Jaffa appears first time in the Bible as Japho (Joshua 19:46); In all other verses, the city is known as Joppa. From Jaffa, King Solomon brought the Cedar woods of Lebanon for the first Jerusalem Temple (II Chronicles 2:16). Later, at the time of second Jerusalem Temple, Cedar was again brought from Lebanon through Jaffa (Ezra 3:7).
However, the most famous person associated with Jaffa is Jonah-the prophet. It was from Jaffa that he went against God's will to Tarshish. As a result he was swallowed by a whale and remained there for three days and three nights (Jonah 1:3).
Jaffa is also the city of St: Peter. Here he resurrected Tabitha or Dorcas (Acts 9:36-42) and had a vision in which the Lord commanded him to eat foods that were "unclean" (Acts 10: 9-16). It should be noted that Jaffa was conquered by the Maccabees to establish a Jewish kingdom in 1st Century BC (I Maccabees 10:76; 14:5).
Jaffa is a city of legends. According to a tradition, it was actually founded by Japheth, the son of Noah after the flood! The Greek mythology places Jaffa as the place where Andromeda, the beautiful daughter of Queen Cassiopeia was chained to a rock to pacify the anger of Poseidon, the God of Sea. The myth goes: Poseidon sends Cetus the sea monster to kill her, but her lover Perseus kills the monster and saves her. To this day, one of the rocks near Jaffa is called 'Andromeda Rocks'.
The first non-biblical writen record about Jaffa is an ancient Egyptian Letter mentioning its conquest by Pharoah Thutmose III (1470 BC).
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