colonnades into a nave, 6.3 m wide, and three aisles, each 1.8 m wide, with stone benches along the walls. The columns of the interior were quasi-Ionic and quasi-Doric, but the capitals of the pilasters which decorated the exterior were Corinthian. A frieze on the upper part of the outside wall shows plant motifs as well as representations of men pressing grapes, a lion devouring a centaur, and a Medusa.
Some private dwellings, a ritual bath, and wine presses have also been found. There are indications that the town was still flourishing in the Byzantine period, which would contradict Eusebius.
BIBLIOGRAPHYH. Kohl & C. Watzinger, Antike Synagogen in Galilea (1916) 41ff; F. M. Abel, Géographie de la Palestine II (1938) 299-300.
A. NEGEV