Casiphia
Casiphia is an ancient city mentioned in the Old Testament, located in the region of Mesopotamia in modern-day Iraq. Known today as Babylon. It appears across 1 verse in Scripture.
Biblical History
Casiphia appears only once in the Old Testament, in Ezra 8:17, in the account of Ezra's preparations for the second great return of exiles from Babylon to Jerusalem in approximately 458 BCE. Ezra gathered the returnees at the river Ahava and, finding no Levites among them, sent a delegation to "Iddo, the leading man at the place Casiphia," with a request that he send servants for the house of God. In response, "by the good hand of our God on us, they brought us a man of discretion, of the sons of Mahli the son of Levi", Sherebiah, along with eighteen colleagues and twenty Levites. This single reference portrays Casiphia as an established Jewish settlement in the Babylonian diaspora with a community of Levites and temple servants available for sacred service. The name has been interpreted by some scholars as related to a word for silver ("keseph"), suggesting perhaps a locale associated with silver trade or refining. Its precise location within the Babylonian exile community remains unknown, but it functioned as a recognized center of Jewish religious life during the exilic period.
Archaeological & Historical Notes
Casiphia has not been positively identified with any excavated site. Its location is described only as a "place" (Hebrew: ha-makom) in the region of Babylonian exile, corresponding to modern Iraq. Some scholars have suggested it may be near ancient Babylon, while others have proposed sites along the canal networks of the Babylonian plain where Jewish exilic communities were settled following the deportations of 597 and 586 BCE. Sites such as Tel Abib (Ezekiel 3:15) and Nippur (attested in the Murashu archive as a center of Jewish life in the 5th century BCE) illustrate the kind of diaspora community Casiphia likely represents, even though it cannot be pinpointed archaeologically.
Verse Appearances (1)
Ezra
References
- Orr, J. (ed.) (1915) The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia. Chicago: Howard-Severance Company. [Public Domain]
- OpenBible.info (n.d.) Bible Geocoding. Available at: https://www.openbible.info/geo/. [CC BY 4.0]
- Bagnall, R. et al. (eds.) (n.d.) Pleiades: A Gazetteer of Past Places. Available at: https://pleiades.stoa.org. [CC BY 3.0]
- Church of England (1769) The Holy Bible, Authorized (King James) Version. [Public Domain]