Josaphat, Valley of

JOSAPHAT, Valley of. - Name of the narrow valley, also called that of the Cedron (v.), east of Jerusalem, between the city and the Mount of Olives; properly the stretch that runs between the Sitti Marjam gate and Bir Ajjūb: it is dotted with tombs. According to a view very widespread among Christians, Jews and Muslims, this valley is supposed to be the theater of the Last Judgment. From the 4th century A.D. onward, the memory of the Judgment drew penitents and contemplatives into the valley, who built numerous monasteries there. Even today many Jews wish to be buried there, in order to be near the place where the Judgment will take place, and nearby, on the west side, by the walls of the Temple, the Muslim cemetery extends. 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 Holy Scripture where mention is made of the "valley of I." with reference to a judgment of Yahweh is Joel 3, 2.12.14: "I will gather all the nations, I will bring them down into the valley of I., and there I will enter into judgment with them... Let the nations arise and come up to the valley of I.; for there I will sit to judge all the neighboring nations... What a multitude, what a multitude in the valley of decision!" But this is a punitive judgment of the neighboring peoples who have done harm to Israel. Above all, the identification of the Joëlic "valley of I." with the present valley that bears its name does not hold. In Holy Scripture this valley is never called the "valley of I.," but the valley or torrent of the Cedron (II Sam. 15, 23; II Kings 2, 37; Jer. 31, 40; John 18, 1): it is little more than the bed of a torrent, and it agrees poorly with the text of Joel, which presupposes ('ēmeq, "broad valley") a spacious valley to receive the peoples. The expression of Joel, "valley of I.," must 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, will promulgate "the decision" (Joel 3, 14). Therefore St. Cyril of Alexandria defines such a belief, prevalent especially among the Jews, as "an old wives' tale" (PG 71, 389).

The identification of the "valley of I." with the valley of the Cedron is already attested by Eusebius, around 330 A.D. (Onomasticon, 273, 89), and by the Itinerarium Burdigalense, year 333, by the apocryphal Transitus of the B. Virgin Mary (ed. C. Tischendorf, p. 118), etc. Some hold that the name derived from the tomb of King Josaphat, which is still shown there (St. Bede too, who visited Jerusalem in 720, mentions it): but the supposed tomb is legendary, since, as is read in I Kings 22, 51, Josaphat was buried in the "city of David," which is the hill southeast of Jerusalem.

According to F.-M. Abel the key to the explanation is 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 (Heb. ša'ar ham-miphāḍh, from pāqāh = "to visit," which can also mean "to exercise a judgment": the Latin translator, even before St. Jerome, took the term in this second sense, and translated porta iudicialis, gate of judgment). The name extended to the valley below: "valley of judgment," or of the "Judgment of Yahweh," hence "valley of I." It was then easy to refer to the place the well-known passage of the prophet Joel.

Gaetano Stano