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JOPPA

(Heb. yāpô)

A city (also Jaffa, Heb. Yafo; 126162) adjoining Tel Aviv and built on a promontory jutting into the Mediterranean, with a natural harbor below protected by several rocky outcrops. Joppa is first mentioned in a 15th-century b.c.e. inscription of Thutmose III (cf. also the Harris papyrus, ca. 1300). After the Conquest it was allotted to the tribe of Dan (Josh. 19:46) and became an important seaport (2 Chr. 2:16[MT 15]; Ezra 3:7). In the 5th century the Persian king granted Joppa to the Phoenician king of Sidon. After Alexander the Great it was populated by Greeks and Greek-speaking Syrians. Under the Hasmoneans, who seized and Judaized it ca. 140 (1 Macc. 13:11), and into the Roman period it remained a port of Judea. In the early Christian period Joppa was the seat of a bishop.

The site was excavated in 1945-1950 by the Israel Department of Antiquities and Museums and in 1954-1974 by Jacob Kaplan on behalf of the Tel Aviv–Jaffa Museum of Antiquities. The site was fortified as early as the Hyksos period (18th century). Significant finds include a Late Bronze Age citadel gate that had jambs inscribed with the titles of Rameses II, an Iron Age temple with a small pillared hall where a lion’s skull was found, and Persian period walls of typical Phoenician construction (ashlar pillars with fieldstone fill between them). A large ashlar building that may have been part of the Hellenistic agora and private houses of the 1st and 2nd centuries c.e. were also found.

Bibliography. J. P. Dressel, “Jaffa,” OEANE 3:206-7; J. Kaplan, “The Archaeology and History of Tel Aviv-Jaffa,” BA 35 (1972): 66-95; Kaplan and H. Ritter-Kaplan, “Jaffa,” NEAEHL 2:655-59.

Kenneth G. Holum

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JOPPA

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)