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Sepphoris in Galilee: Crosscurrents of Culture

edited by Rebecca Martin Nagy, Carol L. Meyers and Zeev Weiss

(Raleigh, NC: North Carolina Museum of Art, 1996; distributed by Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake, Indiana) 240 pp. $29.95

Promise and Redemption: A Synagogue Mosaic from Sepphoris

Zeev Weiss and Ehud Netzer

(Jerusalem: Israel Museum, 1996) 94 pp., English and Hebrew. $13

The past 15 years have witnessed three large-scale excavations in northern Israel, each of which has yielded spectacular results. These digs have centered on the most important urban centers of Roman-Byzantine Palestine: Caesarea, Beth-Shean and Sepphoris. However, Caesarea aside, only selective studies and general overviews have been published to date. The volumes under review here first appeared in conjunction with museum exhibitions and are the first serious attempts to bring the fruits of the Sepphoris excavations to the attention of the wider public. Sepphoris in Galilee provides an excellent introduction to the range of finds at the site, while Promise and Redemption focuses on one of the most stunning of the many mosaic floors discovered there.

In addition to serving as an exhibit catalogue for 177 artifacts, Sepphoris in Galilee also contains 18 concise articles, the bulk of them on the city’s history and archaeology from earliest times through the Crusader period. The book’s subtitle, Crosscurrents of Culture, points to an underlying theme in many of these essays and in the accompanying exhibit: the multifaceted cultural and social scene throughout late antiquity in the Galilee in general and in Sepphoris in particular. Pagan, Jewish and Christian populations and cultures existed side by side, and clearly interacted with one another. Carol Meyers, Zeev Weiss, Ehud Netzer and James Strange map out the types of buildings that have been identified to date, including a theater, major thoroughfares with shops and stoas, a large basilica, public baths, several churches and a synagogue. Most date to the Roman and Byzantine eras, when the city was at the zenith of its power and prominence. Stuart Miller, Seth Ward and Jaroslav Folda cover the history of the city from the Hellenistic through the Crusader periods. Two rather unusual types of finds are accorded special attention: Kenneth Hoglund and Eric Meyers describe a residential quarter and its many miqva’ot (ritual baths) discovered on the city’s western summit, and Tsvika Tsuk reports on an impressive water-supply system, consisting of two separate aqueducts that merge to form an enormous subterranean reservoir on the eastern outskirts of the city.

Sepphoris offers a rare opportunity of relating a city’s archaeological material to a rich trove of literary sources that discuss aspects of its life in late antiquity. As Sepphoris served as one of the main centers of rabbinic activity in the talmudic era (second to fourth centuries C.E.), it appears often in rabbinic sources. The comments of Isaiah Gafni and Miller, describing daily life and the Sepphorean sages respectively, include discussions of demography, economic life, civic institutions and officials, the Patriarchate and rabbinic affairs, offering some idea of just how abundant this material is. In contrast, the two chapters by Sean Freyne and E.P. Sanders, devoted to Christian presence in the city, are far less fruitful. Although Jesus was born in Nazareth, just a few kilometers away, there is no mention of his presence in Sepphoris, and early Christian literature is virtually silent about the city. Interestingly, the two main sources that do document Christian presence are rabbinic literature and the archaeological finds. The former contains a number of traditions about minim (heretics) in Sepphoris and its vicinity, many of whom were Jewish Christians; the archaeological material, for its part, has yielded evidence of a marked Christian presence in the city in the Byzantine period, as attested by the two churches and the many crosses and inscriptions found there.

For all the wealth of the archaeological material discovered at Sepphoris, there can be little question that the most sensational finds over the last decade have been the large number of mosaic floors found in private and public domains and in religious and secular settings. Within this rich variety, three are particularly outstanding. The now-famous Dionysos mosaic (discussed by Carol Meyers, Eric Meyers, Netzer and Weiss) features 15 scenes from the life of the god and was discovered in 1987. It depicts hunting scenes, as well as scenes of a procession of worshipers bearing gifts. Located in a large villa on the acropolis of the city, adjacent to the theater, this well-executed third-century mosaic adorned the floor of a 068dining room, or triclinium. The identification of the owner of this impressive building remains an intriguing question: Was he Roman or Jewish, an official or a wealthy individual?

A second mosaic (discussed by Weiss and Netzer) lies in a large structure with numerous mosaic floors, one of which is especially striking; it features a series of scenes of the Nile River, which is shown flowing horizontally across the mosaic. The third mosaic, in a synagogue discovered in the northern part of the city, is the subject of the second volume under review here, which we will deal with in a moment. The concluding article in the volume, by Netzer and Binyamin Shalev, focuses on a contemporary dimension of the site, the establishment of a national park at Sepphoris.

This handsome volume offers a comprehensive picture of one of the Galilee’s leading cities in antiquity. Each essay is concise and focused, well written, and accompanied by a rich selection of illustrations. Sepphoris in Galilee provides a splendid overview of this important urban setting.

In Promise and Redemption, Weiss and Netzer offer a clear and succinct description of an unusual synagogue mosaic discovered in 1993, one clearly as important as those of Bet Alpha and Hammat Tiberias. Instead of the usual tripartite division, this mosaic has no fewer than seven registers: (1) two lions flanking a wreath, each holding the head of a bull in its paw; (2) a Torah shrine surrounded by a cluster of familiar Jewish symbols (menorah, shofar, lulav and ethrog); (3 and 4) objects associated with the Wilderness Tabernacle; (5) the zodiac signs, four seasons and Helios represented as the sun (not a person); (6 and 7) biblical scenes of Abraham and Sarah. Parts of this mosaic have been severely damaged; the proposed restoration and interpretation by its excavators draw on Jewish and Christian artistic parallels, as well as on midrashic literature (rabbinic interpretations and expansions of the Biblical text).

Were this volume only to introduce and describe this most unusual find, it would have performed a great service. However, the authors have gone one step further by offering an interpretation of these seven registers as a whole. They claim to have found an overriding message—as indicated by the title of their volume—wherein the two scenes associated with Abraham point to the divine promises made to the patriarch, while the Tabernacle panels refer to the future redemption of the Jewish people. These two foci are bridged and united by the zodiac panel, which, according to the authors, represents God’s omnipotence and power and serves to guarantee His translating of the historical promise into the future redemption. The heavy reliance on assorted midrashic statements and the interpretation of the Tabernacle scenes as a reflection of the redemption theme are an interesting approach to understanding this material, though not without its problems. Rabbinic statements are notoriously difficult to date, and none can be associated with fifth-century Sepphoris, the time and place of this synagogue mosaic. Moreover, it is far from clear why a Tabernacle theme should have eschatological significance. The authors seem to recognize this difficulty and attempt to fuse these Tabernacle scenes with traditions relating to the Jerusalem Temple, which does, of course, bear such significance. Moreover, they claim that this same overriding theme of promise and redemption also explains the Bet Alpha mosaic and the painting above the Torah shrine at Dura Europos.

Whatever the eventual judgment regarding this ambitious interpretation of the mosaic, there is no question that this floor constitutes an enormous contribution to our repertoire of ancient Jewish synagogue art. No less than with the other discoveries treated in Sepphoris in Galilee, we eagerly await the detailed final report of this magnificent find in the not-too-distant future.

Sepphoris in Galilee: Crosscurrents of Culture

edited by Rebecca Martin Nagy, Carol L. Meyers and Zeev Weiss

(Raleigh, NC: North Carolina Museum of Art, 1996; distributed by Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake, Indiana) 240 pp. $29.95

Promise and Redemption: A Synagogue Mosaic from Sepphoris