Emmaus

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Caravaggio: Last Supper at Emmaus (around 1601)

Emmaus (pronunciation originally [ ˈɛmaʊ̯s ], later [ ɛˈmau̩s ]) is a place mentioned in the Gospel of Luke near Jerusalem , from which Cleopas , a disciple of Jesus , came. Emmaus means 'warm spring' and was a comparatively common place name or name addition.

Biblical report

Luke reports that Cleopas and another disciple went from Jerusalem to Emmaus in a depressed mood the day after Passover and met the risen Jesus without recognizing him. The unknown companion explained the scriptures to them and explained that the suffering of the Messiah was necessary according to the promises of the prophets. When they arrived in Emmaus, they invited the travel companion to stay with them for the night. At the Lord's Supper, when he broke the bread, they would have recognized in him the risen Jesus, who immediately disappeared. They then ran back to Jerusalem that evening to tell the apostles and the other disciples about the meeting. ( Lk 24.13-35  EU )

Historic location

The position of the biblical Emmaus is not certain. According to the Gospel of Luke, the place is 60  stadiums (approx. 11.5 km) from Jerusalem. He is not mentioned anywhere else in the New Testament. Traditionally, three places in particular claim to be the Emmaus mentioned in the Gospel of Luke: Amwas , Abu Gosch and El Qubeibeh . The historian Carsten Peter Thiede († 2004) was convinced that he had succeeded in proving the location of the place mentioned by Luke at a fourth, previously rarely considered location near Jerusalem.

In the 5th century, Eusebius of Caesarea and Hieronymus referred to the city of Nicopolis, which was re-founded in late antiquity - today's Amwas - as the Emmaus of the biblical story . Cleopas's house has been converted into a basilica . The problem with this is that, at 32.5 km (more than 160 stadiums), this place is too far from Jerusalem to be considered for the history of the Emmaus disciples. The readings cited by the proponents of identification in some of the text witnesses of the Gospel of Luke, in which instead of 60 of 160 stages are mentioned, should, according to the overwhelming opinion of researchers, be subsequent corrections. In addition, according to Luke, the disciples must have walked the route from Jerusalem to Emmaus and back in an afternoon and evening, which would be difficult to manage in the case of such a distance and in the hilly terrain.

A crusader church was built in Abu Gosch to commemorate the journey to Emmaus. Abu Gosh is actually at a distance from Jerusalem that corresponds to the account in Luke's Gospel, but in New Testament times the place was not called Emmaus and, just as in the case of El Qubeibeh, there are no further clues that could support the medieval local traditions.

Thiede and other researchers from the Theological University of Basel have carried out excavations in the Jerusalem suburb of Moza , which was possibly also called Emmaus in New Testament times . Thiede identified Moza with the place named Ammassa or Ammaous ("Emmaus") mentioned by Flavius ​​Josephus in his historical work The Jewish War , which could be derived from the Hebrew name Ham-moza , which is documented in the Bible and Talmud . According to Josephus, the place where a Roman veterans' colony was established under Emperor Vespasian is said to be 30 stadia away from Jerusalem (the 60 stadiums given in medieval copies of the Josephus text were already recognized in older research as the learned correction of Christian copyists). The Latin name of the colony ("Colonia") has apparently been preserved in the name of the Arab village of Qelonija , which was evacuated in 1948 and which had been on the site of today's Moza until then. Although the place is only 7 km (around 30 stadia) from Jerusalem, according to the Basel researchers, Lukas could have added up the way there and back with his 60 stadiums.

Today's Amwas was a not insignificant settlement in biblical times, which has tombs from Maccabees and Herodian times; however it was in the year 4 BC. Was destroyed by the troops of the Roman general Publius Quinctilius Varus and was only rebuilt as a city at the beginning of the 3rd century at the behest of the emperor Elagabal under the new name Nikopolis. According to Thiedes' excavations, Moza can also be assumed to have been settled in Roman times before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70. Like some earlier researchers, Thiede sees the fact that Luke speaks of a "village", an indication that Emmaus (Amwas) , which is further away from Jerusalem and is generally known as the city ( Polis ), could not be meant. Josephus also describes the place where the veterans settled as a simple “place”. This argument was also controversially discussed in older research and partly rejected because the expressions could designate any unfortified place and the destroyed state of the not yet re-founded city of Emmaus makes their use seem conceivable.

