Joppa

Joppa was Judea's principal seaport, a promontory on the Mediterranean coast from which Jonah once boarded a ship to flee his commission to Nineveh, and through which cedar for both Solomon's and Zerubbabel's temples was floated ashore. In Acts, Peter raised Tabitha from the dead at Joppa and, while staying in the house of Simon the tanner there, received the vision that opened the gospel to Gentiles. The city's capture is recorded in an Egyptian tale from the reign of Thutmose III, describing a general smuggling soldiers inside baskets, evidence of Joppa's strategic importance more than a thousand years before Peter's visit.