Heiodian Coin of Tiberias,
OJrerje— Legend in Greek " of Herod the Tctrarch ;" palm-branch and the date 33 (A.D, 29). i^ctierse— Wreath with legend " Tiberias."
2. Scriptural Mention.- — It is remarkable that the Gospels give us no information that the Saviour, who spent so much of his public life in Galilee, ever visited Tiberias. The surer meaning of the expression, " He went away beyond the sea of Galilee of Tiberias," in John vi, 1 {jripav Trig ^a\aa(Tr)(; rr/f FaXiXoiaQ rris TilSspidSog), is not that Jesus embarked from Tiberias, but, as Meyer remarks, that he crossed from the west side of the Galikean sea of Tiberias to the opposite side. A reason has been assigned for this singular fact, which may or may not account for it. As Herod, the murderer of John the Baptist, resided most of the time in this city, the Saviour may have kept purposely away from it, on account of the sanguinary and artful (Luke xiii, 32) character of that ruler. It is certain, from Luke xxiii, 8, that though Herod had heard of the fame of Christ, he never saw him in person until they met at Jerusalem, and never witnessed any of his miracles. It is possible that the character of the place, so much like that of a Roman colony, may have been a reason why he who was sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel performed so little labor in its vicinity. The head of the lake, and especially the Plain of Gennesaret, where the population was more dense and so thoroughly Jewish, formed the central point of his Galitean ministry-. The feast of Herod and his courtiers, before whom the daugh- ter of Herodias <lanced, and, in fidfilment of the tetrarch's rash oath, deinanded the head of the dauntless reformer, was held in all probability at Tiberias, the capital of the province. If, as Josephus mentions {Ant. xviii, 5, 2), the Baptist was imprisoned at the time in the castle of Machierus beyond the Jordan, the order for his exe- cution could have been sent thither, and the bloody trophy forwarded to the implacable Herodias at the palace where she usually resided. Gams {Johannes der Tciufer ini Gfdngniss, p. 47, etc.) suggests that John, instead of being kept all the time in the same castle, may have been confined in different places at different times. The three passages already referred to are the oidy ones in the New Test, which mention Tiberias by name, viz. John vi, 1 ; xxi, 1 (in both instances designating the lake on which the town was situ- ated), and vi, 23, where boats are said to have come from Tiberias near to the place at which Jesus had miracidously supplied the wants of the multitude. Thus the lake in the time of Christ, among its other appellations, bore also that of the principal city in the neighborhood; and in like manner, at the present day, h'a/ir J'uharieh, "Sea of Tiberias," is almost the only name under which it is known among the inhabitants of the country.
3. Later Jewish Importance. — Tiberias has an inter- esting history, apart from its strictly Biblical associa- tions. It bore a conspicuous part in the wars between the Jews and the Romans, as its fortifications were an important military station (Josephus, War, ii, 20, 6; iii,
TIBEUIAS
399
TIBERIAS
10, 1 ; Life, § 8 sq.). The Sanhedrim, subsequently to the fall of Jerusalem, after a temporary st)journ at Jam- iiia and Sepphoris, became lixed there about the middle of the 2d century. Celebrated schools of Jewish learn- ing flourished there through a succession of several cen- turies. The Mishna was compiled at this place by the great rabbi Judah hak-Kodesh (A.D. 190). The Maso- rah,or body of traditions, which has transmitted the read- ings of the Hebrew text of the Old Test., and preserved, by means of the vowel system, the pronunciation of the Hebrew, originated, in a great measure, at Tiberias. The place passed, under Constantine, into the power of the Christians; and during the period of the Crusades it was lost and won repeatedly by the different combatants. Since that time it has been possessed successively by Persians, Arabs, and Turks; and it contains now, under the Turkish rule, a mixed population of Mohammedans, Jews, and Christians, variously estimated at from two to four thousand. The Jews constitute, perhaps, one fourth of the entire number. They regard Tiberias as one of the four holy places (Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed, are the others), in which, as thej' say, prayer must be offered without ceasing, or the world would fall back in- stantly into chaos. One of their singular opinions is that the Messiah, when he appears, will emerge from the waters of the lake, and, landing at Tiberias, proceed to Safed, and there establish his throne on the highest
original site, except that it is confined to narrower lira- its than those of tlie original city. According to Jose- phus C^-t/H § 05), Tiberias was 30 stadia from Hippo, 00 from Gadara, and 120 from Scythopolis; according to the Talmud, it was 13 Koman miles from Sepplioris. The place is four and a half hours from Nazareth, one hour from Mejdel, possibly the ancient Magdala, and thirteen hours, by the shortest route, from ]?anias or Civsarea Philippi. Near Tubarieh, about a mile farther south along the shore, are the celebrated warm baths, which the Koman naturalists (riiny, lligt, Nut. v, 15) reckoned among the greatest known curiosities of the world. The intermediate space between these baths and the town abounds with the traces of ruins, such as the foundations of walls, heaps of stone, blocks of gran- ite, and the like; and it cannot be doubted, therefore, that the ancient Tiberias occu]iied also this ground, and was much more extensive than its modern successor. From such indications, and from the explicit testimony of Josephus, who says {Ani. xviii, 2, 3) that Tiberias was near Ammaus ('A|(jU((oi'»e)) or the Warm Baths, there can be no uncertainty respecting the identifica- tion of the site of this important city. (See also the Mishna, Shuhb. iii, 4; and other Talmudical passages in Lightfoot's Hoi-ce Heh. p. 133 sq. Comp. Wichmanns- hausen, De Thermis Tiberiensibus, in Ugolino, Thesaur, torn, vii.) These springs contain sulphur, salt, and iron ;