Beth Alpha Synagogue

La comunidad judía

No ancient text mentions the village, and its ancient name is not recorded; Sukenik thought it survived in the Arabic name Beit Ilfa. He found no trace of occupation earlier than the end of the Roman period. The broken Aramaic inscription shows, in his reading, that the whole community gave towards the mosaic, with a separate gift from a man, or the sons of a man, titled Rabbi, whose name is lost after its first letter. The word for a hundred and the word for wheat survive in the text, and Sukenik concluded that the congregation were workers on the land who paid partly in produce. The Parks Authority brochure likewise describes the floor as paid for with a hundred measures of grain donated by the villagers. A stone-lined grave 27 metres south-east of the synagogue held a skeleton and Byzantine pottery, and Sukenik took it for a Jewish burial. A second dig in 1962 uncovered further buildings around the synagogue. The number of inhabitants and the names of the community's officers are unknown. The same two mosaicists also signed a floor in nearby Scythopolis (Beit She'an).

Arquitectura y diseño

Sukenik measured the whole complex at 27.70 metres long and about 14.20 metres wide, with walls of untrimmed limestone 70 to 85 cm thick, plastered inside. It is aligned roughly south, 27 degrees west of south by compass, towards Jerusalem. A courtyard 9.65 metres long, entered from the west, led to a vestibule 2.57 metres wide and through three doors into the hall, which was about 10.75 metres long and 12.40 metres wide inside. Two rows of five square basalt pillars divided it into a nave 5.40 metres wide and two aisles; stone benches ran along the walls. At the south end three steps rose to a platform 75 cm high in an apse 2.40 metres deep, where the ark stood; two sockets probably held posts for its curtain. A room adjoined on the west. Column fragments led Sukenik to reconstruct a gallery over the aisles, which he called the women's gallery; that use has since been disputed. The roof was of flat and curved clay tiles laid on mortar. A small bema and extra benches were added after the mosaic was laid, since they cover parts of it. The builder is unknown.

La vida dentro de la sinagoga

Worshippers entered from the north and faced south towards the ark in the apse, crossing the three mosaic panels in turn: first the Binding of Isaac, with Abraham, Isaac, the ram and the hand of God labelled in Hebrew; then the zodiac, its twelve signs and four seasons named in Hebrew around the sun in a four-horse chariot; and nearest the apse the ark with a hanging lamp, two menorahs, lions, birds, a shofar, lulav, etrog and incense shovel between drawn curtains. A lion and a bull flank the two inscriptions at the main door. Sukenik counted 21 shades of stone and glass in the floor. People sat on plastered stone benches along the walls. A plastered cavity in the floor of the apse held 36 bronze coins, the legible ones running from Constantine the Great to Justin I, and Sukenik thought it was the synagogue's treasury. Fragments of glass lamp stems were found, and the courtyard seems to have had a water vessel for washing hands. The floor was patched in antiquity, once clumsily with tesserae at the sign of Capricorn. The order of prayer and the names of those who led it are unknown.

Destrucción

Sukenik wrote that it was plain within a fortnight of digging how the synagogue had been destroyed. The basalt blocks of the pillars lay in every case east and west of their bases, which he read as the effect of a strong earth tremor running roughly west to east. Plaster 20 to 25 cm deep covered the floor of the nave; it had fallen first from the roof, pillars and walls, and so cushioned the mosaic when roof tiles and masonry came down afterwards. The stones did most damage beside the main door, where they destroyed more than half of the Aramaic inscription. He concluded that the building was destroyed by an earthquake, perhaps one of the twenty listed for Palestine in the 6th century, and noted an earlier, hasty repair of the north wall that may have followed a previous tremor. The Israel Nature and Parks Authority says the synagogue was probably destroyed by an earthquake at the end of the 6th century CE. BibleWalks instead names the earthquake of 749 CE. The fallen plaster and rubble were still lying on the floor when the excavators reached it.

El destino de la comunidad

What became of the villagers after the earthquake is not documented. Sukenik wrote that it is difficult to say how long the Jewish settlement lasted, and assumed that it did not continue long after the beginning of the 7th century, since the Persian conquest and the Arab conquest that soon followed left little chance for a small Jewish village at the entrance to the Jezreel Valley. That is his judgement, not a recorded event. He also observed that the figures in the mosaic were never defaced, so the synagogue had fallen before the later hostility to animal images in synagogue decoration. A few pieces of Arab pottery lay in the top layer of debris over the ruin, and a foundation of some later building of unknown purpose was set on the courtyard mosaic. Travellers in the 19th century found only ruins: E. G. Schultz in 1847 described desolate remains and rough sarcophagi, and Victor Guérin in 1870 saw an abandoned Arab hamlet with heaps of large stones to its south. The Jewish National Fund bought the land in 1921, and two settlement groups were established there in 1922.

El lugar hoy

The remains lie in the grounds of Kibbutz Hefzibah at the foot of Mount Gilboa, in Bet Alfa Synagogue National Park, run by the Israel Nature and Parks Authority. After the 1929 dig the mosaic had to be covered with earth again until the Mandate Department of Antiquities put up a building over it; a photograph on Wikimedia Commons is captioned as that building's inauguration in 1933. The Parks Authority says it has since roofed the mosaic and landscaped the area. Inside the present building the original floor lies where it was laid, with the stumps of the pillars, the benches, the apse and the low walls, which Sukenik recorded as standing 0.55 to 1.65 metres high. A model of the synagogue stands outside.

Nombres destacados