THE SYNAGOGUE PROJECT
REHOV, ISRAEL

Rehov Synagogue

The synagogue of ancient Rehov stood in the Beth Shean Valley, in what are now the fields of Kibbutz Ein HaNatziv. Built in the fourth or fifth century CE and twice rebuilt, it held a long halakhic inscription in mosaic. It collapsed suddenly in the late 680s CE, probably in an earthquake.

Completed
4th or 5th c. CE
Destroyed
Late 680s CE by a sudden collapse, probably an earthquake
Architect / style
Unknown · Byzantine-period basilica
Capacity
Unknown
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A large rectangular mosaic panel of pale stone mounted upright on a dark museum wall, covered edge to edge with dense lines of black Hebrew lettering; the joins between the lifted sections are visible and a small round patch near the centre is missing.
PHOTOGRAPHIC ARCHIVE

Images of the synagogue

A large rectangular mosaic panel of pale stone mounted upright on a dark museum wall, covered edge to edge with dense lines of black Hebrew lettering; the joins between the lifted sections are visible and a small round patch near the centre is missing.
01The halakhic inscription from the narthex floor of the Rehov synagogue, lifted after the excavation and mounted in the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; photographed in 2018.Photo: Davidbena, 4 February 2018, Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mosaic_of_Rehob_-_Israel_Museum.jpg)
Black-and-white photograph taken from above of an excavated field: low lines of rough stone walling and heaps of fallen stones mark out a rectangular building, with patches of pale floor between them and scrub beyond.
02General view of the synagogue during Fanny Vitto's excavation, looking north-east; published in 1975.Photograph published in F. Vitto, 'The Synagogue at Rehob', Qadmoniot 8 (1975), p. 120; reproduced by the Kinneret Academic College synagogues database, courtesy Israel Exploration Society (https://synagogues.kinneret.ac.il/synagogues/rehob/)
Line drawing of a nearly square hall with thick black outer walls, two rows of five small squares marking the pillars, a hatched platform across the south end and a long narrow entrance hall on the north labelled 'Inscription', with a north arrow and a scale bar.
03Plan of the Rehov synagogue in its last phase, with the narthex and the position of the mosaic inscription at the north and the bema at the south.Plan by M. Feist, © Israel Antiquities Authority; from F. Vitto, Israel Museum Studies in Archaeology 7 (2015), fig. 2 (https://museum.imj.org.il/journal/archive/2015/images/Fanny%20Vitto.pdf)
Black-and-white photograph of a long strip of mosaic floor edged by stone rubble: panels of diamond lattice on either side of a central rectangular panel densely filled with lines of lettering, with a dark hole near its middle.
04The narthex of the synagogue with the halakhic inscription still in place in its mosaic floor, during the excavation; published in 1975.Photograph published in F. Vitto, 'The Synagogue at Rehob', Qadmoniot 8 (1975), p. 122; reproduced by the Kinneret Academic College synagogues database, courtesy Israel Exploration Society (https://synagogues.kinneret.ac.il/synagogues/rehob/)
Black-and-white photograph of a low platform built of large squared stone blocks with pale plaster on its face, a striped measuring rod standing against it and hills on the horizon.
05The western part of the bema at the south end of the prayer hall, as excavated; published in 1975.Photograph published in F. Vitto, 'The Synagogue at Rehob', Qadmoniot 8 (1975), p. 123; reproduced by the Kinneret Academic College synagogues database, courtesy Israel Exploration Society (https://synagogues.kinneret.ac.il/synagogues/rehob/)
Black-and-white photograph from above of a small room edged by rough stone walls, its mosaic floor showing a diamond-lattice field on the left and a strip of square geometric panels on the right, with large areas missing.
06Geometric mosaic floor of the room east of the bema, as excavated; published in 1975.Photograph published in F. Vitto, 'The Synagogue at Rehob', Qadmoniot 8 (1975), p. 122; reproduced by the Kinneret Academic College synagogues database, courtesy Israel Exploration Society (https://synagogues.kinneret.ac.il/synagogues/rehob/)
Black-and-white photograph of about ten broken pieces of wall plaster laid out on a dark background, painted with bands, arcs and small circles.
07Fragments of painted wall plaster found in the debris of the prayer hall; published in 1975.Photograph published in F. Vitto, 'The Synagogue at Rehob', Qadmoniot 8 (1975), p. 121; reproduced by the Kinneret Academic College synagogues database, courtesy Israel Exploration Society (https://synagogues.kinneret.ac.il/synagogues/rehob/)
Close view of a cracked white marble slab carved in relief with a seven-branched menorah on a three-footed base inside a wreath, the wreath's ribbon ends curling out to either side, above a band of horizontal mouldings.
08The marble chancel screen of the Rehov synagogue, carved with a seven-branched menorah in a wreath, found in the late 1960s and now kept at Kibbutz Ein HaNatziv.Photo: Gilead Peli; Kinneret Academic College synagogues database (https://synagogues.kinneret.ac.il/synagogues/rehob/)
OVERVIEW

The story of Rehov Synagogue

Rehov was a Jewish town of the late Roman and Byzantine periods in the Beth Shean Valley, about 800 metres north-west of the mound of Tel Rehov. Its synagogue lay at the site known in Arabic as Khirbet Farwana and in Hebrew as Horvat Parva. In the late 1960s members of Kibbutz Ein HaNatziv, preparing a field for cultivation, turned up pieces of a marble chancel screen carved with a seven-branched menorah and a clay box of gold coins. Fanny Vitto then excavated the building in five seasons between 1974 and 1980.

