RAMOTH-GILEAD. - A Levitical and city of refuge in the tribe of Gad (Deut. 4:13; Josh. 20:8; 21:38; 1 Chron. 6:66), capital of the Solomonic district north and south of the Yarmuk (1 Kings 4:13), cause of bitter struggles between Israelites and Arameans, who long contested its strategic possession (ibid. 22:3-24; 2 Kings 8:28; 9:1-14).

The site indicated by Eusebius near the Jabbok, 15 miles west of Philadelphia ('Amman), probably es-Salt or Khirbet Gile'ad, does not agree with the biblical data, which presuppose a locality further north, in the 'Ajlun. The identification with the village of er-Remteh, 10 km south of Der'a, the present border between the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and Syria, abandoned for lack of archaeological evidence in favor of the imposing tell of Hosn 'Ajlun, 16 km.

southwest of er-Remteh, has been put forward again with solid archaeological and topographical evidence. The ancient site of R. would be not the village of er-Remteh, but Tell Ramit, 7 km further south. It rises in the middle of a broad plain, suited to chariot warfare, at the crossroads of the roads between 'Amman and Damascus, preserves in its Arabic name the memory of the ancient biblical name, and has yielded archaeological finds from the Iron Age.

Bibliography2 works

BIBL.: A. Fernandez, Problemas de topographia palestinese. Barcelona 1936, p. 97; F.-M. Abel, Géographie de la Palestine, II, Paris 1938, p. 430. The identification with Tell Ramit is proposed by N. Glueck, Ramot-Gilvad, in Bulletin of American Schools of oriental research, 92 (1942), p. 10, and in Annual of American Schools of oriental research, XXIV, New Haven 1951, pp. 96-99.

Donato Baldi

@incollection{ec10_ramoth_in_galaad, author = {Baldi, Donato}, title = {Ramoth in Galaad}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {X}, pages = {516--517}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1953}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/ramoth-in-galaad} }

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Ramoth-Gilead

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