On today’s page of Talmud, the Mishnah tells the story of Rabban Gamliel who had some special charts which he used to question the witnesses who claimed to have seen the new moon:
ראש השנה כד, ב
דְּמוּת צוּרוֹת לְבָנָה הָיוּ לוֹ לְרַבָּן גַּמְלִיאֵל בְּטַבְלָא וּבְכוֹתֶל בַּעֲלִיָּיתוֹ, שֶׁבָּהֶן מַרְאֶה אֶת הַהֶדְיוֹטוֹת, וְאוֹמֵר: הֲכָזֶה רָאִיתָ אוֹ כָּזֶה
Mishnah: Rabban Gamliel had a diagram of the different forms of the moon drawn on a tablet that hung on the wall of his attic, which he would show to the laymen who came to testify about the new moon (but were unable to describe adequately what they had seen). And he would say to them: Did you see a form like this or like this?
The Talmud asks why these charts with pictures of the moon were permitted. “Isn’t it written: “You shall not make with Me gods of silver, or gods of gold” (Exodus 20:19), which is interpreted as teaching: You shall not make images of My attendants, i.e., those celestial bodies that were created to serve God, including the sun and the moon?” This introduces an interesting discussion about precisely what images of the sun, the moon, and the stars are permitted. After a couple of tangential discussions, the Talmud gives three reasons why Rabban Gamliel was permitted to keep these charts: First, he was always surrounded by other people, so there was no suspicion that he would be worshipping the images. Second, perhaps the image of the moon was incomplete (דִּפְרָקִים הֲוָה), and it is only complete images of the moon that are forbidden, and finally perhaps he kept these charts to study and learn from them. This would be permitted “as it is written: “You shall not learn to do (לֹא תִּלְמַד לַעֲשׂוֹת) after the abominations of those nations” (Deuteronomy 18:9), which indicates that you may learn to understand and to teach.”
The Code of Jewish Law, the Shulhan Arukh codifies these rulings:
שולחן ערוך יורד דעה 141:4
וצורת חמה ולבנה וכוכבים אסור בין בולטת בין שוקעת ואם הם להתלמד להבין ולהורות כולן מותרות אפי' בולטות (ויש מתירין בשל רבים דליכא חשדא) (טור בשם הרא"ש)
It is forbidden to make any kind of model representation of the sun, the moon and the stars, whether in positive or negative relief, but if the models or images are to study from, they are all permitted.
It is clear from the Shulhan Arukh that it would be forbidden to make images of the sun and the moon and the stars as decorations. And yet this is precisely what has been uncovered in several ancient synagogues in Israel.
The Zodiac in the Shul
As a recent article published in Ha’artez noted, there are at several ancient synagogues in which pagan images of the zodiac can be found on floor mosaics. For example, they are the synagogues in Zippori, Hammat Tiberias, Hosefa (Usfiyya) and Huqoq in the north, and in Susya and Naaran in Judea. Perhaps the most famous is the excavation in Beit Alfa. Here is its mosaic:
In the center, wrote the eminent Israeli archeologist Rachel Hachili, the sun god - Sol invictus - is represented by his bust and crown, his horses by their legs and heads, and his chariot by its front and two wheels. Let us let Prof. Hachili walk us through the typical features of these remarkable mosaics:
The outer circle of the design contains the 12 signs of the zodiac, identified with the 12 months of the year. Aries is the first sign, being the first month of spring. According to his position in the circle, we see that at Nacaran and Husaifa the goes clockwise, while at Beth-Alpha and Tiberias, it goes counterclockwise. The signs (representing months) do not correspond to the seasons except at Tiberias and Antioch, where the zodiacal signs and seasons are coordinated, although at Antioch we have the personifications of the months rather than of the zodiacal signs.
There are a number of differences between these Jewish images of the Zodiac and those found in Roman Temples, but she noted that “by comparing the zodiacs of the four Jewish synagogue mosaic floors and tracing their origin and development from Roman art, it may be concluded that the Jewish zodiacal panel is a liturgical calendar. In every Jewish calendar, the form, composition, and balance of the three-part scheme are identical, suggesting the existence of a prototype…The design has its roots in the art of the preceding period with the two major designs which are part of the Jewish calendar: the astronomical zodiac and the agricultural calendar.
The Jewish scheme unified both of these into the distinctive design of the seasons, zodiacal signs, and sun god, signifying a liturgical calendar. When the synagogue replaced the Temple, the annual ritual acts, performed by the priests, were represented symbolically in synagogue art. The calendar became the frame of the annual rites now enacted by the community. Thus, it was guaranteed a central location in Jewish synagogue mosaic floors.
“Clearly by the time of these synagogues, the fourth to sixth centuries C.E., the local Jews were comfortable with representational art. They would have presumably objected to representations of pagan gods, however, hence the solar deity in the synagogues was meant to represent the God of Israel, most scholars agree.”
Hellenists or Mainstream?
Some have seen these mosaics as evidence that the synagogues with them practiced a different form of Jewish worship. “It was not Rabbinic Judaism, which would eventually become Judaism as we know it” wrote Elon Gilad and Ruth Schuster in their article in Haaretz, “but at the time was only taking shape on the sidelines of the Jewish world. The Jews who prayed in these and other synagogues belonged to what was then the mainstream of Judaism but is now long forgotten: Hellenistic Judaism.” They suggest that “these shuls and their mosaics only seem strange when compared to the later synagogues of Rabbinic Judaism, but they are perfectly in line with the Roman cults of the period. Indeed, Hellenistic Judaism is best understood as a Roman cult.”
Gilad and Schuster continue:
The evolution of Judaism is quite similar to the evolution of biological species. It's not a neat progression from First Temple Judaism to Second Temple Judaism and then to Rabbinic Judaism, as Jewish history is often viewed. Rather, the religion evolved with time and some forms were false starts, while others spread and continue to evolve to this day, like Rabbinic Judaism, Christianity, Samaritanism, and Karaite Judaism.
To return to the metaphor of the dinosaurs and the tiny furry animals from which we evolved, we could say that Hellenistic Judaism with its zodiac mosaics was like the dinosaurs: great at the time but destined to go extinct – in the calamitous Early Middle Ages. It was the small, at the time almost imperceptible, Rabbinic Judaism that survived these disasters and became the Judaism of later periods, much like the rodents that survived the dinosaur-killing disaster from which we eventually evolved.
But others are not so sure. In his classic work Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period, the archeologist Erwin Goodenough (1893-1965) wrote that “the Zodiac in the synagogues, with Helios in the center, accordingly, seems to me to proclaim that the God worshiped in the synagogue was the God who had made the stars, and revealed himself through them in cosmic law and order and right, but who was himself the Charioteer guiding the universe and all its order and law.” He continued:
Actually the floor of Beth Alpha as a whole, the only one that shows the zodiac in its full original setting, seems to me to outline an elaborate conception of Judaism. In the center is presented the nature of God as the cosmic ruler. Above are the symbols of his specific revelation to the Jews, primarily the Torah in the Torah shrine; below in the sacrifice of Isaac is, I suspect, the atonement offered in the Akedah. All this is surrounded by familiar mystic symbols: birds, animals, and baskets within the intersticies of the vine. At the top of all inconspicuously stand the little fish and the bunch of grapes.
We are unlikely to ever determine which explanation is correct, but the zodiac mosaics certainly represented a Judaism quite different from that described in todays’ page of Talmud, in which there is an almost absolute prohibition against making images of the sun, the moon and the stars. Once upon a time, these images were part of synagogue decorations.
