Onomasticon (On the Place Names in Holy Scripture)
An alphabetical list of the places named in the Bible, compiled by the bishop of Caesarea in Palestine, with notes on where each lay in his own day. It is the oldest record of where Christians of Palestine located many biblical sites.
Read the text at tertullian.org ↗Translator’s introduction and notes on the manuscripts ↗
Eusebius arranged the place names of Scripture by their first letter and by biblical book, and added what he knew of each: its distance in Roman miles from a known town, its condition, and whether a site was “pointed out” to visitors. He lived in Palestine himself. Jerome put the work into Latin about AD 390, correcting and adding as he went, and his additions show what had changed in two generations, above all the churches built at the holy places after Constantine.
The book is evidence for what was believed about a place in the early fourth century, some three hundred years after the time of Jesus. For well-known towns that tradition is often sound. For a particular spot, such as the place of the crucifixion or of the prayer in Gethsemane, it shows how old the identification is and cannot show that it is right.