That seems so strange. I googled it up and it shows up 16 times in the gospels. It amazes me that there is not a mention of it in Acts at all. That seems like an odd ommision to make considering its importance in the gospels. What could be the reason why it is not mentioned?
Yes, there are a lot of references to
Kapharnaoum/
Kapernaoum (Capernaum) in the gospels, by virtue of Jesus dwelling there in the early part of His ministry and due to the fact that a few of His disciples apparently lived there (say, Simon Peter and Andrew) but none in Acts.
No sources have been found for the belief that Capernaum was involved in the bloody Jewish revolts against the Romans, the First Jewish-Roman War (AD 66-73) or Bar Kokhba’s revolt (132-135), although there is reason to believe that the historian Josephus, one of the Jewish generals during the earlier revolt, was taken to “
Kapharnakos” after a fall from his horse in nearby Bethsaida (
Vita, 72).
Apparently, the town was still inhabited by the 4th century AD - St. Epiphanius of Salamis tells us that the population was entirely Jewish. Even so, some passages of the Mishna stress that the Jewish population of Capharnaum during the first three centuries of the Christian era are divided between the orthodox Jews and the
minim (“heretics”; some take this as a reference to Jewish Christians).
It would also seem that between the end of the 3rd and the first decades of the 4th century, the Jewish Christians of Capharnaum had substantially increased to the point that Rabbi Issi of Caesarea cursed the inhabitants of the village thus:
“
Rabbi Issi of Caesarea explained this verse in reference to Minuth…Good is Hananijah, nephew of R. Jehoshua; bad is the sons of Kefar Nahum.”
-Midrash Qoh Rabba VII: 26
It is difficult to tell when exactly and to what extent the gentile-Christians supplanted the Jewish Christian community of Capharnaum. There is however no reasonable doubt that the mid-5th century octagonal church in the town was built by gentile-Christians. In the Byzantine period Orthodox Jews kept living in Capharnaum alongside Christians who in the meantime increased considerably. The sharp increase of Christians among the inhabitants of Capharnaum is clearly documented by archaeological findings; in fact, in any sector of the village so far excavated, most of the houses have imported bowls having stamped crosses.
Eventually, however, in the early 7th century many houses were abandoned and left to ruin, suggesting that the old population of Capharnaum, i.e. Jews and Christians alike, left the site. The fact that in the early Arab period both the synagogue and the octagonal church were abandoned seems to suggest that the newcomers were predominantly Muslims. The town itself was finally left to decline during the 11th century AD, as it was too exposed for Crusaders to safely build there, despite their considerable interest in its religious importance. In the 13th century, a visitor reported that “
the once renowned town of Capernaum is at present just despicable; it numbers only seven houses of poor fishermen.”
