IOSAPHAT, VALLEY of. – Name of the narrow valley, Cedron (v.), east of Jerusalem, between the city and the Mount of Olives; properly speaking, the stretch running between the Sitti Marjam Gate and Bir Ajjūb: it is scattered with tombs. According to a widespread belief among Christians, Jews, and Muslims, this valley was to be the scene of the Last Judgment. From as early as the fourth century A.D., remembrance of the Judgment drew penitents and contemplatives to the valley, where they built numerous monasteries. Even today many Jews wish to be buried there, so as to be close to the place where the Judgment will take place; nearby, on the western side, by the walls of the Temple, lies the Muslim cemetery. But this belief must be considered unfounded, although it is supported by St. Jerome himself (In Ioel, 3, 2 ff.: PL 979-85).
The only passage of Sacred Scripture in which the “valley of I.” is mentioned with reference to a judgment by Yahweh is Ioel 3, 2.12.14: “I shall gather all the nations, and bring them down into the V. I., and there I shall enter into judgment with them... Let the nations arise and go up to the V. I.; for there I shall sit to judge all the neighboring nations... What a multitude, what a multitude in the valley of decision!” But this concerns a punitive judgment upon the neighboring peoples who have done harm to Israel. Above all, the identification of Joel’s “V. I.” with the present valley bearing that name does not stand. In Sacred Scripture this is never called the “V. I.,” but rather the valley or torrent of the Cedron (II Sam. 15, 23; II Reg. 2, 37; Ier. 31, 40; Io. 18, 1): it is little more than the bed of a torrent, and accords poorly with Joel’s text, which presupposes ('ēmeq, “broad valley”) a spacious valley in which to accommodate the peoples. Joel’s expression “V. I.” must therefore have not a topographical but a symbolic and metaphorical sense, founded on the etymology of the name (Jēhōšāphat = “Yahweh judges”): the place where Yahweh will judge and proclaim “the decision” (Ioel 3, 14). For this reason St. Cyril of Alexandria calls such a belief, especially prevalent among the Jews, “an old wives’ tale” (PG 71, 389).
The identification of the “V. I.” with the valley of the Cedron is already attested by Eusebius, around 330 A.D. (Onomasticon, 273, 89), by the Itinerarium Burdigalense, from the year 333, by the apocryphal Transitus of the Blessed Virgin Mary (ed. C. Tischendorf, p. 118), etc. Some hold that the name derives from the tomb of King Iosaphat, which is still shown there (St. Bede, who visited Jerusalem in 720, also mentions it); but the alleged tomb is legendary, since, as we read in I Reg. 22, 51, Iosaphat was buried in the “city of David,” which is the hill southeast of Jerusalem.
According to F.-M. Abel, the key to the explanation lies in Neh. 3, 30, where the Vulgate reads porta iudicialis, one of the gates in the new wall of the city built after the return from exile (Hebrew ša'ar ham-miphāḍh, from pāqāh = “to visit,” which can also mean “to exercise judgment”:
the Latin translator, even before St. Jerome, took the term in this latter sense and translated it porta iudicialis, gate of judgment). The name was extended to the valley below: “valley of judgment,” or of the “Judgment of Yahweh,” hence “V. I.” It was then easy to apply to the place the well-known passage of the prophet Joel.