The Synagogue in Ancient Palestine: Current Issues and Emerging Trends [1 ed.] 9783666522147, 9783525522141

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Rick Bonnie / Raimo Hakola / Ulla Tervahauta (eds.)

The Synagogue in Ancient Palestine: Current Issues and Emerging Trends

Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments Edited by Ismo Dunderberg, Jan Christian Gertz, Hermut Löhr and Joachim Schaper Volume 279

Rick Bonnie / Raimo Hakola / Ulla Tervahauta (eds.)

The Synagogue in Ancient Palestine: Current Issues and Emerging Trends

Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek: The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data available online: https://dnb.de. © 2021, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Theaterstraße 13, D-37073 Göttingen All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher. Typesetting: textformart, Göttingen | www.text-form-art.de Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Verlage | www.vandenhoeck-ruprecht-verlage.com ISSN 2197-0939 ISBN 978-3-666-52214-7

Contents Raimo Hakola / Rick Bonnie / Ulla Tervahauta The Synagogue in Ancient Palestine: Current Issues and Emerging Trends 7 I. Early Synagogues and Their Historical Context Anders Runesson / Wally V. Cirafesi Reassessing the Impact of 70 CE on the Origins and Development of Palestinian Synagogues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Rick Bonnie Hasmonean Memories and Hellenistic Building Traditions. The Appearance and Disappearance of Synagogue Buildings in the Late Second Temple Period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Tom McCollough The Synagogue at Khirbet Qana in Its Village Context . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 Matthew J. Grey Priests, Judean Community Assemblies, and Synagogue Development in the Second Temple Period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 Jordan Ryan The Socio-Political Context of Public Synagogue Debates in the Second Temple Period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 II. Architecture and Dating Jodi Magness The Huqoq Synagogue. A Regional Variant of the Galilean Type . . . . . . 155 Chaim Ben David On the Number of Synagogues and Their Location in the Holy Land . . . 175 Svetlana Tarkhanova The Friezes with the “Peopled Scrolls” Motif in the Capernaum Synagogue. Dating by Stylistic Method and Some Aspects of the Reconstruction . . . 195

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III. Leadership, Power and Daily Life Karen B. Stern Prayer as Power. Amulets, Graffiti, and Vernacular Writing in Ancient Levantine Synagogues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221 Eric Ottenheijm / Jonathan Pater Meals in the Synagogue. Reassessing the Evidence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247 Raimo Hakola Galilean Synagogues as Local Responses to Cultural Globalization in Late Antiquity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271 Chad Spigel A Quantitative Analysis of House-Synagogues in Ancient Palestine . . . . 289 Ulla Tervahauta Sacred Space and Torah Shrines in Late Antique Synagogues . . . . . . . . 311 IV. Contextualizing Synagogue Art Zeev Weiss Visual vs. Virtual Reality: Interpreting Synagogue Mosaic Art . . . . . . . 339 Géza G. Xeravits A Note on the Japhi‘a Synagogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355 Lidia Chakovskaya The Artistic Milieu of the Mosaic of the Beth Alpha Synagogue . . . . . . 367 Gary Gilbert The Appearance of the Menorah in Ancient Jewish Art . . . . . . . . . . . 393 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412 Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 416

Raimo Hakola / Rick Bonnie / Ulla Tervahauta

The Synagogue in Ancient Palestine: Current Issues and Emerging Trends The synagogue is one of the most important Jewish institutions—no matter whether we are speaking of ancient or present-day Judaism. In spite of the in­creasing number of studies dealing with synagogues, there are still unanswered questions and gaps in our knowledge. For example, scholars today are considerably more cautious than earlier to determine a specific historic context or event for the emergence of the synagogue or to propose a monolithic theory that would explain its origins. The chronological scale of alternative academic proposals ranges at least from the destruction of the First Temple (sixth century BCE) to the destruction of the Second Temple (70 CE), and it still remains unresolved whether synagogues first developed in Palestine or in the diaspora—or independently in both of these settings.1 The scarcity of relevant early material may well mean that the exact origins of the synagogue will remain in doubt but it is now increasingly clear that we have enough material—both literary and archaeological—for synagogues in Palestine beginning in the first century BCE. Recent synagogue excavations have provided fresh archaeological data that can be used to fill in some lacunae in our knowledge of ancient synagogue life. This holds especially for the eastern Lower Galilee, where only during the last decade have several new synagogues been exposed in places such as Magdala, Khirbet Wadi Ḥamam, Horvat Kur, and Huqoq.2 The new discoveries that have surfaced have brought to light evidence that can clarify ongoing discussions related to the 1 For theories about the origins of the synagogue, see Anders Runesson, The Origins of the Synagogue. A Socio-Historical Study, CBNTS 37 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2001), 67–168; Lee I. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 21–44; Rachel Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues—Archaeology and Art: New Discoveries and Current Research, HdO 105 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 6–21. 2 Magdala: Dina Avshalom-Gorni and Afran Najar, “Migdal,” Hadashot Arkheologiyot-Excavations and Surveys in Israel 125 (2013): http://www.hadashot-esi.org.il/report_detail_eng. aspx?id=2304. Khirbet Wadi Ḥ amam: Uzi Leibner, Khirbet Wadi Ḥ amam: A Roman-Period Village and Synagogue in the Lower Galilee, Qedem Reports 13 (Jerusalem: Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University, 2018). Horvat Kur: Jürgen K. Zangenberg et al., “The Kinneret Regional Project Excavations of a Byzantine Synagogue at Horvat Kur, Galilee, 2010–2013: A Preliminary Report,” HBAI 4 (2013): 557–76. Huqoq: Jodi Magness et al., “Huqoq (Lower Galilee) and Its Synagogue Mosaics: Preliminary Report on the Excavations of 2011–13,” JRA 27 (2014): 327–55; Jodi Magness et al., “The Huqoq Excavation Project: The 2014–2017 Interim Report,” BASOR 380 (2018): 61–131.

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dating, architecture and typology of ancient synagogues. The decorated stone tables found at Magdala and Horvat Kur as well as the mosaic floors at Khirbet Wadi Ḥamam, Horvat Kur and Huqoq add to our knowledge of the ways and forms of expression in ancient Jewish art. These and other findings offer a new framework that has the potential to clarify and revise older theories based on earlier available literary and material evidence. More importantly, these recent discoveries contribute to broader reconstructions of Jewish life and society in the Roman and Byzantine periods. Arguably more important than an expanding dataset are the new theoretical approaches and methodological innovations of both archaeological and textual research over the past decades. Previous interpretations and newly uncovered data become ever more refined when new methods and theories are added and thereby stimulate novel insights in continuing debates. These developments mean than the study of synagogues in Roman–Byzantine Palestine is thriving more than ever.3 In this book, various experts analyze current issues and emerging trends in the study of ancient synagogues in Palestine using archaeological, textual, historical and art historical methodologies.

1. The Past Century in Synagogue Studies The original conference at the background of this book was held one hundred years after the publication of Heinrich Kohl and Carl Watzinger’s Antike Synagogen in Galilaea, which describes the results of the first systematic architectural study of ten synagogues across Galilee. Though in many ways outdated, this landmark study provided an important stimulus to the field and in terms of the debates that it raised is still of relevance today.4 One of the basic assumptions in this early work was that these Galilean synagogues formed a recognizable architectural group. Kohl and Watzinger’s views were later developed and supplemented by Eleazar Sukenik5 and Michael Avi-Yonah6 and these studies resulted in the classic formulation of synagogue typology. According to this view, different types of synagogues followed each other chronologically so that the earliest Galilean or basilical type of synagogues (second and third centuries) was followed by 3 For the ever-increasing literature on ancient synagogues, see the cumulative bibliographies at The Bornblum Eretz Israel Synagogues Website, http://synagogues.kinneret.ac.il/. See also the papers in Lutz Doering and Andrew R. Krause, in cooperation with Helmut Löhr, ed., Synagogues in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods: Archaeological Finds, New Methods, New Theories, Schriften Des Institutum Judaicum Delitzchianum 11 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, forthcoming). 4 Heinrich Kohl and Carl Watzinger, Antike Synagogen in Galilaea (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1916). 5 Eleazar Sukenik, Ancient Synagogues in Palestine and Greece, The Schweich Lectures on Biblical Archaeology 1930 (London: British Academy, 1934). 6 Michael Avi-Yonah, “Synagogue Architecture in the Late Classical Period,” in Jewish Art: An Illustrated History, ed. Cecil Roth (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961), 157–89.

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transitional or broadhouse synagogues (fourth century) and finally by Byzantine synagogues with a basilical plan including an apsis for the Torah shrine in the Jerusalem-oriented wall and rich floor mosaics. Mounting evidence from the 1960s onwards has shown that the traditional synagogue typology is misleading. The excavations conducted in the Capernaum synagogue in the late 1960s and early 1970s suggested that the synagogue should be dated to the early fifth century, which was against the view that this synagogue is the best representative of the early, third-century, Galilean-type synagogues.7 Furthermore, excavations led by Eric Meyers at several sites in Upper Galilee in the 1970s and early 1980s revealed that synagogues that had been taken to represent different types and eras were in fact dated stratigraphically to the same period.8 Recently, Steven Werlin has challenged whether the late antique synagogues exposed in southern Palestine form such a recognizable and unified group as had earlier been proposed.9 Questions related to the synagogue typology are closely intertwined with discussions about the dating of these synagogues. Jodi Magness in particular has challenged the evidence presented for the early layers of the synagogues at Khirbet Shema‘, Gush Halav, Meiron and Nabratein. While the excavators dated the earliest phases of these buildings to the second or third centuries, Magness has pushed their dating to the late fourth, fifth, and even sixth centuries.10 As one 7 Cf. Stanislao Loffreda, “The Late Chronology of the Synagogue of Capernaum,” IEJ 23 (1973): 37–42; Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues, 63. Jodi Magness has proposed an even later, sixth-century, date for the Capernaum synagogue; see Jodi Magness, “The Pottery from the Village of Capernaum and the Chronology of Galilean Synagogues,” Tel Aviv 39 (2012): 238–50. 8 Eric M. Meyers, A. Thomas Kraabel and James F. Strange, Ancient Synagogue Excavations at Khirbet Shema‘, Upper Galilee, Israel 1970–72, Meiron Excavation Project Report 1 (Durham, NC: ASOR, 1976); Eric M. Meyers, James F. Strange and Carol L. Meyers, Excavations in Ancient Meiron, Upper Galilee, Israel 1971–1972, 1974–1975, 1977, Meiron Excavation Project Report 3 (Cambridge: ASOR, 1981); Eric M. Meyers, Carol L. Meyers and James F. Strange, Excavations at the Ancient Synagogue of Gush Halav, Meiron Excavation Project Report 5 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1990); Eric M. Meyers and Carol L. Meyers, Excavations at Ancient Nabratein: Synagogue and Environs, Meiron Excavation Project Report 6 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2009). 9 Steven H. Werlin, Ancient Synagogues of Southern Palestine, 300–800 C. E.: Living on the Edge, BRLA 47 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 307–9. 10 See various articles in Alan J. Avery-Peck and Jacob Neusner, ed., Judaism in Late Antiquity, Part Three, Where We Stand: Issues and Debates in Ancient Judaism, Volume Four: The Special Problem of the Synagogue, HdO I.55 (Leiden: Brill, 2001). See the following articles: Jodi Magness, “The Question of the Synagogue: The Problem of Typology,” 1–48; idem., “A Response to Eric. M. Meyers and James F. Strange,” 79–91; Eric M. Meyers, “The Dating of the Gush Halav Synagogue: A Response to Jodi Magness,” 49–70; James F. Strange, “Synagogue Typology and Khirbet Shema‘,” 71–78. See further, Jodi Magness, “The Ancient Synagogue at Nabratein,” BASOR 358 (2010): 61–68; Eric M. Meyers and Carol L. Meyers, “A Response to Jodi Magness’s Review of the Final Publication of Nabratein,” BASOR 359 (2011): 67–76; Chad Spigel, “Debating Ancient Synagogue Dating: The Implications of Deteriorating Data,” BASOR 376 (2016): 83–100.

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can see from this volume, the discussion about the dating of synagogues in Galilee is still very much in vogue, but a later dating has also recently been suggested for many of the synagogues known from southern Palestine. Based on a review of the available data, Werlin has recently challenged the formerly proposed early datings and argues that none of these archaeologically attested synagogues in southern Palestine predates the fourth century.11 One of the outcomes of recent discussions related to synagogue chronology is that scholars have become all the more aware of the paucity of solid evidence for distinct synagogue buildings in the first two centuries following the destruction of the Jerusalem temple. The discussion is closely connected to historical evaluations of the consequences of 70 CE for various Jewish groups and institutions that flourished in the later Second Temple period. Recent scholarship has, with good reason, emphasized the multiplicity of religious movements, institutions, practices and beliefs in late Second Temple Judaism.12 According to the conventional view, the Jewish Revolt and the destruction of the Jerusalem temple had a devastating influence on many constituent elements of pre-70 Jewish society. As a result of this disaster, various processes of reinterpretation began and eventually led to the formation of rabbinic Judaism.13 This scenario has recently been contested, as several scholars have argued that there is a significant amount of continuity between pre-70 and post-70 Judaism: this means that it is misleading to speak of a decisive watershed in Jewish history in this connection.14 In this volume, the questions related to synagogue dating and typology are addressed in the first two sections of the book. The gap in our knowledge of post70 CE synagogues is addressed particularly in the first section of the volume, where scholars offer divergent evaluations of the continuity or discontinuity between late Second Temple and late antique synagogues. The section also provides a report of a rare example of a monumental synagogue that was in use in the first decades of the second century CE, shortly after the destruction of the Jerusalem temple. The second section provides a comprehensive overview of all the known synagogues, a revised synagogue typology and a modified chronology of those art historical parallels that have been influential in the earlier study of some Galilean synagogues, most notably that of Capernaum. 11 Werlin, Ancient Synagogues, 291–301 and 321–22. 12 For a research historical review, see Jutta Jokiranta et al., “Changes in Research of Late Second Temple Judaism: An Invitation to Interdisciplinarity,” ST 71 (2018): 3–29. 13 For a reconstruction that emphasizes the break between pre-70 and post-70 Judaism, see, e.g., Seth Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 B. C.E. to 640 C. E. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001). 14 For the discussion, see Daniel R. Schwartz, “Introduction: Was 70 CE a Watershed in Jewish History? Three Stages of Modern Scholarship, and a Renewed Effort,” in Was 70 CE a Watershed in Jewish History? On Jews and Judaism Before and After the Destruction of the Second Temple, ed. Daniel R. Schwartz and Zeev Weiss, AJEC 78 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 1–19 and other articles in the book.

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The proposed later date of many previously excavated synagogues and the evidence for the late fourth- or early fifth-century date of the newly found synagogues at Huqoq and Horvat Kur speak for the continuation of various local Jewish communities well into the fifth century and later.15 Most scholars have abandoned the older view that saw Palestinian Judaism after the Constantinian turn in decline and as increasingly inward turning. Instead, it appears that the increasing urbanization and growth, evidenced in centers of Jewish culture and learning, such as Tiberias and Sepphoris, is paralleled by the building of large-scale and richly decorated synagogues in rural areas.16 The detailed knowledge of how synagogues functioned as part of their urban or rural environments is still fragmentary, but the articles in section three of this volume clarify the motivations of individual benefactors and local communities in building monumental synagogues in rural Galilee as well as various daily uses of synagogues, such as vernacular graffiti and meal practices associated with synagogues. Discussions focusing on Jewish art have been an important part of the study of ancient synagogues at least since the late 1920s when first the synagogue at Beth Alpha with a floor mosaic depicting the twelve zodiac signs and Helios and a few years later the synagogue at Dura Europos with its richly decorated wall paintings were exposed. These early findings contested the notion of ancient Judaism as aniconic and testified to a developed Jewish artistic tradition that blended various Biblical motifs with themes and styles adopted from the wider contemporary culture. Subsequent excavations in places like Hammath Tiberias, Meroth, Susiya, Sepphoris—and most recently—Khirbet Wadi Ḥamam, Huqoq and Horvat Kur have revealed a variety of artistic motifs used in synagogue decorations, some distinctively Jewish but many displaying an extensive range of figures and scenes drawn from Greek mythology or similar expressions in Christian art. These findings imply that discussions related to Jewish art continue to be in the focus of synagogue studies.17 15 Cf. Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 212; Raimo Hakola, “Galilean Jews and Christians in Context: Spaces Shared and Contested in the Eastern Galilee in Late Antiquity,” in Spaces in Late Antiquity: Cultural, Theological and Archaeological Perspectives, ed. Juliette Day et al. (London: Routledge, 2016), 155–57. Based on detailed archaeological surveys, Uzi Leibner has revived the view that Jewish settlements and population were in decline in Galilee in the fifth through seventh centuries. See Uzi Leibner, “Settlement Patterns in the Eastern Galilee: Implications Regarding the Transformation of Rabbinic Culture in Late Antiquity,” in Jewish Identities in Antiquity: Studies in Memory of Menahem Stern, ed. Lee I. Levine and Daniel R. Schwartz, TSAJ 130 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 269–95. For a recent evaluation of Leibner’s arguments, see Hayim Lapin, “Population Contraction in Late Roman Galilee: Reconsidering the Evidence,” BASOR 378 (2017): 127–43. 16 Cf. Lapin, “Population Contraction,” 141. 17 For ancient Jewish art, see Steven Fine, Art and Judaism in the Greco-Roman World: Toward a New Jewish Archaeology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Steven Fine, Art, History and the Historiography of Judaism in Roman Antiquity, BRLJ 34 (Leiden: Brill, 2013);

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One of the most important recent synagogue discoveries, the Second Temple synagogue at Magdala, has a potential to shed new light on the early phases of one of the most important symbols in Jewish art history.18 The excavations have revealed a carved stone block with various floral, geometric and architectural relief decorations, including a menorah.19 The use of this symbol in a synagogue setting attests to the symbolic importance of the menorah outside the Jerusalem temple already in the late Second Temple period. It seems that (some of) the members of this local synagogue cherished temple traditions and expressed their identity through them.20 However, it is difficult to arrive at a definite assessment of the Magdala synagogue or the stone because a detailed report of the excavations has yet to be published.21 This has not prevented some scholars from generating far-reaching theories about the alleged links between the stone’s symbolism, e.g., the rosettes, and various literary texts.22 We agree with Steven Fine’s caution: Lee I. Levine, Visual Judaism in Late Antiquity: Historical Contexts of Jewish Art (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012); Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues; Rina Talgam, Mosaics of Faith: Floors of Pagans, Jews, Samaritans, Christians, and Muslims in the Holy Land (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi; University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2014); Ann Killebrew and Gabriele Faßbeck, ed., Viewing Ancient Jewish Art and Archaeology: VeHinnei Rachel—Essays in Honor of Rachel Hachlili, JSJSup 172 (Leiden: Brill, 2015); Leibner and Hezser, ed., Jewish Art in Its Late Antique Context. 18 For the history of the menorah, see Steven Fine, The Menorah: From the Bible to Modern Israel (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016). 19 For the Magdala synagogue discovery, see Avshalom-Gorni and Najar, “Migdal”; Stefano De Luca and Anna Lena, “Magdala / Taricheae,” in Galilee in the Late Second Temple and Mishnaic Periods, Vol. 2: The Archaeological Record from Cities, Towns, and Villages, ed. David A. Fiensy and James Riley Strange (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015), 312–18; Mordechai Aviam, “The Synagogue,” in Magdala of Galilee: A Jewish City in the Hellenistic and Roman Period, ed. Richard Bauckham (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2018), 127–33. 20 As most scholars now agree, there is no reason to take synagogues as a specifically Pharisaic institution that was somehow competing with the temple. This view was once common especially in the study of the New Testament and it is still supported by Roland Deines, who takes even the Magdala synagogue as evidence of Pharisaic influence in Galilee. See Roland Deines, “Religious Practices and Religious Movements in Galilee: 100 BCE–200 CE,” in Galilee in the Late Second Temple and Mishnaic Periods, Vol. 1: Life, Culture, and Society, ed. David A. Fiensy and James Riley Strange (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2014), 89. 21 Thus also Jürgen K. Zangenberg, “New Observations on the ‘Basalt Stone Table’ from Horvat Kur, Galilee,” BAIAS 37 (2019): 98. 22 For example, see Mordechai Aviam, “The Decorated Stone from the Synagogue at Migdal: A Holistic Interpretation and a Glimpse into the Life of Galilean Jews at the Time of Jesus,” NovT 55 (2013): 205–20; Richard Bauckham, “Further Thoughts on the Migdal Synagogue Stone,” NovT 57 (2015): 113–35; Mordechai Aviam and Richard Bauckham, “The Synagogue Stone,” in Magdala of Galilee: A Jewish City in the Hellenistic and Roman Period, ed. Richard Bauckham (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2018), 135–59. For a skeptical remark on these kinds of proposals, see Lee I. Levine, “The Synagogues of Galilee,” in Galilee in the Late Second Temple and Mishnaic Periods, Vol. 1: Life, Culture, and Society, ed. David A. Fiensy and James Riley Strange (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2014), 138. Levine says that Aviam’s proposals are based on “creative though rather unsubstantiated and speculative interpretations.”

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while spectacular findings such as the Magdala stone tend to stir media hype, they easily lead to overinterpretations as regular decorative elements such as rosettes are taken as signs of some hidden theological agenda.23 As Fine emphasizes, the actual and long-term consequences of most discoveries for the research are rarely revolutionary but rather bring revisions and nuances to earlier scholarship. In this way, the mosaic floors found at Khirbet Wadi Ḥamam, Huqoq and Horvat Kur provide material that invites revisions of the history of Jewish art in Palestine.24 The continued and extensive use of Greco-Roman and Byzantine themes and motifs in synagogue art and decoration has been the subject of much scholarly debate.25 Not only various geometric, animal and floral motifs that were widespread throughout the Mediterranean, but also individual themes or figures drawn from Greek mythology frequently appear in synagogue settings. The best known examples are floor mosaics found in several Palestinian synagogues depicting Helios and the zodiac.26 The synagogue at Hammath Tiberias (so-called Stratum IIA) is today generally dated to the second half of the fourth century and it has often been taken as the earliest attestation of the Helios-and-zodiac theme in synagogue art.27 In his book Visual Judaism, Lee Levine took the Hammath Tiberias synagogue, just like the art exposed in the Beth-She‘arim necropolis, as representing inclinations among patriarchal circles and the local aristocracy in Tiberias. According to Levine, these circles first adapted the Helios-and-zodiac 23 Steven Fine, “From Synagogue Furnishing to Media Event: The Magdala Ashlar,” Ars Judaica 13 (2017): 27–38. 24 There has emerged a lively discussion of the so-called elephant mosaic found in the Huqoq synagogue. The mosaic depicts a meeting of two male figures and their accompanying groups, and different identifications of these figures have been proposed. In addition to Jodi Magness’s article in this volume, see Karen Britt and Ra‘anan Boustan, The Elephant Mosaic Panel in the Synagogue at Huqoq: Official Publication and Initial Interpretations, JRASup 106 (Portsmouth, RI: JRA, 2017); Janine Balty, “La ‘mosaïque à l’éléphant’ de Huqoq: un document très convoité et d’interprétation controversée,” JRA 31 (2018): 509–12; Rina Talgam, “An Illustration of the Third Book of Maccabees in a Late-Antique Galilean Synagogue?,” JRA 31 (2018): 513–23; Benjamin D. Gordon and Zeev Weiss, “Samuel and Saul at Gilgal: A New Interpretation of the Elephant Mosaic Panel in the Huqoq Synagogue,” JRA 31 (2018): 524–41; Adi Erlich, “The Patriarch and the Emperor: The Elephant Mosaic Panel in the Huqoq Synagogue Reconsidered,” JRA 31 (2018): 542–58; Steven Fine, “Review of The Elephant Mosaic Panel in the Synagogue at Huqoq: Official Publication and Initial Interpretations, by Karen Britt and Ra‘anan S. Boustan,” Images 11 (2018): 1–3. 25 For Greco-Roman motifs in Jewish art, see Levine, Visual Judaism, 317–36. In addition to mosaic floors, synagogue lintels depict an extensive range of stone-carved figures drawn from Greek mythology such as sea goats or capricorns, centaurs, medusas and wreaths flanked by Nikai or eagles. Cf. Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues, 435–72. 26 Cf. Levine, Visual Judaism, 319–33; Rick Bonnie, “The Helios-and-Zodiac Motif in Late Antique Synagogues,” in Magic in the Ancient Eastern Mediterranean: Cognitive, Historical, and Material Perspectives on the Bible and Its Contexts, ed. Nina Nikki and Kirsi Valkama, Mundus Orientis 3 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021), 299–311. 27 See, with references, Bonnie, “The Helios-and-Zodiac Motif.”

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theme and other Greco-Roman artistic topoi and in this way affirmed that the Jewish and Greco-Roman worlds were culturally compatible.28 After the elite in Tiberias had appropriated these themes, other communities followed suit by applying similar items in different forms and combinations in their communal buildings without necessarily recognizing that they were adapting originally pagan imagery. While it is sensible that global cultural stimuli first spread among the upper classes, the recent findings suggest that the adaptation of Greco-Roman artistic traditions cannot be taken only as the after-effect of an elite and aristocratic initiative. Some mosaic fragments found at Khirbet Wadi Ḥamam as well as the mosaic at Huqoq confirm that the Helios-and-zodiac theme was widely used in synagogues, not only in urban centers but also in the more rural villages as early as the fourth or early fifth century.29 The Huqoq excavations have added to the repertoire of classical themes in synagogue decoration winged putti (cupids) holding roundels with theatre masks, and harpies or sirens, birds with female heads representing storm winds.30 It is noteworthy that the Khirbet Wadi Ḥamam synagogue in all likelihood predates the one at Hammath Tiberias, while the Huqoq synagogue is roughly contemporary with it. This makes it questionable, or at least difficult to prove, that the Tiberian elite had the proposed impact on the construction of public buildings in villages. When the recent synagogue discoveries are situated in their larger late antique cultural context, the presence of various Greco-Roman cultural influences in rural Galilee are less surprising. It has been repeatedly asserted in scholarship that one of the main characteristics of the cultural environment of Late Antiquity is the continuous and creative reuse of Greek myths and themes by various indigenous communities. Greek tradition was not understood to be antithetical to local traditions but adaptable to changed contexts.31 In this way, all things Greek served 28 Levine, Visual Judaism, 258–59, 335–36. 29 For the possible zodiac mosaic at Khirbet Wadi Ḥamam, see Uzi Leibner and Shulamit Miller, “A Figural Mosaic in the Synagogue at Khirbet Wadi Hamam,” JRA 23 (2010): 239–40; Shulamit Miller and Uzi Leibner, “The Synagogue Mosaic,” in Khirbet Wadi Ḥamam: A Roman-Period Village and Synagogue in the Lower Galilee, ed. Uzi Leibner, Qedem Reports 13 (Jerusalem: Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University, 2018), 172–73. For the zodiac at Huqoq, see Magness et al., “The Huqoq Excavation Project.” Based on the pottery found under the mosaic’s plaster bedding, the excavators date the floor at the Khirbet Wadi Ḥ amam synagogue to the late third or early fourth century. See Miller and Leibner, “The Synagogue Mosaic,” 144. Jodi Magness has contested this dating and suggests that the floor dates to the mid or late fourth century; see Magness, “The Pottery from the Village of Capernaum.” The Huqoq synagogue was constructed in the early fifth century but it is not yet clear when and why the synagogue went out of use; see Magness et al., “The Huqoq Excavation Project,” 86–92. 30 For putti and harpies in the Huqoq mosaic, see Magness et al., “The Huqoq Excavation Project,” 36–38, 53. 31 Cf. Glen W. Bowersock, Hellenism in Late Antiquity (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1991), 1–14; Jaś Elsner, “Classicism in Roman Art,” in Classical Pasts: The Classical

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as a flexible means of self-expression for many groups, not just for Jews. Recent findings reinforce Jaś Elsner’s argument that rather than approaching Jewish art as a monolithic and distinctive category, we should see it as partaking in and sharing the more general cultural and artistic currents of the day.32 In their analysis of the Huqoq elephant mosaic panel, Karen Britt and Ra‘anan Boustan have aptly concluded that the use of diverse artistic traditions in the synagogue decoration could be taken as evidence for “the porous boundaries of late antique Judaism” and as “a localized Jewish expression of material that circulated in Late Antiquity at the messy and unstable intersections of classical, Jewish and Christian traditions, pointing to the much wider world in which modest [Galilean] communities participated.”33 From this perspective, the use of various Greco-Roman motifs in synagogues is not an anomaly but rather a variation of the prevalent late antique visual language.34 The above discussion has important consequences for the identification and interpretation of specific artistic symbolism and imagery. One case in point is the basalt stone table found recently in the Horvat Kur synagogue.35 This stone table was found in a secondary context, as part of a wall or a bench belonging to the last use of the synagogue, which would have been in the late sixth or very early seventh century CE. The table is hewn from a single block of basalt, and carved on one side with figurative elements (including two candelabra and various vessels for liquids) while geometric patterns adorn the other three sides and the top. Generally speaking, there is some resemblance to the carved stone at Magdala. However, the Horvat Kur stone table does not contain any symbol that could Traditions of Greece and Rome, ed. James I. Porter (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 270–97; Jaś Elsner, “Late Antique Art: The Problem of the Concept and the Cumulative Aesthetic,” in Approaching Late Antiquity: The Transformation from Early to Late Empire, ed. Simon Swain and Mark Edwards (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 271–309; Tim Whitmarsh, Beyond the Second Sophistic: Adventures in Greek Postclassicism (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2013), 211–12; Miguel John Versluys, “Roman Visual Material Culture as Globalising Koine,” in Globalisation and the Roman World: World History, Connectivity and Material Culture, ed. Martin Pitts and Miguel John Versluys (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 141–74. 32 Jaś Elsner, “Archaeologies and Agendas: Reflections on Late Ancient Jewish Art and Early Christian Art,” JRS 93 (2003): 114–28. See also Fine, Art and Judaism, 51–2; Catherine Hezser, “‘For the Lord God a Sun and a Shield’ (Ps. 84:12): Sun Symbolism in Hellenistic Jewish Literature and in Amoraic Midrashim,” in Jewish Art in Its Late Antique Context, ed. Uzi Leibner and Catherine Hezser, TSAJ 163 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 213–36. 33 Britt and Boustan, The Elephant Mosaic Panel, 81. 34 Cf. Hezser, “For the Lord God a Sun,” 233. 35 See Jürgen K. Zangenberg, “A Basalt Stone Table from the Byzantine Synagogue at Ḥorvat Kur, Galilee: Publication and Preliminary Interpretation,” in Arise, Walk through the Land: Studies in the Archaeology and History of the Land of Israel in Memory of Yizhar Hirschfeld on the Tenth Anniversary of his Demise, ed. Joseph Patrich, Orit Peleg-Barkat, and Erez Ben-Yosef (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2016), 61–78: Zangenberg, “New Observations,” 95–111.

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be defined as distinctively Jewish nor is its original use context known. This has not prevented scholars from taking the stone as representing specifically Jewish artistic symbolism and assuming for it a similar kind of liturgical function as the Magdala stone (see above) that is seen as a Torah reading table.36 However, Jürgen Zangenberg has forcefully argued that the Horvat Kur stone table—which may or may not have been part of the original synagogue furniture—should be situated in its larger cultural context. Approached from this perspective, the stone and its symbolism suggest that it may be a local adaptation “of one of the most central social practices of the Greco-Roman world: cultivated dining.”37 Questions related to synagogue art are discussed in this volume in sections three and four. The articles there inquire into questions related to the interpretation of synagogue art in various local settings as well as in their larger cultural contexts. These contexts often provide illuminating parallels to specific artistic themes and architectural styles. The articles discuss specific themes and structures, such as the menorah and the Torah shrine, and offer new interpretations of mosaics found at Japhi‘a and Beth Alpha.

2. New Directions for Synagogue Studies The brief review above has made clear that synagogue research over the past century has made significant contributions to our knowledge of the history of Jews and Judaism in the Roman and Byzantine worlds and accelerated revisions of theories that have been based too narrowly on fragmentary literary sources. For example, the proposed later construction dates of several previously excavated synagogues and recently made discoveries have shown how synagogues were built, renovated and in use throughout the post-Constantinian era, the time when Christianity became the official religion, Christian culture became ubiquitous, and imperial Christian politics had their impact on Palestine. Yet the evidence from both Galilee and southern Palestine also demonstrates that synagogues were built and in use and part of the landscape well into the early Islamic period.38 This is

36 Cf. Mordechai Aviam, “Another Reading Table Base from a Galilean Synagogue: Some Comments on the Stone Table from Ḥorvat Kur,” in Arise, Walk through the Land: Studies in the Archaeology and History of the Land of Israel in Memory of Yizhar Hirschfeld on the Tenth Anniversary of his Demise, ed. Joseph Patrich, Orit Peleg-Barkat, and Erez Ben-Yosef (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2016), 79–82; Tibor Grüll, “Reading of the Torah in the First Century Synagogue: New Archaeological Proofs,” in Schöner Alfréd hetven éves: Essays in Honor of Alfred Schöner, ed. János Oláh and András Zima (Budapest: Gabbiano, 2018), 139–52. For a critical response to Aviam and Grüll, see Zangenberg, “New Observations,” 105–9. 37 Zangenberg, “A Basalt Stone Table,” 75. 38 Cf. Magness, “The Question of the Synagogue,” 35–6; Werlin, Ancient Synagogues, 300.

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in line with other data that has challenged any idea of a sudden historical and cultural rupture between Late Antiquity and the early Islamic period. In light of recent studies, the transformation that began in the early seventh century with the coming of Islam was not abrupt but slow and gradual.39 Much remains to be discussed as regards the material and societal changes from the Byzantine to the Islamic era in Palestine. Scholars thus should reconsider their preoccupation with the construction and early history of Palestinian synagogues and begin to examine the final occupation phases of these buildings in light of the recent revisions of the history of the early Islamic period.40 While archaeological discoveries have significantly contributed to the study of ancient synagogues, the material aspects of these public buildings and their different uses and users are still rarely in the focus of scholarship. In his study of synagogue seating capacities, Chad Spigel studied the layout and furnishing of synagogues and asked how various Jewish communities physically occupied and used these buildings. On the basis of his calculations, he concluded that regular synagogue worship was seemingly more general for Jews living in smaller rural villages than for those in urban environments, while some may not have participated at all in synagogue gatherings on a regular basis.41 Spigel’s study takes seriously the materiality of excavated synagogues and in this way gives reasons to ask whether all synagogues could have functioned as centers for the whole community as the current consensus has it.42 Recently, Karen Stern has examined graffiti on the walls of synagogues and amulets found under some synagogues and argued that this evidence brings to light everyday practices and beliefs among those Jews who used synagogues even though they did not necessarily have any official role in their planning, construction or administration.43 As the discussion 39 Cf. Jodi Magness, The Archaeology of the Early Islamic Settlement in Palestine (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2003); Gideon Avni, The Byzantine–Islamic Transition in Palestine: An Archaeological Approach (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). In recent scholarship, early Islamic culture has increasingly been described as a descendant of Late Antiquity because many ideas related to theology, philosophy, popular religion, science and magic were transmitted from late antique Jewish and Christian cultures into Islamic culture. See Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila, “Transmission of Late Antique Culture into Islamic Culture,” in Encounters of the Children of Abraham from Ancient to Modern Times, ed. Antti Laato and Pekka Lindqvist, Studies on the Children of Abraham 1 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 215–29; Robert Hoyland, “Early Islam as a Late Antique Religion,” in The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity, ed. Scott Fitzgerald Johnson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 1053–77. 40 Cf. Werlin, Ancient Synagogues, 301. 41 Chad Spigel, Ancient Synagogue Seating Capacities: Methodology, Analysis and Limits, TSAJ 149 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 339–58. 42 For the communal dimension of synagogues, see Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 381–411. 43 In addition to Stern’s article in this book, see Karen B. Stern, Writing on the Wall: Graffiti and the Forgotten Jews of Antiquity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018). See also Catherine Hezser, Jewish Literacy in Roman Palestine, TSAJ 81 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001), 209–26, esp. 211–12, 224–26.

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above indicates, the scholarly focus on synagogue mosaics is often on their artistic styles or theological interpretations. One very important function of synagogues was their function as places for education in Torah reading and cultural values for Jewish children (primarily boys), although one must keep in mind the low literacy rates, lack of general public education and rarity of books in the ancient world.44 Hagith Sivan has approached synagogue mosaics from the perspectives of education and how identity was built and strengthened. Mosaics in synagogues direct our attention to how children (and adults) were taught to read as well as to know the stories foundational to their Jewish identity, and how images inspired their viewers to feel and dream, thus supporting memory and learning and invoking emotional responses. Sivan suggests that the design of mosaics may indicate pedagogical purposes; for example, children or young people appear among the characters portrayed, enabling younger viewers to identify with the scenes portrayed.45 Although only scant direct evidence is available for how such groups as women or children related to Palestinian synagogues and how their experiences differed from those males who assumed leading positions in their communities,46 the perspectives of gender studies or childhood studies can contribute to analysis of uses of space or rationales behind artistic expressions.47 These discussions by Sivan, Spigel and Stern demonstrate how the study of ancient synagogues can benefit from the growing interest in material culture 44 Hezser, Jewish Literacy, 39–89, esp. 46–59 and 65–7; Levine, The Ancient Synagogue, 374–80. 45 Hagith Sivan, Jewish Childhood in the Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 221–39; Hagith Sivan, “Pictorial Paideia: Children in the Synagogue,” in The Oxford Handbook of Childhood and Education in the Classical World, ed. Judith Evans Grubbs and Tim Parkin, with Roslynne Bell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 532–55; see also Rina Talgam, “From Wall Paintings to Floor Mosaics: Jewish and Christian Attitudes to Figurative Art,” in Jewish Art in Its Late Antique Context, ed. Uzi Leibner and Catherine Hezser, TSAJ 163 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 97–115. 46 Epigraphic evidence of female benefactors and female synagogue officials from the diaspora is discussed by Bernadette J. Brooten, Women Leaders in the Ancient Synagogue, BJS 36 (Atlanta: Scholars, 1982); Bernadette J. Brooten, “Female Leadership in the Ancient Synagogue,” in From Dura to Sepphoris: Studies in Jewish Art and Society in Late Antiquity, ed. Lee I. Levine and Zeev Weiss, JRASup 40 (Portsmouth, RI: JRA, 2000), 215–23. In Palestine, only a few inscriptions mention female benefactors whereas the evidence for female office holders is lacking altogether. See Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 499–518; Tal Ilan, “Gender Issues and Daily Life,” in The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Daily Life in Roman Palestine, ed. Catherine Hezser (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 60–1. 47 For children and childhood in the Ancient World, see Judith Evans Grubbs and Tim Parkin, “Introduction” in The Oxford Handbook of Childhood and Education in the Classical World, ed. Judith Evans Grubbs and Tim Parkin, with Roslynne Bell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 1–15; Christian Laes and Ville Vuolanto, “A New Paradigm for the Social History of Childhood and Children in Antiquity,” in Children and Everyday Life in the Roman and Late Antique World, ed. Christian Laes and Ville Vuolanto (London: Routledge, 2016), 1–10.

