Prn'^-^''\ T^ ^'"''^'" ^■'' ^'i^-"»'i=~Tn-o Hymns to Pr"'r^t^■, and L:rtracts from the Vedas. Tlie East In- dia Company erected a monument to his mcmorv in St,
ecUonVn" ',''"■* ^ "'"^''^ '" ^^'''-^^- A c^-^Plete To r "'^l'::;™'-'^^' '" 6 vols. 4to, was published bv ladv Jone. in 1,99; and another appeared, in 13 vols. 8vo, in A»0'. witli a life of the author by lord Teignmouth
Jonsson, Finx (known also by the Latin name of Finnus Johannaus), the historian of the Icelandic Church and literature, was born on the 10th of January, 1704, at Hitardal, in Iceland, where his father, Jon H^- dorsson, was minister. He was educated at the School of Skalholt, and in 1725 passed to the University of Co- penhagen. On his return to Iceland his intention was to become a lawj'er, but the death of his uncle, a parish priest, who left behind him a numerous family of small children, led his father to request him to alter his views to the Church, that he might bring up the orphans. He obtained the vacant benefice, brought up the family, married, and in 1754 was appointed to the bishopric of Skalholt. He was verj' attentive to the revenues of his diocese, and the account of his episcopate by Petursson is chiefly occupied with his disputes with refractory tenants of Church property. He died on the 23d of July, 1789. He composed several w'orks in Latin and Icelandic, especially a Historia Ecclesidstica Islandioe, first published with valuable additions by his son Finn- son (Copenhagen, 1772-8, 4 vols. 4to), and continued by Petiu-sson down to 1840 (ib. 1841), a valuable and inter- esting work, embracing the literary as well as ecclesias- tical affairs of Iceland. — English Cyclop, s. v,
Jop'pa (Heb. Yapho', iS^, Josh, xix, 46; 2 Chron. ii, 16 ; Jonah i, 3, or XiS^, Ezra iii, 7 ; beauty ,■ Sept., N. T., and Josephus 'loTTTr*/, other Greek writers 'Ioi/tttij, 'IwTr/;, or 'lowrj ; Vulgate Joppe ; Auth.Yers. " Japho," except in Jonah ; usually " Joppe" in the Apocrj'pha), a town on the south-west coast of Palestine, the port of Jerusalem in the days of Solomon, as it has been ever since.
1. Legends. — The etymology of the name is variously explained ; Rabbinical writers deriving it from Japhet, but classical geographers from lojm (lont]), daughter of jEoIus and wife of Cepheus, Andromeda's father, its reputed founder ; others interpreting it " the watch- tower of joy," and so forth (Reland, Palast. p. 864). The fact is, that, from its being a sea-port, it had a pro- fane as well as a sacred history. Pliny, following Mela {De situ Orb. i, 12), says that it was of antediluvian an- tiquity {Hist. Nat. v, 14) ; and even Sir John Maunde- ville, in the 14th century, bears witness — though, it must be confessed, a clumsy one — to that tradition {Early Travels in P. p. 142). According to Josephus, it origin- ally belonged to the Phoenicians {A nt. xiii, 15, 4). Here, writes Strabo, some say Andromeda was exposed to the whale {Geogi-aph. xvi, p. 759 ; comp. T.I tiller's Hist. Grcec. Fragm. iv, 325, and his Geograph. Grcec. Hfin. i, 79), and he appeals to its elevated position in behalf of those who laid the scene there ; though, in order to do so consis- tently, he had already shown that it would be neces- sary to transport /Ethiopia into Plioenicia (Strabo, i, 43). However, in Pliny's age — and Josephus had just before affirmed the same ( H'«r, iii, 9, 3) — they still showed the chains by which Andromeda was bound; and not only so, but ]\I. Scaurns the younger, the same that was so much employed in Judfea liy Pompey ( War, i, 6, 2 sq.), had the bones of the monster transjjorted to Rome from Joppa, where till then thej' had been ex- liiliitod (]Mela, ibid.), and displr.yed them there during Ills a'llileship to the public amongst other prodigies. Xor \\ ould they have been uninteresting to the modem geologist, if his report be correct-, for the}' measured forty feet in length, the span of the ribs exceeding that of the Indian elephant, and the thickness of the spine or vertebra being one foot and a half (" sesquipedalis," i. e. in circumference — when Solinus says " semipedalis," he means in diameter, see Pliny, Hist. Nat. ix, 6 and the note, Delphin ed.). Reland woidd trace the adven- tures of Jonah in this legendary guise [see Jonah]; but it is far more probable that it symbolizes the first interchange of commerce between tlie Greeks, personi- fied in their errant hero Perseus, and the Phoenicians, whose lovely, but till then unexplored clime may be shadowed forth in the fair virgin Andromeda. Perseus,
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in the tale, is said to have plunged his dagger into the right shoulder of the monster. I'ossibly he may have discovered or improved the harbor, the roar from whose foaming reefs on the north could scarcely have been surpassed by the barkings of Scylla or Charybdis. Even the chains shown there may have been those by which his ship was attached to the shore. Kings used by the Romans for mooring their vessels are still to be seen near Terracina, in the south angle of the ancient port (Murray's Ilandhk.fvr S. Itahj, \^. 10, 2d ed.).