Sarepta


Sarepta 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 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 is the exception, the one Phoenician city in the heartland of the culture that has been unearthed and thoroughly studied.

History

Sarepta is mentioned for the first time in the voyage of an ancient Egyptian in the 14th century BCE. 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, and the exiles of Jerusalem who are in Sepharad, will possess the cities of the south.” The medieval lexicographer David ben Abraham al-Fasi identified Zarephath with the city of Ṣarfanda. Originally Sidonian, the town passed to the Tyrians after the invasion of Shalmaneser IV, 722 BCE. It fell to Sennacherib in 701 BCE.
1 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 wadi Kerith became the eponym in Hebrew for any smelter or forge, or metalworking shop. In the 1st century, the Roman port of Sarepta about to the south, is mentioned by Josephus and by Pliny the Elder.
Sarepta is the location of a Shi'i shrine to Abu Dharr al-Ghifari, a companion of Muhammad. The shrine is believed to have been built several centuries after Abu Dharr's death.
After the Islamization of the area, in 1185, the Byzantine monk Phocas, making a gazetteer of the Holy Land, 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. Even after the Crusader states had collapsed, the Catholic Church continued to appoint purely titular bishops of Sarepta, the most noted being Thomas, the auxiliary Bishop of Wrocław, who held the post from 1350 until 1378.

Ecclesiastical history

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. It contained at that time a church dedicated to Elijah. The Notitiae 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.

Titular sees

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

Sarepta of the Maronites

This titular bishopric was established in 1983.
It has had the following incumbents of the fitting episcopal rank:

Sarepta of the Romans

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

Archaeology

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, which is located 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.
The low tell on the seashore was excavated by James B. Pritchard over five years from 1969 to 1974.
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.
During the 2024 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, UNESCO gave enhanced protection to 34 cultural sites in Lebanon including the Sarepta archaeological site to safeguard it from damage.

Other uses of the name

In Hebrew after the Diaspora, the name צרפת, ts-r-f-t, Tsarfat is used to mean France, perhaps because the Hebrew letters ts-r-f, if reversed, become f-r-ts. That usage is retained in daily use in contemporary Hebrew.