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across arts and humanities. During the last decades, scholars representing disciplines as varied as literature, classics, history, art history, anthropology, sociology and archaeology have reacted against what they have understood as one-sided use of intellectual and non-material discourses transmitted in various literary texts as the main source of historical reconstructions. Study of material culture has the potential to shed light on those aspects of ancient history that go underrepresented in written sources, or are not immediately obvious from monumental remains. Popular and magical practices, traces of children and childhood, or experiences of ordinary or non-elite people may be traced when the attention is shifted and new theories adapted. The so-called “spatial turn” has meant that scholars have realized that historical events cannot be examined apart from those tangible material environments in which these events took place. As a result, spaces are not seen just as empty containers of human action but as socially and culturally constructed.48 In a similar way, the “material turn” has moved away from understanding artifacts merely as carriers or representations of some prior and external values or ideologies. There has been extensive theorizing about what objects are and what they do.49 An important result is the realization that material artifacts are not shaped by particular, stable meanings but are capable of evoking various new and unpredictable frameworks of meaning that are not necessarily always discursive or conscious. The recent emphasis on materiality opens the way to approaching synagogues, their decorations, and their integrated assemblages as material objects that have the potential to evoke various responses. The study of Palestinian synagogues has fittingly emphasized the diversity evident in typology, architecture, and decoration. However, this diversity is more often than not understood as reflecting diverse interests and inspirations among those in the local communities who took the initiative to plan and build these buildings or who invested in them and their artistic ornamentation. Alternatively, varieties are ascribed to different artisans, craftspeople, artists or workshops that were active in the construction of synagogues.50 Variations in Jewish art are sometimes interpreted as expressions 48 For the literature, see Juliette Day et al., “Introduction: Spaces in Late Antiquity—Cultural, Theological and Archaeological Perspectives,” in Spaces in Late Antiquity: Cultural, Theological and Archaeological Perspectives, ed. Juliette Day et al. (London: Routledge, 2016), 1–7. 49 Cf. Nicole Boivin, Material Cultures, Material Minds. The Impact of Things on Human Thought, Society, and Evolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Bjørnar Olsen, In Defense of Things: Archaeology and the Ontology of Objects (Lanham, MD: Altamira, 2010); Miguel John Versluys, “Understanding Objects in Motion. An Archaeological Dialogue on Romanization,” Archaeological Dialogues 21 (2014): 1–20; Astrid Van Oyen and Martin Pitts, “What Did Objects Do in the Roman World? Beyond Representation,” in Materialising Roman Histories, ed. Astrid Van Oyen and Martin Pitts (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2017), 3–19, and other articles in the book. 50 For artists and workshops in relation to ancient synagogues, see Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues, 473–515.

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of some already existing and stable intellectual or theological core of Judaism.51 There are also various “metatheories” that have tried to locate the ultimate reference point of synagogue art in messianism, mysticism, rabbinic theology, polemic against Christians, or synagogue liturgy.52 However, these all-embracing interpretations are bound to remain partial because changing local contexts add their distinctive color and variations to artistic imagery.53 Furthermore, these interpretations replicate the predisposition of Western thinking evident in much of the earlier studies of religion in that they privilege spirituality and the interiority of religious beliefs at the expense of religion’s material dimensions.54 While earlier scholarship quite often prioritized abstract concepts and systematic reflections in surviving literary texts, the new emphasis on “material religion” has meant that more and more attention has been paid to a wide variety of emotional and bodily responses that religious objects and symbols are able to evoke. It has been argued that these responses cannot always or even mainly be reduced to textual or discursive frames of reference.55 The recent interest in material religion has quite often been connected with the concept of “lived religion” that has highlighted local and situational forms of everyday religious experiences, practices, beliefs and interactions.56 In her book on lived religion, Meredith McGuire describes how this approach does not consider religions as stable and single entities but as “made up of diverse, complex, and ever-changing mixtures of beliefs and practices, as well as relationships, experiences and commitments.”57 From this perspective, the borders of religious identity and commitment are always potentially “contested, shifting and malleable.”58 When it comes to the study of early Judaism and Christianity, 51 Cf. Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues, 1. Hachlili says that while Jewish art absorbed and assimilated various elements from its Hellenistic, Roman, and Christian surroundings, it, nevertheless, “retained and clung to its own fundamentally spiritual basis, and to its essential beliefs and customs” (italics added). 52 For a critical overview of these metatheories, see Levine, Visual Judaism, 363–84. 53 Cf. Levine, Visual Judaism, 384; Bonnie, “The Helios-and-Zodiac Motif,” 308–10. 54 For the dichotomy between spirituality and materiality in the study of religion and in archaeology, see Julian Droogan, Religion, Material Culture, and Archaeology, Bloomsbury Advances in Religious Studies (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 21–108. 55 Cf. Droogan, Religion, 149–73; Sally M. Promey, “Religion, Sensation, and Materiality: An Introduction,” in Sensational Religion: Sensory Cultures in Material Practice, ed. Sally M. Promey (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), 1–21; Rubina Raja and Jörg Rüpke, “Archaeology of Religion, Material Religion, and the Ancient World,” in A Companion to the Archaeology of Religion in the Ancient World, ed. Rubina Raja and Jörg Rüpke (Oxford: Blackwell, 2015), 1–26. 56 Cf. Droogan, Religion, 9; Jörg Rüpke, On Roman Religion: Lived Religion and Individual in Ancient Rome, Townsend Lectures / Cornell Studies in Classical Philology (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016), 1–7; Raja and Rüpke, “Archaeology of Religion, 3–4. 57 Meredith B. McGuire, Lived Religion: Faith and Practice in Everyday Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 185. 58 McGuire, Lived Religion, 187.

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this concept helps us recognize a tension between lived religion and attempts to advocate a particular form of religious identity and practice as the only accepted alternative both in early Christian writings and, to a lesser extent, in rabbinic sources.59 When applied to the study of ancient synagogues, the concepts of material religion and lived religion draw attention to various potential uses of these buildings by different members of diverse local communities. While these buildings have often been taken as giving a visible form to such dichotomies as public vs. private, sacred vs. mundane, elite vs. common people, or male vs. female, we could ask whether it is possible to find examples of how people customarily bridged these categories in their daily lives. In this way, we could hear voices that often remain unrecorded in surviving literary or material evidence including those of children, who formed a considerable part of ancient populations, yet left few direct traces of themselves.60 The study of ancient synagogues will be fostered if future studies focus on reception no less than on production, and examine through the archaeological record the many ways of sensing, feeling, experiencing and engaging with synagogues among members of the local community in their everyday lives.61 Scholars have still quite rarely examined in detail how synagogues were integrated within their larger local settlements, how accessible they were from the outside, and how visible their interior would have been.62 All these questions are relevant if we want to know more about how these buildings were used and experienced by members of the local communities and how these experiences may have varied.

59 Cf. Hakola, “Galilean Jews and Christians,” 149–55. 60 Children’s lives and experiences remain elusive despite their numbers in the ancient world. However, even when children’s history remains out of the reach of scholars, ancient conceptions or depictions of childhood may be within scholarly reach. See Reidar Aasgaard and Cornelia Horn, with Oana Maria Cojocaru, “Introduction,” in Childhood in History: Perceptions of Children in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds, ed. Reidar Aasgaard and Cornelia Horn, with Oana Maria Cojocaru (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017), 1–18. 61 For a cultural history of vision in rabbinic writings, see Rachel R. Neis, The Sense of Sight in Rabbinic Culture: Jewish Ways of Seeing in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). Neis appropriately highlights the significance of visuality in Palestinian and Babylonian rabbinic Judaism, but her study focuses more on a selection of rabbinic texts than on the material remains of ancient visual culture. 62 Cf. Rick Bonnie, “Monumentality and Space: Experiencing Synagogue Buildings in Late Second Temple Palestine,” in Scriptures in the Making: Texts and Their Transmission in Late Second Temple Judaism, ed. Raimo Hakola, Jessi Orpana and Paavo Huotari, CBET (Leuven: Peeters, forthcoming).

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3. Articles in the Book The articles in this book reflect the current issues and emerging scholarly trends summarized above in a variety of ways. The first section addresses issues related to the early development of synagogues up to ca. 200 CE. The articles provide different explanations for the alleged lack of evidence for synagogues built in the second and third centuries CE and ask how much continuity or change there is between the late Second Temple and late antique synagogues. In “Reassessing the Impact of 70 CE on the Origins and Development of Palestinian Synagogues” Anders Runesson and Wally Cirafesi go along with recent reconsiderations of 70 CE and its significance in Jewish history. Runesson and Cirafesi’s position is that the year 70 did not have a direct impact on the origin and development of the synagogue institution. They emphasize the different aspects that need to be studied to address the question—the spatial aspect (art and architecture), the institutional aspect (leadership), the liturgical aspect, and the non-liturgical aspect. After discussing evidence from these angles, they arrive at the suggestion that instead of explaining the emergence of the synagogue institution as a result of the fall of Jerusalem, it is rather the rise of rabbis and politically empowered Christianity, and Jewish engagement with the latter in a competitive way, that is, sociological factors, that best account for the development of the synagogue. This development was a long process and, in Runesson and Cirafesi’s view, far removed from 70 CE. Rick Bonnie makes a new proposal to solve the virtual disappearance of synagogue building activity from the late first century to the mid-third century in “Hasmonean Memories and Hellenistic Building Traditions: The Appearance and Disappearance of Synagogue Buildings in the Late Second Temple Period.” Bonnie focuses on the particularities of early synagogues, dated from the late first century BCE to the late first century CE, and pays special attention to their geographical distribution and resemblance to Hellenistic bouleuteria. Bonnie proposes that these buildings appear to point to Hasmonean sociocultural influence and argues that this theory also explains the discontinuation of monumental synagogue building for nearly two centuries after the two Jewish revolts. The synagogue as an institution continued its existence not as a monumental, physical building but as gatherings of people, possibly in homes, indicated in those textual sources that pay little attention to the physical contexts of the synagogue gatherings they describe. A description of a particular early synagogue is provided by Tom McCollough in “The Synagogue of Khirbet Qana in Its Village Setting.” McCollough places the synagogue of Khirbet Qana in its village context by discussing the settlement surrounding it, the implications the building had for the economics of the village, and its possible function in the village. McCollough makes two particular observations. First, the synagogue had a relatively small seating capacity and could only

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accommodate less than one-fifth of the inhabitants at one time. Second, in terms of economics, the synagogue was built in a costly way that suggests a considerable economic input and probably communal efforts. What may have been the source of such economic means in a rural village is not known but McCollough considers the possibility of population transfers as one factor. The social and cultural realities behind the building emerge as complex, and they integrate the synagogue and the village and its inhabitants into their wider economic context of Roman Palestine. Matthew Grey collects and surveys the evidence for priestly involvement in synagogues in his article, “Priests, Judean Community Assemblies, and Synagogue Development in the Second Temple period.” Grey asks whether priestly involvement in synagogues after 70 CE was a continuation from priestly involvement in synagogues before the destruction of the temple or an unprecedented innovation. Grey considers the role of priests as teachers of the law and as legal experts in Judean communities from the First Temple era through Ptolemaic and Seleucid rules, and the Roman era. He suggests that a pattern emerges where a link existed between the Jerusalem temple and local communities already pre-70. Grey sees in public and private gatherings of the Hellenistic and earlier eras the framework that enabled the emergence of early synagogues in the late Hellenistic and early Roman periods. According to Grey, priests often—but not everywhere—appear in active roles when it comes to leadership and liturgy. He suggests a significant degree of continuity between the temple and post-temple synagogues in this aspect. In his “The Socio-Political Context of Public Synagogue Debates in the Second Temple Period,” Jordan Ryan investigates the decision-making process in Jewish town and village communities. In particular, he considers the role of synagogues and various members of the communities in judicial issues. Ryan builds his work on the assumption that early synagogues functioned as public, municipal institutions. To answer his questions, Ryan reads literature from the late Second Temple period. Based on his reading of such texts as, e.g., Susanna, Ben Sira, Judith, Josephus and the gospels of Luke and Mark, he concludes that, in legal and political decision making, it is not only the synagogue leaders, elders or other powerful men of a given community who decide on cases requiring solutions, but the public, male and female members of the community, also have a say. The leaders in the discussed texts need to convince the public, and the public may express their disagreement with proposed solutions. In Ryan’s analysis, the synagogue is a public assembly and an arena for public discourse, where aspects of honor and shame are also at play. Section two deals with the architecture and dating of ancient synagogues. It gives an overview of all the synagogues found thus far in archaeological excavations or surveys and approaches the dating of Galilean synagogues in the light of the recent synagogue excavations at Huqoq and a stylistic re-evaluation of the Capernaum synagogue decoration.

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In “The Huqoq Synagogue: A Regional Variant of the Galilean Type,” Jodi Magness reviews the typology and chronology of Palestinian synagogues and uses recent discoveries at Huqoq as a case study. Magness revisits the typology and dating of Galilean, Transitional and Byzantine types of synagogues and challenges the connection between architectural types and chronology. Using Capernaum, Hammath Tiberias, Beth Alpha and Jericho as examples, she argues that these architecturally different synagogues are roughly contemporary. Magness further suggests that Huqoq, Khirbet Wadi Ḥamam and Horvat ‘Ammudim form a sub-group within a Galilean type, distinguished by their richly decorated mosaic floors. She sees the diversity as a result of other factors, namely, regional preferences and availability of building materials, and ultimately, diversity within late antique Judaism. In his article “On the Number of Synagogues and Their Location in the Holy Land,” Chaim Ben David sheds light on the geographical distribution and numbers of ancient synagogues found in excavations and surveys. The article presents the Bornblum Eretz Israel Synagogues Website launched by Holy Land Studies at Kinneret College on the Sea of Galilee. The website is a helpful contribution to the study of ancient synagogues because it keeps an updated list of discovered synagogues and recent scholarly literature. Ben David reviews different numbers suggested for early Roman and Byzantine era synagogues in earlier publications and discusses criteria for identifying unexcavated remains found in surveys as synagogues and features that mark out early Roman period buildings as synagogues. Ben David observes that late Second Temple period synagogues have been discovered at sites destroyed during the two Jewish revolts against Rome. On the basis of his analysis of earlier findings, Ben David engages in the difficult task of predicting what kinds of synagogue findings we can expect in the future. He concludes that scholars should focus on sites where there is hope of expanding our knowledge of late Second Temple period synagogues or of filling the gap in our evidence of synagogues dated to the second to fourth centuries. Svetlana Tarkhanova takes a detailed look at the artwork in the Capernaum synagogue. Since its first discovery, stratigraphic analysis has pushed the synagogue’s dating from the late second century (Kohl and Watzinger) to the first half of the sixth century (Magness). However, some scholars see the sculptural decoration of the Capernaum synagogue as older than the building itself, which has been explained by the use of spolia from some earlier public buildings. Tarkhanova directs her attention to a particular group of decoration, the synagogue’s friezes that are richly decorated with peopled / inhabited scrolls. Tarkhanova presents an in-depth stylistic analysis of the “peopled scrolls” motif on the friezes of the Capernaum synagogue. Setting them into the context of Roman and Byzantine art, and comparing them with architectural sculpture and mosaics from Jordan, Syria and Egypt, Tarkhanova stylistically dates the friezes in Capernaum to the late fifth or early sixth century. She further suggests that this unique feature in synagogue

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decoration is influenced by ecclesiastical architecture from the wider region and that the friezes were originally positioned above the synagogue’s main colonnades. Tarkhanova’s study provides art historical support for the later dating of the Capernaum synagogue as suggested by stratigraphic archaeological evidence. Articles in section three examine leadership, power and daily life in late antique synagogue contexts, illustrating non-monumental inscriptions, amulets and dining in synagogue contexts as well as the role of individual benefactors and global cultural stimuli in the construction of synagogues. This section also contains discussion of evidence for the supposed house-synagogues in Palestine and approaches the increasing hierarchization that took place when Torah shrines were introduced to the inner space of many late antique synagogues. In her “Prayer as Power: Amulets, Graffiti, and Vernacular Writing in Ancient Levantine Synagogues,” Karen B. Stern examines material that has regularly been overlooked in the study of ancient synagogues. Instead of donors, officials or artisans responsible for synagogue architecture, decoration or inscriptions, Stern turns her attention to metal sheets deposited on and inside synagogue floors and to graffiti carved into the finished plaster walls of synagogue exteriors and assembly halls. This data has often been characterized as incidental or dismissed as magical but Stern takes it as evidence of the spatiality of ancient synagogues and daily activities once conducted in synagogue contexts. She approaches vernacular writings as dialogically and spatially determined activity that aimed at creating relationships between the inscribers and their intended divine and human audiences. Stern argues that unauthorized synagogue writings transformed and reconfigured synagogue spaces for those who wanted to leave their mark in them. Stern’s study foregrounds the experiences of those segments of populations who have often remained invisible within ancient synagogue contexts. Furthermore, her evidence demonstrates the broad range of devotional practices and emotional reactions occurring inside synagogues. These variegated activities speak for the heterogeneity and the individuated uses of these sacred spaces. Eric Ottenheijm and Jonathan Pater assess the relationship between synagogue architecture and the spatial rhetoric evident in literary sources in their “Meals in the Synagogue: Reassessing the Evidence.” They present both material and literary evidence for communal dining that was arranged in ancient synagogue contexts. Various inscriptions mention a triclinium as a separate part of synagogue complexes, and archaeological excavations have exposed side-chambers or other facilities that could have been used for cooking and dining. While first century CE literary sources contain only rare and vague allusions to possible meals in synagogues, amoraic rabbinic sources frequently refer to festive meals or meals of distinct associations that took place in synagogue settings. Both literary and epigraphic material show that synagogues were used as hostels for travelers and that lodging is related to eating. Ottenheijm and Pater especially discuss the inscriptions and architectural remains that offer proof for galleries or upper

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rooms that could have served as places where communal meals were offered. They also ask how we should understand a rabbinic ban that mentions meals among those activities that are forbidden in synagogues. According to Ottenheijm and Pater, the ban should be understood in light of the legal differentiation of space that is noticeable in rabbinic regulations related to meals. For the rabbis, the synagogue’s sanctity was defined by the presence and location of the Torah scrolls, which suggests that the ban may have tried to regulate the public use of the synagogue nave, the central hall where the Torah scroll was read in public gatherings. However, side chambers or upper rooms could have been understood as distinct spaces, which allowed them to be used for less sacred or even mundane functions. Ottenheijm and Pater’s discussion shows how synagogue spaces were used for multiple purposes and that some of these uses were potentially religiously sensitive or contested. The boundary between sacred and profane, public and private, did not necessarily follow the outer walls of a synagogue but remained subject to negotiation. Raimo Hakola explores negotiations between local and global cultures in “Galilean Synagogues as Local Responses to Cultural Globalization in Late Antiquity.” Focusing on the monumental Byzantine era synagogues, their mosaic floors and other decorations taken from Greco-Roman culture, Hakola first draws from recent discussions on ancient euergetism and civic benefaction. Although features such as donor inscriptions tend to highlight the role of wealthy individuals in how public buildings such as synagogues were funded, Hakola suggests, based on recent discussions and models, that the communal effort was equally important as a factor in these efforts, if not an even more important one. He then directs his attention to various Greco-Roman motifs in synagogue art and architecture and interprets the use of Greco-Roman motifs there as cultural negotiations with the wider world. Hakola applies recent insights into globalization processes in the ancient world and suggests that Hellenistic artistic and architectural motifs can be read as indicating that alongside a particular local identity, rural Galilean communities sought to express their belonging to the wider cultural landscapes surrounding them. In his article “An Archaeological Analysis of House-Synagogues in Ancient Palestine,” Chad Spigel considers the possibility of house-synagogues in late Roman and Byzantine Palestine. His starting point is the aforementioned lack of clear archaeological evidence for synagogues in the second century, as well as the observation that the known synagogues would have housed only a small fraction of the population. Where then did Jewish people participate in communal worship? Some have suggested, that similarly to the Christian practice of worshipping in house churches, Jews too could have worshipped in private houses. Spigel detects problems with this claim: the first is the meager, though not nonexistent, archaeological evidence; the second, lack of literary evidence for private houses used for communal prayer. Spigel analyzes archaeological evidence

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of houses in Roman and Byzantine Palestine to consider the implications of the house-synagogue hypothesis. What were the average sizes of houses and rooms? Were they large enough for communal gatherings? The evidence indicates that average houses tended to be small in size: they could have provided room, but only for small groups of people. Spigel thus concludes that there is minimal archaeological evidence to support the hypothesis of house-synagogues: so minimal in fact that it is unlikely that houses would have been extensively used for worship purposes by Jewish communities. Spigel combines his discussion with his earlier research on synagogue seating capacities and argues against the prevailing scholarly assumption that many Jews regularly participated in communal worship. In her “Sacred Space and Torah Shrines in Late Antique Synagogues,” Ulla Tervahauta examines the emergence of Torah shrines in synagogues across the Galilee and Golan from the fourth to seventh century CE. Tervahauta argues that the emergence of Torah shrines should be analyzed in parallel with how Christian communities began to seek new ways to organize their communal and sacred space. Both altars in churches and Torah shrines in synagogues create and increase hierarchies within the communal space. These arrangements not only concern the relationship between sacred and human but they also give a material expression to social order among those who gathered in these spaces. If we examine not only the emergence of Torah shrines in late antique synagogues but also their reception, we may ask along with Tervahauta whether it is plausible that these structures were experienced in different ways by different segments of local communities. The Torah shrines may have manifested the increased sanctity of the synagogues and accentuated the identity of local worshippers but, at the same time, they created hierarchies and controlled experiences and practices in shared communal spaces. Section four contextualizes synagogue art. An overview of synagogue mosaics in late antique Palestine is complemented with reinterpretations of the mosaics in the Japhi‘a and Beth Alpha synagogues. The section also offers a discussion of the appearance of one of the most frequent symbols of late antique Jewish art, the menorah. Zeev Weiss examines visual art in late antique synagogues in his “Visual vs. Virtual Reality: Interpreting Synagogue Mosaic Art.” The article deals with the diachronic and synchronic aspects of the mosaic compositions of several synagogue floors in ancient Palestine. There was no central authority who controlled the layout of synagogue mosaics, but different artists developed themes and compositional models that accommodated the needs of local communities. Weiss concentrates especially on the art of three synagogues—Khirbet Wadi Ḥamam, Sepphoris, and ‘En Gedi—and asks why these three communities composed their synagogues’ mosaics so differently. He argues that the floor mosaic in the Khirbet Wadi Ḥamam synagogue with its selection of biblical events is similar to the Dura Europos synagogue frescoes and that both these artworks speak for the centrality of the Bible for local communities. The early fifth-century CE

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Sepphoris synagogue mosaic illustrates the trends that emerged in Palestine when this urban Jewish community was forced to reclaim its identity when faced with Christian attempts to expropriate biblical traditions. Weiss continues by arguing that the aniconic features in the ‘En Gedi mosaic reflect intercommunal disputes when some members in the local community wished to avoid figurative images, while others, more liberal in their attitude toward Greco-Roman culture, wished to employ figurative depictions.63 The negotiated compromise meant that human representations were avoided altogether and a minimal number of birds and peacocks were featured in the mosaic. According to Weiss, these different strategies show how visual art in synagogues was shaped not only by current artistic fashions but was contingent upon varying local circumstances. In his short but informative essay, “A Note on the Japhi‘a Synagogue,” Géza G. Xeravits provides an updated reading of the mosaic floor first found in 1950. The original excavator of the Japhi‘a synagogue, Eleazar Sukenik, interpreted the mosaic as the representation of the twelve Israelite tribes, whereas Erwin Goodenough understood it as the circle of the zodiac. As compared to other Palestinian synagogue mosaics, the poorly preserved Japhi‘a mosaic contains many irregular patterns, which means that subsequent scholarship has been quite cautious in the interpretation of this piece of synagogue art. After assessing the pros and cons of earlier proposals, Xeravits presents evidence for taking the Japhi‘a circle as a representation of the circle of the zodiac. The comparative material from Roman villas or Christian monasteries illuminates some features of the Japhi‘a mosaic earlier regarded as unique, which shows that the search for artistic parallels should not be limited to Palestinian synagogues but should include examples from elsewhere in the Mediterranean world. In addition, the recently found and well-preserved zodiac mosaic at the Huqoq synagogue shares certain similarities with the Japhi‘a mosaic and confirms that the latter represents a variation of the zodiac circle. Xeravits’s discussion shows how recent discoveries offer a new framework that has the potential to illuminate discussions based on evidence available earlier. In her “The Artistic Milieu of the Mosaics of the Beth Alpha Synagogue,” Lidia Chakovskaya studies the iconic Beth Alpha mosaic that previous scholarship has tended to label as primitive, naïve, incompetent or simple. Chakovskaya explores the artistic logic and ways of working of Marianos and Hanina, who are identified as the creators of the Beth Alpha mosaic. She argues that instead of failing to produce a work that fulfills the current standards, Marianos and Hanina were deliberately doing something altogether different. These original artists were not incompetent but deliberately ignored Greco-Roman naturalism and traditional conventions. Chakovskaya shows how Marianos and Hanina emphasize texts and their interpretation. They master composition, have a strong sense of space, 63 Hints of such disagreement among community members find expression in rabbinic literature and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan. See Fine, Art and Judaism, 118–21.

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and display a tendency towards abstraction and denaturalization. She argues that the Beth Alpha mosaic shows a connection with Coptic art and that the way the mosaic is executed resembles a sculptor’s view. Gary Gilbert inquires into the origin of the menorah as the dominant Jewish symbol and identity marker in “The Appearance of the Menorah in Ancient Jewish Art.” Prior to the destruction of Herod’s temple in 70 CE, there are only infrequent cases where the menorah is depicted. By the Byzantine era the use of the menorah becomes frequent in synagogue art, funerary contexts, and everyday objects. Gilbert presents and discusses several proposed explanations. He suggests that the use of the menorah did not emerge as a response to imperial Christianity but that it probably began earlier. The menorah, along with other Temple objects, was displayed in Rome as spoils of war of the First Revolt. The menorah was used in imperial propaganda as evidence of the might and power of the Flavian emperors and how they subjugated Judeans who were now put in place among one of the peoples under the power of Rome. It is in this context, Gilbert argues, that it was reclaimed as the key Jewish symbol. The menorah was reclaimed as an identity marker in response to the Roman claims for eternal peace.

4. Acknowledgements This book publishes the proceedings of a conference with the same name that was held at the University of Helsinki, September 21–24, 2016. The conference was arranged in cooperation with the Foundation of the Finnish Institute of the Middle East. For the organization of the conference, we are indebted to the generous funding from the Centre of Excellence in Changes in Sacred Texts and Traditions, directed by Prof. Martti Nissinen, and the Centre of Excellence in Reason and Religious Recognition, directed by Prof. Risto Saarinen, both funded by the Academy of Finland. Further funding was obtained through Raimo Hakola’s Academy Research Fellowship “Coexistence and Rivalry: Archaeology and the Study of Jewish-Christian Relations in Galilee during the First Centuries CE.” Finally, we would like to thank Dr. Nina Nikki, who helped us with practical arrangements before and during the conference.

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Schriften Des Institutum Judaicum Delitzchianum 11. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, forthcoming. Droogan, Julian. Religion, Material Culture, and Archaeology. Bloomsbury Advances in Religious Studies. London: Bloomsbury, 2013. Elsner, Jaś. “Archaeologies and Agendas: Reflections on Late Ancient Jewish Art and Early Christian Art.” JRS 93 (2003): 114–28. Elsner, Jaś. “Classicism in Roman Art.” Pages 270–97 in Classical Pasts: The Classical Traditions of Greece and Rome. Edited by James I. Porter. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. Elsner, Jaś. “Late Antique Art: The Problem of the Concept and the Cumulative Aesthetic.” Pages 271–309 in Approaching Late Antiquity: The Transformation from Early to Late Empire. Edited by Simon Swain and Mark Edwards. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Erlich, Adi. “The Patriarch and the Emperor: The Elephant Mosaic Panel in the Huqoq Synagogue Reconsidered.” JRA 31 (2018): 542–58. Evans Grubbs, Judith, and Tim Parkin. “Introduction.” Pages 1–15 in The Oxford Handbook of Childhood and Education in the Classical World. Edited by Judith Evans Grubbs and Tim Parkins. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Fine, Steven. Art and Judaism in the Greco-Roman World: Toward a New Jewish Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Fine, Steven. Art, History and the Historiography of Judaism in Roman Antiquity. BRLJ 34. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Fine, Steven. “From Synagogue Furnishing to Media Event: The Magdala Ashlar.” Ars Judaica 13 (2017): 27–38. Fine, Steven. “Review of The Elephant Mosaic Panel in the Synagogue at Huqoq: Official Publication and Initial Interpretations, by Karen Britt and Ra‘anan S. Boustan.” Images 11 (2018): 1–3. Fine, Steven. The Menorah: From the Bible to Modern Israel. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016. Gordon, Benjamin D., and Zeev Weiss. “Samuel and Saul at Gilgal: A New Interpretation of the Elephant Mosaic Panel in the Huqoq Synagogue.” JRA 31 (2018): 524–41. Grüll, Tibor. “Reading of the Torah in the First Century Synagogue: New Archaeological Proofs.” Pages 139–52 in Schöner Alfréd hetven éves: Essays in Honor of Alfred Schöner. Edited by János Oláh and András Zima. Budapest: Gabbiano, 2018. Hachlili, Rachel. Ancient Synagogues—Archaeology and Art: New Discoveries and Current Research. HdO 105. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Hakola, Raimo. “Galilean Jews and Christians in Context: Spaces Shared and Contested in the Eastern Galilee in Late Antiquity.” Pages 141–65 in Spaces in Late Antiquity: Cultural, Theological and Archaeological Perspectives. Edited by Juliette Day, Raimo Hakola, Maijastina Kahlos, and Ulla Tervahauta. London: Routledge, 2016. Hämeen-Anttila, Jaakko. “Transmission of Late Antique Culture into Islamic Culture.” Pages 215–29 in Encounters of the Children of Abraham from Ancient to Modern Times. Edited by Antti Laato and Pekka Lindqvist. Studies on the Children of Abraham 1. Leiden: Brill, 2010. Hezser, Catherine. “‘For the Lord God a Sun and a Shield’ (Ps. 84:12): Sun Symbolism in in Hellenistic Jewish Literature and in Amoraic Midrashim.” Pages 312–36 in Jewish Art in Its Late Antique Context. Edited by Uzi Leibner and Catherine Hezser. TSAJ 163. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016. Hezser, Catherine. Jewish Literacy in Roman Palestine. TSAJ 81. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001. Hoyland, Robert. “Early Islam as a Late Antique Religion.” Pages 1053–77 in The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity. Edited by Scott Fitzgerald Johnson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Ilan, Tal. “Gender Issues and Daily Life.” Pages 48–68 in The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Daily Life in Roman Palestine. Edited by Catherine Hezser. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.

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Spigel, Chad. “Debating Ancient Synagogue Dating: The Implications of Deteriorating Data.” BASOR 376 (2016): 83–100. Stern, Karen B. Writing on the Wall: Graffiti and the Forgotten Jews of Antiquity. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018. Strange, James F. “Synagogue Typology and Khirbet Shema‘.” Pages 71–78 in Judaism in Late Antiquity, Part Three, Where We Stand: Issues and Debates in Ancient Judaism, Volume Four: The Special Problem of the Synagogue. Edited by Allan J. Avery-Peck and Jacob Neusner. HdO I.55. Leiden: Brill, 2001. Sukenik, Eleazar L. Ancient Synagogues in Palestine and Greece. The Schweich Lectures on Biblical Archaeology 1930. London: British Academy, 1934. Talgam, Rina. “An Illustration of the Third Book of Maccabees in a Late-Antique Galilean Synagogue?” JRA 31 (2018): 513–23. Talgam, Rina. “From Wall Paintings to Floor Mosaics: Jewish and Christian Attitudes to Figurative Art.” Pages 97–115 in Jewish Art in Its Late Antique Context. Edited by Uzi Leibner and Catherine Hezser. TSAJ 163 Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016. Talgam, Rina. Mosaics of Faith. Floors of Pagans, Jews, Samaritans, Christians, and Muslims in the Holy Land. Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi; University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2014. Van Oyen, Astrid, and Martin Pitts. “What Did Objects Do in the Roman World? Beyond Representation.” Pages 3–19 in Materialising Roman Histories. Edited by Astrid Van Oyen and Martin Pitts. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2017. Versluys, Miguel John. “Roman Visual Material Culture as Globalising Koine.” Pages 141–74 in Globalisation and the Roman World: World History, Connectivity and Material Culture. Edited by Martin Pitts and Miguel John Versluys. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Versluys, Miguel John. “Understanding Objects in Motion. An Archaeological Dialogue on Romanization.” Archaeological Dialogues 21 (2014): 1–20. Werlin, Steven H. Ancient Synagogues of Southern Palestine, 300–800 C. E.: Living on the Edge. BRLA 47. Leiden: Brill, 2015. Whitmarsh, Tim. Beyond the Second Sophistic: Adventures in Greek Postclassicism. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2013. Zangenberg, Jürgen K. “A Basalt Stone Table from the Byzantine Synagogue at Ḥorvat Kur, Galilee: Publication and Preliminary Interpretation.” Pages 61–75 in Arise, Walk through the Land: Studies in the Archaeology and History of the Land of Israel in Memory of Yizhar Hirschfeld on the Tenth Anniversary of his Demise. Edited by Joseph Patrich, Orit Peleg-Barkat, and Erez Ben-Yosef. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2016. Zangenberg, Jürgen K. “New Observations on the ‘Basalt Stone Table’ from Horvat Kur, Galilee.” BAIAS 37 (2019): 95–111. Zangenberg, Jürgen K., Stefan Münger, Raimo Hakola, and Byron R. McCane. “The Kinneret Regional Project Excavations of a Byzantine Synagogue at Horvat Kur, Galilee, 2010–2013: A Preliminary Report.” HBAI 4 (2013): 557–76.

I. Early Synagogues and Their Historical Context

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Reassessing the Impact of 70 CE on the Origins and Development of Palestinian Synagogues At the beginning of her 2013 tome on the archaeology and art of ancient synagogues, Rachel Hachlili remarks that The destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple was a turning point in the creation of the synagogue, in terms of both architecture and the customs and rituals practiced. The response to the catastrophe of 70 CE was the adoption of Torah reading, study, and prayer as a replacement for the sacrificial cult, making public worship the custom of the synagogue.1

Hachlili’s view is shared, with some variation, by a number of scholars. For example, Paul Flesher has suggested that, before 70, formal public synagogue buildings did not exist in Judea;2 scholars such as Howard Kee, Richard Horsley, and L. Michael White have taken this position with reference to the land of Israel in general.3 Perhaps the most influential voice in scholarship on 70 and the synagogue has been Lee Levine’s, although he is not always entirely clear on his own position. In his 1993 NEAEHL entry, titled “The Ancient Synagogue: From Community Center to a ‘Lesser Sanctuary’,” the events of 70 are presented as a historical turning point for the synagogue: it begins its metamorphosis into a fundamentally religious institution, becoming for the first time a place of communal prayer and worship, and adopting the holiness once possessed by the Jerusalem temple.4 1 Rachel Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues—Archaeology and Art: New Discoveries and Current Research, HdO 105 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 5. However, she immediately goes on to say, somewhat confusingly, that “This new, important, and unique Jewish institution already existed during the Second Temple period.” This causes one to wonder whether, if such an institution existed before 70, the year 70 was, after all, really the “turning point” for the synagogue’s development. 2 Paul V. M. Flesher, “Palestinian Synagogues before 70 CE: A Review of the Evidence,” in Ancient Synagogues: Historical Analysis and Archaeological Discovery, ed. Dan Urman and Paul V. M. Flesher, StPB 47 (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 1:27–39. 3 Howard C. Kee, “The Transformation of the Synagogue after 70 CE: Its Import for Early Christianity,” NTS 36 (1990): 1–24; Howard C. Clark, “The Changing Meaning of Synagogue: A Response to Richard Oster,” NTS 40 (1994): 281–83; Richard A. Horsley, Galilee: History, Politics, People (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity International Press, 1995), 223–25; L. Michael White, The Social Origins of Christian Architecture, Vol. 1: Building God’s House in the Roman World: Architectural Adaptation among Pagans, Jews, and Christians, Harvard Theological Studies 42 (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1996), 61. 4 Lee I. Levine, “The Ancient Synagogue: From Community Center to a ‘Lesser Sanctuary’,” NEAEHL 4: 1424.

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While Levine’s comments in the second edition of his magnum opus, The Ancient Synagogue, are, in reality, far more nuanced than this,5 subsequent scholarship has tended to associate with him the theory that 70 was the historical impetus either for the synagogue’s emergence as a formal religious institution or for the differences that exist between pre-70 synagogues and those of Late Antiquity (fourth–sixth centuries CE).6 Recent scholarship, however, has begun to reassess the evidence for the kind of impact that 70 is so often assumed to have had on the development of various aspects of ancient Jewish society. The 2012 collection of essays entitled Was 70 CE a Watershed in Jewish History? edited by Daniel Schwartz and Zeev Weiss aptly demonstrates this growing scholarly concern. Although this volume does not devote an entire article to it, nowhere is the historical question of the impact of the fall of the temple more relevant than in research into the origins and development of ancient Palestinian synagogues. In this article, we wish to contribute to this ongoing reassessment process and offer the suggestion that the fall of Jerusalem did not have a direct impact on the origins and development of the institution of the synagogue in the land. Two preliminary remarks, one for clarification and the other methodological, are in order before we proceed. First, we must stress that what we are questioning in this article is the sort of historiography that has approached the destruction of the temple as the direct 5 See especially Lee I. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 195–200. On the one hand, on p. 200, he states at the bottom of the page that “at this time” the synagogue began assuming the holiness of the temple. But “at this time” is defined, further up on the same page (second paragraph) as “Some time in the third or fourth century.” On the other hand, at the bottom of p. 198, he states that the rabbis wanted to make such a connection between 70 and the synagogue. See also p. 195, on which Levine stresses that synagogue orientation toward Jerusalem becomes more of a fixed architectural feature in the third century and later (although see our comments on orientation below). The first sentence in the section, which starts on p. 193, stresses continuity from before and after 70. Furthermore, on p. 245, he speaks of Christianity as a source of changes in the synagogue institution, including increased sanctity but also with reference to art (see our discussion below). Thus, we should emphasize here that, while Levine’s approach is nuanced in a way that most scholars are not, there is also a discernible tension in his presentation of the historical phenomenon of synagogue development. 6 In a stated attempt to support Lee Levine’s theory, Eric Meyers has recently suggested, based on the evidence of Nabratein Synagogue 1 (dated by him to the mid-second century CE) that, as a result of the events occurring in 70, the synagogue assumed the temple’s sanctity, and its architecture underwent a transformation process that began quite soon after its destruction. See, e.g., Eric M. Meyers, “The Problem of the Scarcity of Synagogues from 70 to ca. 250 CE: The Case of Synagogue 1 at Nabratein,” in “Follow the Wise”: Studies in Jewish History and Culture in Honor of Lee I. Levine, ed. Zeev Weiss et al. (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2010), 437. The main elements of transformation Meyers identifies are: (1) a façadal orientation toward Jerusalem (i. e., “sacred orientation”), and (2) the placement of a Torah shrine on the synagogue’s orienting wall (in the case of Nabratein 1, this is the southern wall). Meyers appears to be taking his cue largely from Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 195–200. We shall return to this below.

