Sarepta

Sarepta (near modern Sarafand, Lebanon) was a Phoenician city on the Mediterranean coast between Sidon and Tyre, also known biblically as Zarephath. It became a bishopric, which faded, and remains a double (Latin and Maronite) Catholic titular see.

Most of the objects by which Phoenician culture is characterised are those that have been recovered scattered among Phoenician colonies and trading posts; such carefully excavated colonial sites are in Spain, Sicily, Sardinia and Tunisia. The sites of many Phoenician cities, like Sidon and Tyre, by contrast, are still occupied, unavailable to archaeology except in highly restricted chance sites, usually much disturbed. Sarepta[1] is the exception, the one Phoenician city in the heartland of the culture that has been unearthed and thoroughly studied.

Sarepta is mentioned for the first time in the voyage of an Egyptian in the 14th century BCE.[2] Obadiah says it was the northern boundary of Canaan: “And the exiles of this host of the sons of Israel who are among the Canaanites as far as Zarephath (Heb. צרפת), and the exiles of Jerusalem who are in Sepharad, will possess the cities of the south.”[3] The medieval lexicographer, David ben Abraham Al-Alfāsī, identifies Zarephath with the city of Ṣarfend (Judeo-Arabic: צרפנדה).[4] Originally Sidonian, the town passed to the Tyrians after the invasion of Shalmaneser IV, 722 BCE. It fell to Sennacherib in 701.

The first Books of Kings (17:8-24) describes the city as being subject to Sidon in the time of Ahab, and says that the prophet Elijah, after leaving the brook Cherith, multiplied the meal and oil of the widow of Zarephath (Sarepta) and raised her son from the dead there, an incident also referred to by Jesus in Luke's Gospel.[5]

Zarephath (צרפת ṣārĕfáṯ, tsarfát; Σάρεπτα, Sárepta) in Hebrew became the eponym for any smelter or forge, or metalworking shop. In the 1st century CE, the Roman Sarepta, a port about a kilometer to the south[6] is mentioned by Josephus[7] and by Pliny the Elder.[8]

Sarepta is the location of a Shia shrine to Abu Dhar al-Ghifari, a Companion of Muhammad. The shrine is believed to have been built at least several centuries after Abu Dhar's death.[9]

After the Islamization of the area, in 1185, the Greek monk Phocas, making a gazetteer of the Holy Land (De locis sanctis, 7), found the town almost in its ancient condition. A century later, according to Burchard of Mount Sion, it was in ruins and contained only seven or eight houses.[10] Even after the Crusaders' kingdoms had collapsed, the Roman Catholic Church continued to appoint purely titular bishops of Sarepta, the most noted being Thomas of Wroclaw who held the post from 1350 until 1378.[11]

Sarepta as a Christian city was mentioned in the Itinerarium Burdigalense; the Onomasticon of Eusebius and in Jerome; by Theodosius and Pseudo-Antoninus who, in the 6th century call it a small town but very Christian.[12] It contained at that time a church dedicated to St. Elias (Elijah). The Notitia episcopatuum, a list of bishoprics made in Antioch in the 6th century, speaks of Sarepta as a suffragan see of Tyre; all of its bishops are unknown.

The diocese was nominally restored as titular see, twice: in Latin and Maronite (Eastern Catholic) traditions.

This titular bishopric was established in 1983.

It has had the following incumbents of the fitting episcopal (lowest) rank:

It was established as titular bishopric no later than the 15th century. It has been vacant for decades, having had the following incumbents:

A Heavy Neolithic archaeological site of the Qaraoun culture that pre-dated Sarepta by several thousand years was discovered at Sarafand by Hajji Khalaf. He made a collection of material and passed it to the National Museum of Beirut. It consisted of an assemblage of large flakes and bifaces in Eocene flint. Some piebald flint blades were also found along with hammerstones in Nummulitic limestone that resemble finds from Aadloun II (Bezez Cave), which is located 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) to the South. Khalaf also found a well-made adze and a narrow, slightly polished chisel. A collection in the National Museum of Beirut marked "Jezzine ou Sarepta" consisted of around twelve neatly made discoid- and tortoise-cores in cherty flint of a cream colour with a tinge of red.[14]

The low tell on the seashore was excavated by James B. Pritchard over five years from 1969 to 1974. [15] [16] Civil war in Lebanon put an end to the excavations.

The site of the ancient town is marked by the ruins on the shore to the south of the modern village, about eight miles to the south of Sidon, which extend along the shore for a mile or more. They are in two distinct groups, one on a headland to the west of a fountain called ‛Ain el-Ḳantara, which is not far from the shore. Here was the ancient harbor which still affords shelter for small craft. The other group of ruins, to the south, consists of columns, sarcophagi and marble slabs, indicating a city of considerable importance.

Pritchard's excavations revealed many artifacts of daily life in the ancient Phoenician city of Sarepta: pottery workshops and kilns, artifacts of daily use and religious figurines, numerous inscriptions that included some in Ugaritic. Pillar worship is traceable from an 8th-century shrine of Tanit-Ashtart, and a seal with the city's name made the identification secure. The local Bronze Age-Iron Age stratigraphy was established in detail; absolute dating depends in part on correlations with Cypriote and Aegean stratigraphy.

The climax of the Sarepta discoveries at Sarafand is the cult shrine of "Tanit/Astart", who is identified in the site by an inscribed votive ivory plaque, the first identification of Tanit in her homeland. The site revealed figurines, further carved ivories, amulets and a cultic mask.[17]

In Hebrew after the Diaspora, the name צרפת, ts-r-f-t, Tsarfat (Zarephath) is used to mean France, perhaps because the Hebrew letters ts-r-f, if reversed, become f-r-ts.[18] This hypothesis is from a French word-building tool called verlan. That usage is retained in daily use in contemporary Israel.