ABSTRACT
The role of seafaring and maritime activity in ancient Israel, has received little scholarly attention because scholars tend to regard the society of biblical Israel as land-locked and uninterested in maritime matters. This viewpoint is already found in the writings of Flavius Josephus. In defending the Jews of Alexandria, the Jewish historian wrote: ‘Ours is not a maritime country; neither commerce nor the intercourse which it promotes with the outside world has any attraction for us. Our cities are built inland, remote from the sea’ (Contra Apion 1.60). The apologetic nature of this statement, which was accurate when it was written, must be evaluated in the context of Roman rule in the Levant, after Judaea had been deprived of its coastal possessions. In other writings, however, Josephus does provide various accounts of early Israelite and Jewish maritime activity. For the Roman era, most noteworthy are the details about the construction, by King Herod of Judea (37-4 BCE), of the artificial port of Sebastos (Jewish Antiquities 15.32; The Jewish War 1.410), for his newly built city of Caesarea. Josephus (The Jewish War 3.9.2) also noted Jaffa as the primary Jewish naval base in that war against Rome (66-70 CE).
