The Artistic Milieu of the Mosaics of the Beth Alpha Synagogue

The style of the VI century Beth-Alpha synagogue mosaics remain an enigma. The lack of direct artistic parallels among the Holy Land mosaics had led almost all the researches to claim that the artists of the synagogue were not professionals, but mere amateurs (Dunbabin, 1999, Levine, 2013, Hachlili, 2013). This presupposition makes it impossible to explain the other elements of the mosaics and the abundance of the artistic devices which are used in the panel. Among them is the elaborate composition, the use of the biblical text in the panel and the innovative depiction of several Zodiac signs, which are not found elsewhere. The notion of unskilfulness of the synagogue artists is also unable to explain the way the artists described themselves in the inscription.

In the paper I will examine the inscription of the Beth-Alpha synagogue, where the artists Marianos and Hanina called themselves texnitai. I suggest that although the style of the Beth-Alpha mosaics was indeed innovative, it can be explained using the broad artistic parallels from the art of Byzantine Egypt and elsewhere and by the fact that the artists were struck by the problem of depicting the sacred.