town or village

Tiberias

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Lifetime: c. AD 20 – …

Founded by Herod Antipas on the Sea of Galilee and named after Tiberius.

Events

c. AD 20Herod Antipas founds Tiberias
c. AD 920The Aleppo Codex, the model Masoretic Bible, is written in Tiberias

History

Tiberias lies on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee, below steep hills, with hot springs at Hammath just to the south. Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee, founded it about AD 20 and named it after the emperor Tiberius. Josephus says the site was cleared of tombs, so that observant Jews held it unclean; Antipas settled it with Galileans, newcomers, poor people and freed slaves, compelling some to come and giving others houses and land. Tiberias replaced Sepphoris as the leading city of Galilee.

In the New Testament the city appears only in John: boats from Tiberias came near the place where the multitude had eaten bread, and John calls the lake the sea of Tiberias. The Gospels do not say that Jesus ever entered it.

Nero gave Tiberias to King Agrippa II. When the revolt broke out in AD 66, a party led by Jesus son of Sapphias burned Antipas' palace, which was adorned with figures of living creatures. Josephus walled the city, but in 67 its elders went out to Vespasian, the gates were opened, and the Romans broke down part of the south wall to march in. After the war Tiberias became a centre of Jewish learning. The Talmud names it as the last seat of the Sanhedrin, and the Jerusalem Talmud took shape largely in its schools by about AD 400.

At Hammath, excavations by Moshe Dothan in 1961–1963 uncovered a synagogue whose mosaic floor, usually dated to the fourth century, shows the zodiac around the sun god Helios, beside a Torah shrine and menorahs. Epiphanius tells of Joseph of Tiberias, a Jew of the city who became a Christian and received leave from Constantine to build churches in Jewish towns, and who tried to turn an unfinished temple of Hadrian in Tiberias into a church. Excavations led by Yizhar Hirschfeld from 1989 have uncovered parts of the Roman and Byzantine city.

Scripture: John 6:1; John 6:23; John 21:1

Sources

Josephus, Antiquities 18.36-38 (the founding); Life 37-38 (Tiberias and Sepphoris); Life 64-67 (the palace burned); Jewish War 2.573 (the walls); Antiquities 20.159 and Jewish War 2.252 (given to Agrippa II); Jewish War 3.445-461 (the surrender to Vespasian)
Babylonian Talmud, Rosh Hashanah 31a-b (the wanderings of the Sanhedrin)
Epiphanius, Panarion 30.4-12 (Joseph of Tiberias)
M. Dothan, Hammath Tiberias: Early Synagogues and the Hellenistic and Roman Remains (1983)
Y. Hirschfeld, Excavations at Tiberias, 1989-1994 (IAA Reports 22, 2004)
G. Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash (2nd ed., 1996) (the Jerusalem Talmud)

Checked against its sources; not yet read by a historian.

Verses (1)

John 6:23: (Howbeit there came other boats from Tiberias nigh unto the place where they did eat bread, after that the Lord had given thanks:)

King James Version