Jewish Art

in Its Late Antique Context

Edited by

Uzi Leibner and Catherine Hezser

Mohr Siebeck

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Uzi Leibner is a senior lecturer in Classical Archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology in the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He received a Ph.D. in archaeology from Bar Ilan University
in 2004 and joined the faculty of the Hebrew University in 2008. He specializes in Hellenistic,
Roman and Byzantine archaeology of the Land of Israel and its surroundings. His interests lie in
various aspects of landscape archaeology; rural settlements; ancient synagogues; ancient Jewish
Art; and the integration of archaeological material and historical sources.
Catherine Hezser is Professor of Jewish Studies at SOAS, University of London. She received
a Dr. theol. at the University of Heidelberg in 1986 and a Ph.D. in Jewish Studies at the Jewish
Theological Seminary in New York in 1992. From 2000 to 2005 she was Lippert Professor of
Jewish and Near Eastern Religions and Cultures and director of the Herzog Centre at Trinity
College Dublin. Her research focuses on rabbinic literature and the social history of Jews in
Roman Palestine.

ISBN 978-3-16-154388-3
ISSN 0721-8753 (Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism)
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2016 by Mohr Siebeck, Tbingen, Germany. www.mohr.de

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Table of Contents
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Catherine Hezser and Uzi Leibner

Jewish Art in its Late Antique Context: An Introductory Essay . . . . . . . . .

Part I

The Development of Jewish Art in the Roman-Byzantine Period

Orit Peleg-Barkat
Interpreting the Uninterpreted: Art as a Means of Expressing Identity
in Early Roman Judaea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

27

Lee I. Levine
Why Did Jewish Art Flourish in Late Antiquity? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

49

Peter Stewart
The Bet Alpha Synagogue Mosaic and Late-Antique Provincialism . . . . . .

75

Rina Talgam
From Wall Paintings to Floor Mosaics: Jewish and Christian Attitudes
to Figurative Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

97

Part II

Synagogue Mosaic Panels

Zeev Weiss
Decorating the Sacred Realm: Biblical Depictions in Synagogues
and Churches of Ancient Palestine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
Uzi Leibner
Rabbinic Traditions and Synagogue Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139

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Table of Contents

Roland Deines
Gods Revelation Through Torah, Creation, and History:
Interpreting the Zodiac Mosaics in Synagogues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155

Part III

Symbols and Iconography

Rachel Hachlili
Why Did the Menorah and Not the Showbread Table Evolve Into the
Most Important Symbol of Judaism? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
Catherine Hezser
For the Lord God is a Sun and a Shield (Ps. 84:12): Sun Symbolism
in Hellenistic Jewish Literature and in Amoraic Midrashim . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Karen B. Stern
Celebrating the Mundane: Figural Graffiti and Daily Life Among Jews
in the Levant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237

Part IV

Jewish and Christian Art

Markus Vinzent
Earliest Christian Art is Jewish Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
Sean V. Leatherbury
Competitive Sacrifice: Christian Visual Engagement With Jewish
Sacrificial History and the Temple in Late Antique Arabia . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
Robin M. Jensen
The Three Hebrew Youths and the Problem of the Emperors Portrait
in Early Christianity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
Holger Zellentin
The Rabbis on (the Christianisation of) the Imperial Cult:
Mishnah and Yerushalmi Avodah Zarah 3:1 (42b, 5442c, 61) . . . . . . . . . . . 321

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IX

List of Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359

Source Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361
General Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371

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Competitive Sacrifice
Christian Visual Engagement With Jewish Sacrificial
History and the Temple in Late Antique Arabia*
Sean V. Leatherbury

The artistic traditions of Christianity and Judaism were inextricably intertwined

in the late antique Levant. However, as many of the papers in this volume reveal,
biblical images played different roles in the decorative schemes of synagogues
and churches, and as a result seem to have been much more common on the
mosaic floors of synagogues than on the floors of churches in the period.1 Of
course, the nature of extant evidence shapes our perceptions of the iconographic
possibilities of church and synagogue decoration. Because many more mosaic
floors survive than do wall mosaics or paintings, which almost certainly depicted
biblical scenes or images, our understanding of the overall decoration of sacred
buildings in the region is much more limited than is ideal.2 A small group of
church pavements in the region depicted symbolic scenes derived from the Old
Testament Adam and Eve, Adam naming the animals, Jonah and the whale,
the Peaceful Kingdom of Isaiah illustrating Jewish sacred history in order to
coopt the scenes for Christianity and to set up the argument that Christianity had
superseded Judaism.3 However, did every biblical program in a Christian church
serve merely to claim Jewish tradition for the new Christian faith in a generalized way? Were these Christian-Jewish visual engagements merely historical in
character, remnants of fossilized debates over traditions of ritual? Or do some
* This paper is based upon material presented at the American Institute of Archaeology Annual Meeting in 2012 and at the conference at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem on which this
volume is based. My sincere thanks go to Rina Talgam for her suggestions about the mosaics,
and to Ja Elsner for his ever-insightful comments.
1 See Hachlili (2009) 5796, 2268.
2
Surviving images of biblical scenes are common in the churches of Italy, especially Rome
and Ravenna: see Ihm (1960). Eastern churches with extant biblical scenes on walls or in
apses include the Monastery of St. Catherine at Mount Sinai, which features the scene of the
Transfiguration of Christ in the Apse: see Weitzmann (1966); Ihm (1960) 1957; Elsner (1994);
Andreopoulos (2001); Andreopoulos (2005) 12743.
3 On the impact of supersessionist theology on late antique art, see Miles (1993) on the mosaics of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. On the presence of biblical scenes on church floors,
see Hachlili (2009) 2268.

