place · L0326
Beit Alpha Synagogue בית הכנסת בבית אלפא
Village synagogue in the Beit She'an valley whose complete mosaic floor — the binding of Yitzchak, a zodiac wheel with Helios, and a Torah shrine flanked by menorahs and lions — is the most famous synagogue pavement in the land of Israel. Its Aramaic inscription dates the work to the reign of the emperor Justin (518–527 CE) and its Greek inscription names the craftsmen, Marianos and his son Chanina; found by kibbutz members digging an irrigation channel in 1928 and excavated by Eleazar Sukenik.
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I. Who
- Hebrew
- בית הכנסת בבית אלפא
- Also known as
- Bet Alfa, Beth Alpha
III. Where
- Modern location
- Bet Alfa Synagogue National Park, Kibbutz Heftziba, Beit She'an Valley, Israel
V. How do we know
| Claim | Evidence | Confidence | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|
| The mosaic came to light in 1928 when members of Kibbutz Beit Alpha cut an irrigation channel through the buried hall; the 1929 excavation by Eleazar Sukenik for the Hebrew University was the first scientific synagogue excavation in the land of Israel, and its publication shaped a century of debate on Jewish figural art. | archaeology | ★★★★★ | |
| The floor's Aramaic dedication dates the work to the reign of the emperor Justin — generally taken as Justin I (518–527 CE) — and the Greek inscription names the mosaicists, Marianos and his son Chanina: a floor rare in being dated by its own inscription and in naming its craftsmen, whose signatures appear again at nearby Beit She'an.
A minority reads the emperor as Justin II (565–578 CE); the conventional date follows Justin I.
|
archaeology | ★★★★☆ | |
| The nave's entrance panel depicts Akeidat Yitzchak — Avraham with the knife, Yitzchak bound by the altar, the ram caught in the thicket, and the hand of heaven staying the deed, with the figures labelled in Hebrew — the fullest surviving ancient Jewish depiction of the scene of Bereishit 22. | archaeology biblical | ★★★★★ | |
| The dated floor (518–527 CE, roughly AM 4278–4287) falls just past the close of the amoraic era on the atlas's reckoning (c. 500 CE / AM 4260) — squarely in the generation of the Savoraim; the synagogue is kept in scope as a monument of that transitional era, when the communities of the Beit She'an valley still flourished under Byzantine rule.
Era-boundary note: post-amoraic but within the savoraic era the atlas tracks; AM figures follow the standard AM = 3760 + CE conversion.
|
tradition reconstruction | ★★★☆☆ |