EMMAUS, the name of two, or perhaps three, places in ancient Palestine. (1). EMMAUS-NICOPOLIS (mod. `Amwas), a town of the maritime plain about 20 M. from Jerusalem, on the road to Ramleh. Here Judas Maccabeus defeated Georgias (166 B.c.) and here, too, Vespasian established a fortified camp (A.D. 69). The name Nicopolis it received from Heliogabalus.
(2) . THE EMMAUS OF LUKE. St. Luke (xxiv.) makes men tion of Emmaus as being 6o stadia (Codex Sinaiticus and other mss. have 160) from Jerusalem, but with no indication of direc tion. Consequently, its location has been sought in all likely places at the shorter or longer radius. Thus Emmaus-Nicopolis (see above-176 stadia), Karyet el `Anab (66), Kuloniyeh (36), El-Kubeibeh (63), `Urtas (6o), and Khirbet el-Khamasa (86), have been separately advocated. Emmaus-Nicopolis has much support. It has the name and a tradition in its favour, but its great distance from Jerusalem makes it difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile it with the details of Luke's narrative. Of the others, El-Kabeibeh and Kuloniyeh have most in their favour. Josephus (Wars, vii. 6, 6) speaks of an Emmaus at 3o stadia from Jerusa lem, where Vespasian settled Boo veterans, making clear by his manner of reference that he knows of the existence of another Emmaus, presumably that of the Plain. Both the town and its name apparently disappeared, with so many others, in the wide spread destruction during the revolt of 132 to 135. The Emmaus of Josephus would seem to accord well with Kuloniyeh (Colonia). Others who rely on mss. reading 6o instead of 3o stadia in Josephus' account, find his Emmaus at El-Kabeibeh, where the ruins of an early church and a tradition in existence in crusading times, place it. El-Kabeibeh, as Emmaus, would satisfy the Josephus account according to some mss., as well as the Lucan according to most mss.
(3). Emmaus (the Hamath of the Old Testament, mod. Hummam) was the name given by the Greeks to the hot springs that lie on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, a mile to the south of Tiberias.