Tabitha (Aramaic for 'gazelle,' Greek translation Dorcas) was a Christian woman of Joppa — the principal coastal port of Judea south of Caesarea — and is described by Luke as 'full of good works and almsdeeds which she did' (Acts 9:36). She had organized a substantial Christian ministry of making cloaks and garments for the Joppa widows and the indigent — the first recorded New Testament women's social-charitable ministry.
She fell ill and died sometime around AD 36. The Joppa Christian widows, grieving the loss of their patroness, prepared her body for burial in the upper room of her own house and sent urgently to the nearby city of Lydda for the Apostle Peter, who happened to be there. Peter came to Joppa, dismissed the mourners from the room, knelt and prayed beside the body, and then said simply 'Tabitha, arise' (Acts 9:40). She opened her eyes, sat up, and stood. The episode is the only New Testament resurrection-of-the-dead miracle worked by an apostle on a named individual.
The episode produced — Luke specifies — substantial conversions across Joppa (Acts 9:42). The tradition holds that Tabitha lived many years after the resurrection and continued her clothing ministry through old age before her final death. Her tomb at Joppa (modern Jaffa) is a focus of continuous pilgrimage, particularly through the small 19th-century Russian Orthodox church of St. Tabitha that was built over the traditional site.