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cause for the perceived changes in the social and religious fabric of Judaism in the post-70 era. In other words, we do not deny the fact that certain kinds of development indeed took place within the synagogue from the pre-70 period to Late Antiquity,7 or that the loss of the temple was a significant historical reality for the Jewish people in the first century and beyond. Rather, what we are investigating is whether the loss of the temple should really be understood as the cause for any developments seen within post-70 synagogues, or whether other socio-historical factors, such as group-identity formation within the emerging rabbinic movement and the rise of non-Jewish Christianity,8 have the greater power of explanation. Second, methodologically, if we are to trace the development of the synagogue and assess when, why, and in what way it underwent change, it is not enough to analyze simply one aspect of the question, such as issues relating to architecture or leadership structures. Rather, we need to evaluate its development with reference to all of the aspects of the institution, so that we can generate a holistic portrait of it that is sensitive to the specific ways in which the synagogue did (or did not) develop in the post-70 period. We suggest that at least four aspects need to be investigated if we, particularly as historians, wish to learn something holistically about the synagogue’s development in Palestine.9 They are: 1. the spatial aspect (including architecture and art); 2. the institutional aspect (esp. leadership); 3. the liturgical aspect (e.g., Torah reading rituals, prayers, blessings, festival celebration); and 4. the non-liturgical aspect (e.g., the synagogue’s judicial function and its role in village politics). After briefly discussing the nature of the sources, we will sample a variety of materials related to each of these four aspects. The goal will be, in the end, to have a more nuanced understanding of the synagogue’s historical relationship to the events of 70 CE. 7 We will, however, demonstrate that most, though not all, of these differences are perceived rather than actual. 8 See Anders Runesson, The Origins of the Synagogue. A Socio-Historical Study, CBNTS 37 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2001), 485. For recent interpretations along these lines of late-antique synagogues, see Jodi Magness, “Heaven on Earth: Helios and the Zodiac Cycle in Ancient Palestinian Synagogues,” DOP 59 (2005): 1–52; David Milson, Art and Architecture of the Synagogue in Late Antique Palestine: In the Shadow of the Church, AJEC 65 (Leiden: Brill, 2006); Leonard V. Rutgers, “The Synagogue as Foe in Early Christian Literature,” in “Follow the Wise”: Studies in Jewish History and Culture in Honor of Lee I. Levine, ed. Zeev Weiss et al. (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2010), 449–68. 9 Cf. Runesson, Origins, 29–37.

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1. The Nature of the Sources The most obvious difficulty for assessing the impact of the fall of Jerusalem upon the development of the synagogue is the nature of the available data. First, while we do have solid data—both literary and archaeological—to support the existence in the pre-70 period of synagogues as formal public socio-religious and political institutions (purpose-built edifices and gatherings of people),10 the data also renders a diverse portrait involving two types of “synagogue” institutions: the public / civic assembly found only in the land of Israel, and the Jewish association-like institutions, designated by the same synagogue terms as the civic institutions, but filling different socio-religious functions; these latter institutions are found both in the land and in the diaspora.11 10 For sources, see Anders Runesson, Donald D. Binder, and Birger Olsson, The Ancient Synagogue from Its Origins to 200 C. E.: A Source Book, AJEC 72 (Leiden: Brill, 2008). See also Donald D. Binder, Into the Temple Courts: The Place of the Synagogues in the Second Temple Period, SBLDS 169 (Atlanta: Scholars, 1999); Runesson, Origins, 169–235; Levine, Ancient Synagogue, chs. 2–4; and, even more recently, Jordan J. Ryan, The Role of the Synagogue in the Aims of Jesus (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2017). This recent scholarship has proven the theories of especially Kee, but also White and Horsley, to be very problematic and, in fact, outdated. 11 See Runesson, Origins, esp. 213–35 and, more recently, Anders Runesson, “Synagogues without Rabbis or Christians? Ancient Institutions beyond Normative Discourses,” Journal of Belief and Values 38 (2017): 159–72, which includes discussion of the architectural differences between public and association synagogues. One may contrast, for example, the data from Qumran (an association synagogue) with that from Magdala (a public synagogue). The archaeological remains of a separate complex of rooms at the Qumran site, apparently devoted to Torah-related activities, suggest that the Qumran community’s public gatherings were held in a main hall, similar to other first-century synagogues (Runesson, Origins, 180). The presence of several different kinds of rooms indicates various kinds of gatherings (Loci 4 and 30), but the community’s public assemblies likely took place in Locus 77, the largest room on site, which appears to have doubled as a dining hall (triclinium) (Binder, Temple Courts, 459–63). The presence of a triclinium within some sort of assembly structure is characteristic of the association-type synagogue (e.g., Ostia, Stobi, Jericho). Additionally, the somewhat secluded nature of the Qumran site would suggest that its “synagogue” did not allow for the same kind of public access nor house the same type of administrative / political responsibilities within the wider Jewish community that, for example, the synagogue at Magdala would have had (cf. also the civic / political role of the Tiberias synagogue mentioned in Josephus, Vita 276–81, 294–95; see Andrew R. Krause, Synagogues in the Works of Flavius Josephus: Rhetoric, Spatiality, and First-Century Jewish Institutions, AJEC 97 [Leiden: Brill, 2017], 125, 130–43). The Magdala site presents us with evidence of a thoroughly public structure: there is only one central gathering hall (in contrast to the variation in rooms at Qumran, likely to segment certain groups of people), with at least two levels of benches lining all four sides, and either two rows of two or three columns lining the interior space; there is no evidence of a dining hall; and it is located immediately to the north of the city’s public marketplace complex, being separated from it only by a narrow street running east–west. It is difficult to imagine civic and administrative tasks, such as town judicial or scribal activities, taking place anywhere else, at least among the known excavated areas. If we take what Josephus says about Tarichaea / Magdala seriously, we get the picture that Magdala was a relatively important city

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To complicate matters, by the time of the first century, both of these types of institution could be referred to by a variety of Hebrew, Greek, and Latin terms.12 This means we need to specify what institution it is whose development before and after 70 we are attempting to trace. Public synagogues in the pre-70 period represented the central socio-religious and administrative space of Jewish society throughout the land, being run by public officials such as town elders and village scribes.13 Thus, rather than association synagogues, which could meet in a variety of spaces (public and private) and had no direct political influence, it is the public / civic synagogue institution that we would expect to be most impacted by the fall of Jerusalem. We will, therefore, focus our attention here upon several of the more important sources for the public assembly-type synagogue pre- and post-70. The second, and perhaps more difficult source-related problem facing our study is a well-known one: the almost complete silence from the archaeological record of synagogues from ca. 70 to ca. 250 CE (or even later). The only archaeological evidence for the construction of new synagogues post-70 that possibly stand in this gap are Khirbet Qana, dated by the excavators to the end of the first or early second century,14 and Nabratein Synagogue 1, which is dated by Eric and Carol Meyers to the middle of the second century.15 Without Khirbet Qana and within the larger economy of ancient Galilee (esp. its fishing industry), even after the erection of Tiberias in 19 CE. Even though Josephus no doubt exaggerates Magdala’s population (40,000), we can probably conclude, based upon its lakeshore location and the known excavated remains (finely built harbour, marketplace, and synagogue), that the city had considerable traffic levels. Thus, all Galilean Jews either living in or visiting Magdala for business would likely have been welcome to participate in the city’s public gatherings on sabbaths. 12 On the variety of terms used to refer to “synagogues,” see Runesson, Binder, and Olsson, The Ancient Synagogue, 328. 13 See E. P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63 BCE–66 CE (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1992), 171–73; and more recently, Anders Runesson, Divine Wrath and Salvation in Matthew (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2016), 210–12. 14 Douglas R. Edwards, “Khirbet Qana: From Jewish Village to Christian Pilgrim Site,” in The Roman and Byzantine Near East. Vol. 3: Late-Antique Petra, Nile Festival Building at Sepphoris, Deir Qal‘a Monastery, Khirbet Qana Village and Pilgram Site, ‘Ain-‘Arrub Hiding Complex, ed. John H. Humphrey, JRASup 49 (Portsmouth, RI: JRA, 2002), 111–14; Thomas C. McCollough, “Khirbet Qana,” in Galilee in the Late Second Temple and Mishnaic Periods, Vol. 2: The Archaeological Record from Cities, Towns, and Villages, ed. David A. Fiensy and James Riley Strange (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015), 141, where McCollough says carbon-14 dating of stone mortar and wall plaster at the foundation level rendered a date of 4–235 CE. He says further on the page that, “This result [of the carbon-14 dating], when combined with the ceramic evidence, suggests a founding date in the last decades of the first or early second century CE.” See also the article by McCollough in this volume. See below on the identification of this building as a synagogue. 15 The excavators established this date primarily by the coins and pottery sealed under the plaster floor and under the foundations of the walls and benches. See the final report on the Nabratein project in Eric M. Meyers and Carol L. Meyers, Excavations at Ancient Nabratein: Synagogue and Environs, Meiron Excavation Project Report 6 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2009). For a shorter treatment of the date of Nabratein 1, see Meyers, “Problem.” We note here that the date of the Nabratein synagogue has been the center of intense debate. Jodi Magness has

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Nabratein 1, there is, at the shortest, a nearly 150-year gap between our pre- and post-70 archaeological sources,16 which, as Levine notes, makes it very difficult to say anything about the nature of the synagogue, especially its structural features, in the post-70 period based on archaeology alone.17

argued vociferously that there are significant errors in the excavator’s final published report, and has suggested a revised chronology of a single building (rather than three distinct buildings) with a terminus post quem in the mid-fourth century CE. See Jodi Magness, “The Ancient Synagogue at Nabratein,” BASOR 358 (2010): 64. Recently, however, Chad Spigel has demonstrated that one of the major causes, if not the major cause, for the diverging interpretations of Magness and the excavators (on Nabratein as well as Khirbet Shema‘ and Gush Halav) concerns the use of, and access to, unpublished field notes and excavation archives. Magness based her revised chronologies upon the published materials alone, while in their response to Magness’s revision, Meyers and Meyers acknowledged the errors in the final report but drew upon unpublished materials to correct and re-substantiate their position. Spigel’s insightful article not only highlights a major methodological problem facing field archaeologists and the use of their findings by subsequent scholars, but also, in the end, suggests that, in the case of Nabratein (as well as Khirbet Shema‘ and Gush Halav), incorporation of the unpublished field notes supports the original chronologies of the excavators. See Chad Spigel, “Debating Ancient Synagogue Dating: The Implications of Deteriorating Data,” BASOR 376 (2016): 83–100. For the current article, whether one takes the position of the excavators or that of Magness does not matter all that much: on the dating of Magness there is a 300-year gap between the construction of Nabratein and the destruction of the Jerusalem temple; on the dating of the excavators, there is still a gap of approximately 80 years. Both spans of time make a direct connection between the architecture of the building and 70 CE historically tenuous. 16 The next earliest post-70 material remains are the Stratum IIb synagogue at Hammath Tiberias, which is dated by Moshe Dothan to the period of Alexander Severus (222–235 CE). See Moshe Dothan, Hammath Tiberias, Vol. 1: Early Synagogues and the Hellenistic and Roman Remains (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1983), 66–67. Although, see Magness, “Heaven on Earth,” 12–13, where she provides a strong argument for dating the Stratum IIb synagogue to the fourth century. We may add here as well the synagogue at Khirbet Wadi Ḥ amam, which, although the excavators push for a date in the first half of the third century, has many architectural elements (Doric capitals, benches, pilasters) in secondary use that appear to have come from an earlier public building, likely a synagogue from the late Second Temple period. Importantly, the excavators note that the basalt synagogue erected in the third century “stood for about a century, during which time it underwent renovations, such as the replacement of parts of the mosaic with a plaster floor and the addition of a bema against the S [Jerusalem-oriented] wall.” This means the addition of the bema did not occur until the late fourth or early fifth century. See Uzi Leibner, “Excavations at Khirbet Wadi Hamam (Lower Galilee): The Synagogue and the Settlement,” JRA 23 (2010): 235; and more recently Uzi Leibner, “Khirbet Wadi Hamam in the Early and Middle Roman Periods,” in Galilee in the Late Second Temple and Mishnaic Periods, Vol. 2: The Archaeological Record from Cities, Towns, and Villages, ed. David A. Fiensy and James Riley Strange (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015), 343–61. Final report now published as: Uzi Leibner, Khirbet Wadi Ḥamam: A Roman-Period Village and Synagogue in the Lower Galilee, Qedem Reports 13 (Jerusalem: Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University, 2018). 17 Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 187. We heartily agree with Levine when he says: “Only an assessment that balances the archaeological and literary remains within the historical context of the late Roman era can hope to achieve some degree of credibility.”

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Thus, an important methodological thrust of this article is that, while the Mishnah provides literary evidence for continuity in the function of public synagogues during the second century (as buildings and formal gatherings),18 the sources for synagogues in the third and following centuries—both literary and archaeological—are judged as too far removed historically for us to identify 70 CE as the cause for the developments we see in this later period. To answer our central question we employ an approach to the sources that, first, incorporates all literary and archaeological data for public synagogues pre-70 up to ca. 200 CE, although we can only refer to a sample in this article. Including sources dated up to 200 CE allows, we believe, for an adequate period of time after 70 to identify any changes potentially linked to the destruction of the temple. Second, our approach to the late-antique sources favors a sociological interpretation, looking to developments within and around Judaism, particularly a politically empowered Christianity, to explain changes in synagogues during this period.

2. The Spatial Aspect: Synagogue Architecture and Art Before and After 70 Despite the scanty archaeological evidence,19 the theory that the fall of Jerusalem marked a transformation or canonization process in the spatial design and physical structure of Palestinian synagogues is held by a number of scholars. The two architectural features that are most often explained in connection with the temple’s destruction in 70 are the introduction of “sacred orientation” and the installation of platforms or niches for Torah shrines.20 As noted above, the earliest evidence we have for the construction of new synagogue buildings post-70, is Khirbet Qana and the remains of Synagogue 1 from Nabratein. The excavators of Khirbet Qana are cautious in their identifi 18 Sources from the Mishnah include: Ber. 7:3; Ter. 11:10; Bik. 1:4; ‘Erub. 10:10; Pesaḥ. 4:4; Sukkah 3:13; Roš Haš. 3:7; Meg. 3:1–3; 3:4–4:10; Ned. 5:4–5; 9:2; Šebu. 4:10; Mak. 3:12; Neg. 13:12; Sotạ h 7:7; 8; Yoma 7:1. 19 The literary evidence from the Mishnah provides evidence for public synagogues as purpose-built edifices in the first and second centuries (e.g., m. Ned. 5:5; m. Ber. 7:3; m. Roš Haš. 3:7). 20 Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues, 16; Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 197–99, where he situates synagogue orientation toward Jerusalem within his overarching theory of the synagogue’s development into a fundamentally religious institution, and pp. 326–30, where Levine says, “Moreover, the memories of the Temple and Jerusalem, together with the introduction into the synagogue liturgy of expressions of hopes to return and rebuild the Temple and city, were undoubtedly additional forces that helped to forge a distinct and significant synagogue orientation” (p. 330). On these pages, Levine does indeed briefly note that pagan temples and Christian churches, which tended to face eastward, was another factor in the orientation of synagogues. See also Meyers, “Problem.”

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cation of the late first / early second-century building there as a synagogue.21 It is clearly a public building, with remains present of benches along the interior walls as well as stylobate and column fragments. Its architectural features, along with its size and spatial configuration, are “consistent with other structures identified as synagogues.”22 The first-century (pre-70) synagogue at Gamla appears to be a particularly close comparator. The Khirbet Qana building is oriented north–south, with an entrance in the southern wall (toward Jerusalem). There are also two stepped structures in the vicinity, which the excavators have tentatively identified as Jewish ritual baths—common companions to early synagogues.23 The building was in continual use until the Byzantine period, during which (late fifth or sixth century) a rectangular platform was installed against the southern wall. McCollough suggests that this platform has the appearance of platform for a Torah shrine.24 The evidence, then, favors identifying the Khirbet Qana building as a late first / early second-century synagogue that was in continual use for perhaps as many as 400 years. The building was constructed in the late first or early second century, being in most, if not all, respects similar in style and architecture to pre-70 synagogues in the Galilee, especially Gamla. The introduction of a new architectural feature, the possible platform for a Torah shrine, did not occur until approximately three or four centuries after its original post-70 construction. This would seem to make any historical connection between the destruction of the temple and the resultant introduction of the Torah platform quite tenuous. If there was such a connection, one would expect the platform to be installed as part of the building’s original foundation. The Khirbet Qana building is indeed oriented toward Jerusalem, which is a defining feature of later synagogues, but as we shall discuss below, it is not an uncommon feature of pre-70 synagogues as well; its historical dependence on the events of 70 is likewise difficult to sustain. According to the excavators of the Nabratein building, this edifice was oriented so that its broad wall with the entrance and with a double platform was on the south, facing Jerusalem; it also had four columns with two rows of benches on every side except the south side.25 The excavators suggest that, in all likelihood, one of these southern platforms would have supported a Torah shrine, which would have 21 See both McCollough, “Khirbet Qana,” 141 and Edwards, “Khirbet Qana,” 111–14, where they identify the structure as a “possible synagogue,” but then draw compelling architectural comparisons with the synagogue at Gamla. See also Peter Richardson, Building Jewish in the Roman East (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2004), chs. 4 and 6. See now in detail the article by McCollough in this volume. 22 McCollough, “Khirbet Qana,” 141. 23 By “early” we mean those synagogue buildings that were erected in the first century CE or earlier. 24 McCollough, “Khirbet Qana,” 141. 25 Meyers, “Problem,” 439.

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accentuated its “wall of orientation.”26 Eric Meyers notes: “This would mean that the building incorporated the principle of sacred orientation into its philosophy from the outset.”27 Thus, Meyers believes that the architecture of Nabratein 1 in fact provides much earlier evidence (mid-second century) for the theory that the events of 70 led directly to synagogues assuming the “distinguishing features” of sacred orientation and the Torah shrine, and that this indicates that the post-70 synagogue quickly began to assume the “sanctity” of the destroyed temple.28 In our view, there are two points that problematize this interpretation of Nabratein 1. The first is that the principle of “sacred orientation” is clearly not a post-70 creation. Façadal orientation toward Jerusalem is demonstrable in several pre-70 synagogues as well, both inside and outside of the land of Israel.29 Thus, 26 Meyers, “Problem,” 437. It is important to note, however, that the existence of a shrine in the southwest corner of Synagogue 1 is quite uncertain. The main issue, as Meyers notes, is that the ark pediment that was discovered in this corner of the building likely belonged to Synagogue 2a (p. 445). So, even though both platforms may signal liturgical use, the presence of a Torah shrine is currently conjecture. 27 Meyers, “Problem,” 437. 28 Meyers, “Problem,” 437. Here Meyers is clearly attempting to advance what he believes is Levine’s theory set forth in Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 195–200. 29 Synagogues in the land include (1) Khirbet Umm el-‘Umdan (Modi‘in): entrance oriented east-southeast (toward Jerusalem), maintaining in the Herodian period its original orientation during the Hasmonean period. While, in its Hasmonean phase, the main hall had U-shaped benches along three walls (not the eastern entrance wall), in the Herodian period, all four walls were lined with benches, as is typical for first-century synagogues pre- and post-70. Two installations from the Hasmonean-period main hall were identified by the excavators, the northernmost perhaps a square bema projecting about 0.1 meter above floor level, and south of it an installation with a round base 1 meter in diameter. The excavators note the possibility that the central part of the northern bench, which was two levels high and appears to have been specifically fashioned, may have been some sort of proto “seat of honor.” However, its shape could also have been due to the need to allow passage into the hall through its northeastern entrance. See Alexander Onn and Shlomit Weksler-Bdolah, “Horbat Umm el-‘Umdan—A Jewish Village with a Synagogue from the Second Temple Period at Modi’in,” Qadmoniot 130 (2005): 107–16 (Hebrew); Alexander Onn and Shlomit Weksler-Bdolah, “Umm el-‘Umdan, Khirbet (Modi’in),” NEAEHL 5 (2008): 2061– 63; Shlomit Weksler-Bdolah, “Khirbat Umm el-‘Umdan,” Hadashot Arkheologiyot-Excavations and Surveys in Israel 126: http://www.hadashot-esi.org.il/Report_Detail_Eng.aspx?id=14718. (2) Gamla: façade oriented southwest, despite objections from Peter Richardson, “Early Synagogues as Collegia,” Voluntary Associations in the Graeco-Roman World, ed. John S. Kloppenborg and Stephen G. Wilson (London: Routledge, 1996), 101, who suggest this orientation was “accidental” due to the location of the building and the topography of the hill. See Binder’s (successful) response in Temple Courts, 169–70, 170 n. 27. (3) Magdala: most likely had a façadal entrance to the south, contrary to the reconstruction of the IAA excavators (see Ryan, Role of the Synagogues, and a forthcoming study by Ryan and site excavator M. Zapata Mesa). Finally, and possibly, (4) Capernaum 1 (see Binder, Temple Courts, 186–93). Outside of the land: (1) Ostia 1 (see Anders Runesson, “The Synagogue at Ancient Ostia: The Building and its History from the First to Fifth Century,” in The Synagogue of Ancient Ostia and the Jews of Rome: Interdisciplinary Studies, ed. Birger Olsson, Dieter Mitternacht, and Olof Brandt [Stockholm: Paul Åströms Förlag, 2001], 37–40), and (2) Delos, although, since it seems to have been adapted into a synagogue in its

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while it is true that there is no uniformity in orientation among pre-70 public synagogues (e.g., Qiryat Sepher is oriented to the north; Masada is oriented to the east),30 Peter Richardson’s assertion, that “in early [pre-70] Palestinian synagogues orientation to Jerusalem was irrelevant,” is difficult to prove.31 Further, we have two sets of remains at our disposal—Qiryat Sepher and Khirbet Umm el-‘Umdan (Modi‘in)—that the respective excavators have identified as (public) synagogues from the first century BCE (Hasmonean and Herodian eras), both of which seem to have remained in uninterrupted use into the second century CE, probably right up until the Bar Kokhba revolt.32 There is no evidence at these sites to suggest that, for either building, internal or external features underwent any changes or renovations as a result of the events of 70 CE, such as second phase (mid-first century BCE), its eastern orientation could be due to the orientation of the previous structure (see discussion in Binder, Temple Courts, 306–17). Regarding the contentious issue of identifying the building on Delos as a synagogue, Monica Trümper, “The Oldest Original Synagogue Building in the Diaspora: The Delos Synagogue Reconsidered,” Hesperia 73 (2004): 513–98, has argued in favor of such an identification already in its first phase (before 88 BCE). Trümper’s 85-page study is, so far, the most comprehensive. On the other side of the debate is Lidia Matassa, “Unravelling the Myth of the Synagogue on Delos,” BAIAS 25 (2007): 81–115, who objects to identifying this building as a synagogue at all. Binder, Temple Courts, represents a third view, in which the Delos building was a cultic hall of “pagan” association in its first phase, abandoned after the raid of Mithridates’s troops in 88 BCE, and then adapted into a synagogue shortly after. It is worth noting that Binder is quite cautious in his conclusion here and indicates the strong possibility that the building was indeed originally built as a synagogue (p. 314). Therefore, while we have not been convinced by Matassa’s study, we do not wish to adjudicate firmly on whether the building was a synagogue in its first or second phase, but rather wish to keep the matter somewhat open. 30 We should note that neither does there seem to be uniformity in orientation and interior design among late-antique Palestinian synagogues. Levine notes Arbel as an exception among Galilean synagogues (Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 195), and Milson notes the synagogue at Gaza (Milson, Art and Architecture of the Synagogue, 99). Milson stresses that the rabbis themselves do not appear to be uniform in their belief of where the divine presence dwelt after the destruction in 70, which may have led to confusion within Jewish communities over the direction of prayer in synagogues (ch. 3). He also argues that “diversity of plans and interior furnishings is the norm throughout this period” (236). 31 Richardson, “Early Synagogues,” 101. Furthermore, it is not until about the fourth century CE that we begin to see any semblance of standardization in the orientation of synagogue buildings. The fact, then, that we see “sacred orientation” well before the destruction of the temple, and then not again as a distinguishing feature until centuries later, would seem to cast doubt on understanding 70 as its historical cause. At the same time, we have virtually no evidence of Torah shrine installations immediately after 70: as noted above, there are no remains of such an installation in the post-70 phase of either Khirbet Umm el-‘Umdan or Qiryat Sepher, and the strongest evidence for one at Nabratein comes from Synagogue 2a, not Synagogue 1. This suggests as well that understanding 70 as the historical impetus for the introduction of Torah shrines in the fourth century is problematic. 32 Yitzhak Magen, Yoav Tzionit, and Orna Sirkis, “Khirbet Badd ῾Isa—Qiryat Sefer,” in The Land of Benjamin, ed. Yitzhak Magen et al., Judea and Samaria Publications 3 (Jerusalem: Staff Officer of Archaeology—Civil Administration of Judea and Samaria; IAA, 2004), 205.

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the installation of Torah shrine platforms or alterations to the buildings’ original orientation (north for Qiryat Sepher; southeast for Khirbet Umm el-‘Umdan).33 Second, did the fall of Jerusalem really produce an immediate shift by which post-70 synagogues would assume the “sanctity” of the destroyed temple and reflect this in their spatial design and ornamentation (so, e.g., Fine, Meyers, and Richardson)? The Mishnah may provide evidence that at least some second-century rabbis attributed a level of sanctity to the synagogue in general.34 Megillah 3:1–3, for example, recounts a teaching by R. Judah that arranges a number of objects and places, the synagogue included, on a scale of sanctity (‫)קדושה‬. Torah scrolls are at the highest level of holiness, but in the third mishnah, R. Judah also applies to the synagogue the “sanctuary” (‫ )מקדש‬language of Lev 26:31: “For it is written, ‘I will bring your sanctuaries to desolation’.” On the other hand, within the context of the Megillah, the synagogue itself, while deserving respect, is a rather low priority. The synagogue’s role is entirely subordinate to the public performance of Torah,35 to the point that one could argue it is in fact the presence of the holy Torah scrolls inside the synagogue that generates the sanctity, which then attaches to the building, making it similar to a “sanctuary.”36 This point coordinates well with other Mishnaic sources that portray the synagogue as public property, and as continuing as the communityoriented socio-religious institution it was in the pre-70 period (e.g., m. Ned. 5:5; m. Mak. 3:12). Furthermore, recent research has problematized the theory that, in the pre-70 period, public synagogues were solely social / communal institutions that lacked a discernable “religious” character and were completely severed from—or even in competition with—the life and ideology of the Jerusalem temple.37 Perhaps 33 The building at Khirbet Qana, erected relatively soon after 70, also lacks a platform for a Torah shrine, which one would expect to see if 70 was the historical impetus for such a internal feature. 34 Although representing a highly restricted point of view, the Mishnah offers no second-century evidence for the physical characteristics that a building needs to have in order to be a proper synagogue. See Jacob Neusner, The Mishnah: Religious Perspectives, HdO I.45 (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 75. For an extended argument from the Mishnah that the synagogue assumed the sanctity of the temple post-70, see Steven Fine, “From Meeting House to Sacred Realm: Holiness and the Ancient Synagogue,” in Sacred Realm: The Emergence of the Synagogue in the Ancient World, ed. Steven Fine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 21–47. 35 Neusner, The Mishnah, 76. 36 Runesson, Origins, 200. But cf. m. Meg. 3:3, where even a destroyed synagogue carries a level of sanctity. Note that Torah was read also in the Jerusalem temple (the hakhel ceremony; Deut 31:9–13; cf. Runesson, Origins, 209–12). 37 Note Richardson’s comments with reference to pre-70 synagogues: “There was no reflection of Jerusalem, no visual sense of attachment to Temple, no symbolic decoration: none of the [pre-70] synagogues was decorated with symbols reminiscent of the Temple in Jerusalem. Such symbols—found profusely in later synagogues in mosaic floors, capitals, lintels, and other architectural features—were completely absent in pre-70 buildings. The menorah, lulab and

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the most important (and most recently discovered)  artifact in this regard is the Magdala synagogue “temple-stone.”38 Therefore, there is very little, if any, historical basis for directly linking the events of 70 to an immediate change in either the architecture or ornamentation of public synagogue buildings in the post-70 period.39

ethrog, all calling to mind Temple services, came into synagogue art only after 70, it would seem” (Richardson, “Early Synagogues,” 101). Levine comments similarly: “The seven-branched menorah as a decorative (symbolic?) element also first appeared in late third-century synagogues” (Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 198). In contrast, Binder has argued that the broken lintel found in the Gamla synagogue, which was inscribed with the image of a six-petal rosette flanked by date palms, reflects imagery closely associated with similar imagery found in the remains of the Jerusalem temple courts. See Binder, Temple Courts, 168–69 and 168 n. 23. The supporting lintel of the northern façade entry wall at the Qiryat Sepher synagogue was also inscribed with a similar rosette pattern set within a triangle (see Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues, 34–36). 38 The Magdala Stone, in spite of its many enigmatic features, possesses a number of clearly delineated temple-related symbols such as a seven-branched menorah, what is likely to be the wheels of the divine Merkabah, and two palms flanking a prominently positioned six-petal rosette fashioned in the likeness of those found in the palatial homes of priestly families in Jerusalem’s Herodian Quarter. On the rosette being a cultic, indeed priestly, symbol during the Second Temple period, see Donald D. Binder, “The Mystery of the Magdala Stone,” in A City Set on a Hill: Essays in Honor of James F. Strange, ed. D. Warner and Donald D. Binder (Mountain Home, AR: BorderStone Press, 2014), 34–35. Binder suggests that the visual art of the rosette finds its inspiration from biblical texts that speak of the high priest’s turban as a “blossoming flower [i. e., rosette] of gold” (tsits hazahav; Exod 28:36; Lev 8:9; see DCH, s.v. ‫)ציץ‬. The Hebrew ‫“( ציץ‬flower, blossom”) can be rendered by a range of Greek terms, most notably πέταλον (“leaf ”) and ἄνθος (“blossom, flower”). Interestingly, in his description of Solomon’s temple, Josephus notes in A. J. 8.72 that the doors dividing the Holy of Holies from the rest of the temple were covered by “a veil with the most beautifully blooming flowers (εὐανθεστάτοις), having been made from the color of the hyacinth, purple cloth, and scarlet” (κατεπέτασε δὲ ταύτας ὕφεσιν εὐανθεστάτοις ἐξ ὑακίνθου καὶ πορφύρας καὶ κόκκου πεποιημένοις; trans. ours; Greek text from Thackeray). Further, although Josephus is using the term “hyacinth” (ὑάκινθος) with reference to its color (probably some sort of violet; cf. the MT and LXX of 2 Chr 3:14), the fact that he mentions the hyacinth plant (following the description of the veil in 2 Chr 3:14)—described by Ovid in Met. 10:162–219 as having the budding appearance of a lily and being bright purple—is notable. Josephus, therefore, would seem to be describing the image of a budding rosette stitched into the fabric of the temple veil. If this is indeed the case, it only further strengthens the temple symbolism of the Magdala Stone. No such ornamentation was discovered in Nabratein 1, and it is not until perhaps the third century—but more likely the fourth (Magness, “Heaven on Earth,” 13)—that we see such temple-inspired ornamentation re-emerge. Whether or not we should associate sanctity and synagogue in the pre-70 period based on this ornamentation, the sources seem to indicate: (1) that at least some public synagogues reflected an ideological connection (reverence?) to the Jerusalem temple before 70, a connection that was, therefore, not dependent on the temple’s destruction; and (2) that it was not until long after the temple’s destruction (nearly 200 years) that a similar connection (reverence?) was again expressed artistically in synagogues. 39 See the similar conclusion already in Runesson, Origins, 154.

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How do we explain the growth in late-antique synagogues (fourth–sixth centuries) of temple-themed artwork, and the expansion of these buildings into more complex (“monumental”) structures? Scholars such as Leonard Rutgers, Jodi Magness, and, in some places, Lee Levine, have approached these architectural and artistic changes by looking to Judaism’s competitive engagement with the rise of (non-Jewish) Christianity in the Byzantine period. Rutgers, for example, says that the transformation of synagogues into grander monumental buildings, with the introduction of large apses and niches for Torah shrines, and temple-related iconographic programs, were designed to carve out and solidify a distinctly Jewish identity in the face of a Roman world that was undergoing rapid Christianization.40 With reference to artistic developments, Magness suggests that the fact that we see scenes from the Bible depicted similarly on floor mosaics in both Byzantine synagogues and churches—including images of the temple—indicates that Jewish and Christian communities were engaged in “competitive interpretation” of shared sacred texts and institutions. Thus, she says, “Jews and Christians appropriated each other’s visual language and symbols in their attempts to claim the temple.”41 In our view, rather than tying these developments to 70 CE as their historical cause, such social-historical approaches provide a more effective way forward in accounting for (1) the much later date of the apparent “transformation” of Palestinian synagogue art and architecture, and (2) the competitive nature of Jewish–Christian relations and the intense processes of identity formation taking place during the fourth–sixth centuries CE. 40 Rutgers, “The Synagogue as Foe,” 449–50. Milson’s project seems to go even further, suggesting that some aspects of late-antique synagogue architecture and art were actually modelled after developments in Byzantine churches (see esp. Milson, Art and Architecture of the Synagogue, chs. 6–7). The building of the great white limestone synagogue in fifth or sixth (so Magness) century Capernaum, just a stone’s throw away (25 m south) from the fifth-century Domus–Ecclesia-turned-Octagonal Church, is a striking example of this dynamic and competitive process of identity formation. The remains at this site of an ark to house Torah scrolls, and a large number of lintels and capitals decorated with cultic imagery (rosettes, palms, menorahs, shofars, incense shovels) is evidence of this. For a description of the white synagogue, see Stanislao Loffreda, Recovering Capharnaum, 2nd ed. (Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing Press, 1993), 32–49. For a study on what these two edifices might tell us about Jewish–Christian relations in late antique Palestine, see Anders Runesson, “Architecture, Conflict, and Identity Formation: Jews and Christians in Capernaum from the First to the Sixth Centuries,” in Religion, Ethnicity, and Identity in Ancient Galilee: A Region in Transition, ed. Jürgen K. Zangenberg, Harold W. Attridge, and Dale B. Martin, WUNT 210 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007), 231–57. 41 Magness, “Heaven on Earth,” 14. Magness’s use of the term “competitive interpretation” derives from the work of Martha Himmelfarb, “The Mother of the Messiah in the Talmud Yerushalmi and Sefer Zerubbabel,” in The Talmud Yerushalmi and Graeco-Roman Culture, Volume 3, ed. Peter Schäfer and Catherine Hezser, TSAJ 93 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002), 374. Magness also interprets the images of zodiac cycles and Helios on some Palestinian synagogue floor mosaics—images she claims are closely associated with the concepts of temple and priesthood—within this same process of competitive interpretation and identity formation; that is, they reflect Jewish claims to the temple, over against Christian ones.

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3. The Institutional Aspect: Synagogue Leadership Before and After 70 What did the fall of Jerusalem mean for leadership roles within Palestinian synagogues? In his fine history of scholarship on the nature of Judaism before and after 70, Daniel Schwartz notes that one approach has been to see the events of 70 CE as marking the emergence of a synagogue that was led and ordered by the rabbis—formerly the Pharisees—who, in the absence of temple and priesthood, took charge of the Jewish community’s central institution, and thus rose to power relatively quickly.42 This approach, however, has undergone severe scrutiny in the last decade or two and has been largely abandoned in light of the lack of historical evidence for any wide-scale influence of rabbis, particularly in synagogues, before the third century at the very earliest.43 In our view, a better and more historically viable direction concerning synagogue leadership is two-pronged. First, it should be noted that there was a variety of leaders and officials within public synagogues in the pre-70 period. Although it is often very difficult to tease out the specifics of each title and role, we have a range of sources that attest to a number of formal synagogue functionaries. Unsurprisingly, none of them refer to rabbis or their supposed historical predecessors, the Pharisees.44 The most-often mentioned functionary in synagogues from pre-70 Palestine, and probably the one with the most authority, is the ἀρχισυνάγωγος / ‫ראש הכנסת‬, although figures such as the ἄρχων, the ἱρεύς, and others, are also well attested.45 To this pre-70 list, we 42 Daniel R. Schwartz, “Was 70 CE a Watershed in Jewish History?” in Was 70 CE a Watershed in Jewish History? On Jews and Judaism before and after the Destruction of the Second Temple, ed. Daniel R. Schwartz and Zeev Weiss, AJEC 78 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 13–14. 43 This critique has led some scholars to posit that synagogues simply did not exist as formal institutions before the second or third century CE, since before this time it lacked an ordered rabbinic leadership structure (e.g., Kee, “Transformation”; White, Social Origins, 61; Horsley, Galilee). This theory, though, is highly problematic, not least because (1) it assumes that rabbinic leadership is the essential criterion for defining a formal public synagogue institution, and (2) it seems to discard the evidence we do, in fact, have for synagogue leadership in the pre-70 period; we shall return to this. 44 This point accords well with Levine’s strong statement (followed by a number of scholars), that: “the Pharisees had little or nothing to do with the early synagogue, and there is not one shred of evidence pointing to a connection between the two. No references associate the early Pharisees (the ‘Pairs’ and others) with the synagogue, nor is there anything in early synagogue liturgy that is particularly Pharisaic” (Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 41). 45 There is an abundance of research available on the role and status of the archisynagogos. The most helpful presentations of the data are Tessa Rajak and David Noy, “Archisynagogoi: Office, Title and Social Status in the Greco-Jewish Synagogue,” JRS 83 (1993): 75–93; Binder, Temple Courts, 348–52; and Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 415–27. See also Binder, Temple Courts, 344, for a helpful chart of nine terms used in reference to synagogue leaders and their location

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should add the ‫חזן‬, the “attendant,” whose position seems to be equivalent to the νεωκόρος of Hellenistic temples (CPJ 1:129), or the Greek designation ὑπηρέτης, which is mentioned in relation to the Nazareth synagogue in Luke 4:20.46 Second, there is no evidence that suggests that the nature of synagogue leadership in Palestine changed immediately or even very soon after 70. For example, the ἀρχισυνάγωγος / ‫ ראש הכנסת‬and the ‫ חזן‬retain their multifaceted social and religious character in second and early third century sources,47 and an increasing number of scholars today suggest that priests as well maintained a level of influence in synagogues well into the Byzantine period.48 The picture we get, then, of synagogue leadership before and after the destruction of the temple, at least until ca. 200 CE, is one of continuity, not change.

