JEWS OR PAGANS? 143suggested, be little reason to doubt the presence of temples in the cities de-
spite their absence in the archaeological record. At Sepphoris, the excava-
tionsoftheacropolisareincomplete,andanyway,themassivereconstruction
of the city in the sixth century may well have obliterated any traces of a
temple, perhaps replacing it with a church. Something likethis happened at
Tiberias,ifwecanbelieveEpiphanius.Thechurchfatherclaimedthatthere
had been a great temple of deified Hadrian there, which the locals had at-
tempted to turn into a bath but had never completed. This structure was
subsequently (in the 320s or 330s; Epiphanius was writing at the end of the
fourth century) turned into a church (Panarion 30.12). If this is so, it may
imply that the christianization of the city was preceded by its judaization—
hence theattempt to convertthetemple into abathhouse—apointtowhich
I will return below.
The cities also had synagogues, mentioned frequently in rabbinic litera-
ture.^46 Tiberias had had a synagogue already in the first century (Life 277),
though the structure may not have survived the destruction wrought by Ves-
pasian in 67. In any case, possession of a synagogue was a common feature of
high imperial Greek cities in general. The Palestinian Talmud claims there
were eighteen synagogues in Sepphoris and thirteen in Tiberias, but there is
no way to determine what period, if any, these claims may be true for; still
less is it possible to guess what proportion of the population the synagogues
could accommodate; in any case, they surely played a minimal role in the
public life of the cities, at least before the later third century. The richly
decorated synagogues discovered by archaeologists at Hamath Tiberias and
Sepphoris were built in the fourth and fifth centuries respectively, not the
second and third.^47
There are in fact more archaeological traces of pagan than of Jewish wor-
shipfortheearlierperiod;notunexpectedly,theinformationconcerningSep-
phoris is largely archaeological and that concerning Tiberias mainly comes
fromthePalestinianTalmud.Thusfar,publicationsoftheSepphoriteexcava-
tions have consisted mainly of tantalizing fragments; it goes without saying
that comprehensive publication may produce a rather different image of the
city. But in the meantime, here is what has been published:^48 a theater with
(^46) For Sepphoris, see e.g., Y. Kilayi m9:4, 32b (eighteen synagogues in Sepphoris, as opposed
to thirteen in Tiberias); Y. Shabbat 6, 8a; Y. Berakhot 3, 6a, and in general, for both places, and
Lydda,too,Klein,SeferHayishuv,s.v.Thesepassagesmayreflectconditionsofthefourthcentury
rather than the second and third.
(^47) On the synagogue of Sepphoris, see Z. Weiss and E. Netzer,Promise andRedemption: The
SynagogueMosaicofSepphoris(Jerusalem: Israel Museum, 1996); on Hamath Tiberias, M. Do-
than,Hammath Tiberias: Early Synagogues and Hellenistic and Roman Remains(Jerusalem: Is-
rael Exploration Society, 1983).
(^48) Articles and annual reports since the later 1980s inIEJ,HA(=Excavations and Surveys in
Israel),andsoon,haveconcentratedondescribingthestructuresandpublicizingthespectacular
mosaics. Most helpful for the small finds has been E. Meyers, E. Netzer, and C. Meyers,Sep-
phoris(WinonaLake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1992);and R. Nagy etal.,SepphorisinGalilee; see also