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• Τιβεριάς

(New Test. and Josephus Τιβεριάς , Talmud טבריא ), the most important city on the Lake of Galilee in the time of Christ, and the only one that has survived to modern times, still retaining the same name.

1. Origin and Early Associations. — The place is first mentioned in the ‘ New Test. (John 6:1; John 6:23; John 21:1), and then by Josephus (Ant. 18:2, 3; War, 2, 9, 1), who states that it was built by Herod Antipas, and was named by him in honor of the emperor Tiberius. It was probably not a new town, but a restored or enlarged one merely; for Rakkath (Joshua 19:35), which is said in the Talmud (Jerusalem Megillah, fol. 701; comp; Otho, Lex. Rabb. p. 755) to have occupied the same position, lay in the tribe of Naphtali (if we follow the boundaries as indicated by the clearest passages), and Tiberius appears to have been within the limits of the same tribe (Matthew 4:13). If the graves mentioned by Josephus (Ant. loc. cit.) are any objection, they must. militate against this assumption likewise (Lightfoot, Chorog. Cent. c. 72-74). The same remark may be made, respecting Jerome's statement that Tiberias succeeded to the place of the earlier Chinnereth (Onomasticon, s.v.); but this latter town has been located by some farther north and by others farther south than the site of Tiberias. The tenacity with which its Roman name has adhered to the spot (see below) indicates its entire reconstruction; for, generally speaking, foreign names in the East applied to towns previously known under names derived from the native dialect-as, e.g., Epiphania for Hammath (Joshua 19:35), Palmyra for Tadmor (2 Chronicles 8:4), Ptolemais for Akko (Acts 21:7) - lost their foothold as soon as the foreign power passed away which had imposed them, and gave place again to the original appellations.

Tiberias was the capital of Galilee from the time of its origin until the reign of Herod Agrippa II, who changed the seat of power back again to Sepphoris, where it had been before the founding of the new city. Many of the inhabitants were Greeks and Romans, and foreign customs prevailed there to such an extent as to give offence to the stricter Jews. (See HERODIAN). Herod, the founder of Tiberias, had passed most of his early life in Italy, and had brought with him ‘ thence a taste for the amusements and magnificent buildings with which he had been familiar in that country. ‘ He built a stadium there, like that in which the Roman youth trained themselves for feats of rivalry and war. He erected a palace, which he adorned with figures of animals, "contrary," as Josephus says (Life, § 12,13, 64), "to the law of our countrymen." The place was so much the less attractive to the Jews, because, as the same authority states (Ant. 18:2, 3), it stood on the site of an ancient burial-ground, and was viewed, therefore, by the more scrupulous among them almost as a polluted and forbidden locality. Tiberias was one of the four cities which Nero added to the kingdom of Agrippa (Josephus, War, 20:13, 2). Coins of the city of Tiberias are still extant, which are referred to the times of Tiberius, Trajan, and Hadrian.

2. Scriptural Mention. — It is remarkable that the Gospels give us no information that the Savior, 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 6:1 (πέραν τῆς θαλάσσης τῆς Γαλιλαίας τῆς Τιβεριάδος ), is not that Jesus embarked from Tiberias, but, as Meyer remarks, that he crossed from the west side of the Galilean 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 Savior may have kept purposely away from it, on account of the sanguinary and artful (Luke 13:32) character of that ruler. It is certain, from Luke 23:8, 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 Galilean ministry. The feast of Herod and his courtiers, before whom the daughter of Herodias danced, and, in fulfillment of the tetrarch's rash oath, demanded the head of the dauntless reformer, was held in all probability at Tiberias, the capital of the province. If, as Josephus mentions (Ant. 18:5, 2), the Baptist was imprisoned at the time in the castle of Machaerus beyond the Jordan, the order for his execution could have been sent thither, and the bloody trophy forwarded to the implacable Herodias at the palace where she usually resided. Gams (Johannes der Taufer im Gefangniss, 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 only ones in the New Test. which mention Tiberias by name, viz. John 6:1; John 21:1 (in both instances designating the lake on which the town was situated), and John 6:23, where boats are said to have come from Tiberias near to the place at which Jesus had miraculously 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, Bahr Tubarieh, "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 interesting history, apart from its strictly Biblical associations. It bore a conspicuous part in the wars between the Jews and the Romans, as its fortifications were an important military station (Josephus, War, 2, 20, 6; 47, 10, 1; Life, § 8 sq.). The Sanhedrim, subsequently to the fall of Jerusalem, after a temporary sojourn at Jammia and Sepphoris, became fixed there about the middle of the 2nd century. Celebrated schools of Jewish learning flourished there through a succession of several centuries. The Mishna was compiled at this place by the great rabbi Judah hak-Kodesh (A.D. 190). The Masortah, or body of traditions, which has transmitted the readings of the Hebrew text of the Old Test., and preserved, 4by 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 they say, prayer must be offered without ceasing, or the world would fall back instantly 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 summit in Galilee. In addition to the language of the particular country, as Poland, Germany, Spain, from which they or their families emigrated, most of the Jews here speak also the Rabbinic Hebrew and modern Arabic. They occupy a quarter in the middle of the town, adjacent to the lake; just north of which, near the shore, is a Latin convent and church, occupied by a solitary Italian monk. There is a place of interment near Tiberias, in which a distinguished rabbi is said to be buried with 14,000 of his disciples around him. The grave of the Arabian philosopher Lokman, as Burckhardt states, was pointed out here in the 14th century.

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