4. The Liturgical Aspect: Torah Rituals, Prayers, and Blessings Before and After 70 The most important synagogue ritual both before and after the fall of Jerusalem was the public reading of Torah, as most, if not, all scholars agree. What we have here is a strong case of continuity on what we may call the level of performance:49 that is, the ritual, in and of itself, of reading Torah was present before and after the fall of the temple, and we lack evidence of changes made to the ritual immediately after 70.

in the sources. However, one should note that while Binder does distinguish between (ordinary) synagogues (what we term “public” synagogues) from what he calls “sectarian synagogues,” he does not apply this distinction as he carries out his analysis, which, consequently, is based on evidence relating to both types of institution. Thus, our handling of the sources is slightly different. See also Levine, Ancient Synagogue, ch. 11. 46 The title ‫ חזן‬is, however, restricted to Mishnaic sources (Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 438–39; Runesson, Binder, and Olsson, The Ancient Synagogue, nos. 23–25, 86). We note here that, while the actual responsibilities inherent to each of these positions are and will probably continue to be debated by scholars, the important point to note is that, in the pre-70 period, each of these functionaries—including priests—held socio-political and religious roles within the Jewish community broadly and within the public synagogue specifically, thus reflecting the very nature of the institution itself. 47 E.g., m. Yoma 7:1; m. Soṭah 7:7–8; m. Mak. 3:12; t. Meg. 3:21; t. Ter. 2:13; b. Šabb. 29b (late third century). Justin Martyr (Dial. 137) also mentions ἀρχισυνάγωγοι, who he says teach Jews to scoff at Jesus after “the prayer” (Συμφάμενοι οὖν μὴ λοιδορῆτε ἐπὶ τὸν Υἱὸν τοῦ Θεοῦ, μηδὲ Φαρισαίοις πειθόμενοι διδασκάλοις, τὸν βασιλέα τοῦ Ἰσραὴλ ἐπισκώψητέ ποτε· ὁποῖα διδάσκουσιν οἱ ἀρχισυνάγωγοι ὑμῶν μετὰ τὴν προσευχήν). However, this text very well may not be representative of the situation in Palestine in the second century. 48 See Schwartz, “Was 70 CE a Watershed,” 13–14 and 14 n. 50. 49 On suggested different levels and other aspects of ritual analysis as related to synagogues, see Runesson, Origins, 42–55.

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If we switch analytical level, however, to what may be called the ideological level, and look at what Torah readings could be said to represent, we find that some rabbis eventually began interpreting readings about temple sacrifices as if these sacrifices were indeed performed. Such interpretations thus turned specific readings of Torah, if not into a replacement of, so at least a substitute for the temple cult.50 It is hardly possible, though, due to the chronological gap between these texts and 70 CE, to relate this hermeneutical development to the fall of the temple in terms of causality. If we turn to prayer rituals, this is a much-disputed issue with regard to their existence or not in public synagogues before 70 CE. The evidence is meager indeed, but it seems clear that some forms of prayers did occur in synagogues before the fall of the temple, although hardly in the fixed forms of later centuries.51 As in the case of Torah reading, prayers in synagogue settings eventually developed in new directions too, but the evidence, again, postdates the fall of the temple with centuries. This is true also on the level of ideology, as prayer also, like Torah reading, came to be understood as related to the temple cult.52 In sum, we find continuity on the level of performance immediately before and after 70. On the level of ideology, we find development in terms of how reading and prayer rituals were understood, and we also find development on the level of performance of these rituals, as lectionaries were produced and prayer became fixed in Late Antiquity. None of these developments, however, can be directly tied to the destruction of Jerusalem. It is a completely different matter that the fall of the temple eventually was used as a reference point when synagogue rituals were reinterpreted and developed centuries later.53 50 On substitution versus replacement, see Steven Fine, “Did the Synagogue Replace the Temple?” BAR 12 (1996): 41. 51 While we do not have sources that speak of prayers in synagogues on sabbaths, Josephus mentions, in passing, prayers taking place during a public fast performed in the proseuchē of Tiberias (Vita 294–95). The Gospel of Matthew, on the other hand, mentions individual prayers performed in synagogues, representing public space, but does not specify the day(s) on which such praying took place (6:5). Noting that Neh 8, the earliest description we have of a Torah reading ritual in a public space outside the Jerusalem temple, speaks of blessings in relation to the reading of Torah, it is possible that such blessings could have embedded later Torah-reading rituals in synagogues too. If so, since we know that Torah-reading rituals took place on sabbaths in synagogues in the first century (Philo is our earliest witness), this would mean that such prayers / blessings could have constituted the earliest form of prayers in synagogue sabbath contexts. For the development of daily prayer rituals, see most recently Jeremy Penner, Patterns of Daily Prayer in Second Temple Period Judaism, STDJ 104 (Leiden: Brill, 2012). Cf. discussion in Binder, Temple Courts, 404–15. 52 Cf. Runesson, Origins, 348–49. On the offering of prayers in synagogues likened with the offering of sacrifices in the temple, see, e.g., y. Ber. 5:1, 9a. 53 Esther Chazon, “Liturgy Before and After the Temple’s Destruction: Change or Continuity?” in Was 70 CE a Watershed in Jewish History? On Jews and Judaism before and after the Destruction of the Second Temple, ed. Daniel R. Schwartz and Zeev Weiss, AJEC 78 (Leiden: Brill,

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5. The Non-Liturgical Aspect: The Political and Judicial Function of Public Synagogues Before and After 70 As argued first by Leopold Löw in 1884, a theory developed significantly by Lee Levine and Donald Binder, the forerunner of what we have called the public / civic synagogue here originated in the Iron Age city gates as a local institution administrating cities and towns.54 This more administrative aspect of the institution included activities such as the keeping of archives and providing a setting for court proceedings.55 In the interest of space, we shall be brief here and focus only on the major implications for synagogue development inherent to this theory of synagogue origins, to which we also subscribe. That is, this type of institution is conceivable only in a socio-political context in which Jews are in control of local administration. This means that when self-rule is lost, so is the public / civic synagogue institution. The question is, whether the events in 70 CE provide us with a turning point in such political developments, with direct implications for towns and cities in the land. The short answer is a simple “no.” While it is interesting to note that the archaeological record is reduced to a few possible synagogues in the second century, we know that with few exceptions Jewish towns and cities continued to be run by Jews for centuries, not least in the Galilee.56 We also know from literary sources that activities such as judicial proceedings involving synagogue settings and officials were in place both before and after 70 CE.57

2012), 371–92, is also helpful here. She argues that the liturgy of the synagogue pre-70 already included Torah reading and prayer; the rabbinic systematization develops slowly and over the course of centuries. Thus, 70 did not immediately generate the phenomenon of communal prayer, and it did not impact the way these rituals were performed, even though there may have been an impact on the way they were (re)interpreted later on. 54 When eventually we see the introduction of public Torah-reading rituals in these city gates in the Persian period, we find the first traces of what later becomes what we call public synagogues, the latter housing both such reading rituals, unique in the ancient world, and this type of administrative activities. For full discussion, see Runesson, Origins, 237–400. 55 From the diaspora, evidence speaks of synagogues functioning as treasuries, and as places for the manumission of slaves (see the relevant entries in Runesson, Binder, and Olsson, The Ancient Synagogue). While we do not have direct evidence for the public synagogues in the land, it is not impossible that similar activities were carried out there too. 56 For a case study of such developments as unfolding in one place (Capernaum), see Runesson, “Architecture, Conflict, and Identity Formation.” 57 For political and judicial activities taking place in synagogues before 70 CE, see, e.g., Josephus, Vita 276–281; Mark 13:9 (Matt 10:17; Luke 21:12). For texts post-dating the first century, see m. Mak. 3:12. For judicial proceedings in the forerunner of the synagogue, the city gates, see, e.g., Amos 5:10–15; Zech 8:16; Ruth 4:1–2; Isa 29:21.

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The colonization of the land of Israel was a slow process, continuing into the Islamic period.58 Eventually, though, local Jewish administration, carried out in these public synagogue institutions, was replaced by other institutions. Interestingly, during this same time period when the civic assembly synagogues were marginalized politically, the institution morphs into what we would call more properly a “religious” institution. Key in this development is the institutional form of the Jewish associations, which existed long before 70 CE, on the one hand, and the rise of one Jewish group, the rabbis, a group that came to define what Judaism ought to be, on the other hand. This form of Judaism provided institutional, ritual, and halakhic tools for Jewish communities, independent of self-rule, just as diaspora Judaism had long since designed such institutions in lands not their own. In sum, the fall of Jerusalem had little impact even with regard to political and judicial aspects of the public synagogues. The changes that eventually did occur extended over centuries, and were caused most directly by the loss of self-rule. In this process, the memory of (the destruction of) the temple continued to be a powerful hermeneutical tool as the institution reinvented itself, but, again, we lack evidence of direct historical causality between the fall of Jerusalem and these developments.

6. Conclusion What can we say about the public / civic institutions we call “synagogues” and how they developed beyond 70 CE? If we take as point of departure the last aspect of the institution discussed above, involving local administration and loss of land, and merge those conclusions with the other three investigations (into space / art, leadership, and liturgy), we find that these processes roughly coincide chronologically. This leads us to believe that the mechanism of change was intertwined not only with a “religious” culture of competition between Jews and Christians, but also, and importantly, with political processes which eventually led to loss of local self-government, which, in turn, stripped these synagogue institutions of their political functions. In this slowly developing situation, the Jewish associations, the institutional form of which originated well before 70 CE, provided the socio-institutional matrix needed for rabbinic Judaism to influence and eventually define what Jewish communal life should look like. The implication of all this is that the development of the synagogue into the institution we know today had, strictly speaking, little to do with the Jewish civic 58 For the transition into the Islamic period, see most recently Gideon Avni, The Byzantine– Islamic Transition in Palestine: An Archaeological Approach (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).

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institutions of the first century, and the impact of the fall of Jerusalem in the series of events that led to its formation was minimal and indirect at most. The development of the synagogue as we find it in the medieval and modern periods, is then, explained primarily with reference to the rise of the rabbis in Late Antiquity, a process which in turn is historically intertwined with the rise of politically empowered non-Jewish Christianity and the church, and, later, the transition into the Islamic period. In terms of chronology and causality, all of these processes were, then, as we have tried to show here, far removed from the catastrophe of 70 CE.

Cited Sources Avni, Gideon. The Byzantine–Islamic Transition in Palestine: An Archaeological Approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Binder, Donald D. Into the Temple Courts: The Place of the Synagogues in the Second Temple Period. SBLDS 169. Atlanta: SBL Press, 1999. Binder, Donald D. “The Mystery of the Magdala Stone.” Pages 17–48 in A City Set on a Hill: Essays in Honor of James F. Strange. Edited by Daniel A. Warner and Donald D. Binder. Mountain Home, AR: BorderStone Press, 2014. Chazon, Esther G. “Liturgy Before and After the Temple’s Destruction: Change or Continuity?” Pages 371–92 in Was 70 CE a Watershed in Jewish History? On Jews and Judaism before and after the Destruction of the Second Temple. Edited by Daniel R. Schwartz and Zeev Weiss. AJEC 78. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Dothan, Moshe. Hammath Tiberias, Vol. 1: Early Synagogues and the Hellenistic and Roman Remains. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1983. Edwards, Douglas R. “Khirbet Qana: From Jewish Village to Christian Pilgrim Site.” Pages 101– 32 in The Roman and Byzantine Near East. Vol. 3: Late-Antique Petra, Nile Festival Building at Sepphoris, Deir Qal‘a Monastery, Khirbet Qana Village and Pilgram Site, ‘Ain-‘Arrub Hiding Complex. Edited by John H. Humphrey. JRASup 49. Portsmouth, RI: JRA, 2002. Fine, Steven. “Did the Synagogue Replace the Temple?” BAR 12 (1996): 18–26, 41. Fine, Steven. “From Meeting House to Sacred Realm: Holiness and the Ancient Synagogue.” Pages 21–47 in Sacred Realm: The Emergence of the Synagogue in the Ancient World. Edited by Steven Fine. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Flesher, Paul V. M. “Palestinian Synagogues before 70 CE: A Review of the Evidence.” Pages 27–39 in vol. 1 of Ancient Synagogues: Historical Analysis and Archaeological Discovery. Edited by Dan Urman and Paul V. M. Flesher. StPB 47. Leiden: Brill, 1995. Hachlili, Rachel. Ancient Synagogues—Archaeology and Art: New Discoveries and Current Research. HdO 105. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Himmelfarb, Martha. “The Mother of the Messiah in the Talmud Yerushalmi and Sefer Zerubbabel.” Pages 369–90 in The Talmud Yerushalmi and Graeco-Roman Culture, Volume 3. Edited by Peter Schäfer and Catherine Hezser. TSAJ 93. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002. Horsley, Richard A. Galilee: History, Politics, People. Valley Forge, PA: Trinity International Press, 1995. Kee, Howard C. “The Transformation of the Synagogue after 70 CE: Its Import for Early Christianity.” NTS 36 (1990): 1–24. Kee, Howard C. “The Changing Meaning of Synagogue: A Response to Richard Oster.” NTS 40 (1994): 281–83.

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Krause, Andrew R. Synagogues in the Works of Flavius Josephus: Rhetoric, Spatiality, and First-Century Jewish Institutions. AJEC 97. Leiden: Brill, 2017. Leibner, Uzi. “Excavations at Khirbet Wadi Hamam (Lower Galilee): The Synagogue and the Settlement.” JRA 23 (2010): 220–37. Leibner, Uzi. Khirbet Wadi Ḥamam: A Roman-Period Village and Synagogue in the Lower Galilee. Qedem Reports 13. Jerusalem: Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University, 2018. Leibner, Uzi. “Khirbet Wadi Hamam in the Early and Middle Roman Periods.” Pages 343–61 in Galilee in the Late Second Temple and Mishnaic Periods, Vol. 2: The Archaeological Record from Cities, Towns, and Villages. Edited by David A. Fiensy and James Riley Strange. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015. Levine, Lee I. “The Ancient Synagogue: From Community Center to a ‘Lesser Sanctuary’.” NEAEHL 4: 1424. Levine, Lee I. The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years. 2nd ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005. Loffreda, Stanislao. Recovering Capharnaum. 2nd ed. Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing Press, 1993. Magen, Yitzhak, Yoav Tzionit, and Orna Sirkis. “Khirbet Badd ‘Isa—Qiryat Sefer.” Pages 179–241 in The Land of Benjamin. Edited by Yithzak Magen et al. Judea and Samaria Publications 3. Jerusalem: Staff Officer of Archaeology—Civil Administration of Judea and Samaria; IAA, 2004. Magness, Jodi. “Heaven on Earth: Helios and the Zodiac Cycle in Ancient Palestinian Synagogues.” DOP 59 (2005): 1–52. Magness, Jodi. “The Ancient Synagogue at Nabratein.” BASOR 358 (2010): 61–68. Matassa, Lidia. “Unravelling the Myth of the Synagogue on Delos.” BAIAS 25 (2007): 81–115. McCollough, C. Thomas. “Khirbet Qana.” Pages 127–45 in Galilee in the Late Second Temple and Mishnaic Periods, Vol. 2: The Archaeological Record from Cities, Towns, and Villages. Edited by David A. Fiensy and James Riley Strange. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015. Meyers, Eric M. “The Problem of the Scarcity of Synagogues from 70 to ca. 250 CE: The Case of Synagogue 1 at Nabratein.” Pages 435–48 in “Follow the Wise”: Studies in Jewish History and Culture in Honor of Lee I. Levine. Edited by Zeev Weiss et al. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2010. Meyers, Eric M., and Carol L. Meyers. Excavations at Ancient Nabratein: Synagogue and Environs. Meiron Excavation Project Report 6. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2009. Milson, David. Art and Architecture of the Synagogue in Late Antique Palestine: In the Shadow of the Church. AJEC 65. Leiden: Brill, 2006. Neusner, Jacob. The Mishnah: Religious Perspectives. HdO I.45. Leiden: Brill, 1999. Onn, Alexander, and Shlomit Weksler-Bdolah. “Horbat Umm el-‘Umdan—A Jewish Village with a Synagogue from the Second Temple Period at Modi’in.” Qadmoniot 130 (2005): 107–16 (Hebrew). Onn, Alexander, and Shlomit Weksler-Bdolah. “Umm el-‘Umdan, Khirbet (Modi’in).” NEAEHL 5 (2008): 2061–63. Penner, Jeremy. Patterns of Daily Prayer in Second Temple Period Judaism. STDJ 104. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Rajak, Tessa, and David Noy. “Archisynagogoi: Office, Title and Social Status in the Greco-Jewish Synagogue.” JRS 83 (1993): 75–93. Richardson, Peter. Building Jewish in the Roman East. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2004. Richardson, Peter. “Early Synagogues as Collegia.” Pages 90–109 in Voluntary Associations in the Graeco-Roman World. Edited by John S. Kloppenborg and Stephen G. Wilson. London: Routledge, 1996. Runesson, Anders. “Architecture, Conflict, and Identity Formation: Jews and Christians in Capernaum from the First to the Sixth Centuries.” Pages 231–57 in Religion, Ethnicity, and

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Identity in Ancient Galilee: A Region in Transition. Edited by Jürgen Zangenberg, Harold W. Attridge, and Dale B. Martin. WUNT 210. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007. Runesson, Anders. Divine Wrath and Salvation in Matthew. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2016. Runesson, Anders. “Synagogues without Rabbis or Christians? Ancient Institutions beyond Normative Discourses.” Journal of Belief and Values 38 (2017): 159–72. Runesson, Anders. The Origins of the Synagogue. CBNTS 37. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2001. Runesson, Anders. “The Synagogue at Ancient Ostia: The Building and its History from the First to Fifth Century.” Pages 29–99 in The Synagogue of Ancient Ostia and the Jews of Rome: Interdisciplinary Studies. Edited by Birger Olsson, Dieter Mitternacht, and Olof Brandt. Stockholm: Paul Åströms Förlag, 2001. Runesson, Anders, Donald D. Binder, and Birger Olsson. The Ancient Synagogue from its Origins to 200 CE: A Source Book. AJEC 72. Leiden: Brill, 2008. Rutgers, Leonard V. “The Synagogue as Foe in Early Christian Literature.” Pages 449–68 in “Follow the Wise”: Studies in Jewish History and Culture in Honor of Lee I. Levine. Edited by Zeev Weiss et al. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2010. Ryan, Jordan J. The Role of the Synagogue in the Aims of Jesus. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2017. Sanders, E. P. Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63 BCE–66 CE. Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1992. Schwartz, Daniel R. “Was 70 CE a Watershed in Jewish History?” Pages 1–19 in Was 70 CE a Watershed in Jewish History? On Jews and Judaism before and after the Destruction of the Second Temple. Edited by D. R. Schwartz and Z. Weiss. AJEC 78. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Spigel, Chad. “Debating Ancient Synagogue Dating: The Implications of Deteriorating Data.” BASOR 376 (2016): 83–100. Trümper, Monika. “The Oldest Original Synagogue Building in the Diaspora: The Delos Synagogue Reconsidered.” Hesperia 73 (2004): 53–98. Weksler-Bdolah, Shlomit. “Khirbat Umm el-‘Umdan.” Hadashot Arkheologiyot-Excavations and Surveys in Israel 126 (2014). http://www.hadashot-esi.org.il/Report_Detail_Eng.aspx? id=14718. White, L. Michael. The Social Origins of Christian Architecture, Vol. 1: Building God’s House in the Roman World: Architectural Adaptation among Pagans, Jews, and Christians. Harvard Theological Studies 42. Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1996.

Rick Bonnie

Hasmonean Memories and Hellenistic Building Traditions The Appearance and Disappearance of Synagogue Buildings in the Late Second Temple Period

The appearance of a distinct set of synagogue buildings and their early develo­pment from the first century BCE onward has received considerable scholarly attention for several decades now.1 This attention is, in part, a result of the archaeological discovery of several monumental buildings across Roman Palestine attributed to or just after the late Second Temple period (ca. 200 BCE–70 CE), such as at Masada, at Gamla, and more recently at Magdala. The appearance of these structures during the first century BCE and first century CE is, however, followed by a relatively long period during the second and third centuries CE for which evidence for such communal structures is virtually lacking. The presence of such a “break” in terms of the evidence of synagogues and the reasons behind it are not well understood and have resulted in various theories in recent scholarship. Developing from this debate, this article puts forward an alternative proposal for the particular trajectory of the monumental synagogue in the first centuries CE, including their virtual disappearance after the two Jewish revolts. This proposal is based on an examination of the particular location and chronology of the half a dozen or so known synagogue buildings from and just after the late Second Temple period. More specifically, I suggest that it is a lingering Hasmonean sociocultural influence among some Jewish communities in Palestine that effected the appearance 1 This article is developed from parts of my PhD dissertation at the KU Leuven—University of Leuven. Research for this article was made possible thanks to the Research Foundation—Flanders (FWO), the Centre of Excellence in Changes in Sacred Texts and Traditions at the University of Helsinki, and the Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation. For overview works see, e.g., Donald D. Binder, Into the Temple Courts: The Place of the Synagogues in the Second Temple Period, SBLDS 169 (Atlanta: Scholars, 1999); Anders Runesson, The Origins of the Synagogue. A Socio-Historical Study, CBNTS 37 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2001); Lee I. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005); Birger Olsson and Magnus Zetterholm, ed., The Ancient Synagogue. From Its Origins until 200 C. E.: Papers Presented at an International Conference at Lund University, October 14–17, 2001, CBNTS 39 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2003); Anders Runesson, Donald D. Binder, and Birger Olsson, The Ancient Synagogue from Its Origins to 200 C. E.: A Source Book, AJEC 72 (Leiden: Brill, 2008).

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of monumental synagogue buildings, while it is its diminishing significance after the two destructive revolts that eventually caused the virtual disappearance of such similar-styled structures in the period that followed. It should be stressed, however, that I do not suggest that any of the Hasmonean kings was directly involved in introducing monumental synagogue buildings into Palestine during the late Second Temple period. Instead, what I argue is that the introduction of such monumental synagogues into certain Jewish communities was probably stimulated by a local elite class that for sociopolitical reasons conformed to Hasmonean cultural traditions. This ultimately, as monumental synagogues eventually virtually disappeared, leads me to bring up “house synagogues” as a potential alternative to the survival of the synagogue as an institution during the second and third centuries.

1. The Scarcity of Synagogues from the Two Jewish Revolts up to the Mid-Third Century When reviewing the chronological distribution of excavated and surveyed synagogue buildings in Roman–Byzantine Palestine, it soon becomes apparent that the majority of these monumental buildings were constructed in the region from the mid-third to sixth centuries CE.2 However, ever since the first excavation of an early synagogue3 by Yigael Yadin at Masada in the 1960s,4 we have also had monumental synagogue buildings stemming from the period before the two Jewish revolts. The half a dozen or so discovered synagogue buildings that have been exposed to date are mainly attributed to the late first century BCE and first century CE, though it has been suggested, as will be discussed below, that some of these might have been in operation up to the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–135 CE). Between the abandonment and eventual destruction of these earlier, so-called late Second Temple synagogues and the appearance of their late antique counterparts, which show a different architectural layout and features, lies a period 2 See, e.g., Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 177. Levine provides the number of 100 known synagogues in total in the region; others have provided estimates of up to 180 synagogues. These numbers do include the handful of examples from the late Second Temple period. For a discussion of the number of excavated and surveyed synagogues, see also the article by Ben David in this volume. 3 By “early” I mean those synagogue buildings that were erected in the first century BCE and first century CE. 4 Yigael Yadin, Masada: Herod’s Fortress and the Zealots’ Last Stand (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1966), 180–91; Ehud Netzer, Masada III. The Yigael Yadin Excavations 1963–1965: Final Reports—The Buildings: Stratigraphy and Architecture (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1991), 402–13.

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of about 100 to 200 years—depending on how one counts5—with a remarkable scarcity of archaeological evidence for synagogue structures. To my knowledge, the first to have recognized this so-called “period of scarcity” was Yoram Tsafrir, who discussed it in a 1981 article: For the time being, no remains from a synagogue built [in the] second century have been found. Of all the synagogues investigated recently, there is not a single one whose excavators place its construction earlier than the third century—usually in the second half or near the end of the century. Where, then did the Galilean Sages of the Mishnah, of the generation of Usha and their heirs, and Rabbi Judah the Prince, pray? While one may still expect to discover synagogue structures from the second century, we cannot ignore the quantity of accumulated findings we already have in favour of what might yet be discovered in the future.6

Tsafrir’s observation received little attention at the time, and the debate was picked up mainly after Lee Levine’s more extensive discussion in his lengthy overview work on the ancient synagogue.7 Some scholars reacted to Levine’s discussion by contesting the idea that communal synagogue buildings were absent during this period by pointing to traces of evidence at some sites that would suggest otherwise. The one synagogue that arguably gathered most interest is that of Nabratein, located in eastern Upper Galilee (Fig. 1), of which the construction of 5 Lee Levine and Eric Meyers define this period from 70 to ca. 250 CE, a period of about 180 years. See Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 182–87; Eric M. Meyers, “The Problem of the Scarcity of Synagogues from 70 to ca. 250 C. E.: The Case of Synagogue 1 at Nabratein (2nd–3rd Century C. E.),” in “Follow the Wise”: Studies in Jewish History and Culture in Honor of Lee I. Levine, ed. Zeev Weiss et al. (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2010), 435–48. Their definition does not take into consideration the possible extension of usage of some of the early synagogues up to the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–135 CE), such as Khirbet Umm el-‘Umdan, Qiryat Sepher, and perhaps Magdala. Moreover, the end limit of the period—the mid-third century—remains rather flexible. For Khirbet Umm el-‘Umdan, see Alexander Onn et al., “Khirbet Umm El-‘Umdan,” Hadashot Arkheologiyot-Excavations and Surveys in Israel 114 (2002): 64*–68* (English), 74–78 (Hebrew); Alexander Onn and Shlomit Weksler-Bdolah, “Umm El-‘Umdan, Khirbet (Modi‘in),” NEAEHL 5 (2008): 2061–63. For Qiryat Sepher, see Yitzhak Magen, Yoav Tzionit, and Orna Sirkis, “Khirbet Badd ῾Isa—Qiryat Sefer,” in The Land of Benjamin, ed. Yitzhak Magen et al., Judea and Samaria Publications 3 (Jerusalem: Staff Officer of Archaeology—Civil Administration of Judea and Samaria; IAA, 2004), 200–6. For Magdala, see Richard Bauckham and Stefano De Luca, “Magdala As We Now Know It,” Early Christianity 6 (2015): 106–9. 6 Yoram Tsafrir, “On the Source of the Architectural Design of the Ancient Synagogues in the Galilee: A New Appraisal,” in Ancient Synagogues: Historical Analysis and Archaeological Discovery, ed. Dan Urman and Paul V. M. Flesher, StPB 47 (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 1:79. The article was originally published in Hebrew, and only appeared in English in 1995. 7 See Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 182–87. For subsequent discussion of this issue see Meyers, “Problem”; Eric M. Meyers and Mark A. Chancey, Alexander to Constantine. Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, Vol. 3, Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 217–24.

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the first building phase was dated by the excavators to the mid-second century CE.8 However, in her review of its final excavation report, Jodi Magness has argued that the excavators appear to force the sealed numismatic and ceramic evidence into what appears to be a too tight chronological framework.9 Among other issues in terms of the dating of Nabratein’s first building phase, this is most notably clear in the excavators’ insistence on ascribing sealed deposits to a “middle Roman” terminus post quem (meaning 135–250 CE) despite the fact that these deposits contained pottery types known to have a considerably longer chronological range, sometimes up to the fourth century.10 Other potential synagogues that may have been built and in use during this period are few, to say the least. The putative synagogue building from Khirbet Qana, in central Lower Galilee (Fig. 1), is the only strong example. This building consisted of a large north–south oriented, three-aisled hall with plastered benches running along its west, east, and north wall. A smaller room, possibly used as storage space or a bet midrash, was attached to the northeastern corner of the hall. According to the excavators, based on ceramic evidence and radiocarbon dates, this building was first erected in the late first or early second century and functioned (with alterations) up to the Byzantine period.11 8 Eric M. Meyers and Carol L. Meyers, Excavations at Ancient Nabratein: Synagogue and Environs, Meiron Excavation Project Report 6 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2009), 30, 35–40, 397; Meyers, “Problem,” 447. 9 Jodi Magness, “The Ancient Synagogue at Nabratein,” BASOR 358 (2010): 61–68. Note also the excavators’ response: Eric M. Meyers and Carol L. Meyers, “Response to Jodi Magness’s Review of the Final Publication of Nabratein,” BASOR 359 (2010): 67–76. See also Rick Bonnie, Being Jewish in Galilee, 100–200 CE: An archaeological study, Studies in Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology 11 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019), 178–81. In a recent article, Chad Spigel has reviewed the process of determining construction dates based on final excavation reports for two other synagogues that were excavated by Eric and Carol Meyers, Khirbet Shema‘ and Gush Halav, and for which Magness has provided alternative datings. Spigel concluded for the Khirbet Shema‘ and Gush Halav synagogues that a major cause for the disparity between Magness and the excavators in terms of dating lies in the use of and access to unpublished excavation records, and hints that a similar cause may explain the dating disagreement of the Nabratein synagogue. Overall, Spigel suggests that a study of the unpublished excavation records would likely support the original conclusions by the excavators. See Chad Spigel, “Debating Ancient Synagogue Dating: The Implications of Deteriorating Data,” BASOR 376 (2016): 83–100. See also the article by Runesson and Cirafesi and that of Magness in this volume. However, neither the excavators nor Spigel address Magness’s main critique related to the issue of dating in the case of the Nabratein synagogue, that is, the excavators’ decision to not date sealed stratigraphic deposits by the latest datable finds. 10 Cf. Meyers and Meyers, Excavations at Ancient Nabratein, 133 and 444. 11 Unfortunately, no detailed description and plan have been published yet for this structure. For brief descriptions, see Douglas R. Edwards, “Khirbet Qana: From Jewish Village to Christian Pilgrim Site,” in The Roman and Byzantine Near East. Vol. 3: Late-Antique Petra, Nile Festival Building at Sepphoris, Deir Qal‘a Monastery, Khirbet Qana Village and Pilgrim Site, ‘Ain-‘Arrub Hiding Complex, ed. John H. Humphrey, JRASup 49 (Portsmouth, RI: JRA, 2002), 111–14; C. Thomas McCollough, “Khirbet Qana,” in Galilee in the Late Second Temple and Mishnaic Periods, Vol. 2: The Archaeological Record from Cities, Towns, and Villages, ed. David A. Fiensy and James

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Fig. 1: Map of Roman Palestine (map by author).

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Yet, even if these examples are in fact considered as “missing links” of second-century synagogues, and even if scholars disagree with Magness’s critique on the dating of the first building phase of the Nabratein synagogue,12 then this period still requires an explanation. The sheer number of known synagogues for the period from the mid-third century onward and the handful of monumental structures from the first century CE, all disappearing in either of the two revolts, must bear some significance to the virtual lack of evidence for the period in between. If not completely absent, then at least a steep decline in construction and use of communal synagogues is evident in the archaeological record. Various scholars have provided theories that could explain the virtual absence of archaeological evidence for synagogues in this period.13 The one that has received most attention is that the lack of synagogues is a result of the poor state of preservation of second- and third-century synagogue building remains in the archaeological record, which is considered to be a consequence of later building activities. In other words, later-constructed buildings have obscured and / or reused earlier building remains that supposedly derived from earlier synagogue buildings whereby the latter have become no longer identifiable in the archaeological record.14 The problem with this theory, however, is that this is essentially an argument from silence.15 Moreover, the suggested analogies of the obliteration of earlier phases of occupation by Herodian construction in Jerusalem, or by Byzantine period construction in the case of Caesarea in order to support this theory are problematic.16 At both sites there is sufficient earlier evidence retrieved during excavations to describe in considerable detail the size and nature of these cities.17 Riley Strange (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015), 141–42. See also the article by Tom McCollough in this volume. For a discussion of the radiocarbon dates, see Jason A. Rech et al., “Direct Dating of Plaster and Mortar Using AMS Radiocarbon: A Pilot Project from Khirbet Qana, Israel,” Antiquity 295 (2003): 155–64. 12 See, e.g., Spigel, “Debating Ancient Synagogue Dating,” 85. For continuing discussion, see also the article by Cirafesi and Runesson and that of Magness in this volume. 13 See most notably the survey of theories in Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 184–86. 14 For this suggestion, see Meyers and Chancey, Alexander to Constantine, 222–24; Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 186; Meyers, “Problem,” 436. See also the article by Ben David in this volume. 15 To support his argument, Levine brought up two examples of candidate synagogues, Capernaum and Nabratein. Curiously, Levine himself dismissed both examples as potential pre-mid-third-century CE synagogues elsewhere in the book. Cf. Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 71, 183 n. 27. Steven Werlin has shown that in the case of the synagogues in southern Palestine there is also no evidence for predecessors beneath the fourth-century building phases. See Steven H. Werlin, Ancient Synagogues of Southern Palestine, 300–800 C. E.: Living on the Edge, BRLA 47 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 291–92. 16 Caesarea: Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 186. Jerusalem: Meyers, “Problem,” 436; Meyers and Chancey, Alexander to Constantine, 222–23. 17 For the evidence of pre-Byzantine Caesarea, see Joseph Patrich, Studies in the Archaeology and History of Caesarea Maritima: Caput Judaeae, Metropolis Palaestinae, AJEC 77 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 5–39. For the evidence of Second Temple Jerusalem, see Lee I. Levine, Jerusalem: Portrait

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Moreover, to raise another issue with these analogies, the relatively poor preservation of earlier structures in the archaeological record in the case of pre-Herodian Jerusalem and pre-Byzantine Caesarea affects all earlier periods. On the other hand, in the case of the synagogues, the theory does not explain why only synagogue buildings dating to the second and third centuries would have been obliterated and not those that were constructed before this period, i. e., during the first century BCE and first century CE. Furthermore, why would later building activity have obliterated only synagogue buildings from this particular period and not other contemporaneous buildings like theaters, bathhouses, and domestic dwellings? Contrary to what appears to be suggested here, the obliteration of earlier archaeological remains by later construction simply does not happen selectively. But if the poor state of preservation cannot fully explain the particular diachronic distribution of synagogues, what then is the reason for their virtual absence for a long period during the second and third centuries? Tsafrir has suggested, as an alternative theory, that during this period synagogues transformed from stand-alone monumental structures to institutions that were “located in houses with the plan and façade of private homes,” much like the early-Christian domus ecclesiae, i. e., house churches.18 However, without giving any sociohistorical support for why Jewish communities all of a sudden stopped building monumental synagogues, turned to “house synagogues,” and then later renewed the construction of such monumental structures, this theory remains insufficient. Moreover, the suggested sudden change to house synagogues appears extremely rigid, especially when we consider some of the recent evidence for stand-alone monumental synagogues that seemingly were in use during this period, such as the one at Khirbet Qana. This brings us to the last proposed theory, which is that the chaos and destruction of the two Jewish revolts contributed to the discontinuation of the early synagogues.19 This explains the destruction of the earlier archaeologically attested ones, and fits with some (though admittedly late) textual evidence on the conversion of earlier synagogues in Caesarea and Daphne to, respectively, an odeum and a theater.20 Actual support for this claim, however, remains slight. As Levine himself acknowledged, there is no indication whatsoever of a decree of some sort to close or dismantle all synagogues. Moreover, the chaos surrounding the revolts does not sufficiently explain the virtual lack of construction of new ones in the period following these two revolts. One would expect, at least, that within a reasonable timeframe after the revolts similar-styled buildings would have appeared again. of the City in the Second Temple Period (538 B. C.E.–70 C. E.) (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2002), 3–148. 18 Tsafrir, “On the Source of the Architectural Design,” 79. 19 Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 184–85. 20 John Malalas, Chron. 261.

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2. A Particular Pattern of Early Synagogues? To seek an explanation for the virtual disappearance of synagogues and discontinuation of synagogue construction during much of the second and third centuries, it also seems worthwhile to focus on the particularities of the early synagogue and especially the questions of why the earlier synagogues in Palestine were actually constructed as stand-alone monumental buildings in the first place (Fig. 1) and why they eventually were abandoned and went out of use. As congregations or communities theoretically could have simply gathered in houses or open spaces,21 why did certain communities make the choice of constructing larger stand-alone structures with columns and benches, resembling to a considerable degree the bouleuteria of the Hellenistic world?22 This question has largely been neglected by scholars studying the development of early synagogues, who often simply understood it as the adoption of a Hellenistic building tradition;23 yet I believe it may be a crucial one. One way to answer this question is to look at the particular spatial distribution of the documented synagogue buildings in more detail. Why were the early synagogue buildings constructed in precisely those settlements where they have been found? What kind of settlements were they? And is there any possible relationship between those settlements to be made? The spatial patterning of synagogue buildings in the first century CE has usually been ignored. One reason for this might be related to a general idea among scholars that, although not yet all exposed through archaeology, such structures probably were ubiquitous within the region. As Levine wrote: All first-century synagogues were clearly communal buildings, constructed (or restored) as separate edifices with columns as well as benches on three or four sides,

21 Note, for instance, Runesson’s comment on the modern “synagogue” of Lund, Sweden, which is situated in an apartment building. See Runesson, Origins, 350–70, esp. 362. 22 On the association with Hellenistic bouleuteria, see originally Yigael Yadin, “The Excavation of Masada—1963/64. Preliminary Report,” IEJ 15 (1965): 78–79. For other theories, see Binder, Temple Courts, 220–23. See also Rick Bonnie, “Monumentality and Space: Experiencing Synagogue Buildings in Late Second Temple Palestine,” in Scriptures in the Making: Texts and Their Transmission in Late Second Temple Judaism, ed. Raimo Hakola, Jessi Orpana, and Paavo Huotari, CBET (Leuven: Peeters, forthcoming). 23 For example, Levine views the construction of distinct monumental buildings as having no particular significance for the functioning and meaning of the synagogue. Instead, in his hypothesis of the synagogue as originating from the Iron Age city gate, this occurrence is merely considered an influence of Hellenistic building traditions. See esp. Lee I. Levine, “The Nature and Origin of the Palestinian Synagogue Reconsidered,” JBL 115 (1996): 436–38. See also Runesson, Origins, 362, where it is noted that “local building designs were used and adapted to the needs of the Jewish communities…. [T]he type of public architecture [used for a synagogue] is secondary to the activities and rituals performed in the building.”

