PROVO, Utah — Brigham Young University faculty and students excavating an ancient synagogue near the Sea of Galilee made an exciting discovery; as they were cleaning dirt from a mosaic section of the floor, they saw images of biblical heroines Deborah and Jael, the first time these women have been seen in ancient Jewish art.
For over ten years, BYU has joined a consortium of universities excavating the synagogue in the ancient Jewish village of Huqoq in Israel, with this summer's project focusing on the mosaic floor, which dates from the late fourth to early fifth century C.E.
Depicted in the panels featuring these women are Deborah sitting under a palm tree, giving instructions to the Israelite general Barak to guide her people in battle, and Jael driving a tent stake through Sisera’s temple, taking out the Canaanite general to help Israel defeat their enemy from the Book of Judges in the Bible.
Other mosaics on the floor also feature Bible themes, such as Samson delivering Israel from the Philistines, Noah’s Ark, and the drowning of Pharaoh’s army in the Red Sea.
“This is a Jewish community apparently looking back on biblical episodes in which the God of Israel showed His power to deliver Israel from bondage, added Gray.
"It may be that as a minority group in the Byzantine Empire, they wanted to remember those episodes in their past to nurture hope that in the future, God would again deliver them from what they perceived as foreign occupation.”
These discoveries are particularly unexpected, according to the BYU team, as art depicting Bible figures is relatively rare in synagogues during this period, which scholars believe may be because of interpretations of the second commandment forbidding “graven images.”
A "cultural fusion" of Roman and Greek mythology was also depicted in the artistic styles featured in the mosaic scenes, which shows "a fascinating diversity within the Jewish community of the period" according to Gray.
Work on the site is led by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which shares BYU's excitement over the find.
“There is nothing like waking up at 4 a.m., putting on a wide-brimmed hat and hiking boots, and marching through the darkness to the excavation site as the sun rises over the Sea of Galilee,” said BYU communications student Isaac Richards.
“It’s one thing to visit ancient sites in the Holy Land, but it is another thing to dig up a place that will become a national historic site. It really was a physical, intellectual, spiritual and historical adventure of gigantic proportions.”
