**MODIN (Seventy models and models).** A city of Judea, the homeland of the Maccabees (1 Macc. 2:1, 15, 23), where Mattathias and his two sons Judas and Jonathan were buried (1 Macc. 2:70; 9:19; 13:25, 30). The Talmud places it 15 miles from Jerusalem, near Diospolis (Lydda), where the tombs could be seen.
The Madaba map (6th century) places it between Kapar Eruta (Kefr Rut, west of Bethoron) and Diospolis, with this inscription: “Modem, which is today Moditha, from where the Maccabees were.” Moditha, according to the common opinion of scholars, corresponds to Medjeh or el-Midjah, the name of an Arab village until 1948, located 12 km east of Lydda. Nearby, to the south, in the place called el-Arba’in (of the 40 [martyrs]), remains from the Iron Age, Hellenistic, Roman, and Arab periods have been found. The tombs, known as the Maccabees’ tombs, are hewn from rock near the small sanctuary of Sheikh el-Gharbawi.
The location, now agreed upon by scholars, was uncertain from the 12th century onward and was variously identified as Soba, Qastal, or Ramleh, but generally along the Ramleh-Jerusalem road. Since the last century, and not without the influence of the Franciscan Fr. E. Forner, the identification has settled on Medjeh.
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