TIBERIAS (Tepepto:s ; Talm. N'130) is a small town situated about the middle of the western bank of the lake of Gennesareth. Tiberias was chiefly built by the tetrarch Herod Antipas, and called by him after the emperor Tiberias (Joseph. Antiq. xviii. 2. 3). According to Josephus (Vit. sec. 65), Tiberias was 30 stadia from Hippo, 6o from Gadara, and 120 from Scythopolis; according to the Tal mud it was 13 Roman miles from Sepphoris ; and Joliffe, in his Travels, states that it is nearly 2o English miles from Nazareth, and 90 miles from Jerusalem. Others find it above tvvo days' journey from Ptolemais.
From the time of Iferod Antipas to the com mencement of the reign of Herod Agrippa II., Tiberias was the pdncipal city of the province (see Joseph. Vit. sec. 9). Justus, son of Pistus, when addressing the inhabitants of Tiberias, stated that the city Tiberias had ever been a city of Galilee ; and that in the days of Herod the tetrarch, who had built it, it had obtained the principal place ; and that he had ordered that the city Sepphoris should be subordinate to the city Tiberias ; that they had not lost this pre-eminence even under Agrippa, the father, but had retained it until Felix was procurator of Juthea ; but he told them that now they had been so unfortunate as to be made a present of by Nero to Agrippa ; and that upon Sepphoris's submission of itself to the Romans, that city was become the capital of Galilee, and that the royal treasury and the archives were now removed from them.' Tiberias was one of the four cities which Nero added to the kingdom of Agrippa (Joseph. Antiq. xx. 8. 4). Sepphoris and Tiberias were the largest cities of Galilee (Joseph. Vit. sec. 65). In the last Jewish war the fortifications of Tiberias were an important military station (De Bell. yud. 11. 20. 6 ; ro. ; Vit. sec. 8, seq.) According to Josephus ( Vit. scc. 12), the inhabit ants of Tiberias derived their maintenance chiefly from the navigation of the lake of Gennesareth, and from its fisheries. After the destruction of Jeru salem Tiberias was celebrated during several cen turies for its famous Rabbinical academy (sec Lightfoot's Hone Heb. p. 140, seq.) Not far from Tiberias, in the immediate neigh bourhood of the town of Emmaus, were warm mineral springs, whose celebrated baths are some times spoken of as belonging to Tiberias itself (Joseph. De Bell. 7ud. 21. 6 ; Antiq.
2. 3 ; Vit. sec. 16 ; Mishna, Sabb. 4; and other Talmudical passages in Lightfoot's Hone Pleb. p. 133, seq. Compare also Wichmannshausen, Thermis Tiberiensibus,' in Ugolini Thesaur. tom.
vii.) These springs contain sulphur, salt, and iron, and were employed for medicinal purposes. Compare the Travels of Volney and Scholz.
There is a tradition that Tiberias was built on the site of the town ni= Elnnereth (Onomasticon, sub vote Chennereth '). Against this tradition it has been urged that, according to Joshua xix. 35, Chinnereth belonged to the tribe of Naphthali. Compare Reland (Pabestina, p. 160. It has also been said that this tradition is contradicted by the following statement of Josephus (Antiy. xviii. 2. 3) :--` Herod the tetrarch, who was in great favour with Tiberius, built a city of the same name with him, and called it Tiberias. He built it in the best part of Galilee, at the lake of Gennesareth. There are warm baths at a little distance from it, in a village named Emmaus.' Others have identified Tiberias with Chamath ; but it also belonged to the tribe of Naphthali, and the graves mentioned by Josephus militate against it as much as against Chinnereth. According to the Rabbins, Tiberias was situated on the site of Rak kath (Hieros. Megil. fol. 701). Comp. Otho. .Lex. Rabb. p. 755 ; but it too was in the territory of Naphthali, and if the graves mentioned by Jose phus are any objection they must militate against this assumption likewise (Lightfoot, Chorog. Cent.
caP. 72-74).
According to Joliffe (Travels, pp. 487 497 seq.), the modem Tgbarzeh has about four thousand in habitants, a considerable part of whom are Jews. The hot springs are about thirty-five minutes from Tabaria, and. about twenty paces from the lake. Comp. the Travels of Mariti, Hasselquist, Buck ingham, Burckhardt, and Richter. The site of the present town does not fill the area of the ancient Tiberias, of which there are still some insignificant vestiges. Tgbarieh suffered greatly by an earth quake on New Year's Hay, 1837. Almost every building, with the exception of the walls and some part of the castle, was levelled to the ground. The inhabitants were obliged to live for some time in wooden booths (Schubert, in d. Miinchn. Ge Zahn'. Anzeig. 1837, No. 191, p. 505 ; Winer's Real-TVerterb.)—C. F. B.