Dating of Archaeological Sites in Israel (re: mosaics)

Discussion about the Hebrew Bible, Septuagint, pseudepigrapha, Philo, Josephus, Talmud, Dead Sea Scrolls, archaeology, etc.
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billd89
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Dating of Archaeological Sites in Israel (re: mosaics)

Post by billd89 »

Inconvenient truths. Religious politics interferes with too many things in the Near East to pretend that chronological games aren't being played by different parties.

The survival of artifacts and sites in Israel is by no means certain. Sites have been destroyed by religious zealots annoyed by what the evidence shows, whatever dogmatic religious myths are challenged or contradicted.

So I wonder about the late dating of a so-called "Byzantine site" at Sepphoris in Israel featuring mosaics of Greek gods. There's enough wine-chatter in the New Testament so that flagrantly pagan scenes -- explicitly pagan myth -- are wholly unnecessary and really quite anti-Christian. No, I don't think this is Byzantine at all!

On the other hand, Israeli/Jewish history envisions Sepphoris as a devout priestly, rabbinical center c.150 AD and thereafter -- another problematic myth exploded by a pagan-themed winery, I think.

The questions I have, looking at the mosaics themselves, and without any agenda: do the stories told in the tesserae provide any clues as to the most likely date of this winery? This background suggests that the First and Second Centuries are a more likely period for these mosaics. Any stylistic clues?

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