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artworks from sacred spaces in the Levant hint at the existence of real, vibrant
attitudes and arguments in the period?
This paper aims to begin to answer these questions and examines in detail
the linked text and image of Psalm 51 (50) one of the most popular penitential
psalms in Byzantine Christianity in the floor mosaics of the Church of the
Holy Martyrs Lot and Procopius at Nebo (Khirbet Mukhayyat) in Jordan, dated to the middle of the sixth century C. E. In the church, a stones throw from
Mount Nebo, the mountain from which Moses saw the promised land of Israel,
biblical text and image not only constructed an argument for the supremacy of
Christian bloodless sacrifice over the ancient Jewish tradition of animal sacrifice at the Temple in Jerusalem (which by the sixth century had been defunct
for hundreds of years), but also connected specifically to the religious, political,
and spatial geographies in which the mosaic was commissioned and viewed.
Instead of a generic statement of the victory of Christianity over Judaism, the
mosaic at Nebo the first (extant) program of its type was created as a nuanced
local program oriented towards Byzantine architectural, cultural, and religious
ambitions in Jerusalem. By assessing both its local and universal meanings, we
are able to get a glimpse of Christians in mid-sixth-century Arabia engaging
with ancient Jewish traditions that were still regarded as potent, using historical
(and site-specific) arguments to claim proper modes of sacrifice for themselves,
and in the process staking their ownership of both the earthly and the Heavenly
Jerusalem to come.

1. The Mosaics of Khirbet Mukhayyat

(Nebo): Production and Context
The mosaics in question survive in situ on the acropolis of the village of Khirbet Mukhayyat in Jordan, sheltered underneath a purpose-built enclosure that
roughly echoes the shape of the original church walls.4 The village was called
Nebo in the period as it lay on the southern spur of Mount Nebo, the famous
mountain from which Moses had seen the Promised Land (Deuteronomy 34:1).
Its large Monastery of Moses, built in the fourth century C. E., was visited by
many pilgrims to the Holy Land in the period, including the Roman noblewoman Egeria.5 The main dedicatory inscription of the church at Khirbet Mukhayyat
records that it was built and decorated in 557/8 C. E. by the priest and administrator Baricha and funded by four named donors as well as additional anon4 Saller and Bagatti (1949) 5567, Pls. 1421; Piccirillo (1993) 15265; Piccirillo (1998) 34450;
Hachlili (2009) 90.
5
Egeria, Itinerary, 1012 (Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina, 175, 2890), trans. Wilkinson
(1999) 11924.

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Fig 1: View of church from entrance, Church of the Holy Martyrs Lot and Procopius,
Nebo / Khirbet Mukhayyat, Jordan (Photo: Sean Leatherbury / Manar al-Athar).

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ymous donors.6 A secondary dedicatory inscription, situated at the east end of

the south aisle, records three further female donors Roma, Porphyria, and
Maria who have offered their donation to St. Lot, the holy man who survived
the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19).7
Although the church is small in size (16.25 meters long by 8.65 meters wide,
with a small apse and two narrow aisles), its mosaics are a nice example of
sixth-century craftsmanship. The nave, sanctuary and intercolumniations between the nave and the aisles are decorated with figural scenes (Figure 1). In the
central nave, an inhabited scroll contains hunting and pastoral scenes as well as
a detailed scene of wine making (Figure 2), while two sheep flank a fruit-laden
tree in the sanctuary (Figure 3), and animal and Nilotic scenes decorate the intercolumniations. Michele Piccirillo has argued that the mosaicists who produced
these works hailed from nearby Madaba, a center of mosaic production in the
period, based upon stylistic similarities between the sixth-century mosaics at
Madaba and those at our site.8 Regardless of where this team of mosaicists came
from, they or another associated group also seem to have made the mosaics of
two other churches in the village, including those of the Upper Chapel of the
Priest John.9
We are most concerned with the mosaic panel at the western end of the nave of
the church, the first and the last scene that would have been viewed by clergymen
and congregants as they entered and exited the space (Figure 4). This panel features four fruit trees that bracket four pairs of confronted (heraldic) animals.10
Three of the scenes feature pairs of identical animals, including two sets of deer
and one set of hares, while the fourth scene features a short Greek inscription
that combines a prayer for a donor, Epiphania, with the second half of the last
line of the Septuagint version of Psalm 51 (50), line 21: then they shall offer
young bulls upon your [Gods] altar. Lord, have mercy on Epiphania the humble
( ; ()
()).11 This text is paired with images that seem to illustrate the narrative
action of the psalm: two differently-colored bulls process towards a central stone

6
Abel (1914) 1125; Robinson (1914) 4927; Lemaire (1934) 394401, Pls. 25, 27; Saller and
Bagatti (1949) 182202, pl. 24, 34; Saller (1969) 162; Gatier (1986) 1013, no. 97; Piccirillo (1989)
185, 878; Piccirillo (1993) 1645; Di Segni (1998) 4423, no. 42.
7
Most relevant are Gatier (1986) 1034, no. 98; Di Segni (1998) 444, no. 44.
8
Piccirillo (1998) 366; Hachlili (2009) 2702
9 Hachlili (2009) 2702. On the Church of the Priest John, see Piccirillo (1993) 16675.
10
The mosaicists of the church clearly had a preference for this heraldic aesthetic, as the
pair of sheep flanking the altar and the pairs of animals in the intercolumniations attest. On
confronted animals, see Hachlili (2009) 199204.
11
Abel (1914) 114; Lemaire (1934) 397, pl. 25; Saller and Bagatti (1949) 199202, pl. 34; Saller
(1969) 162; Gatier (1986) 1045, no. 99, pl. XXI, 78; Piccirillo (1989) 185, 187; Di Segni (1998)
4434, no. 43.

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Fig. 2: Nave mosaics with hunting, pastoral, and wine-making scenes (Psalm 51 panel
visible at bottom), Church of the Holy Martyrs Lot and Procopius, Nebo / Khirbet
Mukhayyat (Photo: Sean Leatherbury / Manar al-Athar).

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Sean V. Leatherbury

Fig. 3: Sanctuary mosaics, Church of the Holy Martyrs Lot and Procopius, Nebo / Khirbet
Mukhayyat (Photo: Sean Leatherbury / Manar al-Athar).

