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In the ancient Jewish world, impurity was primarily removed through means of ritual washing and bathing. Immersion pools dating from the 1st c. C.E. have been found only where Jews were living, primarily in Judea and Western Galilee. These Jewish immersion pools are not standalone entities, appearing in various contexts: near synagogues, burial caves, the Temple Mount, wine and olive presses, bathhouses, and sites of pottery production. As such, ritual immersion was not necessarily and exclusively linked to Temple worship, but to domestic life as well.
At the Intersection of Texts and Material Finds: Stepped Pools, Stone Vessels, and Ritual Purity Among the Jews of Roman Galilee by Stuart S. Miller
See: pp. 17–62.
Stuart Miller examines the hermeneutical challenges posed by the material and literary evidence pertaining to ritual purity practices in Graeco-Roman Palestine and, especially, the Galilee. He contends that "stepped pools," which we now know were in use well beyond the Destruction of the Temple, and, as indicated by the large collection on the western acropolis of Sepphoris and elsewhere, into the Middle and Late Roman/Byzantine eras, must be understood in light of biblical and popular perspectives on ritual purity.
Ancient Synagogues: Historical Analysis and Archeological Discovery by Dan Urman (Editor); Paul V. Flesher (Editor)
See: David Amit and Yonatan Adler, “The Observance of Ritual Purity after 70 C.E.: A Reevaluation of the Evidence in Light of Recent Archaeological Discoveries,” pp. 121-143.
Lee I. Levine has published 12 monographs, 11 edited or coedited volumes, and 180 articles. His scholarship encompasses a broad range of topics relating to ancient Judaism, especially archaeology, rabbinic studies, and Jewish history. Within these disciplines he has dealt with a variety of subfields, including ancient synagogues and liturgy, ancient Jewish art, Galilee, Jerusalem, Hellenism and Judaism, and the historical geography of ancient Palestine. He is one of the first major scholars to draw on and integrate data from all of these fields in order to afford a better understanding of ancient Judaism. The 32 contributions to this volume by 35 authors are a tribute to his influence on this field of study and reflect the broad spectrum of his own interests. The 26 English and 6 Hebrew essays are divided into sections on Hellenism, Christianity, and Judaism; art and archaeology--Jerusalem and Galilee; rabbis; the ancient synagogue; sages and patriarchs; and archaeology, art, and historical geography.