Galilee Day 4: Sepphoris, Jezreel, Bet Alfa, Bet Shean

On our last day in the Galilee we stopped first at Sepphoris to look at their synagogue, which had a large mosaic on the floor displaying some very Greek-looking things. There were three sections to this mosaic: the first, on the top, was a religious section, depicting the torah and the Ark of the Covenant, the shofar, and a menorah. The middle consisted of a circle and inner circle, divided into 12 sections. There were horses pulling a chariot and the sun. On the 12 sections around the circle there were characters and symbols representing the different zodiac symbols. This large picture in the middle of the mosaic turned out to be a very Hellenistic looking Jewish calendar. It was set to the Jewish yearly agricultural cycle, but the pictures were quite Greek. The third and bottom section contained pictures of Bible stories such as Sarah waiting at the door of her tent, while Abraham entertained his guests. Although there were Hebrew words put into the mosaic, many of them were spelled wrong or the letters were backwards. These things give us evidence of how hellenized the land was becoming by the time of Jesus. Because Sepphoris is in the valley near Nazareth, Jesus might very well have grown up around the city. Because his father’s trade, masonry, was in high demand, it would have been likely that he helped to build at Sepphoris. If Joseph worked there, he probably taught Jesus his trade in the same place. Thinking about Jesus’ life outside of his ministry makes him so much more real. Just as the scripture says, “for we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet was without sin” (Heb. 4:15). He was not just some supernatural creature who looked like a human—he was human. He did things that we do; he worked with his hands and had to learn the ways of society like we do.
There was a room called the vomitorium in the Roman times. It is one of the most disgusting things that I have ever heard of. It is not only what physically occurred in that room that disgusts me either; the entire concept of people eating so much that they would have to throw up, then actually throwing up and gorging themselves again. It gives more meaning to the times Paul tells people not to be gluttonous. Sure, we can take that as just not eating anything we don’t need, but there were specific extreme cases that he was probably addressing when he wrote that.
The warm pools at which we stopped for lunch were beautiful. I was surprised at how warm they actually were. The best part of that was probably that there was a cave to go in where you could stand on the rocks below. The waterfall made for a nice background sound to which to relax. It was nice to have a long break in the middle of the day after three days of field studies already.
We ended the day and the whole trip to Galilee at Beit Shean, which was a really good thing. Beit Shean is probably one of the most impressive sites that we have seen so far. The city was pretty big, but beyond that, it was amazing how much of the remains are still there. It was really helpful to have a model of the whole city as well as a map. The view from the tel of the Roman city was also convenient, allowing one to see most of the city from above. It was somewhat disappointing to see that parts of the city on the model are not actually there to see, because they are pretty much under the modern city right now.