Road to Emmaus by Kathy Rice Grimm, oil on canvas.
Emmaus, a village seven and a half miles north-west of Jerusalem, celebrated for our Lord's conversation with two disciples who went thither on the day of his resurrection. Josephus (de Bello, lib. 8. cap. 27.) says, that Vespasian left eight hundred soldiers in Judea, to whom he gave the village of Emmaus, which was sixty furlongs from Jerusalem. D'Arvieux states, (vol. vii. p. 259.) that going from Jerusalem to Emmaus, he took the right from the high road to Rama, at some little distance from Jerusalem, and "travelled a good league over rocks and flint stones, to the end of the valley of terebinthine trees," till he reached Emmaus. It seems, by the ruins which surrounded it, that it was formerly larger than it was in our Savior's time. __Calmet.
