Footnotes

1.

Richard A. Batey, “Sepphoris: An Urban Portrait of Jesus,” BAR 18:03.

2.

See Robert J. Bull, “Caesarea Maritima: The Search for Herod’s City,” BAR 08:03; Barbara Burrell, Kathryn Gleason and Ehud Netzer, “Uncovering Herod’s Seaside Palace,” BAR 19:03.

3.

See Mark Chancey and Eric M. Meyers, “How Jewish Was Sepphoris in Jesus’ Time?” BAR 26:04.

4.

See Chancey and Meyers, “How Jewish Was Sepphoris?”

5.

See John C. H. Laughlin, “Capernaum: From Jesus’ Time and After,” BAR 19:05.

6.

See “Glorious Beth-Shean,” BAR, 16:04.

9.

As to some of these alleged mikva’ot, there is fierce acacemic debate. Hanan Eshel, for example, argues that some of the pools at Sepphoris cannot be mikva’ot because they do not match later rabbinic descriptions of such baths. In his view, their small size, lack of a partition in the steps leading into the pool, and absence of a storage tank for water suggest that the pools were used for purposes other than removing impurity. Perhaps, he suggests, they were used for regular hygienic bathing. Hanan Eshel, “They’re Not Ritual Baths,” BAR 26:04. Most scholars note, however, that rabbinic opinions do not yet appear to have been authoritative as early as the first century. They also point out that if such pools were used for regular baths, we would expect to find them at a far greater range of sites, including those that were predominantly gentile. Eric M. Meyers, “Yes, They Are,” BAR 26:04; Ronny Reich, “They Are Ritual Baths,” BAR 28:02. In my opinion, it is far more likely that these pools are, indeed, mikva’ot.

10.

See André Lemaire, “Burial Box of James the Brother of Jesus,” BAR 28:06; Edward J. Keall, Hershel Shanks, “Is It or Isn’t It?” BAR 27:06; “‘Brother of Jesus’ Ossuary—New Tests Bolster Case for Authenticity,” BAR 29:04; www.biblicalarchaeology.com/JamesOssuary.

11.

See Rami Arav, Richard A. Freund and John F. Shroder Jr., “Bethsaida Rediscovered,” BAR 26:01, which rejects the identification of et-Tell as Bethsaida.

Endnotes

1.

Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 16.146–148; Jewish War1.422–425 (Loeb ed.).

2.

See, for example, Mark 6:14–29; Luke 3:1, 23:7–12.

3.

See the sources cited in Mark A. Chancey, The Myth of a Gentile Galilee, Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series 118 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2002), pp. 69–83.

4.

James F. Strange, “Six Campaigns at Sepphoris: The University of South Florida Excavations, 1983–1989,” in Lee I. Levine, ed., The Galilee in Late Antiquity (New York and Jerusalem: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1992), pp. 339–356; Carol Meyers and Eric M. Meyers, “Sepphoris,” Oxford Encyclopedia of the Ancient Near East, vol. 4, (New York and Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1997), pp. 527–536; and Zeev Weiss and Ehud Netzer, “Hellenistic and Roman Sepphoris: The Archaeological Evidence,” in Rebecca Martin Nagy, Carol L. Meyers, Eric M. Meyers, and Zeev Weiss, Sepphoris in Galilee: Crosscurrents of Culture (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1996), pp. 29–37.

5.

Josephus, Jewish War 2.618 and 3.539–540.

6.

“Roman Stadium Found in Tiberias,” Jerusalem Post, June 17, 2002.

7.

Vassilios Tzaferis, “A Roman Bath at Rama,” Atiqot 14 (1980), pp. 66–75.

8.

Carol L. Meyers, Eric M. Meyers, Ehud Netzer and Zeev Weiss, “The Dionysos Mosaic,” in Nagy et al., Sepphoris in Galilee, pp. 111–116; R. Talgam and Z. Weiss, The Mosaics of the House of Dionysos at Sepphoris (Jerusalem: Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew Univ., 2004).

9.

Shraga Qedar, “Two Lead Weights of Herod Antipas and Agrippa II and the Early History of Tiberias,” Israel Numismatic Journal 9 (1986–1987), pp. 29–35.

10.

Eric M. Meyers and James F. Strange, Archaeology, the Rabbis, and Early Christianity (Nashville: Abingdon, 1981), pp. 83–84.

11.

Qedar, “Two Lead Weights of Herod Antipas and Agrippa II and the Early History of Tiberias,” pp. 29–35.

12.

David Adan-Bayewitz and Mordechai Aviam, “Iotapata, Josephus, and the Siege of 67: Preliminary Report on the 1992–1994 Seasons,” Journal of Roman Archaeology 10 (1997), pp. 131–165, esp. p. 152.

13.

See comments by Meshorer in Nagy et al., Sepphoris in Galilee, p. 201.

14.

The statistics are from Lee I. Levine, “Beth She’arim,” Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology of the Near East, vol. 2, pp. 309–311.

15.

Yaakov Meshorer, City—Coins of Eretz—Israel and the Decapolis in the Roman Period (Jerusalem: Israel Museum, 1985), p. 34.

16.

Josephus, Life, 65–67.

17.

Mishnah Kelim 10.1; Mishnah Oholoth 5.5; Mishnah Yadayim 1.2.