Sepphoris, the city over the hill from Nazareth
The Galilee of the Gospels was not a backwater: a city under construction stood within walking distance of Nazareth.
Confirmed by the groundExcavated site1st century BC – 1st century AD
Herod Antipas's capital, rebuilt in stone during Jesus's lifetime six kilometres from Nazareth: colonnaded streets, a theatre, houses with frescoes and mosaics, and — through all of it — stepped ritual baths and chalk vessels, so a Jewish city rather than a Greek one.
Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary…?
- Found
- Zippori, Lower Galilee — an hour's walk from Nazareth, 1931 — Leroy Waterman for the University of Michigan; from 1983 by Duke and the Hebrew University
- Now held at
- In place; Zippori National Park
- How it reached us
- Dug up, or still standing where it was built.
What it shows
Sepphoris is never named in the Bible and nothing found there is connected to anyone in it. The suggestion that a builder from Nazareth worked on it is a reasonable guess and no more. What the site establishes is the setting.
How historians use it
Central to how historians now describe first-century Galilee, and to the argument that it was neither isolated nor thoroughly Hellenised.
In Scripture
Connects to
Sources
- Meyers & Meyers, Sepphoris (Eisenbrauns, 2013)
- Chancey, The Myth of a Gentile Galilee (Cambridge, 2002)
These summaries are written in English for now. Translations follow.