Naaran

Naaran appears in 1 Chronicles 7:28-29 in the catalog of the territorial holdings of the sons of Joseph: "And their possessions and habitations were, Bethel and the towns thereof, and eastward Naaran, and westward Gezer, with the towns thereof; Shechem also and the towns thereof." The Chronicler's east-west axis places Naaran in the eastern foothills of Ephraim above the Jordan Valley north of Jericho — the same site spelled Naarah in Joshua 16:7 (Ephraim's eastern boundary marker). The town is identified with Tell el-Jisr in the Wadi Nuweimeh near modern Jericho, where a famous Byzantine synagogue mosaic was excavated in the early twentieth century.