JEWS OR PAGANS? 149changed drastically in that ossilegiu mhad mostly disappeared—but never
botheredtolegislateaboutitordenouncepracticestheyconsideredobjection-
able.^70 Ancient Jewish burial practice had little or nothing to distinguish it
fromthatprevalentintheeasternMediterraneaningeneral.Whileburialwas
nodoubtdeeplysignificanttoitspracticionersandprobablyheavilyritualized,
little or nothing about it was marked as Jewish. It was only in the seventh
or eighth century, when the treatise Evel Rabbati (also called Semahot) was
compiled that burial formally entered the province of halakhah.^71 Burial was
thusanothercommonactivity,likeurbanpolitics,thatwasjudaizedgradually,
partially, and late. Standard practice was transformed into rabbinic prescrip-
tionandprovidedwithinterpretation,adhocandunsystematicthoughitmay
have been, in light of “normative” Jewish religious beliefs. For the present
purposes this late development is important because it implies that we will
have difficulty determining what, if anything, a “proper” Jewish burial of the
second and third centuries should look like; it also means we should not
expect Jews to have provided graphic indication of their Jewishness in their
burials.^72 (The earliest signs of change appear at Beth Shearim, discussed
(^70) Except for the importation of the bones of diasporic Jews for secondary burial in Palestine,
see Y. Ketubot 12:3, 35b. with discussion of I. Gafni,Land, Center, and Diaspora: Jewish Con-
structsinLateAntiquity(Sheffield,U.K.:SheffieldAcademicPress,1997),pp.79–95.Forarchae-
ological surveys of burial in Palestine, see H.-P. Kuhnen,Pala ̈stina in griechisch-ro ̈mischer Zeit,
Handbuch der Archa ̈ologie, Vorderasien 2, vol. 2 (Munich: Beck, 1990), pp. 253–82; Y. Tsafrir,
TheLandofIsraelfromtheDestructionoftheSecondTempletotheMuslimConquest(Jerusalem:
Yad Ben-Zvi, 1984), 2: 143–64.
(^71) The common opinion dates Evel Rabbati to “post-Talmudic” times, but some consider it a
genuinely Tannaitic work of the third century; see D. Zlotnick,The Tractate Mourning, Yale
Judaica Series 17 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), pp. 4–9; Lauterbach, “Semahot.”
(^72) Some characteristicburials of the secondand third centuries: theapparently Jewish mauso-
leumofthelaterthirdandearlyfourthcenturiesatKefarGiladi,inthe“fingerofGalilee,”fifteen
kilometers north of Kadesh; seeNEAEHL, s.v., where the only mark of Jewishness is that the
earliest user of the mausoleum had his name, Hezekiah, inscribed on his sarcophagus in Jewish
Aramaic script; the remaining users of the mausoleum may or may not have been Jewish. The
lead sarcophagi found in the mausoleum are all decorated with mythological motifs. See also Z.
Ilan and A. Izdarechet, “Arbel: An Ancient Town in the Eastern Lower Galilee,”Qadmoniot 22
(1989):111–17forburialcavesoverwhoseentryiscarvedaneaglewithspreadwings;V.Tsaferis,
“A Monumental Roman Tomb at Tel ’Eitun,”Atiqot, Heb. ser., 8 (1982): 23–25 for a third-
century burial cave whose arcosolia are decorated with paintings ofkline-beds, and whose walls
have graffiti of gladiators, horses and riders, and so on. A Greek inscription commemorates one
Ioanes, evidently Jewish. N. Feig, “Burial Caves at Nazareth,”AtiqotHeb. ser. 10 (1990): 67–79
for first-third centuries, standard grave gifts, no iconography at all, as also at Hanita, halfway
between Akko and Tyre, regarded by rabbinic literature as a Jewish settlement: see D. Barag,
“Hanita, Tomb XV: A Tomb of the Third and Early Fourth Century CE,”Atiqot, Eng. ser., 13
(1978),entirevolume.NoteespeciallythegemengravedwithPoseidon’shead(p.43)andBarag’s
unexplainedjudgmentthatthegravewasnot“Jewish”(p.56).Finally,atGivatSeled,fivekilome-
ters north-northeast of Beth Guvrin, in an enduringly Jewish region of the country, a burial cave
“Jewish” in structure (the burials inarcosoliaandkokhim; butkokhimwere in use in Idumaea
long before the district was Jewish) but containing a Greek inscription whose only legible words