Page:Light and truth.djvu/79

Rh 6,) was a city of the Philistines, situated 12 miles south of Joppa. It was called Jamnia by the Greeks and Romans and is now called Gebna or Yebna.

. (Josh. xi. 5.) A city in the southern extremity of the territory of Judah, though allotted to Simeon. In the time of Saul it was in the hands of the Philistines, and Achish, their king, granted it to David as a temporary residence, when he was flying from the persecution of that wicked monarch.—(1 Sam. xxvii. 6.) During the absence of David and the principal men on a campaign, the Amalekites burned the city, and made the women and children prisoners.

, now Acca or Acre, (Judg. i. 31,) or Ptolemais, [so called after the first Ptolemy, king of Egypt, into whose hands it fell about 100 years B. C.) was a sea-port town on the bay of Acre, over against Mt. Carmel, about 30 miles south of Tyre. It was in the territory assigned to the tribe of Asher, and one of the cities from which they were unable to expel the Canaanites; and it is even now considered the strongest place in Palestine. It is mentioned in Acts xi. 7 Its population is from 10,000 to 15,000, chiefly Jews. The remains of this ancient city are very numerous. Buckingham, who visited it in 1816, found several fragments of buildings, that he had no doubt were constructed in the earliest ages, especially thresholds of doors and pillars for galleries or piazzas.

. (Acts xxiii. 33.) A considerable town on the coast of the Mediterranean, between Joppa and Tyre, about 62 miles from Jerusalem. Anciently it was a small town, called Stratonice, or the Tower of Strato; it is sometimes called Cæsarea of Palestine, to distinguish it from Cæsarea Philippi, and is supposed by some to be the Hazor of the Old Testament, (Josh, xi. 1.) Herod the Great contributed chiefly to the magnificence of the city, by building some of the most splendid of its edifices, and constructing a fine harbor for it. He called it Cæsarea, in honor of the Emperor Caesar Augustus. After the destruction of Jerusalem, when Judea became a Roman province, Cæsarea was the chief city of Palestine, (Acts xxvi. 27; xxv. 1, 13,) and was often visited by Paul, (Acts ix. 30; xviii. 22; xxi. 8,)