Tiberias

Tiberias , town (1994 pop. 36,400), NE Israel, on the Sea of Galilee, 682 ft (208 m) below sea level. It is one of the four holy cities of Judaism and a trade center for agricultural settlements. A resort town, Tiberias has hotels, a hot springs spa, and a lake port. There are machine shops, fisheries, and textile factories.

Named for Emperor Tiberius, the town was built (c.AD 20) by Herod Antipas; there are ruins of the baths he built. After the destruction of Jerusalem, Tiberias became (2d cent.) a center of Jewish learning; the Sanhedrin convened in the town, and parts of the Mishna and Jerusalem Talmud were edited there.

Tiberias was captured by the Arabs in 637, taken by the Crusaders in the 11th cent., recaptured by Saladin in 1187, and occupied by Egypt in 1247. It became part of the Ottoman Empire in the 16th cent. Rebuilt and fortified in the 18th cent. by Dahir al-Umar, the local Ottoman ruler, Tiberias resumed its position as a center of Jewish scholarship. In 1922 it became part of Palestine. Maimonides , the Jewish philosopher and physician, is buried in Tiberias. Arabic forms of the name are Tabariya and Tubariya.

Tiberias A city founded by Herod Antipas (20 CE) as his new capital to replace Sepphoris, in honour of the emperor Tiberius on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee (also called the Sea of Tiberias, John 6: 1; 21: 1), on an important trade route. It had a good deal of independence and because it was the power base of the despised Herodian family, Jesus seems to have avoided it and also Sepphoris. It is mentioned only in passing by John (6: 23), and never in the synoptic gospels. Josephus was in command of forces which captured the city early in the Jewish War of 66–70 CE and he surrendered it to the Roman forces in 67. In the following centuries it had a strong Jewish cultural influence, and the Mishnah and the Palestinian Talmud emerged from Tiberias—even though, strictly, it was unclean according to Jewish Law, for it was built on the site of a cemetery.