JAPHA (Heb. Jāp̄ō; Gr. Iyppē; Ar. Jāfā "The Beautiful"). - A city of Palestine, on the coasts of the Mediterranean, mentioned in the list of Thutmose III and in the el-Amarna letters. Although assigned by Joshua to the tribe of Dan (Josh. 19:46), it was dominated by the Philistines, devoted to the cult of Derceto, who located on the rocks of the bay the episode of Andromache and Perseus.
In the port of J., the timber needed for the construction of Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem was unloaded by an envoy of King Hiram of Tyre (II Chron. 2:15), and 5 centuries later that needed for the rebuilding under Zerubbabel (Ezra 3:7). From J. the prophet Jonah set sail for Tarshish (Jonah 1:3). The city, after having endured the sovereignty of the Assyrians, the Sidonians and the Greeks, was conquered in 142 by the Maccabees (I Macc. 10:75; 11:6; 12:33), but in 66 it was incorporated by Pompey into the province of Syria. It lost much of its commercial importance when Herod created the new port of Caesarea.
In the early times of Christianity it had a flourishing community; St. Peter raised Tabitha there (Acts 9:36), and in the house of Simon the tanner he had the vision that led him to welcome the gentiles into the Church (Acts 10). In 66 A.D. Cestius Gallus destroyed it after killing more than 4,000 Jews there (Fl. Josephus, Bell. Iud., II, 18, 10). It rose again with the coming of the Crusaders and became once more the principal port of Palestine. Godfrey of Bouillon in 1100 rebuilt its walls and declared it a county subject to the king of Jerusalem. Around the Crusader castle, which could still be seen until the 19th century, the upper city grew up, a typical example of an eastern city, with low houses, narrow streets, cramped but always thronged bazaars. To the right and to the left of the old city the new city has developed amid orange groves, the principal trade of J.
Bibliography
Donato Baldi