Tiberias ( ; , ; ) is a city on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel. A major Jewish center during Late Antiquity, it has been considered since the 18th century one of Judaism's Four Holy Cities, along with Jerusalem, Hebron, and Safed. In , it had a population of .
Tiberias was founded around 20 CE by Herod Antipas and was named after Roman emperor Tiberius. It became a major political and religious hub of the Jews in the Land of Israel after the destruction of Jerusalem and the desolation of Judea during the Jewish–Roman wars. From the time of the second through the tenth centuries CE, Tiberias was the largest Jewish city in Galilee, and much of the Mishna and the Jerusalem Talmud were compiled there.Conder and Kitchener (1881), SWP I, p. 419-420 "The Sanhedrin, after several removes, came to Tiberias about the middle of the second century, under the celebrated Rabbi Judah Hakkodesh, and from this time Tiberias became the central point of Jewish learning for several centuries. It was here that both the Mishna and the Gemara were compiled." Tiberias flourished during the Early Muslim period (c. 7th–10th centuries CE), when it served as the capital of Jund al-Urdunn and became a multi-cultural trading center.Hirschfeld, Y. (2007). Post-Roman Tiberias: between East and West. Post-Roman Towns, Trade and Settlement in Europe and Byzantium: Byzantium, Pliska, and the Balkans, 5, p. 193–204. The city's importance declined in some periods due to earthquake damage and foreign incursions. After the Galilee earthquake of 1837, the city was rebuilt and grew steadily following the First Jewish Aliyah in the 1880s.
During the Ottoman period, Tiberias had a predominantly Muslim population in the early centuries, while from the late Ottoman period, the city became increasingly mixed and at times, had a Jewish majority or plurality. By the late Ottoman and early British Mandate period, it remained a mixed city with significant Jewish, Muslim, and Christian population. By the late Mandatory Palestine period, it had a majority Jewish population, but with a significant Arab community. During the 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine, fighting broke out between the Jewish residents of Tiberias and its Palestinian Arab minority. As the Haganah took over, British troops evacuated the entire Palestinian Arab population; they were refused reentry after the war, such that today the city has an almost exclusively Jewish population. After the war ended, the new Israeli authorities destroyed the Old City of Tiberias. A large number of Jewish immigrants to Israel subsequently settled in Tiberias.
Today, Tiberias is an important tourist center due to its proximity to the Sea of Galilee and religious sanctity to Judaism and Christianity. The city also serves as a regional industrial and commercial center. Its immediate neighbour to the south, Hammat Tiberias, which is now part of modern Tiberias, has been known for its hot springs, believed to cure skin and other ailments, for some two thousand years.
Etymology The city of Tiberias was named after the Roman Emperor Tiberius.
A Midrash regarding the city's name appears in the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Megillah 6A:
"Rabbi Yirmiya said: [...] And why is it called Tiberias? Because it sits at the navel (tabur) of the Land of Israel".
Rashi, in his commentary, provides two interpretations of the Midrash. The first explains the word "navel" (tabur) as referring to the lowest point in the Land of Israel. The second interpretation suggests that Tiberias is situated at the geographical center of the Land of Israel. Ishtori Haparchi later substantiated this claim through measurements of the entire land, demonstrating its accuracy.
Biblical relevance Hebrew Bible and Talmud Jewish tradition holds that Tiberias was built on the site of the ancient Israelite village of Rakkath (or Rakkat), first mentioned in the Book of Joshua (). In Talmudic times, the Jews still referred to it by this name.Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Megillah 5b
Gospels See Diocese of Tiberias for ecclesiastical history
The city is mentioned directly only in , noting that boats from Tiberias came near the place where Jesus had fed the 5,000.
History Roman period Herodian period Tiberias was founded sometime around 18–20 CE in the Herodian Tetrarchy of Galilee and Perea by the Roman client king Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great.John Everett Heath, The Concise Dictionary of World Place-Names (Oxford 2017) gives the date 18 CE in the entry for Tiberias. Geoffrey Bromiley in the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia Vol 2, 1979 gives the date 20 CE. They both say it was built where the village of Rakkat used to be. Herod Antipas made it the capital of his realm in Galilee and named it after the Roman emperor Tiberius. The city was built in immediate proximity to a spa which had developed around seventeen natural mineral hot springs, Hammat Tiberias. Tiberias was at first a strictly pagan city, but later became populated mainly by Jews, with its growing spiritual and religious status exerting a strong influence on balneological practices. Conversely, in Antiquities of the Jews, the Roman-Jewish historian Josephus calls the village with hot springs Emmaus, today's Hammat Tiberias, located near Tiberias.Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews XVIII.2.3 This name also appears in his work The Jewish War.Josephus, Flavius, The Jewish Wars, translated by William Whiston, Book 4, chapter 1, paragraph 3
Under the Roman Empire, the city was known by its Koine Greek name Τιβεριάς (Tiberiás, ).
