Visiting Research Scholar Spotlight: Zeev Weiss

In the heart of the Lower Galilee, 5 kilometers west of Nazareth, lie the remains of Sepphoris, capital of Galilee for long periods in antiquity. Literary sources and archaeological finds confirm that pagans and Christians lived alongside the Jewish population, providing valuable information about Sepphoris’s social, economic, religious, and cultural life. Hellenistic Sepphoris was built on its hill and slopes, and in the early second century CE, the city spread considerably eastward, boasting an impressive grid of streets with a colonnaded cardo and decumanus running through its center. Public buildings were built in the city, including a Roman temple, a forum, bathhouses, a theater, a monumental building identified as a library or archive, as well as synagogues and churches. Most of the common people lived in simple houses while the wealthy lived in large, spacious, well-planned dwellings. The city retained its layout throughout late antiquity; in the course of the seventh century, when its magnificent buildings were destroyed and abandoned, and its population dwindled, the declining city was transformed into a small town or large village.

 Sepphoris, The decumanus, one of the main colonnaded streets that cuts through the civic center and leads westward, toward the acropolis. Photo courtesy of G. Laron.

The wealth of evidence emerging from Sepphoris, one of the major Galilean settlements that nurtured the creation of part of the rabbinic literary corpus, provides a fresh perspective on Jewish urban life in late antique Palestine. The material finds from the site, combined with the information culled from rabbinic literature, afford a wide range of insights into the relationship between Jewish society and Graeco-Roman culture and also demonstrate how the Jewish population conducted its affairs in a period of transition and change—from Rome to Byzantium and from paganism to Christianity. 

Having directed the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s excavations at the site since 1991, and being involved in uncovering most of the areas within the city, my appointment as a Visiting Research Scholar at ISAW in the spring semester of 2016 provides me with the opportunity to devote my time to conducting research on Sepphoris in the above era and writing a book to be entitled: Sepphoris: A Cultural Mosaic from Alexander to Muhammad. The study will be published as a fully annotated and well-illustrated monograph intended for a broad interdisciplinary scholarly audience. It will offer a new and updated perspective on the city and will ultimately serve as an essential reference for future study of the multifaceted life of Jewish society in late antiquity.

Read more about Zeev's work on his biography page here.