_Caesarea Philippi._――This city stood where all the common maps place it, in the farthest northern part of Palestine, just at the foot of the mountains, and near the fountain head of the Jordan. The name by which it is called in the gospels, is another instance, like Julias Bethsaida, of a compliment paid by the servile kings, of the divisions of Palestine, to their imperial masters, who had given, and who at any time could take away, crown and kingdom from them. The most ancient name by which this place is known to have been mentioned in the Hebrew scriptures, is _Lasha_, in Genesis x. 19, afterwards variously modified into _Leshem_, (Joshua xix. 47,) and _Laish_, (Judges xviii. 7: xiv. 29,) a name somewhat like the former in sound, though totally different in meaning, (לשם _leshem_, “a precious stone,” and ליש _laish_, “a lion,”) undoubtedly all three being from the same root, but variously modified in the changing pronunciations of different ages and tribes. In the earliest passage, (Genesis x. 19,) it is clearly described as on the farthest northern limit of the land of Canaan, and afterwards, being conquered long after most of the cities of that region, by the tribe of Dan, and receiving the name of this tribe, as an addition to its former one, it became proverbially known under the name of _Dan_, as the farthest northern point of the land of Israel, as Beersheba was the southern one. It did not, however, lose its early Canaanitish name till long after, for, in Isaiah x. 30, it is spoken of under the name of Laish, as the most distant part of Israel, to which the cry of the distressed could reach. It is also mentioned under its later name of Dan, in Genesis xiv. 14, and Deuteronomy xxxiv. 1, where it is given by the writer, or some copyist, in anticipation of the subsequent account of its acquiring this name after the conquest. Josephus also mentions it, under this name, in Antiquities book i. chapter 10, and book viii. chapter 8, section 4, in both which places he speaks of it as standing at one of the sources of the Jordan, from which circumstance, no doubt, the latter part of the river’s name is derived. After the overthrow of the Israelitish power in that region, it fell into the hands of new possessors, and under the Greeks and Romans, went by the name of Panias, (Josephus and Ptolemy,) or Paneas, (Josephus and Pliny,) which name, according to Ptolemy, it had under the Phoenicians. This name, supposed to have been taken from the Phoenician name of the mountain near, Josephus gives to it, in all the later periods of his history, until he speaks of the occasion on which it received a new change of name.