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as found at Gamla, Masada, Herodium, Qiryat Sefer, and Modi῾in [i. e., Khirbet Umm el-‘Umdan].24

To his examples, we can add the famous Theodotos inscription from Jerusalem, the recently found synagogue at Magdala, and possibly the structure at Horvat ‘Ethri in the Judean foothills.25 But the claim that all synagogues from the first century would have been stand-alone monumental synagogues is speculative at best. Moreover, after decades of intensive excavations and surveys throughout the region, it is striking to see that structures similar to those just mentioned are not being exposed more frequently, especially taking into consideration the rather monumental character of these buildings. To my knowledge, only Seth Schwartz has made a suggestion regarding their particular distribution, namely that such buildings were located mainly in cities and fortresses.26 This idea, however, can be easily disproven today by pointing to some of the more recently found structures—not known at the time of Schwartz’s writing—such as Qiryat Sepher or Khirbet Umm el-‘Umdan. Nor can their particular distribution be explained from a geographical perspective since these early synagogue structures have been discovered in such varied regions as the Golan, Judea, Galilee, and near the western coastal plains. When placing the most securely identified synagogue remains in chronological order of construction and looking at the spatial distribution, however, we can observe that the earliest-dated synagogues are in Khirbet Umm el-῾Umdan (second half of the first century BCE), Qiryat Sepher (late first century BCE to 24 Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 185. 25 On the Theodotos inscription, see John S. Kloppenborg Verbin, “Dating Theodotos (CIJ II 1404),” JJS 51 (2000): 243–80. For the synagogue at Magdala, see the preliminary reports of Dina Avshalom-Gorni and Arfan Najar, “Migdal,” Hadashot Arkheologiyot-Excavations and Surveys in Israel 125 (2013): http://www.hadashot-esi.org.il/report_detail_eng.aspx?id=2304; Bauckham and De Luca, “Magdala”; Stefano De Luca and Anna Lena, “Magdala / Taricheae,” in Galilee in the Late Second Temple and Mishnaic Periods, Vol. 2: The Archaeological Record from Cities, Towns, and Villages, ed. David A. Fiensy and James Riley Strange (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015), 280–342; Mordechai Aviam, “The Synagogue,” in Magdala of Galilee: A Jewish City in the Hellenistic and Roman Period, ed. Richard Bauckham (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2018), 127–33. For a detailed description of the public structure at Horvat ‘Ethri, see Boaz Zissu and Amir Ganor, “Horvat ‘Ethri—A Jewish Village from the Second Temple Period and the Bar Kokhba Revolt in the Judean Foothills,” JJS 40 (2009): 90–136. The excavators have suggested that this public structure may have functioned as a synagogue, but this identification remains contested among scholars. For a different opinion, see, e.g., Ben David, this volume. On the remains of a possible late Second Temple synagogue at Khirbet Wadi Ḥamam beneath a third-century example, see Uzi Leibner, Khirbet Wadi Ḥ amam: A Roman Period Village and Synagogue in the Lower Galilee, Qedem Reports 13 (Jerusalem: Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2018). 26 Seth Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 B. C.E. to 640 C. E. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 58 n. 24, 225.

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early first century CE), Gamla (early first century CE), Jerusalem (early first century CE), and Magdala (early to mid-first century CE), after which come the two fortresses used by the Jewish rebels, Masada and Herodium.27 One may ask, what do these settlements have in common that might explain the construction of these buildings precisely there? One thing that most of these settlements appear to have in common is a demonstrable Hasmonean sociocultural influence of some sort. The region of ancient Modi῾in, geographically situated roughly between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, was the ancestral home of the Hasmonean dynasty, as it was here that the local priest Mattathias initiated the Maccabean revolt against the Seleucids in the 160s BCE.28 And in 143 BCE, after the death of his brother Jonathan, Simon, the last living of Mattathias’s five sons, built a large burial monument, the first of its kind in the region, over an existing Hasmonean family tomb.29 The precise location of the ancient town of Modi῾in itself is still much disputed. As Boaz Zissu and Lior Perry have discussed in a recent article, over the last century and a half various locations in and around modern Modi῾in have been considered as the location of this ancient town, including most notably the sites of Khirbet Umm el-‘Umdan and Khirbet el-Hummam / Khirbet Midieh.30 Whether Khirbet Umm el-‘Umdan should be identified as the historical Modi῾in or as a neighboring village is not so important,31 as excavations have shown that by the late second and first centuries BCE this village underwent considerable development while under Hasmonean political control.32 The early Hasmonean sociocultural influence in the region 27 Khirbet Umm el-‘Umdan (Modi‘in): Onn and Weksler-Bdolah, “Umm El-‘Umdan, Khirbet (Modi‘in),” 2062. Qiryat Sepher: Magen, Tzionit, and Sirkis, “Khirbet Badd ῾Isa—Qiryat Sefer,” 205. Gamla: Zvi Yavor, “The Architecture and Stratigraphy of the Eastern and Western Quarters,” in Gamla II: The Architecture: The Shmarya Gutmann Excavations, 1976–1989, ed. Danny Syon and Zvi Yavor, IAA Reports 44 (Jerusalem: IAA, 2010), 60–61. Jerusalem (Theodotos inscription): Kloppenborg Verbin, “Dating Theodotos.” Magdala: De Luca and Lena, “Magdala / Taricheae.” 28 1 Macc 2:1. Seth Schwartz has argued that Modi῾in was in fact the home of the Maccabees rather than that they moved there from Jerusalem. See Seth Schwartz, “A Note on the Social Type and Political Ideology of the Hasmonean Family,” JBL 112 (1993): 305–17. For recent studies on the Hasmoneans, see Eyal Regev, The Hasmoneans: Ideology, Archaeology, Identity, JAJSup 10 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013); Katell Berthelot, In Search of the Promised Land? The Hasmonean Dynasty Between Biblical Models and Hellenistic Diplomacy, JAJSup 24 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2018). 29 1 Macc 13:27–29; Josephus, A. J. 13.211–13. On Modi‘in’s burial monument, see Andrea M. Berlin, “Power and Its Afterlife: Tombs in Hellenistic Palestine,” NEA 65 (2002): 143–44. 30 See Boaz Zissu and Lior Perry, “Hasmonean Modi῾in and Byzantine Moditha: A Topographical-Historical and Archaeological Assessment,” PEQ 147 (2015): 316–37. 31 Zissu and Perry, “Hasmonean Modi‘in,” 327–34. Zissu and Perry argue for the identification of Khirbet Hummam / Khirbet Midieh as Hasmonean Modi῾in, which lies ca. four kilometers to the north of Khirbet Umm el-‘Umdan and ca. three kilometers to the west of Qiryat Sepher. 32 Onn and Weksler-Bdolah, “Umm El-‘Umdan, Khirbet (Modi‘in),” 2061–62.

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of ancient Modi῾in could also explain the discovery of a synagogue at Qiryat Sepher, a village site located near both Khirbet Umm el-‘Umdan and Khirbet el-Hummam / Khirbet Midieh. According to Josephus, the town of Gamla was conquered in 83–80 BCE by the Hasmonean king Alexander Jannaeus and shortly afterwards became the Hasmonean capital of the region of Gaulanitis.33 Extensive excavations at the site have shown that the town saw a significant demographic and economic boom during this period, most likely connected to the arrival of Jewish settlers in the wake of the Hasmonean conquest.34 Magdala (identified with Tarichaea in Greek and Latin sources) was also re-founded as a Hasmonean administrative settlement in the early first century BCE, as suggested by its close connection in textual sources to the Hasmonean administrative center of Gamla, on the other side of the Sea of Galilee.35 Moreover, excavations have shown that already by the turn of the common era it had a considerable monumental character, with evidence of a planned street grid and several larger public structures, such as a bathing complex, a fountain house, a large quadriporticus (identified as either a market place or a palaestra), and a harbor.36 Finally, if it was indeed a settlement’s seeming Hasmonean sociocultural and political influence, this could also explain a possible synagogue building at Jerusalem, the capital of the Hasmonean kingdom, as attested by the Theodotos inscription. Yet, because we do not know the character of the building itself, this remains uncertain, and some scholars instead have connected this synagogue with a diaspora setting.37 33 Josephus, B. J. 1.104–105; A. J. 13.393–394. 34 Shmaryahu Gutman, “Gamala,” NEAEHL 2: 459–63; Danny Syon, Small Change in Hellenistic-Roman Galilee: Numismatic Site Finds as a Tool for Historical Reconstruction (Jerusalem: Israel Numismatic Society, 2015), 155–65. 35 On the identification and names of the site, see De Luca and Lena, “Magdala / Taricheae,” 280–98. On its close connection with Gamla, see Suetonius, Tit. 4.3; Josephus, B. J. 4.6. See also Danny Syon, “The Identification of Gamla,” in Gamla II: The Architecture: The Shmarya Gutmann Excavations, 1976–1989, ed. Danny Syon and Zvi Yavor (Jerusalem: IAA, 2010), 1–12. Furthermore, Josephus (A. J. 14.119–120; B. J. 1.180) mentions that in 53 BCE the population of Magdala, which consisted mostly of supporters of the Hasmonean king Aristobulus II, sided with him in an uprising against the Roman military. In 43 BCE, the quaestor Gaius Cassius Longinus sent a letter to Cicero in Rome with the closing lines “ex castris Taricheis” (Fam. 12.11), which has been interpreted as evidence for a nearby (probably temporary) Roman military camp. Whether this meant that Magdala was a Roman outpost, as suggested by De Luca and Lena (“Magdala / Taricheae,” 281), or was under siege by the Roman military remains unknown. 36 See De Luca and Lena, “Magdala / Taricheae,” 312–26; Bonnie, Being Jewish in Galilee, 43–48, 74–76, with earlier literature. 37 Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 57, argues that Theodotos came from a Jewish family that originated from Rome, and hence this building may have had no connection with the Hasmoneans. They presume this based on the name of Theodotos’s father Vettenos, which may be related to the gens Vettia and thereby a possible link to the area around Rome where a certain T. Vettius (Sabinus) was reported as praetor in 59 BCE (Cicero, Flac. 85). However, only a conjecture based on a hesitant association of the name of Theodotos’s father, this familial linkage is inconclusive.

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3. Hasmonean Memories and Hellenistic Building Traditions The conjecture that these stand-alone synagogue buildings are found because of the settlements’ political and sociocultural relation to the Hasmonean ruling class is tentative. There is no direct archaeological or textual evidence, aside from their location, to substantiate the claim. Even the construction of these buildings cannot be directly linked to the earliest Hasmonean arrival in any of these settlements, as most were constructed only in the early first century CE. However, I already briefly commented upon the synagogue buildings’ architectural and, presumably, polyfunctional resemblance to the Hellenistic bouleuteria, council or assembly houses, so well attested elsewhere in the eastern Mediterranean, especially in Greece and in Asia Minor.38 The strongest architectural resemblance is the columnar structures with rising tiers of seats and rear landings, often on three sides, in a rectilinear plan. The clearest examples of this type of bouleuterion are Priene (Fig. 2), in west Turkey (early second century BCE, with later renovations, possibly Roman in date);39 Herakleia-under-Latmos, in southwest Turkey (second century BCE);40 and Sagalassos, in southwest Turkey (late second or early first century CE).41 Noting the affinity with and adoption of Hellenistic building traditions by the Hasmonean ruling elite and their communities42 and its general high level of cultural and political integration into the Hellenistic world,43 the appearance of such a construction style in terms of assembly houses would not strike us as strange if first appearing in precisely those settlements in For a discussion of the issues related to this conjecture, see Kloppenborg Verbin, “Dating Theo­ dotos,” 263. 38 On Hellenistic bouleuteria and their development (including further references), see Doris Gneisz, Das antike Rathaus: das griechische Bouleuterion und die frührömische Curia (Vienna: VWGÖ, 1990); Valentin Kockel, “Bouleuteria. Architektonische Form und urbanistischer Kontext,” in Stadtbild und Bürgerbild im Hellenismus. Kolloquium, München, 24. bis 26. Juni 1993, ed. Michael Wörlle and Paul Zanker, Vestigia 47 (München: Beck, 1995), 29–40; Frederick E. Winter, Studies in Hellenistic Architecture, Phoenix Supplementary Volume 42 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), 141–49. 39 Theodor Wiegand, Priene: Ergebnisse der Ausgrabungen und Untersuchungen in den Jahren 1895–1898 (Berlin: Reimer, 1904), 219–31. 40 William A. McDonald, The Political Meeting Places of the Greeks (Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins Press, 1943), 192–96; Gneisz, Das antike Rathaus, 322. 41 Marc Waelkens, D. Pauwels, and J. Van Den Bergh, “The 1993 Excavations on the Upper and Lower Agora,” in Sagalassos III: Report on the Fourth Excavation Campaign of 1993, ed. Marc Waelkens and Jeroen Poblome, Acta Archaeologica Lovaniensia Monographiae 7 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1995), 25. 42 On the use of Hellenistic material culture by the Hasmoneans, see Eyal Regev, “The Hellenization of the Hasmoneans Revisited: The Archaeological Evidence,” Advances in Anthropology 7 (2017): 175–96. 43 See, most recently, Berthelot, In Search of the Promised Land?, 429–30.

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Fig. 2: Bouleuterion of Priene: plan of first and second building phases (modified after Kockel, “Bouleuteria,” abb. 6; courtesy of V. Kockel).

Palestine in which synagogue buildings first appear. Consider, for instance, the aforementioned columnar burial monument with pyramidal roof in Hellenistic style in the area of Modi῾in that was erected by Simon Maccabeus for his father and brothers, as described in 1 Maccabees.44 Or the construction of a typical late Hellenistic fountain house at Magdala in the late first century BCE that neatly resembles similar ones in the late Hellenistic East, most notably an almost exact parallel at Sagalassos in southwest Turkey.45 It is not only the particular shaping of the benches with their focal point on the hall’s central space marking the resemblance with bouleuteria, but also their few and narrow entrances to control access into the hall.46 This reduces the possibility of communication with the outer world, something that is also seen in the minimal visual access one had into the building, something that is best seen in the case of the Gamla synagogue (Figs 3 and 4).47 44 1 Macc 13:27–29: “And Simon built a monument over the tomb of his father and his brothers; he made it high so that it might be seen, with polished stone at the front and back. He also erected seven pyramids, opposite one another, for his father and mother and four brothers. For the pyramids he devised an elaborate setting, erecting about them great columns, and on the columns he put suits of armour for a permanent memorial, and beside the suits of armour he carved ships, so that they could be seen by all who sail the sea.” See also Berlin, “Power and Its Afterlife,” 143–44. 45 Rick Bonnie and Julian Richard, “Building D1 at Magdala Revisited in the Light of Public Fountain Architecture in the Late-Hellenistic East,” IEJ 62 (2012): 71–88. 46 See esp. the discussion by Kockel, “Bouleuteria,” 32–36. 47 See Yavor, “The Architecture,” 13–112. The main façade of and entrance into Gamla’s synagogue was obstructed by and hidden behind a group of service and storage rooms, which appear to have been built simultaneously with the synagogue itself in the early first century CE (pp. 57–58). In order to access the synagogue’s assembly hall, one had to pass these rooms

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Fig. 3: Synagogue of Gamla: ground plan (modified after Yavor, “Architecture and Stratigraphy,” plan 2.11; courtesy of the IAA).

Fig. 4: Synagogue of Gamla: photo from outside main entrance looking inward (photo by author).

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As with any changing tradition of material culture, Hellenistic building traditions also came and went as a result of changing collective memories and commemorative choices that were sparked by particular group dynamics. It is this dynamic and complex sociopolitical discourse between various Jewish groups that was current in Palestine in the first century BCE and CE that, ultimately, gave rise to the embeddedness of different building choices in the Jewish landscape—including the particular spread of early monumental synagogues.48 That the sociopolitical situation among Palestinian Jews was particularly malleable at this time is indicated by the social tensions between various Jewish groups, the attempted rebellions after Herod’s death, and by the lingering of a veiled sociopolitical power of the Hasmonean cultural tradition on society throughout the Herodian period. Martin Goodman, for instance, observed on the basis of Josephus’s writings that during the late first century BCE and the first century CE there was still a popular affection among ordinary Jews for the Hasmoneans.49 Josephus himself even claimed to be a descendent of the Hasmonean dynasty.50 Based on a lexicon of Jewish names in the period from 330 BCE to 200 CE, Tal Ilan has shown that the most popular personal names adopted during this period in Palestine were still those of the Hasmoneans.51 Finally, the continuing circulation of coins of the Hasmonean king Alexander Jannaeus throughout the first century CE, long after his reign or that of the Hasmoneans had ended, as shown by coins found in excavations at Gamla and at other sites in and around Galilee, also suggests the persistent significance of the Hasmonean cultural tradition on Jewish society.52

through an L-shaped vestibule. The particular plan also blocked any view from the outside upon the activities carried out inside the synagogue. The only other entrance into the building, located in the eastern corner of the main hall, was accessed by climbing up a ca. 3 m high bent staircase. I explore the question of how the architecture of early synagogues and bouleuteria shaped the experiences of the related communities by controlling capacity, movement, and sight further in Bonnie, “Monumentality and Space.” 48 On Jewish identity politics and material culture, see most notably Andrea M. Berlin, “Jewish Life before the Revolt: The Archaeological Evidence,” JSJ 36 (2005): 417–70; Andrea M. Berlin, “Identity Politics in Early Roman Galilee,” in The Jewish Revolt against Rome: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, ed. Mladen Popović (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 69–106. See also the various articles in Benedikt Eckhardt, ed., Jewish Identity and Politics between the Maccabees and Bar Kokhba, JSJSup 155 (Leiden: Brill, 2011). 49 Martin D. Goodman, The Ruling Class of Judaea: The Origins of the Jewish Revolt against Rome, A. D. 66–70 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 121. For an extensive review of the history of scholarship on this matter, see Steve Mason, A History of the Jewish War, A. D. 66–74 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 199–280. 50 Josephus, Vita 1–6. 51 Tal Ilan, Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity, Part I, Palestine 330 BCE—200 CE, TSAJ 91 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002), 6–8. 52 Danny Syon, “Coins,” in Gamla III: The Shmarya Gutmann Excavations 1976–1989: Finds and Studies, Part 1, ed. Danny Syon, IAA Reports 56 (Jerusalem: IAA, 2014), 113–15. Other sites

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The social and political dynamics of the first century CE in particular, combined with the continuing popularity of Hasmonean ideals and traditions (including building traditions) among certain groups in Jewish society, may explain the appearance of stand-alone monumental synagogue buildings within certain localities during this time. An attentive reader might point to the presumed evidence of an early synagogue, as suggested by its excavator, located just east of the Hasmonean palace at Jericho.53 However, I do agree with most scholars that this identification is unacceptable and that the remains should be identified as a peristyle courtyard with garden triclinium that was part of a larger peristyle house.54 Moreover, I should stress that the argument presented here in no way presumes that the Hasmonean kings were directly involved in introducing stand-alone synagogue buildings that resembled the Hellenistic bouleuteria into Palestine. Instead, the adaption of a Hellenistic building tradition like bouleuteria was probably stimulated by a local elite class that later, for sociopolitical reasons, conformed to Hasmonean cultural traditions as they developed over the course of the second and first centuries BCE.55 If the above suggestion holds, this provides a good reason for the eventual discontinuation of such buildings in the period after the two Jewish revolts. The end of Hasmonean influence in Palestine and the full incorporation of the region under direct Roman rule after the revolts may serve as a possible reason why no structures were constructed afterwards by any group connected to it. The exceptions are the synagogues constructed during the First Jewish Revolt by Jewish rebels at Masada and Herodium. Scholars have noted, however, that these Jewish Zealots at Masada and Herodium may have had underlying ties in ideological terms with the Maccabees,56 or were at least considered as “reactionary” to direct Roman rule. If indeed so, this might explain the construction of synagogues at these sites as well. It is, moreover, worth noting that most settlements where such early synagogue buildings were found eventually also fell victim to severe destruction and death at the hands of the Roman military in the events of the are Yodefat, Khirbet Qana, Khirbet Shema‘, Meiron, and Gush Halav. See Edwards, “Khirbet Qana,” 129–30; Syon, Small Change, 158 fig. 33. 53 See Ehud Netzer, “A Synagogue from the Hasmonean Period Recently Exposed in the Western Plain of Jericho,” IEJ 49 (1999): 203–21. 54 See, e.g., Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 73–74. See also Ben David, this volume. 55 The suggested adaptive mechanism by which these traditions developed shows connections with broader discussions on cultural innovation. See, e.g., Nicola Terrenato, The Early Roman Expansion into Italy: Elite Negotiation and Family Agendas (Cambridge University Press, 2019). 56 William R. Farmer, Maccabees, Zealots, and Josephus: An Inquiry into Jewish Nationalism in the Greco-Roman Period (New York: Columbia University Press, 1956), 12. On the impact of Farmer’s thesis and its development in later scholarship, see Mason, A History of the Jewish War, 202–7.

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First Jewish Revolt (e.g., Magdala, Gamla, Masada, Herodium).57 On the other hand, the settlements of Khirbet Umm el-‘Umdan and Qiryat Sepher, together with their synagogues, were reportedly destroyed in the events of the later Bar Kokhba revolt.58 In short, the argument that has been put forward above makes coherent a series of otherwise disconnected datum points and situates them in relationship to a logical underlying sociocultural and political dynamic. It is first the strength and, later, the ebbing of Hasmonean influence among certain Jewish groups that directed the appearance and subsequent disappearance of synagogues as standalone monumental structures.

4. House Synagogues This raises the obvious question of what about the synagogues at other first-century localities as mentioned in textual sources, such as Capernaum, Tiberias, and Nazareth, among others.59 It should be stressed, however, that none of the textual sources show any interest in the physical nature of these institutions. The New Testament texts seem to be more concerned with the socioreligious sphere of the activities held in synagogues (preaching, teaching, healing) rather than their physical nature.60 Nor does Josephus explicitly mention that any of the synagogues at Dora, Caesarea, Jerusalem, and Tiberias were distinct public structures. In fact, Stuart Miller has suggested, based on Josephus’s use of the word oikēma when describing the proseuchē in Tiberias, that it may have been a large domestic residence of some sort, accessible on occasion for public or semi-public gatherings,

57 See Josephus, B. J. 3.485–502 (Magdala); B. J. 4.11–53, 62–83 (Gamla); B. J. 5.67–228 (Jerusalem); B. J. 7.163–209 (Herodium); B. J. 7.304–406 (Masada). Steve Mason has recently argued that the events during the First Jewish Revolt had little impact in terms of destruction and death upon Magdala’s citizens, but that it was primarily directed toward refugees from surrounding areas in that town. See Mason, A History of the Jewish War, 376–77. However, archaeological evidence from the site shows that the northern parts of Magdala were quite rapidly abandoned during the late first century CE, while the southern area around the harbor shows considerable signs of stagnation in terms of development. See De Luca and Lena, “Magdala / Taricheae,” 328. After the revolt, Magdala never again reached such levels of urban splendor and economic prosperity as it did during the early and middle first century CE. See Bonnie, Being Jewish in Galilee, 89–91. 58 Onn and Weksler-Bdolah, “Umm El-‘Umdan, Khirbet (Modi‘in)”; Magen, Tzionit, and Sirkis, “Khirbet Badd ῾Isa—Qiryat Sefer.” 59 See, e.g., for Capernaum: Mark 1:21–29; Luke 4:1–38; 7:1–5; John 6:9; for Nazareth: Mark 6:1–6; Matt 3:53–58; Luke 4:16–30; and for Tiberias: Josephus, Vita 277, 279–280, 290–303. For a discussion of these sources, see Runesson, Binder, and Olsson, The Ancient Synagogue, 20–117. 60 Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 46. For a discussion on how these activities were shaped by the physical nature of the building, see Bonnie, “Monumentality and Space.”

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rather than a distinct monumental synagogue.61 And, finally, as Levine has discussed, the tannaitic and early amoraic rabbinic material also hardly addresses the synagogue as a socioreligious institution, let alone discusses its physical character in any considerable detail.62 Based on such sparse textual evidence for the physical nature of synagogues in Palestine during the first centuries of the common era, it seems unreasonable to claim, as Levine once did, that “[a]ll first-century synagogues were clearly communal buildings.”63 While essentially being an argument from silence, we should keep open the possibility that within some Jewish communities the synagogue as an institution may have been little more than a larger gathering space in a home, much like the proseuchē in Tiberias as Miller envisioned it. The presence of house synagogues in the first centuries CE, alongside larger civic synagogue buildings in a few localities up to the two revolts, also serves as an explanation for the survival of this institution after the two Jewish revolts. At the same time, their presence explains why the synagogue is so intangible within the archaeological record and for many textual witnesses.

5. Conclusion Starting from the observation of a discontinuity of earlier synagogue buildings after the two Jewish revolts and a virtual absence of monumental synagogue construction during much of the second and early third centuries, I explored in this article the particular reasons for this development of the stand-alone monumental synagogue. I have suggested that certain Jewish communities in early Roman Palestine exhibited a lingering of Hasmonean sociocultural and political influence. Such continuing popularity of Hasmonean cultural traditions illustrated by the lasting popularity of Hasmonean names or the continuing circulation of Hasmonean coinage during the first century CE. It is also shown by the fact that some communities started adopting a Hellenistic-oriented building tradition during this time. 61 Stuart S. Miller, “On the Number of Synagogues in the Cities of Eretz Israel,” JJS 49 (1998): 57: “perhaps, other than its size, [the proseuchē at Tiberias was] indistinguishable from rooms in many a home.” See also Josephus, Vita 277, 280, 293. The word oikēma was used in Josephus’s writings, as well as that of contemporary authors, in a rather specific sense, such as “room / chamber,” “dwelling place,” “dining room,” “hall,” or “house.” For these translations, see LSJ, 1203; BDAG, 694–95. Nowhere in Josephus does oikēma seem to refer to a distinct civic structure. For all references to oikēma in Josephus, see Karl Heinrich Rengstorf, ed., A Complete Concordance to Flavius Josephus (Leiden: Brill, 1973–83), 4:177. Miller also noted that Josephus informs us that “this particular oikêma could accommodate a great crowd, which implies that many such structures could not” (p. 57). 62 Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 179–82. 63 Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 185.

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Aside from other types of architecture, this is notably illustrated by the introduction of several stand-alone synagogues, which were rectangular columnar structures with rising tiers of seats and, occasionally, a rear landing—reminiscent of certain types of bouleuteria buildings in the late Hellenistic world. The lingering Hasmonean cultural and sociopolitical influence in first-century CE Palestine and its close association with Hellenistic building traditions led a local elite class to introduce stand-alone monumental synagogue buildings. This happened in especially those towns and villages where the Hasmoneans previously established a political and administrative power base, such as Gamla, Magdala, and the Modi‘in area. For those same towns and villages textual and archaeological evidence also reveal substantial destruction during and abandonment after one of the two Jewish revolts. As a result, all earlier stand-alone synagogue buildings were destroyed and fell out of use, just as the Hasmonean political influence in the region was reduced. The latter may explain why no synagogue buildings resembling the previous ones in style and layout were being built in the aftermath of the two revolts. Instead, as I suggested, Jewish communities likely kept to gathering in houses during the second and third centuries, just as some would have done before the revolts, where some (larger) spaces, such as courtyards, may have been used for semi-public synagogue gatherings.

Cited Sources Aviam, Mordechai. “The Synagogue.” Pages 127–33 in Magdala of Galilee: A Jewish City in the Hellenistic and Roman Period. Edited by Richard Bauckham. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2018. Avshalom-Gorni, Dina, and Arfan Najar. “Migdal.” Hadashot Arkheologiyot-Excavations and Surveys in Israel 125 (2013). http://www.hadashot-esi.org.il/report_detail_eng.aspx?id=2304. Bauckham, Richard, and Stefano De Luca. “Magdala As We Now Know It.” Early Christianity 6 (2015): 91–118. Berlin, Andrea M. “Identity Politics in Early Roman Galilee.” Pages 69–106 in The Jewish Revolt against Rome: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Edited by Mladen Popović. Leiden: Brill, 2011. Berlin, Andrea M. “Jewish Life before the Revolt: The Archaeological Evidence.” JSJ 36 (2005): 417–70. Berlin, Andrea M. “Power and Its Afterlife: Tombs in Hellenistic Palestine.” NEA 65 (2002): 138–48. Berthelot, Katell. In Search of the Promised Land? The Hasmonean Dynasty Between Biblical Models and Hellenistic Diplomacy. JAJSup 24. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2018. Binder, Donald D. Into the Temple Courts: The Place of the Synagogues in the Second Temple Period. SBLDS 169. Atlanta: Scholars, 1999. Bonnie, Rick. Being Jewish in Galilee, 100–200 CE: An archaeological study. Studies in Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology 11. Turnhout: Brepols, 2019. Bonnie, Rick. “Monumentality and Space: Experiencing Synagogue Buildings in Late Second Temple Palestine.” Forthcoming in Scriptures in the Making: Texts and Their Transmission

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in Late Second Temple Judaism. Edited by Raimo Hakola, Jessi Orpana and Paavo Huotari. CBET. Leuven: Peeters. Bonnie, Rick, and Julian Richard. “Building D1 at Magdala Revisited in the Light of Public Fountain Architecture in the Late-Hellenistic East.” IEJ 62 (2012): 71–88. De Luca, Stefano, and Anna Lena. “Magdala / Taricheae.” Pages 280–342 in Galilee in the Late Second Temple and Mishnaic Periods, Vol. 2: The Archaeological Record from Cities, Towns, and Villages. Edited by David A. Fiensy and James Riley Strange. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015. Eckhardt, Benedikt, ed. Jewish Identity and Politics between the Maccabees and Bar Kokhba. ­JSJSup 155. Leiden: Brill, 2011. Edwards, Douglas R. “Khirbet Qana: From Jewish Village to Christian Pilgrim Site.” Pages ­101–32 in The Roman and Byzantine Near East, Vol. 3: Late-Antique Petra, Nile Festival Building at Sepphoris, Deir Qal‘a Monastery, Khirbet Qana Village and Pilgrim Site, ‘Ain-‘ Arrub Hiding Complex. Edited by John H. Humphrey. JRASup 49. Portsmouth, RI: JRA, 2002. Farmer, William R. Maccabees, Zealots, and Josephus: An Inquiry into Jewish Nationalism in the Greco-Roman Period. New York: Columbia University Press, 1956. Gneisz, Doris. Das antike Rathaus: das griechische Bouleuterion und die frührömische Curia. Vienna: VWGÖ, 1990. Goodman, Martin D. The Ruling Class of Judaea: The Origins of the Jewish Revolt against Rome, A. D. 66–70. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Gutman, Shmaryahu. “Gamala.” NEAEHL 2: 459–63. Ilan, Tal. Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity, Part I, Palestine 330 BCE—200 CE. TSAJ 91. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002. Kloppenborg Verbin, John S. “Dating Theodotos (CIJ II 1404).” JJS 51 (2000): 243–80. Kockel, Valentin. “Bouleuteria. Architektonische Form und urbanistischer Kontext.” Pages 29– 40 in Stadtbild und Bürgerbild im Hellenismus. Kolloquium, München, 24. bis 26. Juni 1993. Edited by Michael Wörlle and Paul Zanker. Vestigia 47. München: Beck, 1995. Leibner, Uzi. Khirbet Wadi Ḥamam: A Roman Period Village and Synagogue in the Lower Galilee. Jerusalem: Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University, 2018. Levine, Lee I. Jerusalem: Portrait of the City in the Second Temple Period (538 B. C.E.–70 C. E.). Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2002. Levine, Lee I. The Ancient Synagogue. The First Thousand Years. 2nd ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005. Levine, Lee I. “The Nature and Origin of the Palestinian Synagogue Reconsidered.” JBL 115 (1996): 425–48. Magen, Yitzhak, Yoav Tzionit, and Orna Sirkis. “Khirbet Badd ῾Isa—Qiryat Sefer.” Pages 179–241 in The Land of Benjamin. Edited by Yitzhak Magen, Donald T. Ariel, Gabriel G. Bijovsky, Yoav Tzionit, and Orna Sirkis. Judea and Samaria Publications 3. Jerusalem: Staff Officer of Archaeology—Civil Administration of Judea and Samaria; IAA, 2004. Magness, Jodi. “The Ancient Synagogue at Nabratein.” BASOR 358 (2010): 61–68. Mason, Steve. A History of the Jewish War, A. D. 66–74. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. McCollough, C. Thomas. “Khirbet Qana.” Pages 127–57 in Galilee in the Late Second Temple and Mishnaic Periods, Vol. 2: The Archaeological Record from Cities, Towns, and Villages. Edited by David A. Fiensy and James Riley Strange. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015. McDonald, William A. The Political Meeting Places of the Greeks. Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins Press, 1943. Meyers, Eric M. “The Problem of the Scarcity of Synagogues from 70 to ca. 250 C. E. The Case of Synagogue 1 at Nabratein (2nd–3rd Century C. E.).” Pages 435–48 in “Follow the Wise”: Studies in Jewish History and Culture in Honor of Lee I. Levine. Edited by Zeev Weiss et al. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2010.

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Meyers, Eric M., and Mark A. Chancey. Alexander to Constantine. Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, Vol. 3. Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012. Meyers, Eric M., and Carol L. Meyers. Excavations at Ancient Nabratein: Synagogue and Environs. Meiron Excavation Project Report 6. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2009. Meyers, Eric M., and Carol L. Meyers. “Response to Jodi Magness’s Review of the Final Publication of Nabratein.” BASOR 359 (2010): 67–76. Miller, Stuart S. “On the Number of Synagogues in the Cities of Eretz Israel.” JJS 49 (1998): 51–66. Netzer, Ehud. “A Synagogue from the Hasmonean Period Recently Exposed in the Western Plain of Jericho.” IEJ 49 (1999): 203–21. Netzer, Ehud. Masada III. The Yigael Yadin Excavations 1963–1965: Final Reports—The Buildings: Stratigraphy and Architecture. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1991. Olsson, Birger, and Magnus Zetterholm, ed. The Ancient Synagogue. From Its Origins until 200 C. E.: Papers Presented at an International Conference at Lund University, October 14–17, 2001. CBNTS 39. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2003. Onn, Alexander, and Shlomit Weksler-Bdolah. “Umm El-‘Umdan, Khirbet (Modi‘in).” NEAEHL 5 (2008): 2061–63. Onn, Alexander, Shlomit Wexler-Bdolah, Yehuda Rapuano, and Tzah Kanias. “Khirbet Umm El-‘Umdan.” Hadashot Arkheologiyot-Excavations and Surveys in Israel 114 (2002): 64*–68* (English), 74–78 (Hebrew). Patrich, Joseph. Studies in the Archaeology and History of Caesarea Maritima: Caput Judaeae, Metropolis Palaestinae. AJEC 77. Leiden: Brill, 2011. Rech, Jason A., Alysia A. Fischer, Douglas R. Edwards, and A. J. Timothy Jull. “Direct Dating of Plaster and Mortar Using AMS Radiocarbon: A Pilot Project from Khirbet Qana, Israel.” Antiquity 295 (2003): 155–64. Regev, Eyal. The Hasmoneans: Ideology, Archaeology, Identity. JAJSup 10. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013. Regev, Eyal. “The Hellenization of the Hasmoneans Revisited: The Archaeological Evidence.” Advances in Anthropology 7 (2017): 175–96. Rengstorf, Karl Heinrich, ed. A Complete Concordance to Flavius Josephus. 4 vols. Leiden: Brill, 1973–83. Runesson, Anders. The Origins of the Synagogue. A Socio-Historical Study. CBNTS 37. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2001. Runesson, Anders, Donald D. Binder, and Birger Olsson, The Ancient Synagogue from Its Origins to 200 C. E.: A Source Book. AJEC 72. Leiden: Brill, 2008. Schwartz, Seth. “A Note on the Social Type and Political Ideology of the Hasmonean Family.” JBL 112 (1993): 305–17. Schwartz, Seth. Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 B. C.E. to 640 C. E. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001. Spigel, Chad. “Debating Ancient Synagogue Dating: The Implications of Deteriorating Data.” BASOR 376 (2016): 83–100. Syon, Danny. “Coins.” Pages 109–223 in Gamla III: The Shmarya Gutmann Excavations 1976– 1989: Finds and Studies, Part 1. Edited by Danny Syon. IAA Reports 56. Jerusalem: IAA, 2014. Syon, Danny. Small Change in Hellenistic-Roman Galilee: Numismatic Site Finds as a Tool for Historical Reconstruction. Jerusalem: Israel Numismatic Society, 2015. Syon, Danny. “The Identification of Gamla.” Pages 1–12 in Gamla II: The Architecture: The ­Shmarya Gutmann Excavations, 1976–1989. Edited by Danny Syon and Zvi Yavor. IAA Reports 44. Jerusalem: IAA, 2010. Syon, Danny, and Zvi Yavor. Gamla II: The Architecture: The Shmarya Gutmann Excavations, 1976–1989. IAA Reports 44. Jerusalem: IAA, 2010. Terrenato, Nicola. The Early Roman Expansion into Italy: Elite Negotiation and Family Agendas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019.

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Tsafrir, Yoram. “On the Source of the Architectural Design of the Ancient Synagogues in the Galilee: A New Appraisal.” Pages 70–86 in vol. 1 of Ancient Synagogues: Historical Analysis and Archaeological Discovery. Edited by Dan Urman and Paul V. M. Flesher. StPB 47. Leiden: Brill, 1995. Waelkens, Marc, D. Pauwels, and J. Van Den Bergh. “The 1993 Excavations on the Upper and Lower Agora.” Pages 23–46 in Sagalassos III: Report on the Fourth Excavation Campaign of 1993. Edited by Marc Waelkens and Jeroen Poblome. Acta Archaeologica Lovaniensia Monographiae 7. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1995. Werlin, Steven H. Ancient Synagogues of Southern Palestine, 300–800 C. E.: Living on the Edge. BRLA 47. Leiden: Brill, 2015. Wiegand, Theodor. Priene: Ergebnisse der Ausgrabungen und Untersuchungen in den Jahren 1895–1898. Berlin: Reimer, 1904. Winter, Frederick E. Studies in Hellenistic Architecture. Phoenix Supplementary Volume 42. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006. Yadin, Yigael. Masada: Herod’s Fortress and the Zealots’ Last Stand. London: Weidenfeld & ­Nicolson, 1966. Yadin, Yigael. “The Excavation of Masada—1963/64. Preliminary Report.” IEJ 15 (1965): 1–120. Yavor, Zvi. “The Architecture and Stratigraphy of the Eastern and Western Quarters.” Pages 13–112 in Gamla II: The Architecture: The Shmarya Gutmann Excavations, 1976–1989. Edited by Danny Syon and Zvi Yavor. IAA Reports 44. Jerusalem: IAA, 2010. Zissu, Boaz, and Amir Ganor. “Horvat ῾Ethri—A Jewish Village from the Second Temple Period and the Bar Kokhba Revolt in the Judean Foothills.” JJS 60 (2009): 90–136. Zissu, Boaz, and Lior Perry. “Hasmonean Modi῾in and Byzantine Moditha: A Topographical-Historical and Archaeological Assessment.” PEQ 147 (2015): 316–37.