Fig. 4: Nave mosaics (Psalm 51), Church of the Holy Martyrs Lot and Procopius (Photo:
Sean Leatherbury / Manar al-Athar).

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285

altar with a central niche and a small fire lit on top, meant to represent the altar
at the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem.
This text-image program is in fact not unique, and two other similar examples
survive from the region, from nearby Mount Nebo and from Main (the latter
now on display in the Madaba Archaeological Park). We will return to these
pavements shortly to examine the unusual interest in the region in incorporating
Psalm 51 into the decorative programs of churches. However, we must first investigate how late antique Christians understood the psalm generally, as well as
how the sixth-century congregants of the church at Khirbet Mukhayyat would
have read the depiction of Jewish rites of animal sacrifice, rites that were long
defunct by the date that these mosaics were made.

2. Bulls and Altars: Christian Responses

to Animal Sacrifice in Arabia
For both Jews and Christians, Psalm 51 was one of the most important penitential psalms in the canon. The full text of the psalm as it survives today was
most likely completed after the destruction of the first Temple in Jerusalem by
the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II in 587 B. C. E.12 When read in full, the
psalm asks God to have mercy on the speakers and to forgive them their sins.
Addressed to God, the final four lines of the psalm read:
For you do not delight in sacrifice, else I would give it;
You take no pleasure in burnt offerings.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
A broken and contrite heart you will not despise, God.
Do good in your good will to Zion,
Rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.
Then you will delight in the sacrifices of righteousness, burnt offering and whole offering.
Then they will offer bullocks on your altar. (Psalm 51: 1821)

Because the First Temple was probably in a state of ruin at the time when the
final lines of the psalm were formulated, the speaker declares that God does not
delight in the sacrifice of burnt offerings of animal flesh, as there is no Temple in
which to make proper sacrifices. Instead, God prefers the sacrifice of a broken
spirit and a broken and contrite heart until the Temple and the city walls of
Jerusalem can be rebuilt.
By the sixth century C. E., five centuries after the (Second) Temple of Herod
had been destroyed, Jews saw this text as a reminder of what had been lost as well
as an exhortation to make more personal, spiritual offerings in place of animal
12
Weister (1962) 4012; Terrien (2003) 40010. The first part of the psalm is attributed to
David: see Menn (2004) 64. On animal sacrifice in the Temple, see most recently Klawans (2009);
Petropoulou (2012) 127206.

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Sean V. Leatherbury

sacrifices.13 Some Jews appear to have continued to mourn the end of the sacrificial cult at the Temple, while other communities moved on, embracing the new
paradigm of the metaphorical sacrifice of ones broken heart (enumerated in
the psalm) through prayer.14 This model, based on prayer and personal devotion,
finds its way into other texts of the period, including the Babylonian Talmud,15 as
well as into liturgical poetry, including a poem to be read during Rosh Hashanah
services, written in the sixth century by the poet Yannai:
Then the shofar will be blown for the Complete [One, i. e. God],
The hope [is] that the complete [shofar blasts]
Be received like peace offerings [in the Temple].
Hence any shofar that has a crack
Is not fit, for it interrupts the sounding.
Come forth with a broken soul and not with a broken horn,
With a broken heart and not with a broken shofar.16

This extraordinary poem, used by Steven Fine to explore some of the imagery
that decorated late antique Jewish synagogues in Palestine, links the sounds of
the shofar, which replace peace offerings in the Temple, with the broken soul
and broken heart meant to be offered in place of the bulls of times past.17
However, though new, more personal, models of sacrifice emerged over time,
in late antiquity Jews continued to decorate their synagogues with visual reminders of the sacrificial rites dictated by the covenant between God and Abraham,
as in the famous paintings of the third-century synagogue at Dura Europos in
Syria, which represent both Abrahams halted sacrifice of Isaac and the sacrificial
competition between Elijah and the priests of the pagan god Baal over whose
deity was more powerful (1 Kings 18).18 In the image, God sends a snake to bite
the pagan priest who was hiding under the altar of Baal, revealing the power of
the god to be fraudulent, while Elijah wins the competition when the altar lights
miraculously even after he pours water on top of it. The images of the sacrificial
contest at Dura remind us that in the period, this contest was not only a battle
over the propriety of defunct rituals but also a living contest for religious legitimacy between Jews and pagans, who continued to sacrifice animals centuries
after Christianity became the religion of the Roman state.19 Several centuries lat13
On the complicated attitudes of Jews towards Temple sacrifice in Late Antiquity, see
Stroumsa (2009) 5683, especially 6870; Petropoulou (2012) 27984. On prayers as verbal
sacrifices in late antique Judaism and Christianity, see Mnz-Manor (2013).
14
While prayer was not a new form of devotion in late antique Judaism, the role played by
prayer was magnified after 70 C. E.: Kimelman (2006); Penner (2012).
15
B. Sanh. 106b.
16
Rabinovitz (1985) 2, 204; translated by Fine (2010) 1901, underlines added for emphasis.
17 Fine (2010) 1901.
18
Kraeling (1956) 13741; Goodenough (1964) 14959; Weitzmann and Kessler (1990) 110
14; Fine (2007) 402; Elsner (2012) 1534.
19 While sacrifice had ceased to be common amongst pagan communities as early as 200 C. E.,

