rabbis in the east (70 to 1000 ce) 269
know about such religious figures in Jewish society down to the first
quarter of the fifth century.
A remarkable mosaic in the synagogue of Hammat Tiberias in Gali-
lee, depicting the sun god surrounded by the signs of the zodiac, was set
up (according to the mosaic inscription) by a member of the household
of the patriarcha in the late fourth century. By that time the patriarch
was a figure of considerable standing within the wider community, both
Jewish and imperial. But by the fourth century the rabbinic sources are
silent about the nasi, and it is therefore possible that the holders of the
position were no longer closely aligned to the rabbinic movement, pre-
ferring instead to stress their (possibly fictitious) descent from Hillel and
their (definitely fictitious) descent from David. The Hammat Tiberias
synagogue reflects a city of some sophistication in the fourth century,
distinguished only by its comparatively small size and lack of pagan
shrines from the huge site of Scythopolis (known to the rabbis as Beit
She’an) to the south of the lake, with its theatre and odeon, or from the
great provincial capital of Caesarea on the coast, with its hippodrome,
amphitheatre and governor’s palace. The rabbinic texts preserve stories
of Palestinian rabbis operating in these cities also, but the rabbinic
movement in Galilee always retained a certain rural tinge. In the fifth
and sixth centuries much of the epigraphic evidence for rabbis likewise
comes from the Galilean countryside, or from places like Dabburra on
the Golan.^10
In the account of the Palestinian rabbinic movement of the century
after 70 which emerges from the Babylonian Talmud, of central signifi-
cance in the survival of Judaism after the Bar Kokhba rebellion was the
transmission of authority through semikha, ‘ordination’, of his disciples
by a sage named R. Judah b. Baba, who was himself martyred by the
Romans:
Cannot one man alone ordain? Did not Rab Judah say in Rab’s name,
‘May this man indeed be remembered for blessing – his name is R. Judah
b. Baba ... What did R. Judah b. Baba do? He went and sat between two
great mountains, [that lay] between two large cities; between the Sabbath
boundaries of the cities of Usha and Shefaram and there ordained five
elders: viz., R. Meir, R. Judah, R. Simeon, R. Jose and R. Eliezer b.
Shamua.’The Babylonian Talmud also transmitted the notion that during the
time of Judah haNasi (in the early third century) it was decreed that
only those properly authorized in this fashion could give decisions