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The Pools of Sepphoris: Ritual Baths or Bathtubs?

They’re Not Ritual Baths

By Hanan Eshel

One sure sign that religiously observant Jews inhabited a site from the turn of the era is the presence of ritual immersion pools (mikva’ot; singular, mikveh).

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Footnotes

1.

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

Endnotes

1.

See, for example, The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Ancient Near East, s.v. “Sepphoris.”

2.

Yigael Yadin,Masada: Herod’s Fortress and the Zealot’s Last Stand (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1966), pp. 164–167.

3.

Ronny Reich, “Mishnah, Sheqalim 8:2 and the Archaeological Evidence,” in Jerusalem in the Second Temple Period: Abraham Schalit Memorial Volume, ed. Aaron Oppenheimer, Uriel Rappaport and Menachem Stern (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 1980), pp. 225–256 (in Hebrew); and “A Miqweh at al Isawiya near Jerusalem,” Israel Exploration Journal 34 (1984), pp. 220–223.

4.

Mishnah, Sheqalim 8.2; see Saul Lieberman, “Notes,” P’raqim 1 (1967–1968), pp. 97–98 (in Hebrew); Bargil Pixner, “An Essene Quarter on Mount Zion,” in Studia Hierosolymitana, vol. 1, Archaeological Studies (Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing, 1976), pp. 270–271.

5.

See Reich, “Miqvaot (Jewish Ritual Immersion Baths) in Eretz-Israel in the Second Temple and the Mishnah and Talmudic Periods” (Ph.D. diss., Hebrew Univ., Jerusalem, 1990); and “The Great Mikveh Debate,” BAR 19:02.

6.

It is possible that there is one—as yet unpublished—exception.

7.

See Amos Kloner, “Maresha,” Qadmoniot 24 (1991), p. 81 (in Hebrew); Martha S. Joukouwsky, ed., The Heritage of Tyre (Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt, 1992), p. 2.