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er, in the fifth and sixth centuries C. E., Jews chose images of Temple sacrifice to
decorate their synagogues as a reminder of the historical covenant between God
and his people and of the promise of future redemption, as in the fifth-century
floor mosaics of the Sepphoris synagogue, which illustrate the sacrificial system
of the Temple and the priesthood of Aaron.20
Christians of the period were aware that Jews did not sacrifice animals in their
synagogues, though some used this as a further argument against the legitimacy
of Jewish practice, as did John Chrysostom, who argued that the synagogue
with its Torah shrine was a pale imitation of the Temple: What sort of ark
() is it that the Jews now have, where we find no propitiatory, no tablets
of law, no Holy of Holies, no veil, no high priests, no incense, no burnt offerings
(), no sacrifice, none of the things that made the ark of old holy and
august?21 An even older Christian tradition reads Psalm 51 as proof that God
rejected Jewish traditions of animal sacrifice and instead preferred the metaphorical sacrifice of the heart and soul / spirit through prayer. These two types of
sacrifice animal flesh and human spirit were already seen by some first-century Christians as diametrically opposed, including in the Epistle to the Hebrews
(which some scholars assume was composed in the 60s C. E.), which interprets
Jewish sacrificial practice at the Temple through the lens of another psalm, Psalm
40:79: through those [animal] sacrifices there is a reminder of sins year after
year, for it is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins
(Hebr. 10:34).22 In the writings of fourth- and fifth-century theologians from
both the Latin and Greek traditions, such as Augustine,23 Theodore of Mopsuestia,24 and Theodoret of Cyrrhus,25 Christ had removed the need for further
blood sacrifice by sacrificing himself on the cross, negating Abrahamic tradition
and replacing it with the new Christian order.26 While Christians of some localit was still an issue up to and beyond the fourth century. The literature on the end of (pagan)
sacrifice is quite large and still growing, but see Harl (1990); McLynn (1996); Heyman (2007);
Salzmann (2011); Petropoulou (2012); Elsner (2012).
20
On the Sepphoris mosaics, especially on their alleged eschatological meaning, see Weiss and
Netzer (1996) 38; Weiss (2005) 255; contra Fine (2010) 18891. Branham (2012) 21424, argues
that the scenes of sacrifice at Sepphoris mark a priestly influence instead, illustrating sacrifices
performed by priests at the Temple in order to memorialize the priestly caste and to sanctify the
synagogue, a present reminder of an absent (and defunct) rite.
21 John Chrysostom, Against the Jews, 6.7 (=PG 48, col. 913).
22
These early exegetes (intentionally or unintentionally) misread the context of Psalm 51,
written during a period when the Temple was in ruins and in which animal sacrifices were physically impossible, leading to their interpretation that the psalm itself rejected Temple sacrifice:
on this polemicization of the psalm, see Ullucci (2011); Ullucci (2012) argues that Christians of
the first and second centuries did not have a coherent sacrificial theology.
23 Augustine, Exposition on Psalm 51, 213.
24
Theodore of Mopsuestia, Commentary on Psalm 51, trans. Hill (2006) 66783.
25
Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Commentary on the Psalms, 51, 1314, trans. Hill (2000) 294303.
26 On Christian attitudes to Jewish sacrifice generally, see Nasrallah (2011). On attitudes

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a
Fig. 5 a and b: Mosaic of Psalm 51, Theotokos Chapel, Monastery of Moses, Mount
Nebo, Jordan (after Piccirillo (1989), 164, with kind permission of the Studium Biblium
Franciscanum, Jerusalem).

ities appear to have continued to turn to traditional and previously pagan rites,
sacrificing oxen as votive offerings to Christ,27 most Christians saw Jewish and
pagan sacrificial traditions as an antiquated and irrational form of worship, preferring to offer their spiritual zeal (spiritu ferventes, according to Augustine),28
or rational worship (according to Theodoret),29 performed through communal
prayer and personal devotion to God.
At Khirbet Mukhayyat, then, the priests and their congregants would have
read the text and image of the last line of Psalm 51 as a statement of Christian
triumph over older Jewish (and possibly also pagan) religious practices. However, this was not only a competition between Christians and Jews over historical
traditions of worship, but also a contest over which religion had the best claim
to the paradigm of metaphorical sacrifice that required worshippers to offer
their broken hearts freely to God in prayer, a mode of worship that Jews also
increasingly adopted after the destruction of the Temple and the end of Temple
towards pagan sacrificial traditions, which were on the whole much more reviled after the late
fourth century, see Heyman (2007); Petropoulou (2012).
27
Life of St. Nicholas of Sion, 547, ed. and trans. evenko (1984) 8491; on similar sacrifices performed during the sixth-century dedication ceremony (encaenia) of Hagia Sophia and
recorded by later sources, as well as evidence from Armenian and western European contexts,
see Kovaltchuk (2008). However, these sacrifices were conceived differently than pagan and
Jewish ones: see Grottanelli (2005).
28
Augustine, Exposition on Psalm 50, 23, quoting Romans 12:11.
29
Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Commentary on the Psalms, 51, 14, whose ideas originate with
Paul in Romans 12:1.

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sacrifice (as we have already seen). Walking out of the church after service, the
congregants of the church would be reminded of Christs sacrifice, which had
ended the need for the sacrifice of bulls, of the triumph of their religion over
others, and of their right to claim the model of prayer as personal sacrifice as
their own precisely because they were not tied to a tradition of animal sacrifice.

3. Psalm 51 in the Churches of Arabia: Placement and Meaning

As we have seen, the church at Khirbet Mukhayyat (hereafter Mukhayyat) was
one of three extant churches to feature mosaics related to Psalm 51.30 While
the program is the earliest of the three in date, the similarities and differences
between these programs reveal important developments in arguments between
Christians and Jews over traditions of worship and belief, but also shine light
on the particularities of the Mukhayyat mosaics. About half a century after the
mosaicists executed these mosaics, another group of mosaicists included the same
line from Psalm 51 in the floor mosaics of the nearby Theotokos Chapel of the
Monastery of Moses on Mount Nebo (Figure 5). This program, dated to the early
seventh century, is placed immediately in front of the altar behind a low chancel
screen.31 A second related program, from the Acropolis Church at Main, was
produced in the early eighth century (719 or 720 C. E.) for the floor in front of
30 Several other churches in the region feature mosaics of confronted bulls; however, none
feature the corresponding text of the psalm or a central representation of an altar.
31
Saller (1941) 2558; Piccirillo (1993) 151 and (1998) 3006. Branham (1992) and (2012)
20912; Talgam (2013) 2301. An earlier version of this program without the inscription adorns
the sanctuary floor of the late sixth-century Church of the Lions at Umm al-Rasas (Kastron
Mefaa), where images of bulls walk toward the physical altar of the church: Piccirillo (1993)
236; Hachlili (2009) 203.

