Emmaus Nicopolis 3.35

Emmaus Nicopolis was the Roman name for one of the towns associated with the Emmaus of the New Testament, where Jesus is said to have appeared after his death and resurrection. Emmaus was the seat of the Roman Emmaus Nicopolis was the name of the city from the 3rd century CE until the conquest of Palestine by the Muslim forces of the Rashidun Caliphate in 639. In the modern age, the site was the location of the Palestinian Arab village of Imwas, near the Latrun junction, between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, before its destruction in 1967. The site today is inside Canada Park in Israel, a place maintained by the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, although the archaeological site has been cared for by a resident French Catholic community since 1993.LocationEmmaus Nicopolis appears on Roman geographical maps. The Peutinger Table situates it about 19mi west of Jerusalem, while the Ptolemy map shows it at a distance of 20mi from the city. The Emmaus in the Gospel of Luke seems to lie some 7.5mi from Jerusalem, though a textual minor variant, conserved in Codex Sinaiticus, gives the distance between the New Testament Emmaus and Jerusalem as 160 stadia. The geographical position of Emmaus is described in the Jerusalem Talmud, Tractate Sheviit 9.2: From Bet Horon to the Sea is one domain. Yet is it one domain without regions? Rabbi Johanan said, ‘Still there is Mountain, Lowland, and Valley. From Bet Horon to Emmaus (אמאום) it is Mountain, from Emmaus to Lydda Lowland, from Lydda to the Sea Valley. Then there should be four stated? They are adjacent’.