JUDAIZATION 257ark has standing on each half of its gabled roof a peculiar bird, plausibly
identified as a representation of the cherubim .At Sepphoris, the evocation of
the temple cult is heightened by the intervention of four panels between the
zodiac circle and the ark scene, all of them straightforward representations of
cultic prescriptions from the Pentateuch, marked (like the binding of Isaac at
Bet Alfa, the Daniel scenes at Na’aran and Susiyah, Noah’s ark at Gerasa, but,
curiously, not the other biblical scenes at Sepphoris itself) with the appropriate
biblical verses.
InterpretationWhat are we to make of this? The floors (except perhaps the poorly preserved
floor at Usfiyeh/Husefa) tend to suggest a movement from the world, in ideal-
ized form—nature scenes, scenes from biblical narrative—through the heavens
(the zodiac circle),^44 to the temple cult, and back to the reality of the synagogue.
It may be worth pointing out, though perhaps not too much should be made
of it in light of the paucity of the evidence, that the two most popular scenes
from biblical narrative are primal scenes of worship—the binding of Isaac, the
story of the prototypical sacrifice, and Daniel in the lions’ den, a story of imme-
diately efficacious prayer offered by someone without access to the temple, now
destroyed.^45 Such an interpretation, at least of the binding of Isaac, is slightly
strengthened by the location of the same scene in the synagogue of Dura Euro-
pus, directly over the ark, where it shares a panel with a depiction of the temple
and associated objects .The scene seems, in fact, to have a similar meaning in
the Church of San Vitale in Ravenna, where it is juxtaposed with the scene of
the angelic visitation of Abraham and Sarah .The biblical scenes may somehow
be meant to represent the activities of the congregants .Perhaps all the images
taken together should lead us to think of the synagogue as a kind of reflection
of the heavens or a microcosm.^46 Our prayers are not simply dim echoes of a
long-defunct sacrificial cult but are in fact (we hope) its equivalent .There is
(^44) For Hachlili, the zodiac symbolizes the Jewish liturgical calendar—a problematic view be-
cause calendar mosaics were commonplace and easily adaptable to Jewish needs; why then use
the zodiac, whose relation to the Jewish liturgical calendar is far from obvious? For Foerster
(“Zodiac in Ancient Synagogues,” p .225), “the primary intention [sic] was to represent the sanc-
tity and blessing inherent in the divine order of the universe [this is practically a quotation of
Donnolo—S.S.], expressed in the images of the seasons, the zodiacal signs, the months, and the
heavenly bodies which bring with them the renewal of nature, growth, and crops” (my transla-
tion) .For Weiss and Netzer, it symbolizes God’s intervention in history, at least at Sepphoris.
(^45) Cf .Goldman,Sacred Portal, p .56; Grabar,Christian Iconography, pp .7–30, for a similar
interpretation of the same scenes in a Christian context.
(^46) See Foerster, “Zodiac in Ancient Synagogues,” p .227, for a discussion of Josephan and
Philonic echoes of this theme, which he also sees in the synagogue mosaics.