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the sanctuary of the church.32 While the mosaics from Main are too damaged to
deserve much comment, having suffered from the attentions of later iconoclasts,
the Mount Nebo program survives in fairly good shape. In front of the altar, two
bulls are depicted approaching a central architectural structure from either side,
followed by two tame deer that wear collars with bells around their necks. The
depicted altar towards which the bulls are walking is a much more complicated
structure than is the one in the Mukhayyat mosaics: in the chapel, we see the altar
through an entrance portal that resembles depictions of the main portal into the
Temple of Solomon, which decorated synagogues in the region.33 In the image,
behind the altar lies another structure that resembles a ciborium, with a dome
supported by columns over an altar. This image has been convincingly interpreted by Joan Branham and others as a representation of the Temple in Jerusalem,
in which a fire has been lit for animal sacrifice on the altar in front of the Holy
of Holies.34 Above this scene appears the same line of Psalm 51 quoted in the
church at Mukhayyat, aligned with the first bull to the left of the (physical) altar.
Unlike our program, with its small rectangular altar that is not situated in any
particular architectural or geographical space, the iconography and architectural
setting of the mosaics of the Theotokos Chapel sharpen the comparison between
ancient Jewish and late antique Christian practice. As Joan Branham has argued,
these mosaics map sacrifice directly from Jewish to Christian architectural, geographical, theological, and liturgical space.35 In the chapel, the Christian altar
immediately behind the mosaics replaces the old altar in the inner court of the
Jewish Temple, just as the sacred (and plural) geography of the church replaces
that of the (singular) Temple in Jerusalem. While the mosaics were separated
from the main room of the small chapel by a chancel screen, the screen was typical of the period and was thus short enough to be peered over by worshippers
standing in the main space.36 For both the officiating priest and congregation,
the inscription and image connected the tradition of Jewish sacrifice to that of
the sacrament of the Eucharist and proclaimed the triumph of Christian worship over that of the Temple. This replacement was literalized in the liturgy of
the period, in which the officiating priest recited Psalm 51 at the time when the
offerings of the blood (the wine) and the body (the bread) of the new sacrifice,
Christ, were brought into the sanctuary.37 By incorporating this passage into the
most important moment of worship in the church service (and by writing and
32

Piccirillo (1989) 2313; Piccirillo (1993) 2001, fig. 312.

See Branham (1992); Hachlili (2000); Hachlili (2009) 90.
34 Saller (1941) 2358; Branham (1992) 3812; Piccirillo (1993) 151; Hachlili (2009) 323.
35
Branham (1992); Branham (2012) 212.
36
Branham (1992) 3812, figs. 1011.
37 Saller (1941) 254, who locates the phrase in the Liturgy of the Faithful, the latter part of the
Liturgy of John Chrysostom, in which the last line of the psalm was recited by the priest after
he had placed the Eucharistic bread and wine on the altar; reiterated by Branham (1992) 3812
and Talgam (2013) 231. However, it should be noted that we do not know which liturgy was
33

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depicting the same passage into the decoration of the sanctuary space in the
Theotokos Chapel), Christians on Mount Nebo regularly articulated their radical break with previous Jewish practice and claimed the triumph of their new dispensation over Jewish sacrificial tradition and Law, at the very site where Moses
(the recipient of the Law) had himself seen, but failed to reach, the promised land.
Our program at Mukhayyat, just down the hill from the Monastery of Moses,
certainly had very similar theological and liturgical resonances to those of the
Mount Nebo mosaics, emphasized by the images of lambs flanking the altar
in the sanctuary of the Mukhayyat church, which remind the viewer of the
blameless sacrifice of Christ in his role as the Lamb of God (John 1:29). However, unlike the latter (and later) scheme, the program in the Church of Lot and
Procopius the earliest extant example of this particular text-image program by
half a century was oriented very differently in the church: it was placed at the
western end of the building, facing the west (towards the exit), and integrated
into a larger composition in which the pair of bulls is only one of four pairs of
animals. The mosaics position does not pair the depicted Jewish altar with the
physical Christian altar, while its composition is not the streamlined one of the
mosaics at Mount Nebo and its inscription is slightly different. In order to understand the mosaic fully and place the work back into its textual, compositional
and architectural / spatial contexts, we must compare the two programs in text
and image.
First, the text of our inscription is slightly different from that at Mount Nebo.
Both include the fragment of Psalm 51:21 that refers to the sacrificial practices
of the Temple liturgy, but the inscription at Nebo concludes with an extra component, a final prayer for one of the donors of the church: Lord, have mercy
on Epiphania the humble. Interestingly, this prayer on behalf of Epiphania, a
prayer that most likely would have been read aloud by literate congregants as
they gazed upon the mosaic, echoes Psalm 51:3: Have mercy on me, O Lord.
The inscription particularizes the text of the psalm, turning the psalm into a
prayer for the donor, a prayer that was re-performed each time that the inscription was read.
The composition of the Mukhayyat mosaic is also unique. Unlike on Mount
Nebo (and, seemingly, at Main), the image of the bulls at Nebo is situated within
a frame of trees that also surround three other pairs of animals. As Rina Talgam,
Tamar Shadmi, and Joseph Patrich have pointed out recently, the organization of
this panel, with four fruit trees extending from the corners of the panel towards
the center and framing confronted (heraldic) pairs of animals, reveals the influence of Roman mosaic traditions from the western Mediterranean, especially

practiced on Mount Nebo in the period, and that no mention of bulls is made in the primary
orthodox liturgy of Jerusalem in the period, the Liturgy of St. James, Brother of Our Lord.

