sepphoris was founded as the capital of the galilee. and so it was really invested, much like caesarea maritima, with all the trappings of greek or roman city life. >> narrator: recent archaeological discoveries at sepphoris challenge the conventional picture of jesus' life. >> one of the more exciting discoveries that we made at sepphoris was a magnificent roman villa with a gorgeous, gorgeous mosaic on its floor, in a banquet hall. the lady was dubbed "mona lisa" by the press when we found her because she is really an extraordinary depiction of a beautiful woman of roman antiquity. and the picture we get is a community very much in the mainstream, but on the high end of the scale. sepphoris was not just a city with houses and with waterworks and things like that, but it had satellite settlements around. nazareth, to all intents and purpose, was a satellite village attached to the region or municipality of sepphoris. >> the findings really are requiring us completely to rethink jesus' social economic setting, because we really had thou