Israeli archaeologists have uncovered the ruins of a 1,500-year-old synagogue near the city of Beit Shean in the Jordan Valley, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced on Monday.
The remains consist of a five- by eight-meter (16- by 26-foot) rectangular prayer hall whose walls featured five rectangular recesses built into them. Most likely, they housed wooden benches.
On the floor, the archaeologists found a colorful mosaic, decorated with a geometric pattern. In the center, a Greek inscription proclaimed: “This is the temple.”
According to Leah Di Segni, the scholar at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who translated the inscription, the plan of the building, the orientation and the content of the inscription are in keeping with a Samaritan synagogue.
Indeed, the prayer hall faced southwest toward Mount Gerizim, a mound sacred to the Samaritans, people believed to have originated in the ancient northern kingdom of Israel.
Mentioned by Jesus in the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), the Samaritans, whose religion shares many similarities with Judaism, numbered around a million in the late Roman Empire.
Under the leadership of the high priest Baba Rabbah, they were granted national sovereignty. At the end of the reign of the Emperor Justinian in 529, however, following an unsuccessful revolt, they ceased to exist as a nation.
Today, the Samaritans are the smallest religio-ethnic group in existence.
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