The Sea of Galilee, also called Lake Tiberias, Genezareth Lake or Kinneret, is a freshwater lake in northeast Israel. It is the lowest freshwater lake on Earth and the second-lowest lake in the world (after the Dead Sea, a salt lake),The 1996-discovered subglacial Lake Vostok challenges both records; it is estimated to be to below sea level. with its elevation fluctuating between below sea level (depending on rainfall). It is approximately in circumference, about long, and wide. Its area is at its fullest, and its maximum depth is approximately .Data Summary: Lake Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) The lake is fed partly by underground springs, but its main source is the Jordan River, which flows through it from north to south with the outflow controlled by the Degania Dam.
Geography
The Sea of Galilee is situated in northeast Israel, between the Golan Heights and the Galilee region, in the Jordan Rift Valley, formed by the relative motion of the African and Arabian plates. Consequently, the area is subject to earthquakes, and in the past, volcanic activity. This is evident from the abundant basalt and other igneous rocks that define the geology of Galilee.
Names
The modern Hebrew name Kineret comes from the Hebrew Bible, where it appears as the "sea of Kineret" in Numbers 34:11 and Joshua 13:27, and spelled "Kinerot" in Hebrew in Joshua 11:2. This name was also found in the scripts of Ugarit, in the Aqhat Epic. As the name of a city, Kinneret was listed among the "fenced cities" in . A persistent, though likely erroneous, popular etymology presumes that the name Kinneret may originate from the Hebrew word kinnor ("harp" or "lyre"), because of the shape of the lake.Easton's Revised Bible Dictionary, "Chinnereth". Another speculation is that the name comes from a fruit called in Biblical Hebrew kinar, which is thought to be the fruit of Ziziphus spina-christi. The scholarly consensus, however, is that the origin of the name is derived from the important Bronze and Iron Age city of Kinneret, excavated at Tell el-'Oreimeh. The city of Kinneret may have been named after the body of water rather than vice versa, and there is no evidence for the origin of the town's name.
All Old and New Testament writers use the term "sea" (Hebrew yam, Greek ), with the exception of Luke, who calls it "the Lake of Gennesaret" (Luke 5:1), from the Greek (limnē Gennēsaret), the "Grecized form of Chinnereth".Easton, Gennesaret. The Babylonian Talmud as well as Flavius Josephus mention the sea by the name "Sea of Ginosar" after the small fertile plain of Ginosar that lies on its western side. Ginosar is yet another name derived from Kinneret. In English, "Lake Genezareth" serves as alternative name for the Sea of Galilee.
The word Galilee comes from the Hebrew Haggalil (), which literally means "The District", a compressed form of Gelil Haggoyim "The District of Nations" (Isaiah 8:23). Some time after the city of Tiberias was founded on its western shore in honour of Roman emperor Tiberius in 16 CE, the Sea of Galilee started to be called the Sea of Tiberias. In the New Testament, the term "sea of Galilee" () is used in the Gospel of Matthew 4:18; 15:29, the Gospel of Mark 1:16; 7:31, and in the Gospel of John as "the sea of Galilee, which is [the sea] of Tiberias" ().Easton, Tiberias Sea of Tiberias is also the name mentioned in Roman texts and in the Jerusalem Talmud, and it was adopted into Arabic as Buḥayrat Ṭabariyyā (), "Lake Tiberias". Some writers use the spelling "Gallilee", for example Selah Merrill in a nineteenth century journal article.Merrill, S., Oriental Department: Palestine Explorations, in The American Antiquarian: A Quarterly Journal Devoted to Early American History, Ethnology and Archaeology, Chicago, Volume 2, Issue 2, (1 October 1879), p. 155, accessed on 29 November 2024
From the Umayyad through the Mamluk period, the lake was known in Arabic as Baḥr al-Minya (), the "Sea of Minya", after the Umayyad qasr complex, whose ruins are still visible at Khirbat al-Minya. This is the name used by the medieval Persian and Arab scholars Al-Baladhuri, Al-Tabari and Ibn Kathir.
History Prehistory In 1989, remains of a hunter-gatherer site were found under the water at the southern end. Remains of mud huts were found in Ohalo. Nahal Ein Gev, located about east of the lake, contains a village from the late Natufian period. The site is considered one of the first permanent human settlements in the world from a time predating the Neolithic Revolution.
Early Iron Age According to Sugimoto (2015), the Iron Age IB (1150–1000 BCE) cities in the northeastern region of the Sea of Galilee likely reflect the activities of the Kingdom of Geshur, mentioned in the Bible. Also, the later Iron Age IIA–B cities here are linked with the southern expansion of the Aram-Damascus kingdom. Among these Galilean cities are Tel Dover, Tel 'En Gev, Tel Hadar, Tel Bethsaida, and Tel Kinrot.David T. Sugimoto 2015, History and Nature of Iron Age Cities in the Northeastern Sea of Galilee Region: A Preliminary Overview. ORIENT Volume 50, 2015
Hellenistic and Roman periods The Sea of Galilee lies on the ancient Via Maris, which linked Egypt with the northern empires. The Greeks, Hasmoneans, and Romans founded flourishing towns and settlements on the lake including Hippos and Tiberias. Contemporary Roman–Jewish historian Flavius Josephus was so impressed by the area that he wrote, "One may call this place the ambition of Nature"; he also reports a thriving fishing industry at this time, with 230 boats regularly working in the lake. Archaeologists discovered one such boat, nicknamed the Jesus Boat, in 1986.Rabinovich, Abraham (1999). "'Jesus Boat' Causes Ripples". Jerusalem Post.