The supporters of the traditional equation of the New Testament Emmaus with Amwas (Nikopolis), including the archaeologist and writer Karl-Heinz Fleckenstein and the Protestant Bible historian Rainer Riesner as well as supporters of the Catholic nun Mirjam Baouardy , who was canonized on May 17, 2015 , who used the site of the Emmaus Supper in 1878 in Amwas recognized on the basis of a vision, cite private excavations since the 1990s, through which Nicopolis has proven to be the place with the oldest and most enduring Christian Emmaus tradition in the Holy Land. Reference is made to Jewish-Christian ossuary graves from the first century AD and mosaics from the 5th century, which could be interpreted as evidence of the veneration of the place as the scene of the Emmaus event. Fleckenstein sees in the mosaics in particular an indication of the tradition handed down by the church historian Sozomenos in the 5th century that Jesus was already in Emmaus during his lifetime and washed his feet in the healing spring there .

According to the exegete Jürgen Becker , the sparse information given by Luke prohibits the biblical account from simply looking at the founding legend for a Christian community in Emmaus (for example, the Gospel text does not mention that the disciple Cleopas lived in Emmaus, and the place of contemplation is also not specified). Therefore, the early Christian archaeological evidence found in Amwas is not very conclusive with regard to an identification of the city with the place of the apparition. On the other hand, the editorial history research also considers the distance information of "60 stages" in the Gospel of Luke often as an indication of the evangelist independent of the original tradition of an apparition of Jesus in Emmaus. With reference to Emmaus and / or the disciple Cleopas who may have come from there, a tradition would have arisen, according to which the resurrected One revealed himself to two disciples after walking together at mealtimes. Only Luke connects this tradition in his story with the date of Easter Sunday and with the motif of a hike to and from Jerusalem. As the distance, he specifies a route that hikers would have to cover in the time frame he told. To localize the historical place of origin of the tradition, however, this literary statement would be worthless. In this case, the identity of the biblical Emmaus with the later Nicopolis or Amwas, which is the only better-known place of this name in the vicinity of Jerusalem, can be assumed relatively unproblematic. Another place with the same name could also be considered.

The Emmaus motif in art

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Emmaus  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Carsten Peter Thiede: The rediscovery of Emmaus near Jerusalem. In: Zeitschrift für antikes Christianentum , 8 (2005), pp. 593-599 (here: 599).
  2. ↑ Michael Wolter: Emmaus. In: WiBiLex , Stuttgart 2010 (see section “3. Identifications”, first point).
  3. ↑ Research on the New Testament location Emmaus continues , message from www.israelnetz.com dated December 22, 2005, accessed on May 9, 2015.
  4. ↑ Michael Wolter: Emmaus. In: WiBiLex , Stuttgart 2010 (see section “3. Identifications”, second point).
  5. ^ Edward Robinson , Eli Smith : Biblical Researches in Palestine and the Adjacent Regions, the Voyage of 1852. Boston 1856, p. 149 ; Adolf Schlatter : Some results from Niese's edition of Josephus. In: Journal of the German Palestine Association , XIX (1896), p. 222; L.-H. Vincent, F.-M. Abel: Emmaüs, sa basilique et son histoire. Paris 1932, pp. 284-285.
  6. ↑ Carsten Peter Thiede: The rediscovery of Emmaus near Jerusalem. In: Zeitschrift für antikes Christianentum , 8 (2005), pp. 593-599 (here: 594).
  7. ^ Emmanuel Fleckenstein: Emmaus Nicopolis Film. Published on February 20, 2014 on YouTube (minutes 6:04 to 8:58).
  8. ^ Emmanuel Fleckenstein: Emmaus Nicopolis Film. Published on February 20, 2014 on YouTube (minute 2:06 to 2:50).
  9. ↑ Ulrich W. Sahm: German researcher discovers the "real" Emmaus. In: Material Service No. 6 (December 2001) of the Evangelical Working Group on Church and Israel.
  10. ↑ Carsten Peter Thiede: The rediscovery of Emmaus near Jerusalem. In: Zeitschrift für antikes Christianentum , 8 (2005), pp. 593-599 (here: 593).
  11. ↑ See Bell. Jud. , VII 6.6 .
  12. ^ Edward Robinson, Eli Smith: Biblical Researches in Palestine and the Adjacent Regions, the Voyage of 1852. Boston 1856, p. 149 .
  13. ↑ Emmanuel Fleckenstein: Emmaus Nicopolis Film on YouTube - Published on February 20, 2014 (minute 9:20 to 9:55).
  14. ↑ Jürgen Becker: The resurrection of Jesus Christ according to the New Testament. Tübingen 2007, p. 58.
  15. ↑ Michael Wolter: Emmaus. In: WiBiLex , Stuttgart 2010 (see section “4. Evaluation: Where was Emmaus really?”).
    Similar: Jürgen Becker: The resurrection of Jesus Christ according to the New Testament. Tübingen 2007, p. 57f.