Tom McCollough

The Synagogue at Khirbet Qana in Its Village Context

The focus of this study is the large public building that the excavations at Khirbet Qana have uncovered on the northwest quadrant of the acropolis.1 The excavations identified the building as a late first–early second century synagogue and the features that make such an identification seem reasonable will be set forth below. The recovery of this building on the one hand adds one more structure to the growing catalogue of village-based synagogues in Galilee in the early and middle Roman period. As such, it will find a place in the rich discussion of synagogue architecture, design, decoration, and function in that region at that time. This article will argue, however, that the value of this building goes beyond its role in enhancing synagogue typology. By locating the synagogue in the village proper, the analysis broadens to provide insight into the opaque world of Galilean village social and economic realities. The archaeological investigation of villages has, unfortunately, lagged far behind that of urban sites. Villages, such as Khirbet Qana, hold the potential for allowing one to better examine social forms of ranking, the nature and degree of integration with the larger political economy, and the extent to which small settlements connected to wider commercial and cultural spheres.2 Moreover, from Horden and Purcell’s advancing the value of micro-ecology for the analysis of Mediterranean culture, to Eric Meyers’s campaigning for regional analysis of Galilean archaeology, to Michael Satlow’s arguments for the value of local communities for developing polythetic maps of Judaism in antiquity, it has become increasingly 1 The archaeological excavations at Khirbet Qana were initiated and directed by Douglas Edwards on behalf of the University of Puget Sound from 1998 to 2008. I served as his field director and co-director until his premature death in the fall of 2008. I am now the director of the excavations. 2 Data from first-century villages in the Greek East is especially limited. The surveys of Rafael Frankel et al., Settlement Dynamics and Regional Diversity in Ancient Upper Galilee: Archaeological Survey of Upped Galilee, IAA Reports 14 (Jerusalem: IAA, 2001) and Uzi Leibner, Settlement History in Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine Galilee. An Archaeological Survey of the Eastern Galilee, TSAJ 127 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009) have made evident the density of village sites in Galilee and thus their importance for Galilean studies. Martin Goodman’s State and Society in Roman Galilee, A. D. 132–212 (Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Allanheld, 1983) is very effective in terms of data from later periods in Galilee. See also Douglas Edwards, “Identity and Local Location in Roman Galilean Villages,” in Religion, Ethnicity, and Identity in Ancient Galilee: A Region in Transition, ed. Jürgen K. Zangenberg, Harold W. Attridge, and Dale B. Martin, WUNT I 210 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007), 357–76.

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apparent that fleshing out as fully as possible regional and local practice is the best possible avenue toward a thick and more genuine description of Jewish villages in Roman Galilee.3

1. The Site Khirbet Qana (“the ruins of Cana”) is located in the center of lower Galilee along a critical east–west corridor, the Beth Netofa Valley (Fig. 1). The site is seven kilometers east of the ancient city of Sepphoris and fifteen kilometers west of Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee. No systematic survey or excavation of the site occurred until 1997 when Douglas Edwards initiated the University of Puget Sound excavations. The survey in 1997 revealed plentiful evidence of human activity from the Neolithic through the Ottoman periods. The majority of the surface finds indicated that the most extensive and significant occupation occurred in the early Roman period and again in the Byzantine through Crusader periods. The excavations that began in 1999 have recovered no evidence of substantial remains from the Hellenistic period. There is significant numismatic material from the Hasmonean period, but there are no structures to connect this village with local representatives of Hasmonean power. The village does begin to emerge architecturally in the early Roman period. The village was concentrated on the acropolis and north, east, and west slopes of a small rocky hillock on the eastern fringe of the Beth Netofa Valley. The steeper south slope—facing Sepphoris and the Beth Netofa Valley—had no buildings until one reaches a plateau halfway down, where a separate small village was built perhaps as late as the early Ottoman period. In terms of size, the early Roman village covered approximately five hectares (Fig. 2). By way of comparison, it was about the same size as the nearby village of Yodefat / Jotapata and a bit larger than Nazareth but smaller than Capernaum that measured about seventeen hectares. It was significantly smaller than the urban center of Sepphoris at sixty hectares. Presuming a relatively dense population co-efficiency (similar to Gamla), the Roman period population of Khirbet Qana would be approximately 1,200.4

3 Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell, The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2000); Eric M. Meyers “Galilean Regionalism as a Factor in Historical Reconstruction,” BASOR 221 (1976): 93–102; Michael L. Satlow, Creating Judaism: History, Tradition, Practice (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006). 4 Based on the work of Chad Spigel, Ancient Synagogue Seating Capacities: Methodology, Analysis and Limits, TSAJ 149 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012).

The Synagogue at Khirbet Qana in Its Village Context

Fig. 1: Map of lower Galilee (drawing by J. Rosenberg, used by permission).

Fig. 2: Aerial view of Khirbet Qana (University of Puget Sound Excavations, used by permission).

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In terms of water supply, no natural supply of water has been located. The village seemed to be entirely dependent on cisterns. Sixty cisterns are located within the confines of the village. The excavations have exposed domestic quarters concentrated on the north, east, and west slopes. As noted, the south slope was apparently too steep to accommodate housing units. The village appeared to be organized according to a “quasi-Hippodamian” pattern with a street that followed the contours of the hill.5 The houses that were exposed showed signs of foundation in the early Roman period and continuous use and renovation through the Byzantine period. As Peter Richardson observed in his architectural analysis of the domestic spaces, there were three types of houses built at Khirbet Qana. On the east and west slopes, the houses were small terrace types similar to those exposed at Gamla and Yodefat / Jotapata. The houses exposed on the northern slope of the hill, where the hill flattens slightly, were larger and included side courtyards. One courtyard included a stepped pool structure that was identified as a possible mikveh. A third house form was exposed on the acropolis. This large structure consisted of two rooms (ca. 8.5 × 5 m) connected by a flagstone courtyard. One room included an interior pilaster with a nicely carved capital. The interior walls were plastered and fragments of paint on the walls suggested frescoes. The size of this house and the quality of the plaster suggest this was an “elite” house similar to the one found at Yodefat / Jotapata.6 A second pattern of use of space in the early Roman village was exposed on the eastern and southeastern slopes. The excavations in these areas uncovered evidence of industrial activity. On the eastern slope a bell-shaped plastered dovecote, or columbarium, hewn into the bedrock was exposed (Fig. 3). This type of dovecote is similar to others found at Roman sites in Palestine and in terms of form is typical to the first century BCE / CE.7 A second industrial area was uncovered on the southeastern slope. The excavations revealed a set of installations partially cut into bedrock, partially constructed with stone and mortar and covered with plaster (Fig. 4). Two underground dome-shaped structures with steps were built adjacent to these installations. The function of these installations and connected stepped structures is uncertain. It is possible that the stepped structures were ritual baths (mikva’ot) connected either to dealing with flax or with tanning. It is clear that 5 On the design of the village and housing types, see Peter Richardson, “Khibet Qana (and other villages) as a Context for Jesus,” in Jesus and Archaeology, ed. James Charlesworth (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 120–44. 6 David Adan-Bayewitz and Mordechai Aviam, “Iotapata, Josephus and the Siege of 67: Preliminary Report on the 1992–94 Seasons,” JRA 10 (1997): 131–65. 7 Mordechai Aviam, “Columbaria in Galilee,” in Jews, Pagans, and Christians in the Galilee: 25 Years of Archaeological Excavations and Surveys Hellenistic to Byzantine Periods (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2004), 31–35.

The Synagogue at Khirbet Qana in Its Village Context

Fig. 3: Drawing of Columbarium at Khirbet Qana (drawing by A. Söderlund, used by permission).

Fig. 4: Photo of the early Roman industrial area at Khirbet Qana (photo by D. Edwards; University of Puget Sound Excavations).

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the uses of these installations are distinct from the industrial activity exposed at the nearby village of Yodefat / Jotapata (olive oil presses and ceramic kilns) which suggests an intentional effort at complementarity as these villages moved beyond subsistence agriculture to industrial production.8

2. The Synagogue The building, identified as a synagogue, was discovered on the southwestern quadrant of the acropolis. The building was composed of one large main hall approximately 20 × 15 m (similar in size to the synagogue at Gamla) that was connected to a small room (3 × 5 m) on the northeastern corner (Figs 5 and 6). The building is oriented north–south and an entry on the southern wall was uncovered. A Herodian-type bossed stone from the doorjamb was recently recovered suggesting a substantial and elaborate entryway. Architectural elements (column base, flagstones) indicating a porch or courtyard adjacent to the entry suggests this is an early example of an apsidal-type synagogue. The fully exposed western wall of the main building is 1.5 m wide. Plaster was found on both the exterior and interior faces of this wall. A small fragment of the interior wall plaster from the first phase of the building shows signs of being painted red. The interior of the building is divided into a central nave and two side aisles by way of eight interior columns (Fig. 7). As at Gamla, the floors of the aisles were covered with plaster while the nave was unpaved flattened bedrock. Footers for the columns were recovered that were 5 m apart, north–south and 2.5 m east–west. Column and stylobate fragments were also exposed. A capital was uncovered in reuse (Fig.  8). The capital’s decorative elements place it in the Ionic order with recessed volutes. There are also carvings of fruit hanging from the volutes. In terms of dating the founding of the building, probes to foundation level revealed that the structure was built in an area that had previously served as a place for quarrying stone. The stones used at founding level had been mortared and there was plaster adhering to the exterior and interior surfaces of this wall. The soil at foundation level yielded a few readable sherds—predominantly Kefar Hananyah 8 Mordechai Aviam, “An Early Roman Oil Press in a Cave at Yodefat,” in Jews, Pagans, and Christians in the Galilee: 25 Years of Archaeological Excavations and Surveys Hellenistic to Byzantine Periods (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2004), 89–91. See also C. Thomas McCollough, “City and Village in Lower Galilee: The Import of the Archaeological Excavations at Sepphoris and Khirbet Qana (Cana)  for Framing the Economic Context of Jesus,” in The Galilean Economy in the Time of Jesus, ed. David A. Fiensy and Ralph K. Hawkins (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2013), 49–74.

The Synagogue at Khirbet Qana in Its Village Context

Fig. 5: Aerial photo of synagogue at Khirbet Qana (photo by Skyview; University of Puget Sound Excavations, used by permission).

Fig. 6: Plan of synagogue (University of Puget Sound Excavations, used by permission).

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Fig. 7: Photo of excavation of interior of synagogue with columns and base (photo by D. Edwards; University of Puget Sound Excavations, used by permission).

Fig. 8: Photo of capital from synagogue (photo by D. Edwards; University of Puget Sound Excavations, used by permission).

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Fig. 9: Drawing of foundation wall of synagogue and carbon-14 dating (drawing by J. Recht; University of Puget Sound Excavations, used by permission).

3a (bowl) and Kefar Hananyah 4a (cooking pot), each with a start date of the late first century BCE and an end date of the beginning of the second century CE. We also found fragments of Early Roman storage vessels from Shikhin, a pottery production site nearby Sepphoris, that provide the same range of dating. The one coin that was discovered at foundation level was a Seleucid coin of Antiochus IV. In addition to the ceramic evidence, carbon-14 analysis was applied to the mortar that had been used in constructing the foundation (Fig. 9). That analysis yielded a date of 4–236 CE with 95 percent probability.9 To this evidence from the building’s foundation, evidence from the interior floors was added. The floors were sections and the earliest layer of the flooring was again subject to carbon-14 analysis and yielded a date of 128–382 CE. Excavations below the floor in two locations (sealed loci) yielded once more only a very small number of readable sherds. The datable forms included again Kefar Hananyah 3a, Eastern Terra Sigillata bowl fragments that were of the same type as found at Dor with a start date of 100 CE, and one jug fragment Kefar Hananyah 6a, which is a second-century form. 9 On the use of carbon-14 dating at Khirbet Qana, see Jason Rech et al., “Direct Dating of Plaster and Mortar using AMS Radiocarbon: A Pilot Project from Khirbet Qana, Israel,” ­Antiquity 77 (2003): 155–64.

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The combination of evidence for founding and floors created somewhat of a quandary in terms of final dating. In brief, the question was whether to use the ceramic and numismatic evidence to fix the date in terms of the earlier timeframe on the carbon-14 spectrum or to treat the evidence as a terminus post quem. In light of the long life of these ceramic forms combined with the coin evidence, it was judged that the latter was best. The judgement was made that the ensemble of evidence pointed to a post-70 CE synagogue; suggesting a founding in the late first–early second century with full elaboration—plaster floors and columns—by the mid-second century. The building’s north–south orientation, with the entry on the south wall may reinforce a post-70 dating.10 One final observation in regards to the excavation of the interior debris layers. A sample of the roof tiles recovered in the debris on the floor were examined by Anastasia Shapiro. Of the twenty sampled, eleven were determined to be imported from either from Cyprus or the province of Cilicia. Shapiro commented that the remaining tiles that appeared to be made from local materials “may have been manufactured for the replacement of damaged tiles or to complete the roof when rebuilt.”11 This is an intriguing discovery and as Douglas Edwards noted, “The roof tiles … reflect a significant change in the village of Khiret Qana in the post revolt period. It participated in trans-regional trade, importing what appears to be a prestige item, well-made roof tiles. … [T]he village or local leaders elected to use imported roof tiles for the large colonnaded building, possible a synagogue, which demonstrates that Khirbet Qana, like nearby Sepphoris, participated in significant building and renovation programs during the latter part of the early Roman period.”12 As noted above, a small room connected to the main hall on at the northeast corner. While the foundation of this structure had been disturbed by Byzantine rebuilding, the excavations were able to establish that it was founded on quarried bedrock in the same manner as the large hall. The bottom level of debris contained an overwhelming number of late Hellenistic and Roman sherds. Further, the 10 On orientation, see Lee I. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 195–97, 215–16. 11 Anastasia Shapiro, “Petrology of the Ceramic Roof Tiles from Excavations at Khirbet Qana (seasons 1998–2001)” (Unpublished report prepared for the final report on Field II, The Synagogue, Khirbet Qana). 12 Douglas Edwards, “Walking the Roman Landscape in Lower Galilee: Sepphoris, Jotapata, and Khirbet Qana,” in A Wandering Galilean: Essays in Honour of Seán Freyne, ed. Zuleika ­Rodgers with Margaret Daly-Denton and Anne Fitzpatrick McKinley, JSJSup 132 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 227. The importation of the roof tiles has a parallel with importation of clay lids for sarcophagai as noted in Danielle Parks and Hector Neff, “A Geochemical Vector for Trade: Cyprus, Asia Minor and the Roman East,” in Geochemical Evidence for Long-Distance Exchange, ed. Michael Glasscock (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002) 205–14. See also, Anastasia Shapiro, “Petrographic Analysis of Roman Clay Sarcophagi from Northwestern Israel and Cyprus,” ‘Atiqot 33 (1997): 1–5.

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room was equipped with a single low bench on three sides that was plastered. That plaster was subject to carbon-14 dating and it yielded a date that suggests an association with the floor of the in the main hall: 100–300 CE.13 This result, combined with the fact that the north wall of the room is not an extension of the north wall of the large building, suggests it was added as part of the elaboration on the original building in the second century. As to its function, the small room’s connection to the synagogue suggests it served either as a bet midrash or perhaps as a room for storage of books or small ritual items. The latter was noted as the possible function for a similar room attached to the first century synagogue at Qiryat Sepher.14 Having worked through the architectural elements of the building, I now circle back to more fully integrate the structure into the village as such.

3. Size and Function First, some observations on the size of this building and what it could reveal about its function in this village. As noted above, the village population was approximately 1,200. In terms of this synagogue, assuming one bench around the periphery on three sides and possible additional seating in the aisles provided by mats or benches, the seating capacity is estimated at 225–250 which would represent only about 18 percent of the population. By way of comparison, the Gamla synagogue could accommodate 10–15 percent of the population, the first synagogue at Nabratein around 50 percent, and the first synagogue at BethShe‘arim around 50 percent of the population.15 If the Khirbet Qana synagogue could only accommodate 18 percent of the village population, this raises the interesting question about how to assess its role in village life. All the indicators we have from the village (mikva’ot, stone vessel fragments, predominance of Hasmonean coins) argue that this is a Jewish village. Moreover, we have no evidence of another synagogue within the village. How then does the synagogue with its limited capacity function in terms of serving the whole of the population? While absent more evidence (e.g., a dedicatory inscription), the question that eludes a clear answer, I believe there is some heuristic value in considering interpretative possibilities. One option would be that the use of space discriminated by gender (only for males?) or by economic status (built by and for 13 The radiocarbon dating results for this floor are included in a report submitted by Jason Rech to Douglas Edwards to be included in the final report which is being prepared by Tom McCollough. 14 Rachel Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues—Archaeology and Art: New Discoveries and Current Research, HdO 105 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 34. 15 Spigel, Synagogue Seating, 326–37.

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an elite family?). It might also be intended for use by a “religious elite” (i. e., that it could be the enclave of the local tannaim or relocated Judean priestly families).16 If so, this structure would not only fill a beguiling gap of synagogue construction between the pre-70 period and the period the amoraim (late third century) but also suggest a more organic development of design and use from the pre-70 synagogues to those of the amoraic period.17 Then again drawing on modern analogues, in any Jewish community, there is only a limited number of people who frequent the synagogue and thus no need for a building for the whole of the population. Or finally, it might simply be the case that this is first and foremost a communal building whose interior space could readily facilitate civil transactions and only secondarily a building for limited religious use, at least at its point of construction and early utilization. It is worth noting that there are indicators that in time the space was transformed into one used primarily if not solely for religious purposes. In the Byzantine period there are interior reconfigurations to include most notably the addition of a bema or a podium along the Jerusalem wall. As Levine remarked, by adding such structures (and the platform in particular), “This was indeed an additional step toward transforming the synagogue building into a holy place.”18 The small seating capacity (relative to village size) of this public building forces, at the very least, further inquiry into the complexity of village social and cultural realities. Moreover, the location of a structure in which one could reasonably expect some literacy thwarts efforts to reduce Galilean villages to unsophisticated, one-dimensional entities.19

16 As noted below, a reference to the family of Eliashib, the eleventh of twenty-four priestly courses settling in Qanah after the First Jewish Revolt suggests the relocation of a priestly family to Cana. 17 For a review of the scarcity of synagogues in the post-70 period until the late third century and possible reasons for such, see Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 182–87. The synagogue uncovered recently at Kefar Shikhin and tentatively dated to the second century suggests that as more villages are investigated, more structures will be uncovered to fill “the gap.” On the synagogue at Kefar Shikhin, see James Riley Strange, “Kefar Shikhin,” in Galilee in the Late Second Temple and Mishnaic Periods, Vol. 2: The Archaeological Record from Cities, Towns, and Villages, ed. David A. Fiensy and James Riley Strange (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015), 88–108. 18 Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 346–47. 19 On reassessing village depictions, see J. Andrew Overman, “Jesus of Galilee and the Historical Peasant,” in Archaeology and the Galilee: Texts and Contexts in the Graeco-Roman and Byzantine Periods, ed. Douglas Edwards and C. Thomas McCollough (Atlanta: Scholars, 1997), 57–66.

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4. Cost and Economic Stratification A second observation is on the cost of building such a structure and the implications for such in terms of village resources. While the seating capacity is limited, compared to other structures recovered to this point, this is a relatively large building and there are signs that it was constructed with costly materials. As noted, a significant percentage of the roof tiles proved to be imported. The capitals for the interior columns were also suggestive of expensive building materials. The funds gathered and disbursed suggest not only a sense of pragmatic and symbolic importance but also an unexpected level of affluence. We do not have, at this point, definitive indicators of the source of such fiscal largess. As is the case for most early synagogues (pre-late third century), so also here we do not have the benefit of a dedicatory inscription. The epigraphical evidence from later synagogues in Palestine (as opposed to the diaspora)  tend to identify the community as the locus of origins. As Levine notes, “in contrast to the Diaspora evidence, where the benefactors are invariably individuals and at times officials, many Palestinian inscriptions speak of a communal efforts.”20 The resources devoted to the construction of this building may reflect or perhaps benefit from the transfer of population from the south after the destruction of the Jerusalem temple as well as the relocation of local populations displaced as the result of the Great Revolt.21 We have no evidence that Khirbet Qana participated in the Revolt, and it would make an obvious haven for refugees from the nearby village of Yodefat / Jotapata.22 In terms of population transfers from Judea, there is an intimation of this village being a site of such in the well-known work of the medieval poet Eleazar Qalir regarding the relocation of the priestly courses.23 In the text there is a reference to the family of Eliashib, the eleventh of twenty-four priestly courses settling in Qanah after the First Jewish Revolt. Assuming that Eleazar’s Qanah is the same as Khirbet Qana, the presence of a priestly course may provide impetus and resources for the synagogue.24 20 Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 447. 21 See the discussion of the possible transference of wealth in Meyers, “Galilean Regionalism,” 99. 22 Another possible site for refugee resettlement is the unexplored site of Khibet Shifat located on the southern slope of Yodefat / Jotapata. See the brief reference to this site in AdanBayewitz and Aviam, “Iotapata,” 157. 23 See the sources cited in Stuart S. Miller, Studies in the History and Traditions of Sepphoris, SJLA 37 (Leiden: Brill, 1984), 62 n. 1 and 125. 24 On locating Khirbet Qana as Eleazar’s Qanah, see C. Thomas McCollough, “Khirbet Qana,” in Galilee in the Late Second Temple and Mishnaic Periods, Vol. 2: The Archaeological Record from Cities, Towns, and Villages, ed. David A. Fiensy and James Riley Strange (Minneapolis: Fortress), 127–45.

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When this relatively costly public building is seen in combination with the various types of housing as well as the presence of at least small industry, we have compelling evidence of complex socio-economic variables at work in this and I suspect other villages of Galilee. As before, when building and village work together, they provide ways to pry open the shadowy world of village life in Roman Galilee.

5. Conclusion The large public building that was exposed in the excavations at Khirbet Qana possesses those architectural features that argue for its inclusion in the growing ensemble of synagogues in early and middle Roman Palestine. By embedding this building in its village context, the value of the analysis goes beyond synagogue research as such. The greater attention that is being given to village sites in lower Galilee has not only enhanced a fuller understanding of the region, but also made evident rural complexity and internal stratification. Moreover, by paying closer attention to such variables as seating capacity and building materials this building begins to stitch the village and its population into the larger fabric of Judaism in the Roman Palestine and of the Eastern Mediterranean political economy.

Cited Sources Adan-Bayewitz, David, and Mordechai Aviam. “Iotapata, Josephus and the Siege of 67: Preliminary Report on the 1992–94 Seasons.” JRA 10 (1997): 131–65. Aviam, Mordechai. “An Early Roman Oil Press in a Cave at Yodefat.” Pages 89–91 in Jews, Pagans and Christians in the Galilee: 25 Years of Archaeological Excavations and Surveys Hellenistic to Byzantine Period. Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2004. Aviam, Mordechai. “Columbaria in Galilee.” Pages 31–5 in Jews, Pagans, and Christians in the Galilee: 25 Years of Archaeological Excavations and Surveys Hellenistic to Byzantine Periods. Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2004. Edwards, Douglas. “Identity and Local Location in Roman Galilean Villages.” Pages 357–76 in Religion, Ethnicity, and Identity in Ancient Galilee: A Region in Transition. Edited by Jürgen K. Zangenberg, Harold W. Attridge, and Dale B. Martin. WUNT I 210. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007. Edwards, Douglas. “Walking the Roman Landscape in Lower Galilee: Sepphoris, Jotapata, and Khirbet Qana.” Pages 219–36 in A Wandering Galilean: Essays in Honour of Seán Freyne. Edited by Zuleika Rogers with Margaret Daly-Denton and Anne Fitzpatrick McKinley. JSJSup 132. Leiden: Brill, 2009. Frankel, Rafael, Nimrod Getzov, Mordechai Aviam, and Avi Degani. Settlement Dynamics and Regional Diversity in Ancient Upper Galilee: Archaeological Survey of Upped Galilee. IAA Reports 14. Jerusalem: IAA, 2001. Goodman, Martin. State and Society in Roman Galilee, A. D. 132–212. Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Allanheld, 1983. Hachlili, Rachel. Ancient Synagogues—Archaeology and Art: New Discoveries and Current Research. HdO 105. Leiden: Brill, 2013.

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Horden, Peregrine, and Nicholas Purcell. The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2000. Leibner, Uzi. Settlement and History in Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine Galilee: An Archaeological Survey of the Eastern Galilee. TSAJ 127. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009. Levine, Lee. The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years, 2nd ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005. McCollough, C. Thomas. “City and Village in Lower Galilee: The Import of the Archaeological Excavations at Sepphoris and Khirbet Qana (Cana) for Framing the Economic Context of Jesus.” Pages 49–74 in The Galilean Economy in the Time of Jesus. Edited by David A. Fiensy and Ralph K. Hawkins. ECL 13. Atlanta: SBL Press, 2013. McCollough, C. Thomas. “Khirbet Qana.” Pages 127–45 in Galilee in the Late Second Temple and Mishnaic Periods, Vol. 2: The Archaeological Record from Cities, Towns, and Villages. Edited by David A. Fiensy and James Riley Strange. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015. Meyers, Eric M. “Galilean Regionalism as a Factor in Historical Reconstruction.” BASOR 221 (1976): 93–102. Miller, Stuart. Studies in the History and Traditions of Sepphoris. SJLA 37. Leiden: Brill, 1984. Overman, J. Andrew. “Jesus of Galilee and the Historical Peasant.” Pages 57–66 in Archaeology and the Galilee: Texts and Contexts in the Graeco-Roman and Byzantine Periods. Edited by Douglas Edwards and C. Thomas McCollough. Atlanta: Scholars, 1997. Parks, Danielle, and Hector Neff. “A Geochemical Vector for Trade: Cyprus, Asia Minor, and the Roman East.” Pages 205–14 in Geochemical Evidence for Long Distance Exchange. Edited by Michael Glasscock. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Company, 2002. Rech, Jason, Alysia Fisher, Douglas Edwards, and A. J. Timothy Jull. “Direct Dating of Plaster and Mortar using AMS Radiocarbon: A Pilot Project from Khirbet Qana, Israel.” Antiquity 77 (2003): 155–64. Richardson, Peter. “Khibet Qana (and other villages) as a Context for Jesus” Pages 120–44 in Jesus and Archaeology. Edited by James Charlesworth. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006. Satlow, Michael. Creating Judaism: History, Tradition, Practice. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. Shapiro, Anastasia. “Petrographic Analysis of Roman Clay Sarcophagi from Northwestern Israel and Cyprus.” ‘Atiqot 33 (1997): 1–5. Shapiro, Anastasia. “Petrology of the Ceramic Roof Tiles from Excavations at Khirbet Qana (seasons 1998–2001).” Unpublished report prepared for the final report on Field II, The Synagogue, Khirbet Qana. Spigel, Chad. Ancient Synagogue Seating Capacities: Methodology, Analysis and Limits. TSAJ 149. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012. Strange, James R. “Kefar Shikhin.” Pages 88–108 in Galilee in the Late Second Temple and Mishnaic Periods, Vol. 2: The Archaeological Record from Cities, Towns, and Villages. Edited by David A. Fiensy and James Riley Strange. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015.

Matthew J. Grey

Priests, Judean Community Assemblies, and Synagogue Development in the Second Temple Period In recent years, a confluence of evidence has emerged which suggests that, during the centuries following the destruction of Jerusalem’s Second Temple, Jewish priests had a more prominent role in synagogue leadership and liturgy than scholars had previously assumed. Literary sources from Late Antiquity show that after 70 CE priests were given priority in synagogue Torah readings, and that priests continued to perform their temple duties of leading prayers and bestowing blessings upon synagogue congregations;1 some targums used in synagogues during the third–seventh century seem to reflect a priestly worldview in their expansions of the biblical text;2 fifth–sixth century liturgical poems (piyyutim) glorify the priesthood in synagogue hymns;3 synagogue plaques listing the twenty-four priestly courses re-contextualize priesthood organization in a Galilean setting;4 and some synagogues depict imagery related to the temple and priestly activities on frescoed walls and mosaic floors,5 all of which highlights in a syn 1 Lee I. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 524–29; e.g., m. Meg. 4:3–8; m. Git.̣ 5:8; t. Meg. 2:7, 3:21–30; y. Ber. 1:1; 3:1; 5:4; 7:3; y. Ta‘an. 4:1; y. Meg. 4:8; b. Git.̣ 59b–60a; and Sipre Num 39. 2 See Paul V. M. Flesher, “The Literary Legacy of the Priests? The Pentateuchal Targums of Israel in their Social and Linguistic Context,” in The Ancient Synagogue. From Its Origins until 200 C. E.: Papers Presented at an International Conference at Lund University, October 14–17, 2001, ed. Birger Olsson and Magnus Zetterholm, CBNTS 39 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2003), 467–508; Beverley P. Mortensen, The Priesthood in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan: Renewing the Profession, 2 vols., Studies in the Aramaic Interpretation of Scripture 4 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), passim. 3 See Joseph Yahalom, Poetry and Society in Jewish Galilee of Late Antiquity (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1999), 107–36 (Hebrew); Michael D. Swartz, and Joseph Yahalom, ed., Avodah: An Anthology of Ancient Poetry for Yom Kippur (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005), passim. 4 For a survey of the evidence and scholarship relating to the late antique synagogue plaques listing the twenty-four priestly courses, see Uzi Leibner, Settlement and History in Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine Galilee, TSAJ 127 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 404–19. 5 For a consideration of synagogue art depicting temple items, sacrificial scenes, and cosmic imagery within the context of priestly ideology, see Jodi Magness, “Heaven on Earth: Helios and the Zodiac Cycle in Ancient Palestinian Synagogues,” DOP 59 (2005): 1–52. In addition, David Amit, “Priests and the Memory of the Temple in the Synagogues of Southern Judea,” in Continuity and Renewal: Jews and Judaism in Byzantine-Christian Palestine, ed. Lee I. Levine (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak, 2004), 143–54 (Hebrew) argues that the architectural layout of synagogues in southern Judea reflect a continuation of priestly traditions regarding sacred space and liturgy into the late Roman and Byzantine periods.

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agogal context the priesthood’s ability to provide ritual mediation between God and Israel. Additional evidence has shown that these aspects of late-antique synagogue worship did not only reflect an elevated interest in priestly themes among the Jewish population, but that—in several instances—it was accompanied by an actual presence of priests who were functionally involved in synagogue activities. Inscriptions indicate that in some synagogues priests served as leaders, teachers, and prominent donors;6 late-Roman imperial legislation lists priests among synagogue leaders exempted from munera corporalia;7 and priests were often the authors of the piyyutim sung in synagogues to extol the divine glory of the priesthood.8 This confluence of evidence has important implications for the nature of Jewish social dynamics and community institutions following the destruction of the Jerusalem temple—whereas most scholars once assumed that civic and religious life in post-70 Judaism were predominantly led by rabbinic sages, it now appears that priests retained a prominent role in Jewish society long after the loss of the Jerusalem temple and that synagogues of the post-temple period often provided the setting in which ongoing priestly leadership, worldviews, and ritual mediation could be expressed.9 The existence of these trends in late-antique synagogues raises an important question: Was priestly interest and involvement in synagogues after 70 CE an innovation that was unprecedented in earlier Jewish practice and that only developed in response to the loss of the temple cult? Or, was it a natural continuation of priestly influence and activity in synagogues from before the temple’s destruction? As stated by Lee Levine in his discussion of priests and synagogues in the post-70 era, “whether such priestly prominence was always there … or whether it was indeed something new in synagogue and communal life, the product of changed circumstances in Late Antiquity … remains to be clarified.”10 To my knowledge, 6 For a survey of priestly synagogue inscriptions (incl. Dura Europos, Susiya, Eshtemoa, Na‘aran, Sepphoris, Rome, Sardis, and Aphrodisias), see Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 522–24. 7 Cod. theod. 16.8.4; cf. David Noy, “Jewish Priests and Synagogue Officials in the Greco-Roman Diaspora of Late Antiquity,” in Priests and State in the Roman World, ed. James H. Richardson and Frederico Santangelo, Potsdamer Altertumswissenschaftliche Beiträge 33 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2011), 313–30. 8 Yahalom, Poetry and Society, 107–36. 9 For a collection and preliminary synthesis of the data relating to priestly circles after 70 CE, see Matthew J. Grey, “Jewish Priests and the Social History of Post-70 Palestine” (PhD diss., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2011); cf. Oded Irshai, “Priesthood and Authority: Jewish Palestinian Leadership in Late Antiquity,” in Continuity and Renewal: Jews and Judaism in Byzantine-Christian Palestine, ed. Lee I. Levine (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak, 2004), 67–106 (Hebrew); Philip S. Alexander, “What Happened to the Jewish Priesthood after 70?” in A Wandering Galilean: Essays in Honour of Seán Freyne, ed. Zuleika Rodgers with Margaret Daly-Denton and Anne Fitzpatrick McKinley, JSJSup 132 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 5–33. 10 Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 529.

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this question has not yet been systematically addressed, although several scholars have made inferences regarding the issue based on the ways in which they have viewed the institutional relationships between synagogues, the temple, the priesthood, and local community leadership before 70. For example, throughout the twentieth century, most scholars assumed that during the Second Temple period the socio-religious influence of priests was largely restricted to the sacrificial realm of the Jerusalem temple, while groups of lay Torah scholars—such as scribes, Pharisees, and proto-rabbis—were popular leaders of local Jewish communities and institutions apart from the temple. These institutions included “the synagogue” which, it was often thought, originated after the Babylonian exile as a rival to the temple, provided a democratized (non-priestly) alternative for Jewish worship in locations outside of Jerusalem,11 and posed a threat to priestly status, income, and prerogatives.12 Owing to the perceived dichotomy that existed between lay synagogue gatherings on one hand and the centralized shrine and priesthood on the other, it was often asserted that the inherently non-sacerdotal nature of the synagogue is precisely what allowed it to survive the events of 70 and to become elevated as the main locus for Jewish community assembly, rabbinic instruction, and democratized religious activities after the temple cult was defunct.13 Based on this model, priestly involvement in late-antique synagogues would appear to be a phenomenon that emerged sometime after 70 CE, and thus would have been an invasive imposition upon the egalitarian framework of the earlier institution. 11 Classic examples of scholars assuming that a sharp dichotomy existed between the temple (the realm of cultic ritual and priestly hierarchy) and early synagogues (the realm of democratized worship “free of such incidentals”) can be seen in Ismar Elbogen, Jewish Liturgy: A Comprehensive History (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1993 [1913]), 3; Solomon Zeitlin, “The Origin of the Synagogue: A Study in the Development of Jewish Institutions,” in The Synagogue: Studies in Origins, Archaeology, and Architecture, ed. Joseph Gutmann (New York: KTAV, 1975), 14–26; Gedaliah Alon, The Jews in Their Land in the Talmudic Age, trans. Gershon Levi (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), 260; Rachel Hachlili, “Aspects of Similarity and Diversity in the Architecture and Art of Ancient Synagogues and Churches in the Land of Israel,” ZDPV 113 (1997): 92. 12 For a recent articulation of this position, see Roland Deines, “Religious Practices and Religious Movements in Galilee: 100 BCE–200 CE,” in Galilee in the Late Second Temple and Mishnaic Periods, Vol. 1: Life, Culture, and Society, ed. David A. Fiensy and James Riley Strange (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2014), 78–111, esp. 89. 13 See, e.g., Louis Finkelstein, The Pharisees: The Sociological Background of Their Faith, 3rd ed. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1962), 568–69; Joseph Gutmann, Ancient Synagogues: The State of Research, BJS 22 (Chico, CA: Scholars, 1981), 4; Victor Tcherikover, Hellenistic Civilization and the Jews (New York: Atheneum, 1982), 124–25; Martin Hengel, Between Jesus and Paul: Studies in the Earliest History of Christianity (London: SCM Press, 1983), 16–18; and W. D. Davies, “Reflections on Aspects of the Jewish Background of the Gospel of John,” in Exploring the Gospel of John: In Honor of D. Moody Smith, ed. R. Alan Culpepper and C. Clifton Black (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996), 46–49.

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However, in more recent scholarship (mostly produced since the 1990s) at least three reassessments related to the nature of synagogues and community leadership structures during the Second Temple period have undermined this traditional model and have challenged the historical assumptions that underlie it. The first is that early synagogues did not seem to have developed in opposition to the Jerusalem temple complex, but rather often existed in a symbiotic relationship with the temple and its priestly hierarchy;14 the second is that pre-70 synagogues were not ubiquitously led by sectarian groups of lay Torah scholars such as Pharisees and proto-rabbis, but instead were most often community institutions presided over by local civic leadership;15 and the third is that priests often had more influence and involvement in the civic leadership of Jewish communities apart from the temple cult than was previously recognized as they served in various administrative, judicial, and scribal capacities on the local level.16 Taken together, these observations imply that priests before 70 may have long had a degree of prominence in Jewish communal assemblies (and thus early synagogue gatherings) by virtue of their hereditary status and position within the social hierarchies of the communities in which they resided.17 If accurate, this alternative to the traditional model of synagogue development would not only confirm a significant continuity for the role priests played in synagogues between the pre- and post-70 periods, but it 14 See, e.g., Lester L. Grabbe, “Synagogues in Pre-70 Palestine: A Reassessment,” in Ancient Synagogues: Historical Analysis and Archaeological Discovery, ed. Dan Urman and Paul V. M. Flesher, StPB 47 (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 1:23–24; Donald D. Binder, Into the Temple Courts: The Place of the Synagogue in the Second Temple Period, SBLDS 169 (Atlanta: SBL Press, 1999); Anders Runesson, The Origins of the Synagogue. A Socio-Historical Study, CBNTS 37 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2001); and Anders Runesson, “Persian Imperial Politics, the Beginning of Public Torah Readings, and the Origins of the Synagogue,” in The Ancient Synagogue. From Its Origins until 200 C. E.: Papers Presented at an International Conference at Lund University, October 14–17, 2001, ed. Birger Olsson and Magnus Zetterholm, CBNTS 39 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2003), 63–89. 15 See Shaye J. D. Cohen, “Were Pharisees and Rabbis Leaders of Communal Prayer and Torah Study in Antiquity? The Evidence of the New Testament, Josephus, and the Early Church Fathers,” in Evolution of the Synagogue: Problems and Progress, ed. Howard C. Kee and Lynn H. Cohick (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1999), 89–105; James Tunstead Burtchaell, From Synagogue to Church: Public Services and Offices in the Earliest Christian Communities (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 228–71; Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 21–44, 135–45, 412–53; Rachel Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues—Archaeology and Art: New Discoveries and Current Research, HdO 105 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 6–20. 16 See, e.g., E. P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief 63 BCE–66 CE (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1992), 170–89; Martha Himmelfarb, A Kingdom of Priests: Ancestry and Merit in Ancient Judaism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 11–52; Junghwa Choi, Jewish Leadership in Palestine from 70 CE to 135 CE, AJEC 83 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 44–71. 17 See Lee I. Levine, “The Nature and Origin of the Palestinian Synagogue Reconsidered,” JBL 115 (1996): 425–48; E. P. Sanders, “Common Judaism and the Synagogue in the First Century,” in Jews, Christians, and Polytheists in the Ancient Synagogue: Cultural Interaction during the Greco-Roman Period, ed. Steven Fine (London: Routledge, 1999), 1–17.

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could also advance in important ways our understanding of synagogue origins and the extent to which priests were integrated into the broader social, political, and religious landscape of early Judaism. In an effort to explore these potential contributions to the study of ancient synagogues and Jewish social dynamics, this article will provide a survey and synthesis of the extant evidence for the interconnected relationships between priests, community leadership, communal assemblies, and synagogue development during the time of the Second Temple. While the limitations of primary sources often prevent a complete understanding of these relationships, noticeable patterns provide significant insights that can inform our reconstruction of Judea’s socio-political structures during the Persian, Hellenistic, and early Roman periods and allow us to surmise the extent of priestly activity in pre-70 synagogues. These insights support and refine more recent approaches to the topic by showing that, from the beginning, priests often played a prominent role in both community and synagogue leadership as a result of their hereditary responsibilities, and that early synagogue assemblies often strengthened the connection between the Jerusalem temple complex and local settlements, affirmed the status of priests in the community’s social hierarchy, and extended priestly influence beyond the sacrificial realm of the Jerusalem temple.