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North Africa.38 This type of layout eliminates the possibility of viewing the
mosaic as a whole from one static position, as the viewer only can get a sense of
the whole composition as (s)he walks around the panel. The four fruit-bearing
trees structure the scene, splitting the animals into discrete pairs and establishing
a natural, even paradisiacal, setting.
In addition to the two bulls, which adopt mirror-image poses, the other two
identifiable pairs of animals also possess deeper Christian allegorical significance.
To the right of the bulls, the two deer drinking from the spring, a popular image
in church mosaics of the period, illustrates Psalm 42:2, an expression of personal
devotion to God: As the hart pants for flowing streams of water, so my soul
pants for you, oh God.39 To the left, the two rabbits flanking a craggy outcropping of rock recall a passage from yet another psalm, Psalm 104:18, in which the
rock, a Christian symbol for both Christ and his church, is a refuge for rabbits.
By placing the pair of bulls within the overall scheme of paired animals from the
Psalms, the mosaicists at Mukhayyat constructed a remarkably complex program
with multiple types of associations iconographic (heraldic animals confronting
a central architectural or natural feature), typological (between the psalms of the
Old Testament and Christ), combining text and image (either written or implicit) which constructs a kind of model for the Christian worshipper to follow: believe in Christ as the true sacrifice, and make your own spiritual sacrifice to him
and to God in order to assure your salvation. However, the image of the bulls
remains unique within this program: it is the only scene to feature a written text,
and unlike the other animal pairs, which operate as similes (as the hart pants for
water, as the rabbit climbs the rock), the bulls are simultaneously allegorical
(stand-ins for the souls of the faithful) and actual representations of past Jewish
practice that has been superseded by the new Christian order.
Finally, as we have already seen, the placement and orientation of the mosaics
within the church at Khirbet Mukhayyat is very different from those of the mosaics on Mount Nebo, as they are placed at the western end of the nave (instead
of near the altar), facing west towards the exit (instead of east towards the apse).
This orientation, as with the orientation of most mosaics, was related to the
38 Talgam, Shadmi, and Patrich (2012), who also show that this scheme was popular in Arabia,
including in the churches of Madaba, as in the north chapel of the Church of the Apostles: Piccirillo (1993) 1067 fig. 92. However, the combination of three different pairs of animals each
related to a psalm is unusual.
39
Other representations of the scene occur in both wall mosaics, in the so-called Mausoleum of Galla Placidia in Ravenna, dated to the fifth century, and in floor mosaics, including the
Church of Tayibat al-Iman in Syria, dated by inscription to 447 CE, in which deer drink from
the four rivers of paradise: on the latter, see Zaqzuq and Piccirillo (1999) 445, fig. 9. A church at
Chrysopolitissa on Paphos features mosaics that pair an inscription of Psalm 42:1 with a related image of a deer drinking from a spring: Hadjichristophe (1999) 923; also the baptistery at
Salona: Dyggve (1951) fig. II, 30. By itself, the inscription also features in churches in Palestine,
including at Khirbet el-Hadatha, dated to the fifth-sixth centuries CE: Ovadiah and Ovadiah
(1987) 934, no. 156.

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usage of the church interior, and the directional arrangement of the mosaic and
its inscription to the west, facing the direction of the city of Jerusalem indicate that the images were meant to be read by those leaving the space, possibly
after services had ended.40 However, in the case of the Mukhayyat mosaics, the
orientation of the Psalm 51 panel towards Jerusalem also seems to relate to its
meanings for late antique viewers. As well as evoking the transformation of Jewish sacrifice into the Christian Eucharist celebrated in the liturgy, as do the later
Mount Nebo and Main mosaics, the mosaics at Mukhayyat, the first program of
this type, also were meant to establish a spatial connection between the church
and the city of Jerusalem.

4. Placing the Sacred: Christian-Jewish

Competition over the Legacy of Jerusalem
While all three of the mosaics of Psalm 51 must have called to mind the holy city
of Jerusalem due to their images of sacrifice at the Temple, the mosaics of the
Church of Lot and Procopius seem to exhibit a directional fascination with the
city itself. On a directional level, as the congregant left the church after walking
over the mosaics, (s)he exited directly in the direction of Jerusalem, only 30 or
so miles away. Now, this was the case with all the churches in the region: as late
antique churches were (for the most part) oriented to the east, exiting the church
required one to move to the west. Additionally, all churches in the region (and
elsewhere) were spiritually oriented towards Jerusalem. This was indeed a region
in which biblical and contemporary geographies were intentionally conflated, as
is most apparent on the famous Madaba map that adorned the floor of another
sixth-century church in Arabia on which inscriptions in Greek label cities in the
region and provide their biblical significance.41 However, we must keep in mind
the close proximity of Khirbet Mukhayyat to the Monastery of Moses on Mount
Nebo (the site of the Theotokos Chapel, already examined), the mountain from
which Moses saw the promised land of Israel. The very fact that the church fell
into the larger orbit of Mount Nebo would seem to suggest a special geographical
affinity between the locality and the primary locus sanctus of the Holy Land,
Jerusalem. Indeed, a number of early pilgrim accounts, including that of Egeria,
40
Most mosaic inscriptions of the period tend to be oriented for ease of reading. On the
direction of inscriptions as evidence for the direction of movement within buildings, see Weiss
(2009) 3314. A program of two confronted bulls appears in a similar position at the west end of
the nave in the Church of St. John the Baptist at Oum Hartane in Syria, though those bulls are
stuck full of arrows and face a birdbath instead of an altar: Donceel-Vote (1987) 1969. While
it is possible that the mosaics would have been read as connected to Psalm 51 by some viewers,
their overall symbolism appears to have been more complicated.
41
The bibliography for the map is large, but see Schulten (1900); Avi-Yonah (1954); Piccirillo
(1989) 7695 and (1993) 2633, 8195; Piccirillo and Alliata (1999); Bowersock (2006) 6590.

