EMMAUS. — 1. A city famous in the history of the Maccabees (I Mach. 3:40; 4:3; 9:50), capital of a toparchy in 47 B.C. (Fl. Josephus, Bell. Ind., III, 5), reduced to ashes by Varus in 40 B.C. (id., Antiq. Ind., XIV, 122). In the 2nd–3rd centuries it was rebuilt and received the title of Nicopolis, but in 637, after falling under Muslim rule, it lost its importance. Today it is Amwās, a village near Latrūn, 30 km from Jerusalem on the road to Jaffa.
2. The territory of E. — It was assigned by Vespasian to a colony of 800 veterans, situated 30 stadia from Jerusalem. The name of E. is highly doubtful, since the Latin version has Amasa, which corresponds to Amosa of Ios. 18:26, identified with the village of Qolānijjeh, 6.5 km from Jerusalem.
3. The village of E. — On the day of the Resurrection, Jesus appeared there to Cleopas and his companion (Lc. 24:13–26). Three places claim the honor of being the Emmaus of the Gospel, but the text, tradition, and ruins do not lead to any explicit preference. The majority of the most important manuscripts and versions place the village at a distance of 60 stadia from Jerusalem; six Greek uncial manuscripts, including the Sinaitic (4th century), and some minuscules instead have 160 stadia. Critics generally prefer the reading 60, supposing that the Greek letter representing the number 100 was added to the figure 60 in order to harmonize the text with the tradition then current concerning the Emmaus of the Gospel at Nicopolis, which was, by the most frequented and convenient route, 160 stadia from Jerusalem. The ancient tradition (Origen, Eusebius of Caesarea, St. Jerome, Sozomen), until the Crusader period, knew only Emmaus-Nicopolis and did not find it implausible that the two pilgrims of the Gospel had covered, going and returning in a single afternoon, 320 stadia, that is, 60 km.
At first the Crusaders identified Castellum E. at Qolānijjeh, 30 stadia from Jerusalem, in the place now called Abū Gāš, where the church built in 1145 by the Hospitallers over the so-called “fountain of E.” is preserved. In 1172 the pilgrim Theodoric indicated there the “Castellum E. quod moderni Ponteneid vocant”. But later (the documentation begins in 1282), all pilgrims indicated and visited the Emmaus of the Gospel at a village 11 km (= 60 stadia) northwest of Jerusalem, called by the Arabs el-Qubejbeh.
The imposing ruins of Amwās, where distinguished archaeologists have recognized a three-apsed church, built in the 3rd century and altered in the 6th and 12th centuries, have yielded no positive evidence relating to the Gospel event; nor are there lacking specialists who recognize in it a Roman monument converted into a church in the 4th or 6th century. At el-Qubejbeh, which recent excavations have shown to have been inhabited as early as the Maccabean period, the Franciscan Fathers rebuilt the Crusader church in 1901, on Byzantine-period remains, incorporating into the northern nave the walls of a house which pilgrims said was that of Cleopas. Although the site accords with the figure of 60 stadia and with the circumstances of the Gospel narrative, it nevertheless lacks a toponymic tradition, although it is significant that the Crusaders designated it as Castellum E., as well as an archaeological consensus concerning the antiquity of the remains of the house said to have belonged to Cleopas and the early construction of the church.
In a fragment of a sarcophagus preserved in the Museo delle Terme in Rome, some scholars have believed they recognized a representation of the supper at E. However, although three figures appear seated beside a table, one of them, bearded, is in the act of narrating, while the other two are paying close attention to his account, archaeologists have generally rejected that attractive interpretation (Wilpert).
The representation of Christ’s journey toward E. and of his encounter with Cleofa and his companion is instead fairly frequent during the Middle Ages. We see the journey in the mosaics of S. Apollinare Nuovo at Ravenna, in the Greek Evangeliorio no. 74 of the Library of Paris, in the frescoes of S. Angelo in Formis, dating from the 11th century, and in the mosaics of Monreale from the 12th century; whereas in a manuscript preserved in Munich and belonging to the 9th century, Christ appears as a priest beside an altar, accompanied by two figures. Further scenes of the encounter at E. and of the supper are found in the Salterio Albaud of Hildesheim and subsequently in 13th- and 14th-century art, for example in Duccio’s Maestà in the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo in Siena.
They would become still more frequent in Renaissance painting. Beato Angelico represented the scene of the encounter in a lunette of the Convent of S. Marco in Florence, where Christ is dressed as a pilgrim and Cleofa and his companion wear the habit of Dominican friars; whereas, with more realistic intent, Giovanni Bellini represented the scene of the supper in the church of S. Salvatore in Venice, followed by Tiziano and Paolo Veronese in two paintings in the Louvre, and Rembrandt in a painting also in the Louvre. Caravaggio too painted a supper at E. in a canvas formerly in the Patrizi collection in Rome and now in the Galleria di Brera in Milan, while Jacopo Chi-
menti da Empoli portrayed it,
almost by now a scene of ge-
nre through the realism of its
details, in a canvas in the
Schiff-Giorgini collection in Rome.
- Vedi tav. XXVII.