SEPPHORIS (Heb. postbiblical Şippurî; Gr. Σεπφάς). - A city of Galilee, whose name is preserved in the present-day village of Şaffürijjeh, 8 km northwest of Nazareth (Israel). Flavius Josephus (Antiq. Iud., XIII, 12, 5) reports that in the time of Alexander Jannaeus (103-78 B.C.) S. was able (ca. 100 B.C.) to resist the attacks of Ptolemy Lathyrus (117-81 B.C.).
Because of its political and economic importance, Gabinius (57-55 B.C.) chose it as the seat of one of the five sanhedrins into which Palestine was divided by the Roman administration. Incorporated into the Kingdom of Herod the Great, it attempted to rise up at the King's death, but was severely punished by Varus, who sold its inhabitants into slavery. Rebuilt by Herod Antipas (4-39 A.D.), it bore the title of Autocratoris and Caesarea and was the capital of the tetrarchy of Galilee until 18, when the tetrarch Herod transferred the capital to the new city of Tiberias. When Tiberias was ceded in 55 to Agrippa II (49-93 A.D.), S. again became the capital of Galilee and perhaps on that occasion received the title of Irenopolis-Neronias-Sepphoris. Having surrendered to Vespasian, it received many fugitives from Jerusalem and Judea. At Diocaesarea, as S. was called by the Romans, resided the famous rabbi Jéhúdháh han-Náší; it was a center of intense Jewish religious and political life. Count Joseph of Tiberias, a converted Jew, built there a church in honor of St. Anne, held to be a native of the city: serious riots broke out on the part of the Jews, however, and were severely repressed by Gallus (351). In the 6th century it was an episcopal see, and the pilgrim Piacentino visited there the church of St. Anne (P. Geyer, Itin. Hier., 161, 4). The Crusaders rebuilt the church, of which important ruins remain, and from there they later set out for the ill-fated battle of Qurn Ḥaṭṭin (1189). In 1725 the emir Dāhir el-'Omar restored there the castle that still today dominates the hill, a witness in its architecture to the various periods of its history. In 1909 a hall with a mosaic floor and an Aramaic inscription, belonging to a synagogue, was discovered there. In 1931 archaeological soundings brought to light a Roman amphitheater, mosaics, capitals, columns and the remains of a temple.