But while history and archaeology tell us a great deal about Taricheae, we know very little about a Galilean town or village that would have been known as Magdala in the first century...No contemporary early Roman sources mention a town called Magdala on the western shores of the Sea of Galilee. However, both the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds—the two major collections of Jewish oral law and commentary written down between the third and sixth centuries—do reference the existence of one Magdala—Migdal Nunayya, or "Tower of the Fish"—in very close proximity to Tiberias... In one story, the second-century rabbi Shimon bar...