Emmaus

Luke names Emmaus as a village “sixty stadia from Jerusalem”, about eleven kilometres, to which two disciples walked on the day the tomb was found empty (Luke 24:13); see the Appearances and the Great Commission. Some manuscripts, among them Codex Sinaiticus, give the distance as a hundred and sixty stadia, about thirty kilometres (Codex Sinaiticus Luke 24:13 (transcription)); the reading stands in the Greek transcription on that page, while the English translation shown beside it has “sixty”. The New Testament does not mention the place again.

The larger figure fits the Emmaus of the Maccabean wars (1 Maccabees 3:40; 4:3), a town in the foothills west of Jerusalem that was later called Nicopolis. Eusebius, early in the fourth century, identifies it as the home of Cleopas (Eusebius, Onomasticon 457). The map marks it. Luke has the two disciples return to Jerusalem the same evening (Luke 24:29, 33), which at that distance means a walk of about thirty kilometres each way. Josephus knows another Emmaus near Jerusalem, where eight hundred veterans were settled after AD 70; the Greek text gives its distance as thirty stadia, and the old English translation as sixty (Josephus, Jewish War 7.217 (Greek text)) (Josephus, Jewish War 7.217). Other sites nearer the city have also been proposed. None is established.