The name Aphek or Aphec[1] refers to one of several locations mentioned in the Hebrew Bible as the scenes of a number of battles between the Israelites and the Arameans and Philistines: After the turn of the 20th century the predominant opinion was that the location of all these battles is one and the same, and that the town lay east of the Jordan.
[citation needed] Initially it was thought that the name is preserved in the now depopulated village of Fiq near Kibbutz Afik, three miles east of the Sea of Galilee, where an ancient mound, Tell Soreg, had been identified.
[2][3] The site most favoured now by the archaeologists is Tel 'En Gev/Khirbet el-'Asheq, a mound located within Kibbutz Ein Gev.
[4][5] A more recent theory has focused on regarding this same Aphek also as the scene of the two battles against the Philistines [dubious – discuss] mentioned by the Bible - the supposition [citation needed] being that the Syrians[dubious – discuss] were invading Israel from the western side, which was their most vulnerable.
[7] Eusebius, when writing about Eben-ezer in his Onomasticon, says that it is "the place from which the Gentiles seized the Ark, between Jerusalem and Ascalon, near the village of Bethsamys (Beit Shemesh),"[8] a locale that corresponds with Conder's identification.