1. Priestly Involvement in Judean Civic Leadership, Public Torah Reading, and Community Assemblies As scholars have long lamented, extant source material on synagogue origins and the inner-workings of early Jewish community life is regrettably sparse, leaving many gaps in our understanding of these two interrelated topics. Nevertheless, the available evidence that can illuminate the roles priests played in these areas reflects consistent patterns and highlights important aspects of Jewish social institutions that have received relatively little attention in scholarship.18 In order to provide the proper context and analysis of this evidence, it is first necessary to make a few preliminary observations regarding the institutional development of synagogues in the Second Temple period, as well as their relationship to civic leadership structures in Persian, Hellenistic, and early Roman Judea. Of course, these are highly complex issues that cannot be fully addressed within the confines of this article. However, as they relate to the question of priestly involvement, recent research has laid a helpful foundation by showing that—rather than emerging in response to a specific event or under the leadership of one particular social group—synagogues developed gradually out of a broad matrix of public or semi-public assemblies 18 For valuable preliminary work done on the relationship between priests, Jewish community life, and early synagogue development, see the studies cited in n. 14–17.

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that occurred within the post-exilic community for administrative, judicial, or religious purposes and that often promoted (along with other possible activities) the communal reading, studying, and exposition of the Torah.19 As socio-historical studies have shown, over time such gatherings included national assemblies at the Jerusalem temple, local councils or legal hearings in public settings, gatherings of like-minded households to promote a particular ideology, denominational or sectarian assemblies that came to resemble voluntary associations, and perhaps even the gatherings of various occupational guilds devoted to the God of Israel.20 In these different gatherings the precise liturgical arrangements varied based on period, location, and social group, and often the organization of assembly leadership was either comprised of local town officials or was patterned after local forms of government.21 For the purposes of this article, it is significant to recognize that a wide spectrum of such assemblies throughout the Second Temple period were intended to strengthen the connection between the Jerusalem temple complex and local communities, and often included the involvement of priests as they served alongside other community officials in local leadership capacities. As will be seen below, this could include priests who were appointed to represent the central shrine in Jerusalem or priests who (by virtue of their lineage) naturally functioned within the social hierarchies of the communities in which they resided when they were not on duty at the temple. This is not to say that priests were ubiquitous leaders in all Judean communities and assemblies; the primary sources for ancient Jewish society make it clear that core leadership commonly included local elders and magistrates who, regardless of priestly lineage, were socially, economically, or politically influential within their cities, towns, or villages. However, it is important to note that, during the centuries following the return from Babylonian exile, Pentateuchal legislation provided a foundational framework for Judean social structures that informed the nature of community hierarchies, legal instruction, and public gatherings in 19 Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 135–72 discusses and historically contextualizes other activities occasionally attested in Second Temple period synagogues, including various civic functions, religious sermons, targums, and prayers. However, for the sake of concision, this article will focus on Torah-centered activities as the most consistent, prominent, and defining activity of Judean gatherings that could be considered part of early synagogue development. 20 See Runesson, Origins; Runesson, “Persian Imperial Politics,” 63–89; Alexei Sivertsev, Private Households and Public Politics in 3rd–5th Century Jewish Palestine, TSAJ 90 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002), 161–69; Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 21–44; Richard Last, “The Other Synagogues,” JSJ 47 (2016): 330–63. 21 For fuller discussions on the relationship between local community functions, civic leadership, and early synagogues, see the sources in n. 15. For a discussion of sectarian assemblies that based their leadership structures on local forms of government (using the Qumran community as a case study), see Yonder Moynihan Gillihan, Civic Ideology, Organization, and Law in the Rule Scrolls: A Comparative Study of the Covenanter’s Sect and Contemporary Voluntary Associations in Political Context, STDJ 97 (Leiden: Brill, 2012).

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significant ways, and that this framework assigned a prominent role to priests. In short, biblical law afforded priests a hereditary status that—as mediators of the divine realm and representatives of the temple complex—would have naturally given them high profile responsibilities in the administration of Israel’s national institutions and integrated them (where present) into the local leadership bodies of Judean communities.22 This status, in turn, would have placed priests in a position to be involved in public and semi-public assemblies that contributed to the evolution of early synagogues. Although the precise dating of Pentateuchal sources is debated, it seems that their visions for the integration of hierocratic leadership within ancient Israel had begun to emerge by the final decades of the First Temple period. For example, in addition to the development of Priestly legislation that set apart priests to be Israel’s religious specialists whose sacrifices, prayers, and blessings provided communion with God,23 the Deuteronomistic reforms of the seventh century BCE included the appointment of Levitical priests to be custodians of divine law and legal experts who—on account of their divinatory gifts—were instructed to “teach Jacob [the] ordinances and Israel [the] law.”24 In an effort to promote the central authority of the Jerusalem temple complex, to ensure that all would be taught the legal code by state officials, and to affirm the didactic role of priests within Israel’s national institutions, Deuteronomy required the community to gather in a public assembly at the Jerusalem temple every sabbatical year to hear the Torah read by an appointed delegation of “the priests, the sons of Levi … [and] the elders,” thus ensuring that Israel would regularly “hear and learn … the words of the law.”25 While such assemblies long pre-date the formal synagogue gatherings that would emerge in the late Second Temple period, they may nevertheless be an important and influential precedent in early synagogue development, as Deuteronomy’s injunction is the earliest attested vision for cyclical public Torah 22 This article will occasionally use the term “national” to describe the public civic and religious institutions of Judea as they operated at the state level, typically under the authority of the Jerusalem temple complex. Although in some ways this terminology could appear anachronistic and may not fully account for Judea’s integration into the broader political structures of the region during this period, it is simply used here as a convenient way to differentiate these centralized institutions, assemblies, and leadership bodies from their more localized counterparts that operated at the town or village level. 23 E.g., Exod 29:38–46; Lev 8–9; Num 6:22–27. 24 Deut 33:8–10. The appointment in Deuteronomy of priests as custodians of the law can also be seen in the requirement for the king to give his copy of the Torah to the Levitical priests for safekeeping (17:18–20) and in the account of Moses giving his copy to the priests to deposit in the ark of the covenant (31:9, 24–26). For the ways in which divinatory gifts contributed to the qualification of priests in their role as Israel’s legal experts, see Matthew J. Grey, “Priestly Divination and Illuminating Stones in Second Temple Judaism,” in The Prophetic Voice at Qumran: The Leonardo Museum Conference on the Dead Sea Scrolls, 11–12 April 2014, ed. Donald W. Parry et al., STDJ 120 (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 21–57, esp. 23–26. 25 Deut 31:9–13.

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reading in ancient Israel.26 To the extent that this is the case, it is significant that biblical legislation places these public assemblies and Torah reading ceremonies under the supervision of a national leadership body comprised of the community elders and the temple’s priestly representatives, with the latter being assigned the most prominent role in the reading liturgy.27 As an extension of presenting priests as experts and teachers of divine law at the national level, the Pentateuch also attempted to integrate priests into Israel’s broader community leadership structures by appointing them to adjudicate a wide variety of civic and religious legal matters that would have been relevant on the local level apart from the temple, including property disputes, the purity status of individuals and households, and accusations of adultery.28 This legal expertise made priests an important component of the Torah’s ideal court system, in which priests joined local judges and elders to hear legal cases in the towns and villages of Judah, and in which the chief priests and judges at the temple served as Israel’s highest court of appeals.29 Although the various Pentateuchal texts that present this legislation originated in different social circles (such as the Priestly and Deuteronomistic schools), their shared ideals of hierocratic instruction and adjudication appear to have reflected at least some degree of historical reality in the late First Temple and exilic periods, as indicated by repeated references to priestly didactic and judicial activities in contemporaneous literature.30 Unfortunately, the relative sparsity of evidence makes it difficult to determine the full extent to which the ideals of this biblical legislation were implemented during the post-exilic period, especially in local settings where non-priestly families were also in a position to vie for influence in civic affairs.31 However, a brief historical survey of public assemblies and civic ideology in the early 26 For interesting (if somewhat dated) discussions about the ways in which Josiah’s Deuteronomistic reforms may have influenced early synagogue development, see Julian Morgenstern, “The Origin of the Synagogue,” in Studi orientalistici in onore di Giorgio Levi della Vida, 2 vols., Pubblicazioni dell’Istituto per l’Oriente 52 (Rome: Istituto per l’Oriente, 1956), 2:192–201; and J. Weingreen, “Origin of the Synagogue,” Hermathena 98 (1964): 68–84. 27 For more on this legislation, its use in public Torah readings in the Persian period, and its role in the formation of early synagogues, see Runesson, Origins, 245–303. 28 E.g., Lev 10:10–11; 14:57; 27:8, 12, 23; Num 5:11–31; Deut 17:8–13; 21:5; 24:8. 29 See Deut 17:8–13; 19:17; 21:1–9. 30 See Hos 4:6, Zeph 3:4, Mic 3:11, and Ezek 7:26; 22:26 (statements assuming that priests were Israel’s official teachers); 2 Kgs 17:27–28 (the Assyrian use of local priests to maintain awareness of God’s law in Samaria); Jer 18:18; 36:6–10; 51:59–64 (the public teachings of Jeremiah the priest); and Ezek 8:1; 14:1; 20:1; 33:30–31 (the gatherings of elders in exile at the home of Ezekiel the priest to receive divine instruction). Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 24–25 surveys previous scholarship that saw some of these episodes as contributing to synagogue origins (though typically without emphasizing the relevance of priestly involvement). 31 Alexei Sivertsev, Households, Sects, and the Origins of Rabbinic Judaism, JSJSup 102 (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 38–63 discusses the circles of both priestly and non-priestly families who sought to influence local politics and religious practice after the return from exile.

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Second Temple period suggests that the governing authorities of Judea often drew upon the codified sacerdotal system of the Pentateuch in ways that provided a foundational framework for early synagogue gatherings and that promoted the role of priests in those gatherings. As demonstrated by Anders Runesson, this framework may have begun to take shape under the Persians who—following their administrative policies for governing foreign provinces—sought to establish the Torah as the official law of Yahud, affirm the centralized authority of the Jerusalem temple complex, and increase the influence of the priesthood in the towns and villages of the region.32 These policies were enacted through the establishment of diarchic leadership (a governor and High Priest) as the central authority of the province,33 and the appointment of priests as representatives of the state whose responsibilities included the public teaching of the Torah (both at the temple and in local assemblies) and, in conjunction with local elders, oversight of the province’s judicial affairs.34 Salient examples of this administrative arrangement during the mid-fifth century BCE can be seen in the public assemblies and official Torah readings presided over by Ezra, a priest and “scribe skilled in the law of Moses,” as the means to promote the government’s reformation programs.35 In the first such instance, the community was gathered on the New Year in the open court near the Water Gate in Jerusalem, where “the priest Ezra brought the law before the assembly” (LXX: τῆς ἐκκλησίας) and read it aloud from a wooden platform while flanked both by priests and by prominent civic officials—an event that concluded with Ezra’s blessing of the congregation and communal prostration, followed by a delegation of Levites going among the community to provide interpretation of what was read.36 Related episodes include the subsequent offering of legal instruction by Ezra (accompanied by “the priests and the Levites”) to the heads of ancestral clans 32 Runesson, Origins, 259–300 and Runesson, “Persian Imperial Politics,” 63–89 provide detailed discussions of the following policies and political strategies used by the Persians to administer the province of Yahud, as well as compelling arguments that the official use of public assemblies and Torah readings in this period contributed in important ways to early synagogue development. 33 Zech 3:1–4:14; cf. Hag 1:1; 2:20–23. For more on diarchic government in Persian Yahud and its subsequent manifestations in Judean politics, see David Goodblatt, The Monarchic Principle: Studies in Jewish Self-Government in Antiquity, TSAJ 38 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1994), 57–76. 34 For the codification of the Pentateuch in the Persian period and the ways in which it supported the role of priests in the administration of Yahud, see Joseph Blenkinsopp, The Pentateuch: An Introduction to the First Five Books of the Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 239–42. For more on the responsibility of priests to promote the Torah as the civic and religious law of Yahud, see H. G.M. Williamson, Ezra, Nehemiah, WBC 16 (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1985), 290. 35 Ezra 7:1–10 describes how Ezra and other priests returned from Babylon to Jerusalem with the official assignment from the Persian court to instruct the inhabitants of the province in the “law of the Lord.” 36 Neh 8:1–12.

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on how to prepare for the Feast of Tabernacles, and Ezra’s public promotion of national reforms that were sanctioned by government “officials” (LXX: ἄρχοντες), priests, and Levites.37 These earliest attested public assemblies for the purpose of Torah reading—which occurred during pilgrimage festivals but outside of the temple—included Ezra acting both as a representative of the Persian government and in a priestly capacity by pronouncing blessings, leading communal prayer, and reading from the law while subordinate priests and Levites worked among the people to ensure their comprehension of Ezra’s legal instruction. The collaboration of this priestly delegation and other government officials (including the heads of ancestral clans) shows that priests did not have exclusive control over such public assemblies, but that the Persian government of Yahud attempted to implement at the national level Deuteronomy’s vision of an integrated leadership structure for the province (including both “priests and elders”), with the appointment of priests as the community’s legal administrators. Other texts from the Persian period suggest that the government of Yahud continued to use priestly Torah instruction and adjudication, at times with the assistance of local non-priestly officials, as a means to promote national cohesion and extend the influence of the temple complex throughout the province.38 For example, the book of Chronicles – a retelling of Judahite history which reflects socio-political institutions as they existed at the time of its composition (likely the late Persian period)—describes the Jerusalem authorities commissioning a teaching delegation of two priests, nine Levites, and five non-priestly officials to go “through all the cities of Judah” and instruct the people in Torah.39 It also affirms the existence of an integrated judicial system with local judges and a court of appeals in Jerusalem comprised of priests, Levites, and elders.40 The logistical 37 Neh 8:13–18; 9:1–38. For arguments that Ezra’s public Torah readings inspired the origins of early synagogues (though without acknowledging the significance of Ezra’s priestly identity in these activities), see Shmuel Safrai, “The Synagogue,” The Jewish People in the First Century, 2 vols., ed. Shmuel Safrai and Menahem Stern (Assen: Van Gorcum; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976), 1:912–18; and Shmuel Safrai, “The Synagogue and its Worship,” in The World History of the Jewish People, 1st series, vol. VIII, Society and Religion in the Second Temple Period, ed. Michael Avi-Yonah and Zvi Baras (Jerusalem: Massada, 1977), 46–47. 38 In response to administrative policies that permitted non-priests to participate in these efforts, it appears that some (early sectarian?) priestly circles attempted to assert their exclusive rights as Israel’s teachers and judges. Such an attempt can be seen in Ezek 44:23–24, which seems to be a secondary addition to the book of Ezekiel made in the Persian period as a polemic against a more inclusive view of civic administration. This passage builds upon the legislation in Lev 10 and Deut 17 by arguing that only a specific subgroup of the Jerusalem priesthood—the “sons of Zadok”—has the right to teach ritual law and serve as judges; see Nathan MacDonald, Priestly Rule: Polemic and Biblical Interpretation in Ezekiel 44, BZAW 476 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015), 78–80, 114–15. 39 2 Chr 17:8–9. 40 2 Chr 19:5–11. For additional references to priests as teachers and judges in the Persian period, see Hag 2:11; Mal 2:6–9; 2 Chr 15:3.

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ability to implement this administrative system in the settlements apart from Jerusalem was likely provided in part by the division of the priestly and Levitical families into twenty-four courses that were settled in key locations throughout the province; except for the two to five weeks a year when they would have been on duty at the temple, the priests and Levites of these courses would have been in a position to serve as official representatives of the temple complex in local towns and villages.41Although a more narrowly defined synagogal institution would not appear until subsequent centuries, this network of public assemblies in Jerusalem, community Torah reading and adjudication in the villages, and the involvement of priests in local leadership—the earliest post-exilic efforts to implement the Pentateuch’s vision for Israel’s legal system—likely made important contributions to the development of early synagogue gatherings, with priestly involvement being an essential feature in the initial stages of their evolution. Based on the extant sources, it seems that this Pentateuchal framework for the hierocratic administration of Judea largely remained in-tact (with variations) throughout the remainder of the Second Temple period.42 Under Ptolemaic, Seleucid, and Hasmonean rule, for instance, Judea essentially continued to function as a temple-centered state, the authorities of which continued to conduct public assemblies and Torah readings while still claiming that priests had a divine appointment to serve as teachers and judges within the community. It also seems that priests remained well integrated in the new Hellenistic forms of government and civic structures that developed during these centuries on both the national and local levels.43 In Jerusalem, such institutions included a gerousia and boulē (governing bodies in which the High Priest presided over a council of

41 1 Chr 24:1–31. It is also possible that this administrative structure included the development of ma‘amadot—geographical divisions of the community that corresponded with the settlements of the twenty-four priestly courses—in which formal gatherings of local villagers would read scripture when priests and other representatives from the village were on duty at the temple during the assigned rotation of their course. See Levine, “Nature and Origin,” 439–40; Samuel Rocca, Herod’s Judaea: A Mediterranean State in the Classical World, TASJ 122 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 197–98; Richard Bauckham, “Magdala in the List of the Twenty-Four Priestly Settlements,” in Magdala of Galilee: A Jewish City in the Hellenistic and Roman Period, ed. Richard Bauckham (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2018), 294–97. If this is the case, these gatherings may have helped shape early synagogue assemblies in towns and villages, and would suggest that, from the beginning, a major function of such assemblies was to strengthen the connection between local communities and the Jerusalem temple. 42 For the continuation of Persian administrative policies in Hellenistic Judea, see Runesson, Origins, 304–20. For the development of Judean thought on ideal forms of “constitutional” government (πολιτεία) derived from the Pentateuch during the Hellenistic and Roman periods (to be discussed further below), see Gillihan, Civic Ideology, 75–126. 43 For more on the following institutions and their development during the early Hellenistic, Hasmonean, and Herodian periods, see Rocca, Herod’s Judaea, 261–76 and Choi, Jewish Leadership, 120–32.

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elders),44 and a popular assembly (ekklesia) that would periodically convene under their authority in the courts of the Jerusalem temple;45 for purposes of civic governance, regional toparchies were established that might have had some correlation to the geographical division and administrative functions of the twenty-four priestly courses;46 and in the towns and villages of Judea, municipal councils—led by magistrates drawn from members of the community with prominent economic, political, or social standing (which likely included priests, where present)—performed a wide variety of deliberative and judicial functions at the local level.47 Presumably, these governing bodies were among the institutions referred to in contemporary writings that affirm the role of priests in community leadership, legal instruction, and public assemblies. For example, the Wisdom of Ben Sira—written in the early second century BCE by an author who promoted 44 With regard to national leadership during the early Hellenistic period, Hecataeus of Abdera (ca. 300 BCE) is said to have observed that Judea was governed by a High Priest who served as a messenger from God and who “in assemblies and other gatherings announces what is ordained” (Diodorus Siculus, Bib. Hist. 40, 3.3–6). 45 It seems that by the time of the Maccabean revolt, the public ekklesia in Jerusalem was referred to as “the great assembly,” and included various political, military, and religious gatherings that occurred under the direction of priestly authorities. See, e.g., 1 Macc 5:16 (an assembly led by Judas Maccabeus to deliberate on military actions; cf. 2 Macc 15:9 in which Judas reads from the Torah and prophetic writings to a gathering of his troops); 1 Macc 14:19–27 (an assembly led by Simon the High Priest to hear a letter from the Spartans addressed to “the elders, the priests, and the rest of the Jewish people”); and 1 Macc 14:41–47 (the declaration that Simon the High Priest had authority to supervise all public assemblies in Judea). There are indications that in the Hellenistic period such assemblies met in the courtyards of the Jerusalem temple. For instance, from the second century BCE onward, accounts of the public Torah reading assemblies of Ezra and his priestly delegation (Neh 8) relocate the assemblies from the Water Gate to the open square before the temple’s east gate (1 Esd 9:37–55; cf. Josephus, A. J. 11.154–158), suggesting that by the late Second Temple period the Septennial Torah reading ceremony and other forms of priestly legal instruction took place in that setting. See Jordan Ryan, The Role of the Synagogue in the Aims of Jesus (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2017), 33–34. Another example from the late Hellenistic period of a public assembly occurring in the temple courts (and under the direction of priestly authorities) can be seen in the gathering to conduct political negotiations between Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II (Josephus, B. J. 1.122). 46 Rocca, Herod’s Judaea, 198–99 claims that, for logistical purposes, the boundaries of toparchies directly aligned with the regional boundaries of the priestly courses with their corresponding ma‘amadot. However, Bauckham, “Magdala,” 294–97, suggests that the two structures remained distinct in their administrative responsibilities, with toparchies overseeing secular civic affairs, and the priestly courses and accompanying ma‘amadot overseeing matters pertaining to the cultic sphere, such as the collection of tithes, first fruits, and other sacred offerings. 47 Ryan, Role of the Synagogue, 54–55 suggests that these local councils were also a contributing factor to the earliest synagogue assemblies, and that the seating arrangements in early synagogue buildings were deliberately patterned after Hellenistic bouleteria to facilitate such gatherings. For detailed analogies of the forms, functions, and composition of local councils in Egypt during the Hellenistic and Roman periods (including the attested involvement of local priests), see Alan K. Bowman, The Town Councils of Roman Egypt, ASP 11 (Toronto: The American Society of Papyrologists, 1971).

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the administrative policies of the temple establishment—continued to endorse the Pentateuchal model of hierocratic governance by highlighting the national leadership of Jerusalem’s High Priest,48 and by asserting that God gave Aaron’s priestly descendants “authority and statues and judgments, to teach Jacob the testimonies, and to enlighten Israel with his law.”49 The text is not explicit about how priests carried out these responsibilities, but it does mention various official gatherings in which priests likely participated with local elders (and that may have been early prototypes for later synagogues). These include references to the “congregations (συναγωγαί) of Jacob” that provided legal adjudication before local judges and magistrates;50 a “public assembly” (ἐκκλησία) in which community members could deliberate, receive punishment for violation of Torah, and be acknowledged for their service to the community;51 and a “house of instruction” that may have been an educational institution associated with the Jerusalem temple.52 Considered together with the national and local councils that had been developing in Judea since the Persian period, it appears that by the time formal synagogues began to emerge as community gatherings in the late Hellenistic and early Roman periods, a broad network of public institutions, assemblies, and leadership bodies had long been in place throughout the region to promote and facilitate the Pentateuch’s vision of priestly legal instruction, expertise, and adjudication.53 48 Sir 45:6–26; 50:1–21. 49 Sir 45:17. Other efforts of this text to promote the role of the priesthood in Judean social hierarchy include its reworking of the daily shema to pay homage to priests (7:29–31; see MacDonald, Priestly Rule, 135–39) and its insistence that ongoing oracular gifts would empower priests to serve as Israel’s teachers in perpetuity (see Grey, “Priestly Divination,” 37–39). 50 Sir 1:30; 4:47; 24:23; 41:18. 51 Sir 15:5; 21:17; 23:24; 24:2; 31:11; 33:19; 38:33; 39:10; 44:15 (see Ryan, Role of the Synagogue, 47–47). The judicial responsibility of this body to oversee accusations of adultery implies that priests (to whom the Pentateuch assigns a special role in such cases; Num 5:11–31) were somehow integrated into its leadership structure. 52 Sir 51:23 (see Runesson, Origins, 314–15). If indeed these passages are reflections of early “synagogue” activities, they would undermine the argument made by Ellis Rivkin (“Ben Sira and the Nonexistence of the Synagogue: A Study in Historical Method,” in In The Time of Harvest: Essays in Honor of Abba Hillel Silver on the Occasion of His 70th Birthday, ed. Daniel J. Silver [New York: Macmillan, 1963], 320–54) that synagogues must not have existed in the Hellenistic period because Ben Sira (one of the most important sources of information on Judean religious life before the Hasmonean revolt) exclusively promotes the didactic and judicial authority of priests without mentioning corresponding Pharisaic institutions (which, Rivkin assumed, would have included synagogues). Instead, these passages would further support the argument that early synagogues were not democratized sectarian gatherings led by Pharisees, but rather were public venues in which priests could perform their various non-sacrificial responsibilities (such as legal instruction and adjudication) on the local level. 53 Although this article focuses on community leadership, communal assemblies, and synagogue development in Judea, it is significant to note that priestly involvement in these areas is also well attested in the diaspora. For example, in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt, priests often

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During this time (and continuing through the end of the Second Temple period), this system of state-sponsored assemblies and the integration of priestly officials in community leadership was given additional support through the development of political ideologies that focused on the Jerusalem temple, its priesthood, and the central authority of these institutions in Judean civic and religious life. For example, during the late Hellenistic and early Roman periods— precisely when formal synagogue gatherings began to appear as public features of city, town, and village life—Judean elites affiliated with the temple sought to promote hierocratic forms of government through the drafting of “constitutional literature” that, though drawing upon the political verbiage of the Greco-Roman world, viewed the Torah as Israel’s divinely revealed “constitution” (πολιτεία) that should frame the administration of the Judean state.54 This naturally included the Pentateuchal notion of a theocracy in which priests would serve as Israel’s rulers, judges, and teachers of Torah on both the national and local levels. The most explicit articulation of this position is found in the writings of Josephus, an aristocratic temple priest from Jerusalem during the first century CE.55 served as prominent leaders, teachers, facilitators of public Torah reading, and ritual specialists within the local Jewish community (Daniel R. Schwartz, “The Priests in Ep. Arist. 310,” JBL 97 [1978]: 567–71). In some instances these priestly circles in Egypt may have been dispatched to represent the Jerusalem temple complex as a way to extend the influence of the Jerusalem priesthood throughout the Jewish diaspora, while in other instances their prominence may have simply been based on the hereditary status they enjoyed within their local community hierarchies (for more on the relationship between diaspora communities and the Jerusalem temple, see Jonathan R. Trotter, The Jerusalem Temple in Diaspora Jewish Practice and Thought during the Second Temple Period, JSJSup 192 [Leiden: Brill, 2019]). In either case, literature from these eras indicates that within the Egyptian Jewish community priests (who were seen as the custodians of sacred law and ritual facilitators of the divine realm) often presided over public Torah readings and local prayer services, both of which seem to have comprised the main activities associated with synagogues and related institutions in the region. E.g., Josephus, C. Ap. 1.187–189 (cf. Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 25 n. 21); Let. Aris. 310; 2 Macc 1:10–2:18; Let. Aris. 184–185 and Josephus, A. J. 12.97–98; 3 Macc 6:1–7:20; Philo, Spec. 3.131; 4.190–192. 54 Gillihan, Civic Ideology, 6–8, 152. 55 In A. J. 4.176–331 (esp. 194) and C. Ap. 2.145–286 (esp. 222, 264, and 287), Josephus presents two versions of the ideal Mosaic “constitution” for governing Judea, and in A. J. 7.363–366 he seems to rewrite the scriptural account of David appointing priests and Levites as Israel’s cultic leaders based on his vision of this model. In each of these passages, Josephus highlights what he saw as the three main functions of priests in Judean society—oversight of divine worship, the supervision of law in daily life, and legal adjudication (including the condemnation of guilty persons); see Choi, Jewish Leadership, 47–57. For fuller discussion of these constitutional passages, see Yehoshua Amir, “Josephus on the Mosaic ‘Constitution’,” in Politics and Theopolitics in the Bible and Postbiblical Literature, ed. Henning Graf Reventlow, Yair Hoffman, and Benjamin Uffenheimer, JSOTS 171 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1994), 13–27; Zuleika Rodgers, “Monarchy vs. Priesthood: Josephus, Justus of Tiberias, and Agrippa II,” in A Wandering Galilean: Essays in Honour of Seán Freyne, ed. Zuleika Rodgers with Margaret Daly-Denton and Anne Fitzpatrick McKinley, JSJSup 132 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 173–84; and Oliver Gussman, Das Priesterverständnis des Flavius Josephus, TSAJ 124 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 306–20.

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On more than one occasion Josephus asserted that, according to the ideal Mosaic “constitution,” God had ordained priests to administer the affairs of the “entire (Judean) community”—including the supervision of legal instruction and adjudication—as a result of their divinely appointed lineage and inherent spiritual gifts.56 According to Josephus, this theocratic form of government was to be instituted on the national level through the combined leadership of the High Priest, the presiding council of elders (gerousia), and the “leading men of the tribes,”57 whereas on the local level each town in greater Judea was to be governed by a body of seven archons that were accompanied by at least two Levitical priests to ensure the town leadership had access to their divine gifts of discernment, prophecy, and legal expertise in its civic, religious, and judicial responsibilities.58 Furthermore, Josephus implies that this constitutional system should be studied in weekly Sabbath assemblies so that all within the community might understand the divine law and the role that priests have in its oversight and implementation.59 At the national level, there is clear evidence that—despite the somewhat diminished status of the High Priest under Herod and the Roman governors—key features of this hierocratic model were maintained throughout the early Roman period in the governance of Judea’s central polis (Jerusalem), including a municipal council (boulē) comprised of chief priests and other prominent figures, a high court presided over by the High Priest, and a public assembly (ekklesia) routinely held in the temple under the auspices of the city’s priestly and civic authorities.60 56 See Josephus, C. Ap. 2.165, 184–189, 193–194; A. J. 14.41; cf. Grey, “Priestly Divination,” 40–43. 57 Josephus, A. J. 4.186, 224. For the ways in which Josephus’s “constitution” expands upon the national leadership role for priests outlined in Deut 17:18–20, see Louis H. Feldman, Judean Antiquities 1–4, FJTC 3 (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 415 n. 705. 58 Josephus, A. J. 4.214–218; cf. 4.220–222 and 9.4–6. 59 In C. Ap., Josephus’s discussion of the Mosaic “constitution” includes a treatise on Jewish law (2.151–241), along with instructions for studying it in Sabbath assemblies (2.175). According to this treatise, the first category of law to be studied applies to all within the community (e.g., the ten commandments, food laws, Sabbath requirements, and various prohibitions), while the second category places particular emphasis on priestly responsibilities and prerogatives, including purification rites (2.198, 203, 205), purity inspections (2.187), operation of the sacrificial cult (2.188, 194), judging doubtful cases and accusations of adultery (2.187; cf. Num 5:11–31), carrying out the punishment of condemned individuals (2.187), and administering government affairs (2.184–187). See Carl Mosser, “Torah Instruction, Discussion, and Prophecy in FirstCentury Synagogues,” in Christian Origins and Hellenistic Judaism: Social and Literary Contexts from the New Testament, edited by Stanley E. Porter and Andrew W. Pitts, TENTS 10 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 538–40. 60 For more on the developments from the popular assembly (ekklesia) of the Hasmonean period to these administrative bodies as reorganized by Herod and his Roman successors in the first century, see Binder, Temple Courts, 219–20; Rocca, Herod’s Judaea, 262–67; and Ryan, Role of the Synagogue, 33–34. For examples of Jerusalem’s municipal councils, courts, and assemblies (all of which merge religious, legal, and political discourse) occurring in the temple and under the direction of priestly authority in cooperation with other civic officials, see Josephus, B. J. 2.1–5

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However, Josephus’s ideal constitution for more localized forms of hierocratic leadership might not have been possible or followed in every community, as its implementation would have depended both on the presence of priestly families in any given location and on the willingness of local communities to follow the Pentateuch’s requirements for priestly involvement in civic government. It is reasonable to assume, for instance, that such an arrangement was more viable in towns and villages with higher concentrations of influential priests in residence, as was likely the case in Judean settlements closer to the Jerusalem temple where priests could easily be integrated into local leadership structures.61 In other regions, such as Galilee, where a sizeable priestly presence is much less certain, cities, towns, and villages may have had to adapt their local forms of government on account of there being no or few available priests to fulfill the responsibilities assigned to them by Pentateuchal law.62 Still, occasional references to priests being dispatched from (cf. A. J. 17.200–201); 2.230–234; 2.294–295; A. J. 20.197–203; Mark 8:31; 11:27; 14:43, 53; 15:1; Matt 16:21; 26:3, 47, 57; 27:1, 3, 12, 20, 41; Acts 4:5–12; 23:1–5. Jonathan Bernier, Aposynagōgos and the Historical Jesus in John: Rethinking the Historicity of the Johannine Expulsion (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 55–56, 64–74 makes a compelling argument that Jerusalem’s public assembly— which convened in the temple courts and was presided over by a coalition of chief priests and other leading council members (including some prominent Pharisees)—was the “synagogue” from which early Jesus followers were expelled according to the Gospel of John (9:18–22; 11:47–53). 61 Attested examples of prominent priestly families living in towns and villages of Judea apart from (but still near) Jerusalem include the family of Mattathias, the priest and influential local archon at Modi‘in (1 Macc 2:1–18); the Goliath family in Jericho that likely held offices in the temple bureaucracy (Bauckham, “Magdala,” 294–97); and the priest Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth, who lived in an unnamed town in the Judean hill country (Luke 1:5, 39). Rocca, Herod’s Judaea, 273–75 seems to assume that such locations, and other villages within Judean toparchies, could have realistically implemented Josephus’s juridical model of seven local magistrates and two Levitical priests. For further discussion of priestly settlement and land holdings in Judea during the late Second Temple period, see Benjamin D. Gordon, Land and Temple: Field Sacralization and the Agrarian Priesthood of Second Temple Judaism, SJ 87 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020). 62 Conclusive evidence for the extent to which priestly families resided in pre-70 Galilee is notoriously allusive. On the one hand, the Hasmonean conquest and colonization of the region in the second or first century BCE raises the possibility (perhaps even the likelihood) that some priests had migrated from Judea and settled in Galilean towns and villages. If so, Richard Bauckham may be correct in his claim that families from the twenty-four priestly courses relocated to Galilee during the Hasmonean period and subsequently worked with newly organized ma‘amadot as local representatives of the Jerusalem temple complex (see Bauckham, “Magdala,” 287–305; cf. Rocca, Herod’s Judaea, 197–98). Possible evidence to support priestly presence in pre-70 Galilee could also include the high concentration of aristocratic Jewish homes and ritual purity implements in first century Sepphoris and Magdala that might have been occupied by wealthy priestly families (see Eric M. Meyers, “Roman Sepphoris in Light of New Archaeological Evidence and Recent Research,” in The Galilee in Late Antiquity, ed. Lee I. Levine [New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1992], 322–26 and Richard Bauckham, “Magdala as We Now Know It: An Overview,” in Magdala of Galilee: A Jewish City in the Hellenistic and Roman Period, ed. Richard Bauckham [Waco, TX: Baylor University Press], 52–54, 56–58); later

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Jerusalem to advise local councils and judicial hearings suggest that, even in these regions, Josephus’s ideal of priestly leadership (or at least variations of it) may have been realized to some degree.63 Since such assemblies, councils, and leadership bodies almost certainly contributed to the network of public synagogue gatherings developing within these communities, it seems significant that priests—either as appointed representatives of the Judean temple-state or as publically recognized authority figures on account of their hereditary prerogatives—were often involved in a variety of capacities as they worked as, with, and alongside local officials. In addition to the public national and local assemblies surveyed thus far, during the late Hellenistic and early Roman periods evidence begins to appear for a greater variety of social groups that held their own assemblies apart from (or even in opposition to) official institutions such as the Jerusalem temple complex and local civic councils. These private or semi-public assemblies—which would also contribute to the complex process of early synagogue development—included groups of like-minded families that gathered to discuss their own interpretative traditions and the formation of sectarian movements that began to resemble voluntary associations of the Hellenistic world.64 Even though they often contested rabbinic traditions about the High Priestly family of Joseph b. Ellem living in Sepphoris during the mid-first century (Choi, Jewish Leadership, 58); the implication in the Gospel of Luke that Mary of Nazareth was from a priestly family with roots in Judea (Luke 1:5, 36, 39–40); the possibility that Matthew, one of Jesus’s followers from Capernaum, was a Levite (Mark 2:13–15; cf. Luke 5:27–29); and Jesus’s instructions to healed lepers in Galilee to show themselves to a (local?) priest (Mark 1:40–45; Luke 5:12–14; 17:11–19; see Bauckham, “Magdala,” 60). Furthermore, the ample attestation of priestly presence throughout the diaspora supports this possibility (if priests were known to live in several Judean communities in the larger eastern Mediterranean, there is no reason to think that they did not also live in Galilee). On the other hand, however, much of this evidence is either circumstantial or conjectural (reasonable though it might be) and is lacking direct literary, archaeological, or epigraphic support. This has led some scholars to believe that, although most Galileans would have been loyal to the Jerusalem temple complex, paid their tithes and offerings, and respected the authority of Judean priests, there was little or no permanent priestly presence in Galilee before 70 CE. See Bradley W. Root, First Century Galilee: A Fresh Examination of the Sources, WUNT 378 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 34, 42, 74, 81, 83, 87, 167, 170, 181–82 and Alex J. Ramos, Torah, Temple and Transaction: Jewish Religious Institutions and Economic Behavior in Early Roman Galilee (Lanham: Lexington Books / Fortress Academic, 2020). 63 For example, Josephus – a priest dispatched by the provisional government of Jerusalem—established and presided over a regional council and judicial body in Galilee that consisted of seventy members, and appointed seven subordinate judges for each town to address minor disputes (see Josephus, B. J. 2.570–571 and Vita 79; cf. A. J. 4.287). When Josephus himself was brought up on legal charges, the provisional government of Jerusalem sent a delegation that included at least two priests to hear the case (Vita 196–198). 64 For more on the relationship between early (semi-public)  synagogues and Hellenistic associations, see Steven Fine, This Holy Place: On the Sanctity of the Synagogue during the ­Greco-Roman Period, Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity 11 (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), 26; Runesson, Origins, 62–65, 339–42, 477–88; Philip Harland, Associations, Synagogues, and Congregations: Claiming a Place in Ancient Mediterranean Society (Min-

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aspects of public leadership and the temple cult in their own ideology and practices, many of these separatist circles continued to base their internal hierarchy and community regulations on the biblical model of civic administration used by the Judean state. This adaptation by various sectarian groups of the language, structure, and organizational patterns of local government included the ideals of priestly leadership, instruction, and adjudication seen in official “constitutional literature,” and some practical implementation of these hierocratic structures likely would have occurred in their respective gatherings.65 Although strands of evidence for such sectarian movements can be seen as early as the third century BCE,66 the best attested example of a separatist group modelling itself after Pentateuchal leadership structures is the Dead Sea Scrolls community, which throughout the late Hellenistic and early Roman periods incorporated those structures in both its central hierarchy and its local cells throughout the towns and villages of Judea.67 As part of its protest against the contemporary administration of Jerusalem’s temple complex, this movement formed its own internal hierarchy, regulations, and assemblies that closely resembled the priestly organization outlined in the Torah and that were promoted by Judean officials, only with sectarian priests serving prominently as the community’s leaders, teachers, and judges (an arrangement that was reflected in every phase of its

neapolis: Fortress, 2003), 177–212. Significantly, there is extensive epigraphic, papyrological, and literary evidence from throughout the eastern Mediterranean that the leadership structures of Greco-Roman associations commonly included local priests who worked alongside other officials (such as archons and archisynagogoi) as ritual specialists, benefactors, and legal arbiters on their behalf; see Richard S. Ascough, Philip A. Harland, and John S. Kloppenborg, Associations in the Greco-Roman World: A Sourcebook (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2012), nos. 7, 23, 63, 68, 77–79, 116, 117, 123, 159, 165, 173, 182, 213, 216, 244, 249, 251, 252, 255, 263, 281, and 287. As will be seen below, this evidence parallels the frequent prominence of priestly leadership in private, semi-public, or sectarian Jewish assemblies during the late Second Temple period. 65 See Gillihan, Civic Ideology, 1–126. 66 For examples of polemical “sectarian” literature that maintained an emphasis on priestly leadership (including the need for priestly teachers, judges, and scribes), see Jub. 31:11–17; Aramaic Levi 13–18, 22–25, 99 (cf. T.Levi 13:1–3); 1 En. 12–16. For discussion on the social circles that produced these texts, see Himmelfarb, Kingdom of Priests, 11–52; Joseph L. Angel, “Enoch, Jesus, and Priestly Tradition,” in Enoch and the Synoptic Gospels: Reminiscences, Allusions, Intertextuality, ed. Loren T. Stuckenbruck and Gabriele Boccaccini, EJL 42 (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2016), 289–93; and Sivertsev, Households, 64–93. 67 For helpful and detailed overviews of the Dead Sea Scrolls community as it relates to this topic, see Robert A. Kugler, “Priesthood at Qumran,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls after Fifty Years: A Comprehensive Assessment, 2 vols., edited by Peter W. Flint and James C. VanderKam (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 2:93–116; Florentino García Martínez, “Priestly Functions in a Community without Temple,” in Gemeinde ohne Tempel: Zur Substitutuierung und Transformation des Jerusalemer Tempels und seines Kults im Alten Testament, antiken Judentum und frühen Christentum, ed. Beate Ego, Armine Lange, and Peter Pilhofer, WUNT 118 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999), 303–19; Sivertsev, Households, 94–142; and Gillihan, Civic Ideology, 133–503.