In 135 CE, Bar Kokhba's revolt was put down which was part of the Jewish–Roman wars. The Romans responded by banning all Jews from Jerusalem. The center of Jewish culture and learning shifted to the region of Galilee and the Kinneret, particularly Tiberias. It was in this region that the Jerusalem Talmud was compiled.
Middle Ages In 1187, Sultan Saladin defeated the armies of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem at the Battle of Hattin, largely because he was able to cut the Crusaders off from the valuable fresh water of the Sea of Galilee.
Early 20th century
In 1917, the British defeated Ottoman Turkish forces and took control of Palestine, while France took control of Syria. In the carve-up of the Ottoman territories between Britain and France, it was agreed that Britain would retain control of Palestine while France would control Syria. This required the allies to fix the border between the Mandatory Palestine and the French Mandate of Syria.The Preamble of the League of Nations Mandate The boundary was defined in broad terms by the Franco-British Boundary Agreement of December 1920, which drew it across the middle of the lake.Franco-British Convention on Certain Points Connected with the Mandates for Syria and the Lebanon, Palestine and Mesopotamia, signed 23 December 1920. Text available in American Journal of International Law, Vol. 16, No. 3, 1922, 122–126. However, the commission established by the 1920 treaty redrew the boundary. The High Commissioner of Palestine, Herbert Samuel, had sought full control of the Sea of Galilee.Gideon Biger, The Boundaries of Modern Palestine, 1840–1947 (London and New York: Routledge Curzon, 2004) , p. 130. The negotiations led to the inclusion into the Palestine territory of the whole Sea of Galilee, both sides of the River Jordan, Lake Hula, Dan spring, and part of the Yarmouk.The Boundaries of Modern Palestine, 1840–1947, pp. 150 and 130. The final border approved in 1923 followed a 10-meter wide strip along the lake's northeastern shore,The Boundaries of Modern Palestine, 1840–1947, p. 145. cutting Mandatory Syria (State of Damascus) off from the lake. Geographer Gideon Biger suggests that the three factors determining the position of these boundaries were (1) "biblical-historical", (2) Zionist pressure to include as many water resources as possible in Mandatory Palestine, and (3) the human and physical landscape.The Boundaries of Modern Palestine, 1840–1947, pp. 149–150.
The British and French Agreement provided that existing rights over the use of the waters of the River Jordan by the inhabitants of Syria would be maintained; the government of Syria would have the right to erect a new pier at Semakh on Lake Tiberias or jointly use the existing pier; persons or goods passing between the landing-stage on the Lake of Tiberias and Semakh would not be subject to customs regulations, and the Syrian government would have access to the said landing-stage; the inhabitants of Syria and Lebanon would have the same fishing and navigation rights on Lakes Huleh, Tiberias and River Jordan, while the government of Mandatory Palestine would be responsible for policing of lakes.Agreement between His Majesty's Government and the French Government respecting the Boundary Line between Syria and Palestine from the Mediterranean to El Hámmé , Treaty Series No. 13 (1923), Cmd. 1910. Page 7.
State of Israel
On 15 May 1948, Syria invaded the recently founded state of Israel, capturing territory along the Sea of Galilee. Under the 1949 armistice agreement between Israel and Syria, Syria occupied the northeast shoreline of the Sea of Galilee. The agreement stated that the armistice line was "not to be interpreted as having any relation whatsoever to ultimate territorial arrangements." Syria remained in possession of the lake's northeast shoreline until the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
In the 1950s, Israel formulated a plan to link the Kinneret with the rest of the country's water infrastructure via the National Water Carrier, in order to supply the water demand of the growing country. The carrier was completed in 1964, providing more than three quarters of Israel's irrigation needs, a use that has shifter primarily to providing potable water.Tal, Alon. Pollution in a Promised Land, University of California Press, 2002. Accessed June 30, 2026. "When it was completed in 1964, the Carrier provided two-thirds of the country's water. Of this, 80 percent went for irrigation. With the change in Israel's demographics, however, today half goes to the drinking water supply, and by 2010 this may be as much as 80 percent." The Israeli plan, which the Arab League opposed while endorsing its own plan to divert the headwaters of the Jordan River, sparked political and sometimes even armed confrontations over the Jordan basin.
In October 2025, Israel began pumping desalinated water into the Sea of Galilee, in a world first. The project began by pumping of water per hour, which was increased in March 2026 to per hour. The water is sent from plants near the Mediterranean Sea via the Reverse Carrier to the Tzalmon Stream in Ein Ravid, where it replenishes local water supplies and makes its way to replenish the Sea of Gallilee."Israel launches historic project to send desalinated water into Sea of Galilee", The Jerusalem Post, March 5, 2026. Accessed June 30, 2026. "Israel has begun a historic operation to pump desalinated water into the Sea of Galilee as part of a major effort to stabilize the country’s water supply amid climate change and ongoing wartime conditions, the Israel Water Authority and national water company Mekorot announced this week. The initiative, launched Tuesday, will significantly increase the flow of desalinated seawater to the lake using the 'Reverse Carrier' system, one of Israel’s most ambitious water infrastructure projects of the past decade. The system is now pumping about 4,000 cubic meters of water per hour, in addition to roughly 1,000 cubic meters per hour that has been flowing since December 2025 from the Ein Ravid area."
Geology