She found a basilica set almost exactly north to south, with its back wall towards Jerusalem, and distinguished three building phases. The first hall, which summaries of her earlier reports date to the fourth century CE, burned down. It was rebuilt with basalt pillars, a raised platform and painted plaster, and in its last phase was given an entrance hall on the north. In the floor of that hall was a mosaic of 29 lines setting out which produce in the district was subject to tithes and to the laws of the Sabbatical year.

The building fell suddenly while a new nave mosaic was being laid. Vitto dates the collapse to the end of the 680s CE and thinks an earthquake the likeliest cause, although none is recorded for those years. The mosaic inscription is now in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

LOCATION

Where it stood

Historic: Rehov (Roob), four Roman miles from Scythopolis (Beth Shean); Khirbet Farwana / Horvat Parva. Today: field of Kibbutz Ein HaNatziv, about 800 m north-west of Tel Rehov, Emek HaMaayanot Regional Council, Beth Shean Valley, Israel (approximate).

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The Jewish community

Almost nothing is known of the people who built and used the synagogue beyond what the building itself says. The place kept the biblical name Rehov: Eusebius, in his early fourth-century Onomasticon, mentions a Roob four Roman miles from Beth Shean, and the excavator named the site accordingly. Vitto describes it as a Jewish settlement in the vicinity of a gentile city, whose inhabitants were concerned with keeping the agricultural laws of tithes and of the Sabbatical year. One painted version of the halakhic text ends by addressing the inhabitants of the locality, and Vitto suggests it was originally a letter received by the community. A painted list of the twenty-four priestly courses and a list of fast days were also displayed. A dedication of about sixteen lines named some thirty donors, some with their professions or nicknames, but those names are not given in the sources read. The size of the population, the names of its leaders and the date the town was founded are unknown. Surveys at Farwana have recorded finds from the Iron Age to the Ottoman period.

Architecture and design

Summaries of Vitto's encyclopaedia entry describe the first synagogue, dated there to the fourth century CE, as a hall of about 11 by 19 metres with walls 0.8 metres thick, built of large fieldstones and rubble. Three doors opened in the north wall and one in the east. Two rows of columns on square basalt bases, probably with limestone Corinthian capitals, divided it into a nave and two aisles, and the aisles had decorated mosaics. After a fire the hall was rebuilt on the same foundations with square pillars of basalt ashlars standing directly on the floor, five in each row in the final arrangement, a geometric mosaic, and a bema at the south end of the nave, towards Jerusalem. In the last phase a narthex was added across the north side, the bema, about 90 centimetres high, stretched the full width of the nave, a low wall in front of it apparently carried the marble chancel screen, and benches were built along the aisle walls. Bronze chandeliers with glass oil lamps hung from the ceiling, and the collapse layer contained roof tiles.

Life inside the synagogue

The walls and pillars were coated with white plaster and painted; some eight hundred fragments were recovered from the debris. The aisle walls carried vertical red stripes, and near the east door was a pattern of red quatrefoils in a green grid. On the pillars, mostly those of the western row, Aramaic and Hebrew texts were written in red inside wreaths about 90 centimetres across, roughly a metre and a half above the floor: a dedication listing donors, a version of the halakhic text, a list of fast days and a list of the twenty-four priestly courses. Near the bema a wreath enclosed a drawing of a structure with four spiral columns and a gabled roof beside a seven-branched menorah, which Vitto reads as a Torah shrine or perhaps the Temple front. Everyone entering through the narthex had to tread on the mosaic inscription, 4.30 by 2.75 metres, which Vitto calls the earliest surviving version of a rabbinic text; it opens with a description of Beth Shean and ends with a list of towns in the region of Sebaste. A four-line Aramaic dedication at the east end of the narthex apparently refers to the rebuilding of the Temple.

Destruction

The building was destroyed twice. The first hall ended in a violent fire, which left burn marks on its mosaic and lumps of charcoal; no source read says who or what started it. The last building came down in a single event. Vitto writes that the destruction 'was obviously violent and abrupt': the bronze chandeliers lay on the floor beneath the points from which they had hung, the walls and pillars had fallen eastwards 'like toppled dominoes', and the mosaicist replacing the floor of the nave had laid only its southern border. The latest coins, among them a gold coin of Justinian II struck in 686/687 CE and a pouch of fourteen Arab-Byzantine coppers buried under a fallen wall, led her to date the event to the end of the 680s CE. She concludes that the pattern of collapse suggests an earthquake, but notes that no major earthquake is recorded for those years: that of 659/660 is too early and that of 749 came more than sixty years later. She therefore leaves open either another cause or a weak, unrecorded tremor acting on a building weakened by repairs. The synagogue was not rebuilt.

The community’s fate

No source read says what became of the Jews of Rehov after their synagogue collapsed. The pottery and glass from the excavation point, according to Vitto, to abandonment in the seventh century, and the unfinished nave mosaic shows that the congregation was still investing in the building when it fell. Whether the people left the town at once, moved to another settlement in the valley or stayed on without a synagogue is unknown. Survey finds from Farwana include Early Islamic, Crusader, Mamluk and Ottoman material, so the place was not deserted for good, but nothing connects those later inhabitants with the Jewish community. In recent centuries the site was the Arab village of Farwana, which stood there until 1948, and a late Ottoman cemetery was dug into the ruins of the synagogue.

The site today

The remains lie in a cultivated field of Kibbutz Ein HaNatziv, south of Beit She'an. When excavated, most of the walls stood only one or two courses high, and ploughing had damaged much of the site, often below floor level. The Kinneret College database of ancient synagogues describes the place as open to the public, in a field with few remains. The mosaic with the halakhic inscription was lifted and has been shown in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem since 1978, and the painted plaster fragments were taken to the museum's laboratories. The marble chancel screen with the menorah and some building stones are displayed at the kibbutz, beside a full-size copy of the inscription. Achia Kohn-Tavor carried out further excavation between 2015 and 2018.

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