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| DATE | 2015-02-24 |
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [NYLXS - HANGOUT] What Jews here??
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http://www.timesofisrael.com/stunning-mosaic-found-at-ancient-galilee-synagogue/
Stunning mosaic found at ancient Galilee synagogue
Team of archaeologists uncovers unprecedented non-biblical figures
in decorations at Huqoq, a 5th-century Jewish village
By Ilan Ben Zion
August 4, 2014, 6:05 pm
The Huqoq synagogue's 5th century mosaic, with the upper register
showing a war elephant. (photo credit: Jim Haberman)
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Ilan Ben Zion
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Ben Zion is a news editor at The Times of Israel. He holds a Masters
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Pachyderms find no mention in the Bible. So Professor Jodi Magness was
astonished to uncover a mosaic in an ancient Galilean village’s
synagogue which featured, of all things, a group of elephants.
Excavations at Huqoq
began in 2011, and during the first season archaeologists led by Magness
found the wall of a synagogue. In the subsequent seasons, Magness’s team
uncovered portions of the Galilean synagogue’s mosaics. The part of the
mosaic uncovered this summer, however, stunned archaeologists because
it’s the first time they’ve found a synagogue decorated with a
non-biblical story scene.
Magness, a professor of Early Judaism at University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill, spoke to The Times of Israel about her team’s latest
discovery this summer: an enormous, ornate section of the 5th-century
synagogue’s floor which tells a story in a mosaic. Which story, however,
remains a subject of debate.
Huqoq, located just to the northwest of the Sea of Galilee, is mentioned
as a border town for the tribe of Naphtali in the Book of Joshua, but
was a Jewish agricultural village during late Roman and Byzantine times,
when the synagogue was in use. The period is associated with the
development of the Jewish law books known as the Gemara, and the village
of Huqoq finds mentions in rabbinic texts as a producer of mustard and
home to some significant rabbis. Stone vessels, /mikvaot/ — Jewish
ritual baths — and the synagogue attest to its Jewish habitation at this
time. (Today there’s a modern kibbutz of the same name.)
“I had not anticipated finding mosaics, because the canonical type of
Galilean synagogue does not have mosaic floors,” Magness said. Her aim
when starting the expedition in 2011 was to determine when the
Galilean-type synagogue, such as that found at nearby Capernaum, became
the prevalent style, but the team had no idea a synagogue even lay
beneath the earth before they started excavating.
They struck pay dirt. The eastern wall of the synagogue was found the
first season; the first section of its mosaic floor was found in the
summer of 2012
,
revealing depictions of Samson setting the Philistine’s fields ablaze
with the aid of unfortunate foxes; and in 2013 a panel was revealed
showing Samson carrying off the gates of Gaza.
Detail from the Huqoq synagogue's 5th century mosaic showing Samson
carrying the gate of Gaza, from Judges 16. (photo credit: Jim Haberman)
Detail from the Huqoq synagogue’s 5th century mosaic showing Samson
carrying the gate of Gaza, from Judges 16. (photo credit: Jim Haberman)
Samson alone would have been a remarkable find; he’s not a popular
character in ancient synagogues (only one other example exists, found at
Wadi Hamam, five miles south of Huqoq). But that was before Magness’s
team found the first bit containing the elephants, and only in summer
2014 did they uncover the full extent of the section’s “really
remarkable” decoration, as she put it.
“We have a dozens of ancient synagogues,” Magness explained. “But until
now, none have been decorated with a non-biblical story.”
The top part contains two central figures, a white-bearded man clad in
white robes and a Greek military commander with golden locks, dressed in
regal purple and wearing a diadem. The old man, who appears in a lower
portion of the mosaic as well, points at the sky and is flanked by an
entourage of younger men in white robes with sheathed daggers. The Greek
king leads a bull by the horns and is backed by a phalanx of soldiers
and war elephants — a quintessentially Greek battle beast — with
brilliant collars and shields on their sides.
“Elephants do not occur in the Hebrew Bible, there are no stories that
involve elephants, so as soon as we had a story that showed elephants it
war clear it was not a biblical story, and this is a first,” she said.
The lower section shows a dying soldier holding his shield and a
bleeding bull bristling with spears.
Detail of the Huqoq synagogue's 5th century mosaic, showing the
white-bearded elder. (photo credit: Jim Haberman)
Detail of the Huqoq synagogue’s 5th century mosaic, showing the
white-bearded elder. (photo credit: Jim Haberman)
The middle section shows the elderly man seated with a scroll in hand
beneath a colonnade, flanked by young men with swords.
Detail of the head of a Greek military ruler in the Huqoq synagogue's
5th century mosaic. (photo credit: Jim Haberman)
Detail of the head of a Greek military ruler in the Huqoq synagogue’s
5th century mosaic. (photo credit: Jim Haberman)
The entire scene, which has not yet been released, is “really
remarkable,” said Magness, but scholars remain uncertain as to what
precisely it depicts.
“We’re not releasing that entire upper scene [which includes the two
figures and elephants] because it’s so extraordinary, and so amazing,”
she said. “I have a mosaic specialist on my staff who is working with
another scholar to prepare the publication of that in a proper manner.”
There are two contending theories for the time being. Last summer
archaeologists postulated it represented the Maccabees facing off
against the Seleucid Greeks, the wars commemorated in the Jewish holiday
of Hannukah. While “that interpretation is still a possibility,”
said Magness, she leans toward the panel telling the story of Alexander
the Great’s legendary meeting with the Jewish high priest.
She emphasized that the sections of the ornate floor revealed thus far
are but a small fraction of the entire mosaic, and the nave of the
synagogue and its central design have yet to be uncovered.
“We don’t even know what’s in the central aisle,” Magness said.
Although graven images are proscribed in Orthodox Jewish tradition, the
prevalence of human figures in this period — particularly in synagogues
— reinforces the notion that there was a greater diversity in Jewish
practice than suggested by historical texts.
“We tend to look at Judaism after 70 CE through the lens of the rabbis,
because basically what we have is rabbinic literature for this period,”
Magness said. “One of the things that we learn from archaeology is that
in fact Judaism was far more diverse than what we would have anticipated
from just reading rabbinic literature alone.”
For the time being the mosaics have been removed from the site for
conservation and study and the synagogue filled in, so there’s no point
in rushing up to Huqoq to try and see them in situ.
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