Beit She’an/Scythopolis Capital of the Decapolis

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 In the first century the Decapolis was a loose league of semi-autonomous Roman cities across the Jordan River from Israel, stretching from Damascus in the North to Amman in the south. They had a high proportion of gentile inhabitants.

The major city or ‘capital’ was the imposing Roman city of Scythopolis, called Beisan in Arabic and Beit She’an in Hebrew. As was typical of Roman cities, it had two main shop-lined colonnaded streets: a North-South Cardo Maximus and an East-West Decumanis Maximus. This large city had two theatres, a circus, a nymphaeum, temples, two Roman bath-houses with a palaestra (an exercise courtyard) with pools as well as two public latrines with running water. Because it required a lot of land, a circus (or hippodrome) was constructed outside the town.

As yet neither a public synagogue nor a mikvah (Jewish ritual immersion pool) has been found. Perhaps few Jews lived in the city but in the excavated House of Leontis, which has splendid mosaics with inscriptions in Aramaic and Greek, one room was a Jewish ‘chapel’ with a menorah and a ‘shalom’ inscription in Hebrew. Leontis, his brother, Yehonatan, and an inn-keeper Yosai are named there. Perhaps guests were often Jewish, moreover one inscription mentions the congregation that financed the complex so it would appear that, by the time that Christianity and monasteries were established in the Decapolis in general Beit She’an also had a Jewish presence.

In ‘the Jesus period’ (the early 1st century AD) Beit She’an would have been the last city level on top of the (more ancient) Tel. The mighty Hellenistic city on the lower level had been commenced after the Roman conquest of 63 BC but it would have taken decades to finish it and most of the Roman city dates from the 2nd to 3rd centuries AD, well after the ‘Jesus period’. Its construction may have been seen by Jesus when he passed through the area of his way from Galilee to Jericho (Lk. 19:1) as some building-progress may have been made by 30 AD. The most direct route to Jericho was (and still is) via Beit She’an (a road which became part of the King’s Highway).

Jesus would have been very familiar with Beit She’an as the semi-official capital of the Decapolis. It is a strategic location for economic and military protection and is at the junction of two fertile valleys. The Jordan Valley gives access from the Lake of Galilee South to the Dead Sea and the Jezreel Valley gives access to the North-West, across to the coastal port of Haifa.

We know that Jesus preached throughout the Decapolis (Mk. 5:20 and 7:31) and this would have included this, the major city, despite it having few Jewish inhabitants at the time.

The city that tourists see today (the Roman city) was ruined by an earthquake which also decimated other cities in the area in 749 AD.


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