Emmaus

After Jesus’ resurrection He appeared to two of His disciples along the road from Jerusalem to “a village called Emmaus.” Although the two don’t recognize Him at first, they invite Him to stay with them when they reached the town.

The site of Emmaus is not known for certain. Although there are up to nine sites proposed for the location of Emmaus, there are two main contenders; Emmaus-Nicopolis and Emmaus-Qubeibeh.

Emmaus-Qubeibeh is eight miles northwest of Jerusalem, which matches the sixty stadia from Jerusalem, thus matching the earliest copies of Luke’s account. In the 1940’s Ballarmino Bagatti excavated Qubeibeh and found a crusader-era church built over a Roman-era house. He dated the village using pottery sherds, including a Herodian lamp, and coins dating from the third century B.C. through the fifth century A.D. However, Qubeibeh was not associated with Emmaus until 1290. Although there are ruins there from the right period, the absence of an early tradition of the site with Emmaus is extremely problematic.

The other major contender for Emmaus is Emmaus-Nicopolis. Nicopolis has the oldest tradition of any of the possible locations of the village, as far back as the third century, and its Arabic name of ‘Amwas lends evidence of it being the correct site of Emmaus. Excavations conducted by the Franciscans in the late 1800’s and again from 1940-1944 there revealed a fourth or fifth century Byzantine basilica built over a first-century house. It was located along the major road from Jerusalem to the Mediterranean coast as well. However, it is almost seventeen miles from Jerusalem, thus it does not fit with the earliest copies of Luke. However, many other manuscripts have 160 stadia instead of 60. If 160 was original, then Emmaus-Nicopolis does fall within the correct distance. However, scholars have argued that it would have been impossible for the disciples to walk the 35 mile round trip from Jerusalem to Emmaus-Nicopolis in one day. However, the text does not say they walked, so some have argued that they could have ridden a pack animal, or even that they ran part of the way back to Jerusalem in their excitement at having seen the risen Lord. It has also been pointed out that even into modern times the Bedouins of the Levant regularly travel up to 40 miles in one day. Although the textual issue of the uncertain distance listed by Luke remains a problem, Emmaus-Nicopolis is currently the most likely location of the Emmaus of Luke’s Gospel.

Bibliography. ASB 1716, “Archaeological Sites: Emmaus;”

Baez-Camargo, Gonzalo, Archaeological Commentary on the Bible, (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1984), 225; Finegan, Jack, The Archaeology of the New Testament: The Life of Jesus and the Beginning of the Early Church, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 287-89; Negev, Avraham and Shimon Gibson, “Emmaus-Nicopolis” in Archaeological Encyclopedia of the Holy Land (New York: Continuum, 2001, c. 1972), 159; Shanks, Hershel. “Emmaus: Where Christ Appeared.” Biblical Archaeology Review, 34 (Mar/Apr 2008), 40-2, 44-51, 80, accessed April 20, 2010, http://members.bib-arch.org/publication.asp?PubID=BSBA&Volume=34&Issue=2&ArticleID=8