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mention pilgrims journeying from Jerusalem to the monastery on Mount Nebo

in order to visit the burial place of Moses which, according to later tradition, was
atop the mountain and from which one could see Jerusalem itself on clear days.42
In fact, the very text of our psalm also orients the mosaic program at
Mukhayyat towards the holy city. As we have seen, the last four lines of Psalm
51 describe proper modes of sacrifice and ask God to take a special interest in Jerusalem and allow the city walls (and, implicitly, the Temple) to be rebuilt. While
the inscription quotes only the end of the final line, the paired image makes clear
the reference to animal sacrifice at the Temple. In late antique Christian thought
and experience, the Temple Mount was a complicated site and symbol, simultaneously the location of important events in the life of Christ (his presentation as
an infant and his scourging of the sellers and moneychangers) and confirmation
of Christs prediction that the Temple would be destroyed and lie in ruins for
eternity (Matthew 24:2). Pilgrims who visited the city in the fourth, fifth and
sixth centuries most frequently noted the latter of these two significances, including Bishop Eucherius of Lyon, who wrote to his friend the priest Faustus in
440 C. E. that the site of the Temple, which had been a magnificent structure, lay
in ruins, with only the foundations visible.43
While they might not have embraced the ritual practices that were observed
at the First and Second Temples, Christians in the sixth century considered the
physical Temple of Solomon, whose dimensions are reported in the Hebrew
Bible (1 Kings 67, 2 Chronicles 3), a grand architectural achievement. Several
Byzantine elites explicitly tried to build churches that would equal and surpass
the Temple in order to demonstrate Christianitys triumph over Judaism. While
Temple-mania does seem to have been alive and well in different areas of the
Empire in the sixth century, many of the comparisons between the Temple and
a church were made in reference to buildings built by the emperor Justinian.44
Justinian appears to have conceived of his effort to rebuild Hagia Sophia in
relation to the Temple: his construction project was set against the destruction
of the Temple in a hymn by Romanos the Melodist,45 and upon its completion the emperor (probably apocryphally) proclaimed that he had vanquished
Solomon.46 This proclamation was of course also a thinly veiled attack on the
noblewoman Anicia Juliana, whose church of Hagios Polyeuktos, completed in
42
Egeria, Itinerary, 1012, trans. Wilkinson (1999) 11924. On the historicity of Mount
Nebos claim to be the burial place of Moses, see Cortese and Niccacci (1998).
43 Eucherius, Letter to the Presbyter Faustus (Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum
175, 1267).
44
On other propagandistic comparisons between the Temple and various churches, see
Ousterhout (2010); Talgam (2013) 2289.
45
Romanos the Melodist, Hymn 54 (On Earthquakes and Fires), ed. Maas and Trypanis
(1963) 46271.
46 Preger (1901) 105.

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the 520s in Constantinople, was built according to the presumed dimensions of

the Temple.47
In addition to his construction projects elsewhere in the Empire, Justinian
also undertook an extensive building program in Jerusalem. Archaeological evidence as well as Procopius panegyric of the emperor-as-builder, On Buildings
(De Aedificiis), reveals imperial sponsorship of the grand Nea (New) Church
as well as other churches, monasteries, hospices, roads, cisterns and wells in
and around the city.48 By the late 550s, Jerusalem had a new church second in
status only to the Holy Sepulchre, as well as a number of other new buildings
and urban improvements that would have been noted by the communities on
and around Mount Nebo. This sixth-century architectural boom was felt in the
area as well. In the 530s, the Monastery of Moses was redecorated and a new
baptistery added, while local patrons in the town of Khirbet Mukhayyat / Nebo
built several other churches around the same time, including the Church of St.
George (535/6)49 and the Church of the Priest John (second half of the sixth
century, probably decorated by the same team of mosaicists that made the Lot
and Procopius mosaics).50
This mid-sixth century building boom in Jerusalem and the surrounding region may have in fact been seen by some as connected to the message of Psalm
51. Christians of the period interpreted the biblical exhortation of the psalm to
restore Jerusalem in at least two ways: as referring either to the earthly (physical)
city of Jerusalem or to the heavenly (spiritual) Jerusalem that would descend
with the anticipated Second Coming of Christ. As we have already seen, Psalm
51 is concerned with physical architecture, as it expresses the hope that the walls
of Jerusalem will be rebuilt. This part of the psalm was quoted in the mid-sixth
century by the historian John Malalas in a clever reference to the empress Eudokia, wife of Theodosius II, and her supposed reconstruction of the city walls
in the mid-fifth century: She (Eudokia) reconstructed the wall of Jerusalem,
saying: It was of me that the prophet David spoke when he said, In thy good
pleasure (eudokia), O Lord, the walls of Jerusalem shall be built [quoting Psalm
51:20].51 We do not know whether the empress actually connected herself and
her construction project to Psalm 51, or if she rebuilt the city walls at all, as
archaeologists typically date the walls to the late fourth or early fifth century.52
47 The epigram of Julianas church is preserved in the Greek Anthology 1.10, trans. Paton
(1916) 611; on the church, see Harrison (1989) 1379; and Connor (2004) 94116.
48
Procopius, On Buildings 5.6.126, 5.9.111.
49 Saller and Bagatti (1949) 6677; Piccirillo (1998) 3209.
50
Saller and Bagatti (1949) 4955, Pls. 813; Piccirillo (1993) 16675 and (1998) 3515.
51
Malalas, Chronograph, 14.8.3578. On the issue of her patronage of the walls (which has
been disputed), see the useful summary of Klein (2011/2012) note 24. On the architectural
remains of the early Byzantine city walls, see Weksler-Bdolah (20062007) 93102; Prag (2008)
85, 4748.
52 Weksler-Bdolah (20062007) 93102, contra the earlier Constantinian date of Geva (1993).

