JUDAIZATION 263here, were considered improper in a public text .In any case, the third panel’s
resemblance to contemporaneous amulets may offer a key to its presence in
this inscription, for amulets were often deposited in the apses of ancient syna-
gogues, either in or near the ark.^56 Thus the En Geddi inscription may be
evoking the apsidal assemblage of the synagogue by miming its contents .It
may be worth adding that the periphrasis used for God comes from the
prophet Zechariah’s vision of themenorah, and so may serve as another very
indirect evocation of the synagogue apse .I suggest this with diffidence, be-
cause if this is what the Engeddites wished to do, why did they not quote a
relevant portion of the Torah—surely a more obvious evocation of the con-
tents of the apse? Were they squeamish about having it stepped on?
For the present purposes though, what is important, even rather poignant,
about the En Geddi pavement is the tension it implies between the old and
the new, the continuing embrace of the potency of the zodiacal iconography,
but its quite literal marginalization, for that matter its literalization, its reduc-
tion to writing.^57
ThePiyyut
Thepiyyutoffers unambiguous evidence for the rabbinization of liturgical
practice in sixth century Palestine .All extant Hebrewpiyyutimare constructed
around the armature of the rabbinic liturgy as prescribed in Mishnah, Tosefta,
and Yerushalmi Berakhot .Starting with the work of Yannai, in the sixth cen-
tury, all are packed with allusions to rabbinic laws and exegesis (and it scarcely
matters for our purposes whether these allusions were to written texts or unre-
dacted “traditions”); frequently, as their Babylonian critics noted, thepiyyutim
(^56) See comments on Naveh-Shaked, no .10 (Horvat Rimmon), no .11–13 (Maon-Nirim, all
found in the apse), no .16 (apse of Meroth synagogue)
(^57) I suggest here with diffidence, and in a footnote only, that the uniquely schematic and
nonnaturalistic style of the Bet Alfa mosaic, which is roughly contemporaneous with that of En
Geddi, may be the product of a similar sort of anxiety about physical representation .This point
could be made more strongly (1) if there were any reason to believe that Tzori was wrong to
think that the nave mosaic of the northern synagogue of Beth Shean, executed in classicizing
style, was not the work of Marianos and Hanina, who signed their name to an apparently later,
very poorly preserved, mosaic in a sideroom of the synagogue (“The Ancient Synagogue in Beth
Shean,”EI8 [1967] 149–67); and (2) if we could be certain that Ernst Kitzinger (Israeli Mosaics,
p .15) was right to suggest that Marianos and Hanina had some role in producing the pavements
of the Monastery of Lady Mary, again in Beth Shean, and again in an utterly different style from
the Beth Alfa pavement .These considerations would suggest that Marianos and Hanina were not
lively rustic naifs, as they are normally represented, but highly competent metropolitan artisans,
who in the Bet Alfa mosaics were fulfilling the wishes of their employers .But this must remain
a suggestion.