In the days of Herod Antipas, some of the most religiously orthodox Jews, who were struggling against the process of Hellenisation, which had affected even some priestly groups, refused to settle there: the presence of a cemetery rendered the site ritually unclean for the Jews and particularly for the priestly caste. Antipas settled many non-Jews there from rural Galilee and other parts of his domains in order to populate his new capital, and built a palace on the acropolis. The prestige of Tiberias was so great that the Sea of Galilee soon came to be named the Sea of Tiberias; however, the Jewish population continued to call it Yam HaKineret, its traditional name. The city was governed by a city council of 600 with a committee of ten until 44 CE, when a Roman procurator was set over the city after the death of Herod Agrippa I. The city is estimated to have had a population between 4,500 and 15,000 during the first century CE.
Tiberias is mentioned in as the location from which boats had sailed to the opposite, eastern side of the Sea of Galilee. The crowd seeking Jesus after the miraculous feeding of the 5000 used these boats to travel back to Capernaum on the north-western part of the lake.
In 61 CE, Herod Agrippa II annexed the city to his kingdom whose capital was Caesarea Philippi.
Great Revolt and Bar Kokhba revolt During the First Jewish–Roman War, the Jewish rebels took control of the city and destroyed Herod's palace, and were able to prevent the city from being pillaged by the army of Agrippa II, the Jewish ruler who had remained loyal to Rome.Crossan, John Dominic (1999) Birth of Christianity: Discovering What Happened in the Years Immediately After the Execution of Christ. Continuum International Publishing Group, , p 232 Eventually, the rebels were expelled from Tiberias, and while most other cities in the provinces of Judaea, Galilee and Idumea were razed, Tiberias was spared this fate because its inhabitants had decided not to fight against Rome.Thomson, 1859, vol 2, p. 72 It became a mixed city after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE; with Judea subdued, the surviving southern Jewish population migrated to Galilee.Safrai Zeev (1994) The Economy of Roman Palestine Routledge, , p 199 An epitaph found in Taenarum, Laconia (modern Kyparissa, Greece) records a man named Justus, son of Andromache, from Tiberias. He is believed to have been a first- or second-generation refugee displaced from Tiberias in the aftermath of the revolt.
There is no direct indication that Tiberias, as well as the rest of Galilee, took part in the Bar Kokhba revolt of 132–136 CE, thus allowing it to continue to exist, despite a heavy economic decline due to the war. Following the expulsion of Jews from Judea after 135 CE, Tiberias and its neighbour Sepphoris (Hebrew name: Tzippori) became the major Jewish cultural centres.
Late Roman period According to the Talmud, in 145 CE, Rabbi Simeon bar Yochai, who was very familiar with Galilee, hiding there for over a decade, "cleansed the city of ritual impurity", allowing the Jewish leadership to resettle there from the Judea, which they were forced to leave as fugitives. The Sanhedrin, the Jewish court, also fled from Jerusalem during the Great Jewish Revolt against Rome, and after several attempted moves, in search of stability, eventually settled in Tiberias in about 220 CE.Mercer Dictionary of the Bible Edited by Watson E. Mills, Roger Aubrey Bullard, Mercer University Press, (1998) p 917 It was to be its final meeting place before its disbanding in 425 CE. When Johanan bar Nappaha (d. 279) settled in Tiberias, the city became the focus of Jewish religious scholarship in the land and the so-named Jerusalem Talmud was compiled by his school in Tiberias between 230–270 CE. Tiberias' 13 synagogues served the spiritual needs of a growing Jewish population. Tombs of famous rabbis Yohanan ben Zakkai, Akiva and Maimonides are also located in the city.
Byzantine period During the Byzantine period, Tiberias was incorporated into the province of Palaestina Secunda. In the 6th century Tiberias was still the seat of Jewish religious learning. In light of this, the Letter of Simeon of Beth Arsham urged the Christians of Palaestina to seize the leaders of Judaism in Tiberias, to put them to the rack, and to compel them to command the Jewish king, Dhu Nuwas, to desist from persecuting the Christians in Najran.
In 614, Tiberias was the site where, during the final Jewish revolt against the Byzantine Empire, parts of the Jewish population supported the Persian invaders; the Jewish rebels were financed by Benjamin of Tiberias, a man of immense wealth; according to Christian sources, during the revolt Christians were massacred and churches destroyed. In 628, the Byzantine army returned to Tiberias upon the surrender of Jewish rebels and the end of the Persian occupation after they were defeated in the battle of Nineveh. A year later, influenced by radical Christian monks, Emperor Heraclius instigated a wide-scale slaughter of the Jews, which practically emptied Galilee of most its Jewish population, with survivors fleeing to Egypt.
Early Muslim period During the Muslim conquest of Syria, Tiberias capitulated to the Arab commander Shurahbil ibn Hasana in . As part of the agreement, half the houses and churches were ceded to the Muslims, the other half to the Christians.Le Strange, 1890, p. 340, quoting Yakut Tiberias thereafter became the capital of Jund al-Urdunn (the military district of [the River] Jordan). Its territory corresponded with the Byzantine province of Palaestina Secunda (Palestine II, i.e. the Galilee and southern Lebanese mountains) with the additions of the Mediterranean coastal towns of Acre and Tyre and Jerash east of the Jordan River. Caliph Umar () allowed 70 Jewish families from Tiberias to form the core of a renewed Jewish presence in Jerusalem.