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However, independent of architectural realities, Malalas clever use of the quotation to play on the name of the empress reveals the resonance of the psalm in
the period, as well as the sixth-century focus on building projects in the earthly
Jerusalem.
For others, the psalm also had an eschatological meaning. Just as the Jerusalems of Solomon and Herod might have been seen by some as precursors to
Justinians Jerusalem, the Jerusalem adorned with sixth-century imperial projects
was seen as anticipating the coming of the heavenly Jerusalem. Echoes of this
eschatological sentiment are evident in late antique Christian exegeses, including
the commentary of Theodoret of Cyrrhus on Psalm 51. Written in the mid-fifth
century, the text interprets the psalms reference to Zion as a prophecy about
the coming of the heavenly Jerusalem:
The conclusion of the psalm [Psalm 51] contains, however, a further prophecy as well.
You see, after setting forth above the gifts of the all-holy Spirit, he [King David] went on
to show the God of all to be not pleased with the sacrifices according to the Law, and his
prayer is for the new Zion to emerge, the heavenly Jerusalem to be built on earth, and the
new way of life to be inaugurated as soon as possible, offering not irrational victims but
the offering and sacrifice of righteousness, and rational and living holocausts .53

This text seems to fit within a larger tradition of debate between Christian and
Jewish commentators over when and how the apocalypse would come about, as
arguments over eschatology were not confined to Christian communities but instead seem to have been shared by Christians and Jews in the region.54 For some
communities, these debates were more than academic, as for Apollinaris, a bishop of Laodicea in Syria in the fifth century, who encouraged his congregation to
rebuild the Temple and reinstitute sacrifice in order to hasten the arrival of the
heavenly Jerusalem.55 While Apollinaris appears to have been a fringe character,
the numerous apocalyptic texts produced in the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries reveal that at least in some Christian communities people conceived of the
apocalypse and the coming of the heavenly Jerusalem as events close at hand.
Walking out of the Mukhayyat church after a service and seeing the mosaics,
viewers may have connected the mosaics to one or both of these interpretations
of Psalm 51. As viewed through the prism of the mosaics themselves, the former
reading linked the building of the church with contemporary imperial and elite
building projects in Jerusalem, emphasizing the earthly architectural achievements that have been supported by divine favor. The church became a metaphorical and physical extension of the walls of Jerusalem mentioned in the psalm,
allowing its patrons, priests, and congregants to envision themselves as part of a
53

Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Commentary on the Psalms, 51, trans. Hill (2000) 3023.
Wilken (1985) 45471; on Jewish apocalyptic writings of the period, see Levi (1914).
55
The writings of Apollinaris do not survive, but his beliefs are reported by Jerome, Commentary on Daniel 9.24; also see Wilken (1985).
54

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grander project with biblical foundations. Those congregants who were aware
of the eschatological reading of the psalm, however, perhaps went a step further,
expressing their heartfelt wish that the heavenly Jerusalem descend, and descend
soon, urged on by the glorification of God and his holy city.56
In light of the eschatological reading of the psalm, the decorative program of
another church in the same town is interesting. The floor mosaics of the Church
of Priest John, probably executed by the same group of mosaicists as those of
the Church of Lot and Procopius, explicitly reveal a fascination with the Temple
as depicted in late antique Jewish art.57 In the nave mosaics, the dedicatory inscription of the church is framed by an architectural structure that most closely
resembles depictions of the Temple and / or Tabernacle familiar from synagogue
mosaics and architectural sculpture in Roman and early Byzantine Palestine,
with the same monumental faade and triangular pediment with a shell motif.58
While there are many iconographic differences between the two, most notably
the inclusion of specifically Christian and Jewish elements (for example, the peacocks, cocks, and flowering trees in the church mosaics), the similarities indicate
that the mosaicists who decorated the church were fascinated with the architectural faade form most typically used to represent the Temple. Because the image
in the Church of Priest John is unique and seems to have been heavily inspired
by synagogue decoration, it remains unclear what it meant to its creators and
viewers. But might this modified image of the Temple-as-frame, set in paradise
and surrounded by Christian symbols of renewal and rebirth (e. g., the peacocks),
be a symbol for the heavenly Jerusalem, an image of Christian triumph over the
world of the Temple cult but also a sign for the heavenly city?59 Whatever this
vibrantly colored building frame was meant to represent, it seems likely to have
been connected to the local fascination with Jerusalem, whether earthly or heavenly or both, and to have been a part of the larger argument over whether Jews
or Christians had stronger links to the holy city.

56
On the connection between other Byzantine architectural projects and ideas about the
heavenly Jerusalem, see Carile (2012) 15778. On the transportability and adaptability of Jerusalem as city, space, and metaphor see Hoffmann and Wolf (2012).
57
On the church mosaics see Piccirillo (1993) 16675.
58
A debate exists over which forms were meant to be read as the doorway to the Temple and
which were meant to be read as the Tabernacle: among many contributions, see Revel-Neher
(1984); Khnel (1986/1987); Hachlili (2009) 228 and (2013) 2005 (who reads all forms as images of the Torah Shrine); Levine (2013) 231, 33741. On Christian borrowing of Jewish forms
see Laderman (2012), who points out that the motif does not appear in Christian art before the
sixth century; Talgam (2013) 248. On images of the heavenly Jerusalem in art see Khnel (1987)
and (1997/1998).
59 On the symbolism of peacocks in early Christian art, see Jensen (2000) 15960.

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5. Conclusion
The mosaics of the Church of Lot and Procopius make a complex argument
about the supremacy of Christian faith and history. In text and image, the mosaics put forth a Christian claim to an alternative model of personal sacrifice,
reminding congregants how to worship properly through analogy and symbol while at the same time staking a claim for the primacy of contemporary
architectural projects and linking the site to the earthly (and possibly also to
the heavenly) Jerusalem. By placing the mosaics at Khirbet Mukhayyat / Nebo
back into their spatial, local, and regional contexts, and by considering both the
theological and the popular uses of Psalm 51 in the period, we are able not only
to get a glimpse at the physical and metaphysical networks that joined Jerusalem
and nearby holy sites such as the Mountain of Moses, but also to perceive some
of the ways in which late antique works of art convey both general and particular
local meanings as well as reflect ongoing debates between Christians and Jews
over modes of worship and eschatology.

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