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development).68 For instance, the sect’s earliest legislation required that priests preside at local gatherings, lead in the reading and interpretation of scripture, and exert their judicial authority over community members on matters ranging from ritual to household law.69 Similar priestly leadership structures existed with some variation in the community’s subsequent regulations, assemblies, and anticipated organization of the eschatological kingdom.70 Although the word “synagogue” is not directly used in the Dead Sea Scrolls corpus to describe these community gatherings, it is reasonable to assume that they nevertheless represented the sectarian equivalent to the various public assemblies occurring throughout Judea, and that their leadership structure paralleled to some degree those of civic (non-sectarian) communities.71 This brief overview of Judea’s socio-political institutions during the Second Temple period has highlighted the relationship between community assemblies, civic leadership structures, and public Torah reading at both the national and local levels (as well as in sectarian communities), and has shown that this matrix likely provided an important foundation and framework for the nature and development of early synagogue gatherings. While the surviving evidence does not allow for a comprehensive historical reconstruction, a consistent pattern emerges from a wide variety of sources—ranging from early strata of biblical legislation to later “constitutional literature” and sectarian polemics—which suggests that, from the beginning, various Jewish assemblies that included the basic components of later synagogues (communal Torah reading, exposition, and adjudication) often forged a strong link between the Jerusalem temple and local communities, and often extended the influence of the priesthood beyond the sacrificial realm of the temple cult. The precise configuration of these gatherings would continue to develop in different ways and in different communities, but by the time more defined “synagogues” appear during the late Hellenistic and early Roman periods, their 68 For a fuller discussion on the sect’s priestly leadership and their claims to possess oracular gifts in their instruction of the community, see Grey, “Priestly Divination,” 43–55. 69 The Damascus Document divided the sectarian community into “camps” (cells scattered throughout towns and villages) in which priests would supervise scripture study (6.14–19; 13.1– 14.15), serve in judicial bodies overseeing internal property and household disputes (9.13–16; 10.4–10; 13.2), and oversee the application of ritual law according to the community’s interpretation (12.22–13.20). For more on these sectarian courts, study sessions, and the ways in which they mirrored local forms of government, see Gillihan, Civic Ideology, 203–4, 231–40. 70 For priests serving as community leaders and presiding over community gatherings (including Torah instruction, sacred meals, and legal proceedings) in later legislation of the sect, see 1QS 1.16–3.12; 5.3–6; 6.1–13; 8.1–10; 9.7; 4Q271. The sect’s vision for priestly hierarchy in the assemblies of the eschatological kingdom can be seen in 1QSa 1.4–5 and 1.22–2.22. 71 William Wesley Grasham, “The Priestly Synagogue: A Re-Examination of the Cult at Qumran” (PhD diss., University of Aberdeen, 1985) provides an interesting (if somewhat dated) treatment of priestly leadership and communal liturgy at Qumran within the context of synagogue worship in the Second Temple period.

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main features had been in place for centuries and priests—who were ordained by the Pentateuch as the custodians of divine law—had long been involved in facilitating their primary activities.

2. Priests in Early Synagogue Leadership and Liturgy With the preceding survey of the interconnected relationships between communal Torah reading, public or semi-public gatherings, and priestly involvement in Judean civic leadership during the Second Temple period, we are now in a position to examine more particularly the available evidence for the roles priests may have played in pre-70 synagogues. As is well known, the emergence of formal synagogue assemblies, terminology, and buildings (whether as town halls, private structures, or even homes) is not attested in Judea until around the turn of the Common Era,72 and the precise details of their evolution are notoriously difficult to establish with certainty.73 However, for the purposes of this article it is significant that, among the 72 Although this article is focused on synagogue development in Judea, it is worth noting that in the diaspora—where variations of “synagogue” gatherings and structures appear as early as the third century BCE—priestly activity in public assemblies is similarly attested or implied. For example, in Egypt where priests were prominent leaders among the Jewish community (see n. 53), assemblies for prayer, Torah reading, and other communal activities occurred in proseuchai, or “prayer houses.” These structures, whatever their precise function and relationship to Judean synagogues, were generally patterned after Egyptian temples in their architectural features, community functions, and legal status. See P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 282–83; J. Gwyn Griffiths, “Egypt and the Rise of the Synagogue,” in Ancient Synagogues: Historical Analysis and Archaeological Discovery, ed. Dan Urman and Paul V. M. Flesher, StPB 47 (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 1:3–16; Aryeh Kasher, “Synagogues as ‘Houses of Prayer’ and ‘Holy Places’ in the Jewish Communities of Hellenistic and Roman Egypt,” in Ancient Synagogues: Historical Analysis and Archaeological Discovery, ed. Dan Urman and Paul V. M. Flesher, StPB 47 (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 1:205–20; Seth Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 B. C.E. to 640 C. E. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 216–20. Therefore, it is reasonable to surmise that in this early variation of diaspora synagogue gatherings priests may have often served as both administrative officials and liturgical functionaries (see Binder, Temple Courts, 111–18; Runesson, Origins, 429–54). Similar observations could be made for diaspora gatherings in Italy, Greece, and Asia Minor that are referred to in the sources as hiera (“sacred places”), hieros peribolos (“sacred precinct”), and other titles associated with temples. Since such structures are often associated with communal prayer and even “sacrifices” (e.g., Philo, Spec. 3.171; Josephus, A. J. 14.259–261), it is intriguing to consider the possibility that priests (when present) also functioned in the leadership and liturgy of these community assemblies (see Binder, Temple Courts, 122–40). 73 For insightful debates over the origins of synagogue architectural and liturgical features, see the essays in Dan Urman and Paul V. M. Flesher, ed., Ancient Synagogues: Historical Analysis and Archaeological Discovery, 2 vols., StPB 47 (Leiden: Brill, 1995), and Birger Olsson and Magnus Zetterholm, ed., The Ancient Synagogue. From Its Origins until 200 C. E.: Papers Presented at an International Conference at Lund University, October 14–17, 2001, CBNTS 39 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2003).

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limited literary, epigraphic, and archaeological sources, priests appear with relative frequency as being active participants in the leadership and liturgy of several synagogues. In these synagogues it seems that priests were among the prominent officials and liturgical functionaries based either on their status as representatives of the Jerusalem temple or their standing within the social hierarchy of the cities, towns, and villages in which they lived. It is also likely that priestly activity in these synagogues was a natural extension of the ways in which priests were integrated in local government, involved in public gatherings, and oversaw many of the Torah-centered activities within the post-exilic Judean community. In some cases, the evidence for priestly involvement in early synagogue leadership, ritual, and other activities may be indirect or could be seen as circumstantial, although even these hints have the potential to inform the present discussion. Examples in this category include Josephus’s account of Jerusalem’s provisional government during the First Revolt sending delegations of priests to Tiberias, where they were active participants (along with local officials) in the political and religious gatherings that occurred in the public synagogue (proseuche);74 the contemporary synagogue recently discovered at Magdala with its stone table depicting cultic imagery that seems to have associated the congregation’s liturgy with the rituals of the Jerusalem temple and that may hint at priestly involvement in synagogue activities;75 ostraca that suggest the presence of priests and the 74 This structure mentioned by Josephus appears to have been an important venue for the city’s “general assembly” (συνάγονται πάντες) and political deliberations of local councils during the First Revolt. It may be significant that while these councils included influential local magistrates, they were often conducted under the leadership of Josephus—himself a priest appointed by Jerusalem’s provisional government to administer the wartime affairs of Galilee—or a delegation of four individuals (which included at least two priests) sent by the government to scrutinize Josephus’s activities (Josephus, Vita 195–198, 276–303; cf. Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 52–55). In one such assembly convened on a Sabbath, the local archon led a vigorous debate about which priestly leadership body (Josephus and his colleagues or the delegation recently sent by Jerusalem) was best qualified to oversee the administration of the region (278–289). It may also be significant that, throughout these proceedings, the priestly delegation from Jerusalem had the authority to call for a public fast and additional assemblies (280–293). In addition to facilitating political deliberations, this synagogue / proseuche in Tiberias was also a place where Josephus the priest and his colleagues could conduct their morning prayer services (294–295; cf. Sanders, “Common Judaism,” 10). 75 For preliminary reports on the synagogue, its limestone table adorned with Jerusalem temple imagery (such as the menorah and various offering vessels), and its possible connections with temple leadership or other priestly circles, see Dina Avshalom-Gorni and Arfan Najar, “Migdal—Preliminary Report,” Hadashot Arkheologiyot-Excavations and Surveys in Israel 125 (2013), http://www.hadashot-esi.org.il/report_detail_eng.aspx?id=2304; Mordechai Aviam, “The Decorated Stone from the Synagogue at Migdal: A Holistic Interpretation and a Glimpse into the Life of Galilean Jews at the Time of Jesus,” NovT 55 (2013): 205–20; Stefano De Luca and Anna Lena, “Magdala / Taricheae,” in Galilee in the Late Second Temple and Mishnaic Periods, Vol. 2: The Archaeological Record from Cities, Towns, and Villages, ed. David A. Fiensy and James Riley Strange (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015), 312–17; Mordechai Aviam and Richard Bauckham,

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collection of priestly tithes (as well as food set apart for priestly consumption) in the synagogue built by the rebels at Masada;76 literary evidence that the network of public synagogues in Judea and the diaspora was often used to funnel consecrated funds to Jerusalem for the support of the temple and its priestly administrators;77 and other occasional references to priests or Levites participating in synagogue “The Synagogue Stone,” in Magdala, ed. Bauckham, 135–59. Richard Bauckham has argued that an involvement of priests in the Magdala synagogue might have been related to the possible presence of families from the priestly course of Yehezq‘el, which he believes settled in Magdala during the Hasmonean period, and that the stone table could relate to efforts of the local ma‘amad (a delegation of representative priests, Levites, and laymen) to collect first fruits for the Jerusalem temple (Bauckham, “Magdala,” 45–49, 52–54). Alternatively, the dating of this building’s final phase to the opening year of the First Revolt and the presence of liturgical furniture that may have been imported from Jerusalem raises the intriguing possibility that priests dispatched from Jerusalem’s provisional government were actively involved in the Magdala synagogue (see, e.g., the councils, public assemblies, and wartime delegations presided over by Josephus in Magdala / Tarichaea and in nearby Tiberias; Josephus, Vita 96, 127–174, 188, 276–299, 404–413). However, without further evidence and more detailed excavation reports of the synagogue, these suggestions are admittedly speculative. 76 Yigael Yadin, Joseph Naveh, and Yaacov Meshorer, Masada I: The Yigael Yadin Excavations 1963–1965 Final Reports (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1989), 20 (no. 385), 31–38 (nos. 441–52, 456–57, 461), 56 (no. 577). These ostraca—along with fragments of Deuteronomy, Ezekiel, Jubilees, Ben Sira, and Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice (all of which promote priestly leadership and community Torah instruction)—were found either within the synagogue or in close proximity to it. They have therefore suggested to some scholars that priests played a prominent role in the assembly at Masada and that the synagogue served to facilitate priestly activities during the siege (see Binder, Temple Courts, 173, 177, 179, 200–4, 399–404; although, for observations that could challenge aspects of this interpretation, see Lidia D. Matassa, Invention of the First-Century Synagogue, ed. Jason M. Silverman and J. Murray Watson, ANEM 22 [Atlanta, SBL Press, 2018], 109–57). A similar situation may have existed in the early second century synagogue at Herodium where, according to documents associated with the leadership of the Bar Kokhba revolt, tithes and other priestly gifts were collected in and distributed from a treasury at the site. See DJD 2: 122–33 no. 24 (frags. B, C, E); Yigael Yadin et al., ed., The Documents from the Bar Kokhba Period in the Cave of Letters: Hebrew, Aramaic and Nabatean-Aramaic Papyri (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2002), 322–28; Yigael Yadin, “Expedition D,” IEJ 11 (1961): 36–52, esp. 49. 77 As attested in several sources, legal rights were granted to Jewish communities throughout the eastern Mediterranean—including in Egypt, Cyrene, Rome, Asia Minor, and Syria—to collect tithes, first fruits, the annual temple tax, and other consecrated gifts, store them in their synagogues, and from there send them to Jerusalem for the economic support of the temple complex (e.g., Philo, Leg. 155–158, 216, 311–316; Spec. 1.76–78; Flacc. 74; Josephus, B. J. 2.285–292; 7.110, 412; A. J. 14.213–216, 225–264; 16.162–173; Cicero, Flac. 67–68; CPJ 2:153). In several instances, the rights to collect sacred funds in these locations were granted by Imperial officials at the behest of ambassadors sent by the High Priest in Jerusalem (e.g., Josephus, A. J. 14.223–229, 241–243), showing that the Jerusalem temple leadership was involved in and financially benefitted from the network of diaspora synagogues. With regard to the transportation of consecrated gifts to Jerusalem, Philo suggests that some diaspora communities sent priests from their local synagogues to bring the funds to the temple and offer sacrifices there on behalf of the congregation (Leg. 155–157).

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activities in various locations.78 On their own, these examples may not be conclusive enough to provide a comprehensive view of priestly roles in early synagogues, but taken together and within the context of the material surveyed in this article they do conform and contribute to the pattern of priests being involved with public synagogue gatherings in a variety of civic, religious, economic, and ritual capacities. More direct evidence for priestly involvement in pre-70 synagogues comes from one of the most famous synagogue artifacts of the Second Temple period— the Theodotos inscription. This Greek inscription from the first century CE was discovered in Jerusalem’s lower city and attested a synagogue building located somewhere to the south of the Temple Mount, likely toward the southern end of the City of David on the escarpment above the Pool of Siloam. The inscription indicates that, in its early phases, this synagogue was administered by multiple generations of priests and was renovated by a priestly official to serve as a hostel and place for Torah instruction.79 It reads in part: Theodotos, son of Vettanos, a priest and an archisynagogos, son of an archisynagogos, grandson of an archisynagogos, built the synagogue for the reading of Torah and for teaching the commandments … Its foundation stone was laid by his ancestors, the elders, and Simonides.80

Due to a lack of further evidence, the precise nature of this synagogue is uncertain, including the debatable issue of whether it was a public gathering place for Greek speaking pilgrims who had come to worship at the Jerusalem temple or if it facilitated a private (semi-public)  assembly similar to other known diaspora synagogues in the city.81 In either case, the Theodotos inscription provides 78 For example, the book of Acts describes Barnabas – a Levite from Cyprus who might have been one of the priests who joined the early Jesus movement (Acts 4:36; 6:7)—as actively teaching in synagogues throughout the eastern Mediterranean (see Acts 13:1–14:28). Although Acts emphasizes the preaching of Paul in these narratives, it is possible that Barnabas’s status as a Levite could have provided teaching opportunities for his companion in synagogue settings; Mosser, “Torah Instruction,” 546–48 further suggests that Barnabas (a “son of prophecy”) might have had oracular gifts that contributed to his own didactic authority in synagogue exhortations (for more on the divinatory gifts associated with the priestly tribe of Levi, see Grey, “Priestly Divination”). Another possible example of a priest or Levite participating in synagogue assemblies includes the involvement of Annaios b. Levi (possibly from the tribe of Levi) in the public council of Magdala / Tarichaea as one of its “principle men” (Josephus, B. J. 596; Vita 131). 79 See John S. Kloppenborg Verbin, “Dating Theodotos (“CIJ” II 1404),” JJS 51 (2000): ­243–80; Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 57–59; Anders Runesson, Donald D. Binder, and Birger Olsson, The Ancient Synagogue from Its Origins to 200 C. E.: A Source Book, AJEC 72 (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 52–54. 80 CIJ 2:332–35 (no. 1404); Hannah M. Cotton et al., ed. Iudaeae / Palaestinae, Volume  I: Jerusalem, Part 1: 1–704 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011), 53–56 (no. 9). 81 It is often assumed that the Theodotos synagogue was a private, association-type, synagogue for diaspora Jews living in Jerusalem, similar to those mentioned in Acts 6:9 (the syn-

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valuable insights that support the previous observations regarding the relation­ ship between priests, community assemblies, and public Torah reading in this period, and that highlight aspects of priestly involvement in the Theodotos synagogue which correspond to evidence from other synagogues in Judea and the diaspora. For example, the inscription indicates that Theodotos and his priestly ancestors (including his father and his grandfather) were closely associated with Jerusalem’s upper class as they, along with “the elders and Simonides,” laid the foundation of the synagogue and presided over the assemblies there. As seen in the previous section, the Pentateuchal “constitution” for the administration of Judea attempted to integrate priests into the community’s local leadership structures and, while patterns in the evidence indicate that this arrangement existed (where possible) in civic government, the Theodotos inscription shows that the administrative cooperation between priests and local elders could also be present in local synagogue hierarchy. In some instances, this could occur as priests worked with and alongside other local officials who served in more prominent leadership positions.82 However, the case of Theodotos and his forebears shows that the roles of “priest and archisynagogos” could also be combined in the same person, which agogue[s] of the Freedmen, Cyrenians, Alexandrians, and those from Cilicia and Asia). This assumption is mostly based on the claim that the public assembly in the Jerusalem temple was the only official gathering in the city that performed the community functions of Torah reading, deliberation, and legal adjudication, thus implying that other synagogues in the city (such as the Theodotos synagogue) could not have operated in any public or official capacity (e.g., see Ryan, Role of the Synagogue, 26, 39, 50). However, while it is likely that the Theodotos synagogue served a specific demographic in the city (such as Greek speaking visitors or residents), there is no obvious reason why this or other synagogues in Jerusalem could not have also had ties to the Jerusalem temple complex and remained deferential to its authority (for instance, the synagogue[s] in Acts 6:8–7:1 cooperated with the priests and elders of Jerusalem’s municipal council on matters of religious behavior). Therefore, although the official public assembly in the temple was clearly the most prominent civic body in the city, it is not unlikely that other smaller synagogues in Jerusalem were used for the public reading of Torah on a weekly basis (including for pilgrims or residents of the community). In that case, the Theodotos synagogue would not necessarily have been a private institution with no connection to public temple assemblies, but could actually have been an extension of them, especially since a local priestly family worked alongside local elders in its establishment and supervision. 82 An example of this configuration may be seen in a first century synagogue inscription from Cyrene (Berenice) in North Africa which contains a list of donors to the synagogue that is seemingly organized to reflect the social hierarchy of the assembly. In this instance it is likely significant that, after honoring a group of ten presiding archons who made donations to the building, the list then mentions the offering of “Cartisthenes the priest,” followed by the donations of the assembly’s lower ranking members (CJCZ 72). The fact that Cartisthenes was listed after the archons but before the other members (despite his contribution being a substantially lesser amount than those lower on the list) suggests that he—as a priest—was recognized as being a part of the synagogue’s leadership structure, albeit subordinate to the archons (see Binder, Temple Courts, 260–62 and Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 137).

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in this particular synagogue resulted in a series of priests being the presiding authorities over the assemblies that took place within the building.83 Another insight provided by the Theodotos inscription is that, as way to fulfill their appointment as custodians of divine law, priests could use local synagogues to facilitate public Torah reading and provide legal instruction at the local level. Unfortunately, the inscription’s reference to Theodotos building a synagogue “for the reading of the Torah and for teaching the commandments” does not offer much detail regarding the precise nature of these didactic gatherings; perhaps they were meant to give instruction for segments of the larger Jerusalem community, prepare Greek speaking pilgrims visiting from the diaspora to worship properly at the temple, promote the interpretative tradition of this priestly family among a small group of followers, or some combination of these possibilities.84 In any case, the inscription is a reminder that, in those communities where they resided, priests were positioned to serve as liturgical functionaries who presided over the Torah-centered activities of local synagogues (which, in this instance, was a position that could be filled by priests who also served as administrative officials).85 This arrangement is further attested by Philo of Alexandria who, also in the first century CE, provided what may be the earliest surviving account of synagogue assemblies in Alexandria. In his description of these gatherings, Philo specifically highlights the prominent role priests played in the rituals of public Torah reading and instruction during Sabbath synagogue services: [Jews] assemble themselves together in the same place … to listen to the laws with order and reverence … [when they] assemble together, they do sit down one with another, the multitude in general in silence.… And then some priest who is present, or some one of the elders, reads the sacred laws to them, and interprets each of them 83 Later examples of priests also serving as the presiding elders, archons, or archisynagogoi in synagogue congregations can be seen at Dura Europos (Carl H. Kraeling, The Synagogue: The Excavations at Dura Europos: Final Report 8/1, 2nd ed. [New York: KTAV, 1979], 263–68, 277–79, 331 and IJO 3.Syr84–86), Rome (CIJ 1:347 and 1:504), and Aphrodisias (IJO 98–99, no. 14). 84 The first two options would be the most likely if the Theodotos synagogue was a public institution under the supervision of Jerusalem temple authorities, whereas the latter scenario would suggest that the synagogue was a private (or semi-public) institution maintained solely by Theodotos and his family (see Sivertsev, Private Households, 163–64; Runesson, Origins, 226–31). 85 As mentioned in the introduction (see n. 1), there is evidence that priests continued to preside over the Torah reading liturgy in synagogues after 70 CE. This is implied in Mishnaic passages from the early third century which indicate that the same priests who recited the blessing over the congregation also read Torah in front of the ark (e.g., m. Meg. 4:3–5; cf. t. Meg. 3:27 and y. Meg. 4:4), that maintain the hierarchy of priests and Levites as having priority in synagogue scripture reading (e.g., t. Meg. 2:7), and that seem to retroactively impose aspects of post-70 synagogue liturgy onto the pre-70 temple by having the “minister of the synagogue” pass the Torah scroll to the High Priest, who then read it aloud and offered prayers on behalf of the assembly (e.g., m. Sotạ h 7:7; cf. m. Tamid 1:6).

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separately till eventide; and then when separate they depart, having gained some skill in the sacred laws, and having made great advances towards piety.86

Spatial limitations will not allow for a more detailed analysis of this passage, but for the purposes of this article it is significant to note that, according to Philo’s description of Alexandrian synagogue gatherings, the Theodotos inscription was not an anomaly in its portrayal of priests in synagogal leadership and liturgical positions.87 Based on Philo it appears that other Jewish communities with a priestly presence also integrated them (along with the “elders”) into the hierarchical structures of local synagogues and afforded them a prominent position in the assembly. In this case, Philo also offers corroborating evidence that priests (where present) were given priority in the most central activity of the synagogue gathering—the public reading, interpretation, and teaching of sacred law to the community which, as discussed previously, was one of the non-sacrificial prerogatives given to priests in the Torah.88 In addition to these observations, it is worth reiterating that the Theodotos inscription attests to a multigenerational family of priests who were active in the leadership and liturgy of a particular synagogue. Although this is not a detail found in Philo’s description, there is evidence that there were also other priestly families of which several members served as synagogue functionaries, either in the same synagogue or in a regional network of synagogues. For instance, on a first-century ossuary found in Jerusalem and recently published in the Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaeae / Palaestinae, two Aramaic inscriptions identified its female occupant as both “the daughter of Samuel the priest, the hazzan of the synagogue of Apamea” and “the mother of Hanana the priest, the hazzan of the synagogue of Palmyra.”89 86 Philo, Hypoth. 7.12–13. It may be possible to argue that Philo’s reference to a “priest” here is a generic usage of the term meant to indicate any religious leader or specialist. However, given Philo’s deep interest and knowledge of the Jewish priesthood, it is likely that he indeed meant to indicate an actual Aaronide priest as the one who would ideally lead Torah instruction at Jewish gatherings (see the references in n. 53). 87 For a fuller treatment of Philo’s description and its implications for Sabbath gatherings in Egypt (though curiously without discussion of the role priests played in the assemblies), see Jutta Leonhardt, Jewish Worship in Philo of Alexandria, TSAJ 84 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001), 74–91. 88 Although Philo is not explicit about this, his description also suggests that the liturgical arrangements of synagogue gatherings in Alexandria were similar to the configurations of contemporary associations and collegia, which served to reaffirm the standing of local priests in the community’s social hierarchy. For example, the ways in which the seating priorities affirmed the standing of certain classes within Greco-Roman associations and Jewish sectarian movements might be implied in Philo’s description of priestly prerogatives in local synagogue gatherings; see Moshe Weinfeld, The Organizational Pattern and the Penal Code of the Qumran Sect, NTOA 2 (Fribourg: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986), 19–21, 27–29, and Gillihan, Civic Ideology, 247–48, 300–7, 350–54. 89 Hannah M. Cotton et al., ed., Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaeae / Palaestinae, Volume I: Jerusalem, Part 2: 705–1120 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012), 494–96 (nos. 1119–20). The ossuary is

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While we know little about the synagogue congregations in these locations,90 the inscriptions show a grandfather (Samuel) and grandson (Hanana) of a priestly family from Jerusalem facilitating liturgical activities within two different synagogues in Syria. In this instance, the two priests both functioned as a hazzan— a title that is given in early Tannaitic literature to individuals who assist in the reading of Torah during public assemblies.91 Furthermore, as in the Theodotos inscription, the mention on the ossuary of both the priestly status and synagogue title of the two family members seems to reflect the honor ascribed to these interrelated and mutually reinforcing positions within the community.92 Finally, along with these examples of priestly involvement in what seem to be public synagogues, there is also evidence in pre-70 Judea for priestly leadership and participation in various semi-public, private, or sectarian synagogue gatherings. Among these, the most highly developed model of priestly ideology and hierarchy as reflected in sectarian “synagogues” can be seen in the assemblies

unprovenanced, but the editors suggest that it was discovered in the village of Silwan, south of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. 90 It is interesting to note, however, that the Jewish community in Apamea—perhaps even the synagogue to which Samuel the priest belonged—is mentioned in literary sources as collecting sacred funds for the temple (Cicero, Flac. 68). It may also be significant that a fourth century CE synagogue inscription from Apamea also mentions a priest as a prominent donor (IJO 3.Syr53–56). If not coincidental, this might suggest a longer tradition of priests functioning in synagogue capacities in this region both before and after 70 CE. 91 For example, m. Yoma 7:1 and m. Soṭah 7:7–8 describe a hazzan handing the Torah scroll to the High Priest for his readings before public assemblies in the Jerusalem temple (although this might be a later rabbinic attempt to retroactively read second or third century synagogue practices into pre-70 temple assemblies). It is possible that this position corresponds to the Greek title hyperetes (“attendant”) attested in synagogue settings during the late Second Temple period (e.g., Luke 4:17, 20). See Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 435–42 and Ryan, Role of the Synagogue, 52. 92 Evidence from the late Roman period shows similar instances in which multiple members of influential priestly families were either involved in synagogue leadership or were prominent members of the assembly. These include the third-century synagogue at Dura Europos, the dedicatory inscriptions of which indicate that a family under the leadership of “Samuel the priest” built the synagogue, served as its archons, elders, and treasurers, and presided over its liturgy (see Kraeling, Synagogue, 263–68, 277–79, 331; Jodi Magness, “Priests and Purity in the Dura-Europos Synagogue,” in “Follow the Wise:” Studies in Jewish History and Culture in Honor of Lee I. Levine, ed. Zeev Weiss et al. [Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2010], 421–33; Sivertsev, Private Households, 162–64); the fourth–fifth century synagogue at Susiya with “Isi the priest” and “Rabbi Yochanan the eminent priestly scribe his son” as leaders in the local community and prominent donors to the synagogue’s mosaic floor (see Joseph Naveh, On Sherd and Papyrus. Aramaic and Hebrew Inscriptions from The Second Temple, Mishnaic and Talmudic Periods [­Jerusalem: Magnes, 1992], 115–16 no. 75 [Hebrew]); and the fifth-century synagogue at Sepphoris with at least three generations of the same priestly family—“Yudan son of Isaac the priest,” along with Tanhum and Yosi the sons of Yudan—who were honored in the aisle mosaics for their status in the assembly (see Zeev Weiss and Ehud Netzer, Promise and Redemption: A Synagogue Mosaic from Sepphoris [Jerusalem: Israel Museum, 1996], 41; Sivertsev, Private Households, 166–68).

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held among the Essenes.93 According to descriptions given by Josephus and Philo, it appears that this community attempted to emulate the activities of temple priests in their local gatherings by performing ritual washings, wearing white linen garments, participating in sunrise prayer services, studying scripture (“holy books”), sharing sacred communal meals in a dining hall referred to as a sanctuary, collecting sacred funds, holding their own internal courts, and performing their own “sacrificial” rituals.94 Both writers further indicate that the Essenes were not merely imitating priests in these gatherings, but were led by them as priestly leaders of the sect offered prayers to accompany communal meals and (it may be implied) conducted scripture readings, provided legal instruction, and presided over judicial proceedings.95 Perhaps not coincidentally, this scenario among the Essenes recalls the legislation found among the Dead Sea Scrolls which requires priests to lead the sect, preside over legal instruction and adjudication (including among any group of ten men gathered to study Torah), offer blessings in conjunction with communal dining, and fulfill numerous other community responsibilities.96 Unfortunately, there are only a few possible references to “synagogue” gatherings in the Dead Sea Scrolls,97 but the presence of targums, hymns, prayers, blessings, and other liturgical texts within the corpus suggests that the community’s assemblies closely resembled synagogue activities of other pre-70 groups, and in several ways fore-

93 In addition to the Essenes, Philo indicates that another Jewish sectarian group in Egypt (the Therapeutae) sought to emulate in their synagogue gatherings the temple activities of priests and Levites by dressing in white garments, studying law, partaking of sacred communal meals, singing hymns, and offering sunrise prayers facing east (see Philo, Contempl. 30–35, 65–89). In this instance, however, it is not clear if actual priests in the group presided over these rituals or if the Therapeutae merely sought to replicate and pay homage to temple cultic activities in a synagogue setting. In either case, Philo’s description of Therapeutae synagogue gatherings suggests that some groups may have viewed synagogues as a natural venue for extending practices of the temple and priesthood on a local level. For more on the Therapeutae, their synagogue gatherings, and their possible priestly connections, see Binder, Temple Courts, 468–71 and Leonhardt, Jewish Worship, 87–88. 94 See Josephus, B. J. 2.123, 128–131, 134–138, 145–146, 159; A. J. 18.19; Philo, Prob. 75, ­81–87. Josephus does not explicitly use “synagogue” terminology to describe Essene gatherings, but the close parallels between the activities he lists and the functions of public synagogues— along with Philo’s statement that Essenes perform many of these activities in “sacred places which they call synagogues” (Prob. 81–82)—suggest that Essene assemblies can be viewed within the larger matrix of synagogue gatherings developing in this period. 95 Josephus, B. J. 2.131; A. J. 18.18–22. Philo, Prob. 81–82 also describes Essene synagogue gatherings as following the same pattern as more public synagogues, in which priests led the reading and interpretation of Torah (cf. Hypoth. 7.12–13). 96 E.g., 1QS 6.1–10; CD 10.4–7; 11QT 57.11–14. For additional sources on priestly leadership and activities among the Dead Sea Scrolls community, see n. 67–71. 97 E.g., CD 11.21–23; 20.10, 13; 1QM 3.4.

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shadowed the broader development of synagogue liturgy after 70.98 Therefore, although this sectarian arrangement was likely more fully developed in its priestly ideology, leadership, and liturgy than public synagogues, it is an important example of gatherings apart from the temple that facilitated priestly mediation of the divine realm, provided a venue for priests to perform their non-sacrificial functions, and affirmed the role of priests in the social hierarchy of the community.99

3. Conclusion This article has attempted to collate, survey, and provide a preliminary synthesis of the available evidence for the role of priests in community leadership, public Torah instruction, communal assemblies, and synagogue development in Judea during the Second Temple period. Despite the limitations of the extant source material, consistent patterns in this evidence has shown that throughout the post-exilic period, priests were often integrated into Judea’s national institutions and into the local leadership structures of the cities, towns, and villages where they resided when they were not on duty at the Jerusalem temple. This integration was promoted by Pentateuchal legislation, which appointed priests to be custodians of divine law whose legal expertise and gifts of divination also qualified them to serve as judges over a variety of civic, ritual, and religious matters within the Judean community. In the various efforts under Persian, Greek, and Roman rule to implement the Pentateuchal “constitution” in the administration of Judea, public

98 See Esther G. Chazon, “Liturgy Before and After the Temple’s Destruction: Change or Continuity?” in Was 70 CE a Watershed in Jewish History? On Jews and Judaism before and after the Destruction of the Second Temple, ed. Daniel R. Schwartz and Zeev Weiss, AJEC 78 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 371–92. Similarities between Essene / Qumran “synagogue” activities and rituals attested in post-70 synagogues also include the requirement to have a priest present in every group of ten men studying Torah (m. Meg. 4:3), some (priestly?) functionaries during synagogue reading rituals wearing white and going barefoot in imitation of temple practices (m. Meg. 4:8), and priests giving blessings before and after communal meals (t. Ber. 5:14; cf. y. Ber. 5:4). In addition, there is a later rabbinic tradition that while the temple stood, priests in assemblies apart from the temple would offer the priestly blessing with their hands raised to their shoulders (m. Sotạ h 7:6; cf. m. Tamid 7:2). While this description may resemble the blessings that sectarian priests bestowed upon gatherings among the Essenes / Dead Sea Scrolls community, the lack of evidence for prayer or blessing liturgies in public synagogues before 70 suggests that the sages of Late Antiquity anachronistically read synagogue rituals of their own time into earlier synagogal practice. This does show, however, that Jews of the post-70 period believed that contemporary synagogue rituals involving priests began to develop while the temple cult was still in operation. 99 For further discussion on the ways in which the priority afforded to priests in the sectarian gatherings of 1QS reflects the affirmation of social hierarchy in contemporary Greco-Roman associations, see Weinfeld, Organizational Pattern, 19–21, 24–34.

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gatherings and communal Torah readings began to develop on both the national and local levels in which priests worked as, with, and alongside other officials to provide scriptural teaching and adjudication, either as representatives of the central shrine (the Jerusalem temple) or as a result of their status within the social hierarchies of their local communities. By the late Second Temple period, these assemblies provided a framework for the emergence of early synagogues—both as public gatherings sponsored by town councils and as more private gatherings meant to promote sectarian interests—in which institutional hierarchy often consisted of (or was patterned after) the local civic government of the town or village in which the synagogue was located. In several synagogues, therefore, priests naturally would have participated in administrative leadership positions and as liturgical functionaries overseeing the reading, exposition, and adjudication of Torah. By making these observations and highlighting relevant pieces of evidence, this article is not attempting to make overstated or imbalanced claims that priests were present or presided in all Judean synagogue assemblies and civic leadership bodies; indeed, there were certainly many locations in which priests were either not present or not involved, and where local non-priestly officials led out in these communal activities (this naturally would have been the case in those communities with little or no priestly presence, as well as in locations where local civic councils chose not to implement the ideals of Pentateuchal government). However, this survey of evidence does show that— contrary to traditional models of synagogue origins—early synagogue gatherings were not inherently in tension with priestly leadership, rituals, or worldviews, but instead often served as venues in which priests (where present) could fulfill many of their non-sacrificial responsibilities and assert their hereditary status within the Judean social hierarchy as they operated alongside other community officials in local leadership capacities. In addition to challenging traditional views regarding the nature of pre-70 synagogues, this survey of evidence can also help address the question posed by Lee Levine with respect to priestly involvement in synagogues during Late Antiquity: was priestly activity in post-70 synagogue life a new and unprecedented development that resulted from the loss of the temple, or was it a continuation of and expansion upon earlier practices that existed alongside the temple cult? The sources examined in this article support the latter. Indeed, literary, epigraphic, and archaeological evidence combines to suggest that there was a significant degree of continuity in terms of priestly involvement in synagogue leadership and liturgy between the temple and post-temple eras. Certainly, as a response to the loss of the temple, new innovations were introduced in synagogue ritual, art, and architecture that highlighted the cultic role of priests as mediators of the divine realm, including the formation of communal prayers based on the daily temple services, the bestowal of priestly blessings once offered in the temple, the recitation of liturgical poetry that extolled the divine glory of the priesthood, the use of temple-themed

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art to recreate its sacred space, and the construction of furniture that replicated temple features so as to perpetuate various forms of temple liturgy. However, the basic components of priest-led Torah reading, scriptural interpretation, and legal adjudication—combined with the integration of priests (where possible) in community assemblies and leadership—were in place from the beginning stages of synagogue development. Therefore, it seems that priestly involvement in post-70 synagogues was not an invasive innovation introduced to fill a cultic void, but was a continuation and natural extension of priestly synagogue activity that went back to the earliest days of the institution.

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MacDonald, Nathan. Priestly Rule: Polemic and Biblical Interpretation in Ezekiel 44. BZAW 476. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015. Magness, Jodi. “Heaven on Earth: Helios and the Zodiac Cycle in Ancient Palestinian Synagogues.” DOP 59 (2005): 1–52. Magness, Jodi. “Priests and Purity in the Dura-Europos Synagogue.” Pages 421–33 in “Follow the Wise:” Studies in Jewish History and Culture in Honor of Lee I. Levine. