Samson Mosaic Discovered In Ancient Synagogue In Huqoq, Israel

A colorful mosaic depicting the Biblical figure Samson has been discovered in the Galilee region of Israel, according to the Israeli Antiquities Authority.

The artwork (click for photo) was found in a synagogue in Huqoq and is well preserved even though it dates back to the late Roman period, or around the 4th or 5th century.

In addition to the mosaic of Samson, another was found featuring two unknown individuals believed to be women.

Jodi Magness, a religious studies professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told CNN the finding was "significant" and "stunning" considering the quality of the artwork and how rare it would have been at the time.

As explained by Gail Myhre in "Jewish Mosaics from the Roman Empire," mosaics are generally a Roman, not Jewish, artform. This discovery shows a blending of the two cultures.

Monumental stones were also found composing the synagogue's walls. Combined with the rich mosaics, this suggests the village had a high level of prosperity, Art Daily reports, citing Magness.

Biblical archaeology in the Middle East and Egypt dates back about two hundred years and continues to this day. The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs maintains a public list of scheduled archaeological excavations.

Other recent digs have uncovered ancient jewelry and evidence that Bethlehem existed long before the birth of Jesus.

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• A colorful <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/05/samson-mosaic-discovered-huqoq-israel_n_1652525.html" target="_hplink">mosaic depicting the biblical figure Samson has been discovered</a> in the Galilee region of Israel, according to the Israeli Antiquities Authority. The artwork was found in a synagogue in Huqoq and is well preserved even though it dates back to the late Roman period, or around the fourth or fifth century.

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Comments

[Talab]

11:10 AM on 07/17/2012

How does a "Synagogue" have graven immages of anything that walks on the earth , flies in the air or swims in the sea to quote the ancient prohibition in the Torah

[Galilee]

04:46 PM on 07/20/2012

Taliban, I guess they destroyed the only "Synagogue" in your Jihadi country, otherwise you could have seen for yourself.

[Talab]

05:16 PM on 07/20/2012

So you cnsider America a "Jihadi Country" ...What an interesting perspective given how much of my tax money has supported you country

[James Heilpern]

12:01 PM on 01/02/2013

That's kind of rude, Galilee. He was just asking a question.

[trekie70]

08:30 PM on 07/09/2012

Hmm....not really how I had pictured Samson looking, with a chubby face and a wimpy look.

[James Heilpern]

12:04 PM on 01/02/2013

The picture on the website is not the picture of Sampson- it's a woman. The foxes appear on the other side of the floor, with supposedly Sampson's legs next to them. I was on the team that uncovered it, and you can find more pictures at the Biblical Archaeological Society's website

[Michael II]

10:37 AM on 07/09/2012

Fascinating news, although I roll my eyes with despair when politics and archeology are put through the blender together.

[Stephanie Buday]

09:55 AM on 07/09/2012

I'd like to learn more about the discovery. In the early years of Christianity the Jews and Christian-Jews hadn't officially parted ways yet and Christianity kept some of the Jewish traditions and meeting places. Jews were also mostly dispelled from Palestine by 135 CE. Is it possible that the synagogue is actually a Christian meeting place and the mosaic influenced by Roman Christians, who would also have read the story of Sampson?

[WESmith]

12:04 PM on 07/09/2012

By 135 CE, the Roman government had pretty much taken over the Christian religion and dispersed the Jewish religion. Politicians controlled what the common people, including the priests knew for the next 1300 years.
July 7th was the anniversary of the martyred death of Jan Hus, who tried to return control of the Church to Christians in the 14th century. A hundred year later with the help of the printing press, Christians learned the truth and fought against the politicians. Tens of thousands of peasants were slaughtered and Christian literature was burned.

[austinreid]

01:12 PM on 07/09/2012

I don’t want to be too picky because most of what you said is true but the Roman Empire did not even tolerate Christianity until Emperor Constantine’s time from 306-337 C.E. and it did not become the official religion of the empire until 395 C.E.

[austinreid]

01:09 PM on 07/09/2012

Christianity and Judaism officially separated in C.E. 50 at the conclusion of the Council of Jerusalem where the early Church rejected the Law of Moses this synagogue was built after that and was an exclusively Jewish place of worship.

[SeaSalty58]

08:01 AM on 07/09/2012

I can only imagine how thrilling it must be to make such a discovery.

[Macready]

05:43 AM on 07/09/2012

ah another roman era find . . .

[mrs w waugh]

06:06 AM on 07/09/2012

How very interesting,I hope one day it will be open to the public..........................

[Macready]

06:20 AM on 07/09/2012

if you like roman stuff mrs waugh . . .

[Watching rock grow]

01:16 PM on 07/08/2012

I prefer Bronze Age discoveries myself. What is cool about the dating of this discovery is Empress Helene, Constantine's mother might have seen it!

[Claudia L]

03:02 PM on 07/08/2012

3000 B.C. to 634 A.D., Invasions, Sieges and Plunders
The Phoenicians of the Iron Age (first millennium B.C.) descended from the original Canaanites who dwelt in the region during the earlier Bronze Age (3000-1200 H.C.),

www.biblebelievers.org.au/edomites.htm
The lands of Israel and southern Syria once formed the empire of the Canaanites and the early Phoenicians: "Archeologists have found evidence of a definite ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Medieval_Arab_Palestine.jpg

http://phoenicia.org/history.html
This day will the Lord deliver thee into my hand, and I will smite thee and take the souls of men away from thee: and I will give the high chimneys of the factories of the Philistines to the fowls of the air, and their deep furnaces to the beasts of the earth, that all the world may know that there is a God in Israel.”

They totally destroyed the original inhabitance. Goliath was a Philistine - there before the Israelites. Sorry! BEFORE THE ROMANS.

[Watching rock grow]

04:29 PM on 07/08/2012

As a real historian of the Bronze Age Middle East all I can say about your post Claudia. Is yadda, yadda, yadda more bible thumping by folks that reject reality for theology. There is plenty of evidence that Biblical times are misplaced in time. But this evidence is not allowed out of justifiable fear of right wing religious folks demands. That it is their 17th century European theological chronology is the only chronology of truth. Sell it elsewhere I do not buy it, I know better.

I also believe you posted to the wrong post in your hurry to defend your beliefs unsupported by real history. Have a nice day.

[JustLiel]

11:27 AM on 07/08/2012

Incredible,it's always amazing to find new archaeological discoveries that proves that the Jews been in the promised land first,it's stunning to witness how the people who lived there at that time managed their life,it might be a little mosaic but it truly tells and indicates about how people used to live,how my ancestors used to live.
Yet I haven't heard about any Palestinian archaelogical discoveries that indicates on them living here in Israel,Palestine is a myth,too bad the world is too blind.
This is the promised land that was promised for the Jews.

[Claudia L]

03:05 PM on 07/08/2012

See the above post! On page 1. SORRY!

[Macready]

09:43 AM on 07/09/2012

this is roman 4th 5th century AD . . .

[austinreid]

01:18 PM on 07/09/2012

Yes and it is Jewish a Jewish place of worship influenced by the Roman art styles of the time just like synagogues are always influenced by local artist traditions.

[austinreid]

11:36 AM on 07/10/2012

Oh I know they did but you could not call any Roman leader anti-Jewish until Hadrian who could not understand why the Jews did not become Hellenized. It was hard to be anti-Jewish back than because the idea of racial superiority was not around yet; now the idea of intellectual superiority was but the Jews were not seen as inferior to the Romans in that way due to their long history as a civilized people. Religion was also very relaxed back then no one particularly cared what God or gods you prayed to.

[Beeteetoo]

11:42 PM on 07/07/2012

"4th or 5th century"...." Roman, not Jewish, artform......shows a blending of the two cultures."

Seems to support Israel Bartal, dean of the humanities faculty of the Hebrew University.:

"No “nationalist” Jewish historian has ever tried to conceal the well-known fact that conversions to Judaism had a major impact on Jewish history in the ancient period and in the early Middle Ages. Although the myth of an exile from the Jewish homeland (Palestine) does exist in popular Israeli culture, it is negligible in serious Jewish historical discussions. Important groups in the Jewish national movement expressed reservations regarding this myth or denied it completely."

[austinreid]

11:36 AM on 07/08/2012

Is that so? We talked about the exile and effects of the Diaspora in my conversion classes that was a serious Jewish historical discussion taught by an ordained rabbi and everything.

[Beeteetoo]

05:03 PM on 07/08/2012

Theology and Archaeology at odds when it comes to History:

"This is what archaeologists have learned from their excavations in the Land of Israel: the Israelites were never in Egypt, did not wander in the desert, did not conquer the land in a military campaign and did not pass it on to the 12 tribes of Israel. Perhaps even harder to swallow is that the united monarchy of David and Solomon, which is described by the Bible as a regional power, was at most a small tribal kingdom. And it will come as an unpleasant shock to many that the God of Israel, YHWH, had a female consort and that the early Israelite religion adopted monotheism only in the waning period of the monarchy and not at Mount Sinai.

Most of those who are engaged in scientific work in the interlocking spheres of the Bible, archaeology and the history of the Jewish people—and who once went into the field looking for proof to corroborate the Bible story—now agree that the historic events relating to the stages of the Jewish people's emergence are radically different from what that story tells."

- Prof. Ze'ev Herzog, Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Tel Aviv University.
http://individual.utoronto.ca/mfkolarcik/jesuit/herzog.html#auth

[Macready]

05:45 AM on 07/09/2012

fanned again . . . The Bible Unearthed and David and Solomon are really good books to read about this too . .. .

[Michelle Seltzer]

08:54 AM on 07/09/2012

This is from a Jesuit website. No - G-d does not have "female consorts, " people do.

