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).
More than a dozen stepped pools have been uncovered in excavations at the important Lower Galilee site of Sepphoris, just 4 miles northwest of Nazareth. They are generally regarded as mikva’ot, both by the excavators and by others.1 Because of its proximity to Nazareth Sepphoris has figured prominently in discussions of the cultural context in which Jesus of Nazareth grew up.a
I do not doubt that Sepphoris was an important city at the time of Jesus, with a significant Jewish as well as pagan population. In the late second to third 043century C.E., Sepphoris became the seat of the Sanhedrin under the leadership of the great Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi, compiler of the earliest rabbinic code (the Mishnah). The city remained a major center of Jewish learning for a considerable time.
But are these dozen or so stepped pools mikva’ot? I think not.
The first mikva’ot ever to be excavated were unearthed in the 1960s by Yigael Yadin at Herod’s palace/fortress of Masada, which overlooks the Dead Sea. They raised quite a stir. Yadin was a master showman as well as a master archaeologist, and he called rabbinic experts to the site to confirm that these pools were indeed mikva’ot, built in full conformity with rabbinic regulations.2
The regulations regarding these ritual immersion pools are set forth in the tractate of the Mishnah called Mikva’ot. A mikveh must hold at least 40 seahs of water (approximately 60 gallons). The whole body of the person or vessel to be purified must be totally immersed. And, most significant for our purposes, the water must be “living” water. That is, it must come directly from a river or a spring or from rainwater that flows into the pool; it may not be drawn. To meet this latter requirement, the rabbis permitted the use of an otzer, a pool of living water that was connected by a plugged pipe to the main immersion pool. The main pool could be filled with drawn water (not qualified for use in ritual immersion), and when needed, the pipe between the otzer and the main pool was unplugged, allowing the qualified, living water from the otzer to come into contact with the water in the main pool, rendering it fit for immersions.
Two of the Masada mikva’ot had two pools: one pool with steps and another, adjacent pool, the otzer, without steps. The two pools were connected by a pipe. 044The otzer stored rainwater (even at Masada it rains occasionally), which was used to purify the drawn water in the immersion pool.
Similar mikva’ot were found near Bethlehem at Herodion, another of Herod the Great’s palace/fortresses, and near Jericho at the palace of the Hasmonean king John Hyrcanus. Still another was found in Jerusalem.
Many pools have been discovered, however, without an adjacent reservoir pool. Were these mikva’ot? It is quite possible that they were. They would qualify so long as they used living water. But it is not always easy to determine whether this was the case.
Another telltale sign of a mikveh often appears in excavations: a low partition that divides the stairs into two staircases, one for going into the bath, one for coming out.3 The partition may be cut out of the same rock as the steps or built on top of them. Or sometimes there was just a line on the stairs to mark the division. Various references in the Mishnah and other 045ancient literature indicate that the people immersing themselves went down impure on one side and came up pure on the other.4 In addition to a partition on the stairs, some mikva’ot had double entries, one for entering and another for exiting. Mikva’ot with some form of separation between the entryway and the exit have been found at Qumran, adjacent to the Dead Sea Scroll caves, and at Jericho and Gezer. But this physical separation was not listed as a legal requirement in the Mishnah.
To return to the supposed mikva’ot at Sepphoris: The pools have neither an adjacent otzer nor a division on the steps. This is not necessarily fatal to their identification, however, as neither feature is an absolute requirement of a valid mikveh. Indeed, pools without either have been declared mikva’ot.5
So what about the pools at Sepphoris?
It is not simply that they have no otzer,6 no division on the stairs and no double entrance. There are at least three other considerations. First, they are all significantly smaller than the mikva’ot found at the other sites I have mentioned. This immediately suggests that they were used for bathing rather than ritual purification, although they do hold 40 seahs of water.
Second, most of these pools are located in the upper quarter of the city. Sepphoris had an elaborate water system that provided the city with abundant springwater (see “Bringing Water to Sepphoris,” in this issue). But these pools were higher than the aqueduct, so they could not be filled with living water. If they were not filled with living, that is, flowing, water, they would need an otzer (which they did not have) filled with rainwater to meet the rabbinic requirements for mikva’ot.
Finally, in other sites where mikva’ot have been found, we often find other bathing facilities, such as a bathtub for washing. A mikveh is for ritual purification, not for taking a cleansing bath. Another facility was needed for this purpose. Yet at Sepphoris we do not find such bathing facilities near the supposed ritual purification bath. True, a public bath has recently been discovered at Sepphoris, but it is unlikely that this could have served the entire population.
In short, not all stepped pools are for ritual purification. Stepped pools for bathing have been found in pagan areas as well, from Marisa in the south to Tyre in the north.7 It seems very doubtful that the pools at Sepphoris were mikva’ot. If we are to conclude that the people who used these pools were Jews, we must do so on some other basis.
For further details, see Hanan Eshel, “A Note on ‘Miqvaot’ at Sepphoris,” in Douglas R. Edwards and C. Thomas McCollough, eds., Archaeology and the Galilee (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997).
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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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.
