BETH-SHAN, more generally known by the name of Scythopolis. The second book of Maccabees, xii. 29. places it at six hundred furlongs distance from Jerusalem, or seventy five miles, which make two and twenty leagues, at three miles to the league. Josephus says1, it was an hundred and twenty furlongs from Tiberias; according to which computation it cannot be so near the lake of Tiberias, as some Geographers pretend it is. It lay on this side Jordan westward, at the extremity of the great Plain. Abulfeda says, there is a small river, which falls into the river Jordan at Scythopolis. The name of Scythopolis, or the city of the Scythians, came, according to George Syncellus2, from the Scythians, who made an irruption into Palestine in the reign of Josiah, Son of Amos, King of Judah. Stephens the Geographer and Pliny call it likewise Nysa. In the Hebrew text of the Old Testament it is named Bethshan. But the Septuagint Judg. i. 27. read Bethshan, otherwise called the city of the Scythians. And in the books of Maccabees and Josephus, it goes very frequently by the name of Scythopolis. After the battle of Gilboa, the Philistines having taken the bodies of Saul and Jonathan, hung them upon the walls of Bethshan. But the inhabitants of Jabesh-Gilead, on the other side of Jordan, came in the night, carried off the bodies, and interr’d them honourably, under a grove of Oaks, near their city.
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