[MIKEinNYC]

09:47 PM on 07/07/2012

I notice that one of the cave drawings looks like a "W".

Think they were trying to tell us something?

[Colonel Muttonfield]

09:25 PM on 07/07/2012

It's terrible the things people do to hurt one another. While I was fighting in Vietnam, a draft-dodging  "Jody" named Jud was having his way with my girlfriend. Later, she told me in a letter that he was an art student in Ithaca, NY where she lived. I heard through a friend after the war tht old Jud had gotten her pregnant and then stopped returning her calls. She had the child in a home for unwed mothers and ended up on welfare. What a guy Jud must be.  

[austinreid]

11:38 AM on 07/08/2012

That is a very sad story but I can’t help but ask why post this on a story about the discovery of an ancient synagogue?

[Rosin the Bow]

08:34 AM on 07/09/2012

The guy's name is "Jud", Austin. Do you think you can crack that code?

[Utopian Sky]

05:16 PM on 07/08/2012

Why did you post this? What does it have to do with the topic?
And, since you poured out your personal life to the world- get over it.
That was what- forty years ago?
Get a life.

[Colonel Muttonfield]

06:59 PM on 07/07/2012

Most live their lives failing to grasp the full point of that living. Because human beings perceive, think, act, and feel primarily in terms of dualities, much is overlooked.  I have found it helpful to speak of the mystery of darkness in referring to that which is missed in the process of existence. It is that mystery which is the one, the totality, the eternal.

It is this darkness which brought us forth, sustains us, moves us and ultimately calls us to return to our origin. It is the darkness that moves the universe and will ultimately call it to its cold, icy and entropic end. But we experience it most profoundly in human experience through death, destruction, chaos. Such experiences most often leave us confused, angry, fearful, frustrated, and grieving because we struggle to comprehend their full meaning in the continuum of our existence.

But, within human experience, there is a bridge to this mystery that most never cross. The very actuality of life and the very certainty of death force one to regard the space and time of living as causal and finite in nature. We too easily settle for this perception and most avoid reflection upon this realty unless it is thrust upon them by circumstance.  

But the union of these two mysteries in the cosmos is characterized in all classical theories about existance and takes us beyond mere causality and finitude. Somehow, through observation of this cyclical play, we glimpse something of the eternal.

[phal4875]

07:37 PM on 07/07/2012

I have fanned you before, Colonel, this must be a "Favorite." That is a brilliant post, and it will take some time for me to fully absorb it. Keep up the great writing, sir.

[Colonel Muttonfield]

08:22 PM on 07/07/2012

Thank you for your kindness. 

[jankantius]

02:40 AM on 07/08/2012

Have you ever seen "Earth From Space". I think you would like it.

[allisoninwonderland]

01:08 PM on 07/07/2012

I spent a month and a half in Israel doing archeological digs. It was the most fascinating experience of my life. I hope to go back soon and study again.

[Macready]

09:45 AM on 07/09/2012

you should try to get to work on one in Egypt

[allisoninwonderland]

02:01 PM on 07/09/2012

I actually was awarded a slot on a team to dig in Giza (yes...at the Pyramids...my life long dream...literally) in the spring of 2001, for a dig the following fall.  The research was being done in the fall of 01...and well...world events happened and Egypt cancelled on us.  Now it would be far too dangerous for me to go, if they allow me in at all (which last I heard, they will not (as I am Jewish and have stamps from Israel on my passport).  No need to put my family in that kind of stress...hopefully times will settle down and I can make it back there some day.

[BcemXAHA]

12:52 PM on 07/07/2012

Still waiting for any actual palestinian artifacts to be found, some archeological digs that would make it clear beyond any shadow of a doubt that the palestinian arabs were there before the Jews!

[MarcEdward]

04:30 PM on 07/07/2012

I'm sure there are plenty of Canaanite and Assyrian things around. The Arabs didn't enter that area in great numbers till later. That realm has been a stomping ground for a lot of folks for many thousands of years.

[BcemXAHA]

05:45 PM on 07/07/2012

Nice try Marc, you know quite well that Canaanite are extinct.  When we hear of Assyrian archeological discoveries, we can talk.

[austinreid]

11:40 AM on 07/08/2012

Well the Assyrians were from northern Iraq…

[tallndumb]

04:32 PM on 07/07/2012

The wailing wall was formerly a Christian garbage dump. That should be sufficient evidence.

[BcemXAHA]

05:45 PM on 07/07/2012

No doubt you're not just tall.

[austinreid]

11:46 AM on 07/08/2012

What does that have to do with anything? Yes the early Christians (and some modern ones) thought that Jesus by his death and resurrection superseded the “old” covenant and replaced the Temple with his sacrifice. They had no respect for the Temple Mount thinking it was an old relic of the past that only the Jews the so called killers of Christ still fawn over. They then no longer seeing any significance in the area turned it into a dump.

[Indigo1941]

12:14 PM on 07/07/2012

Nice hair.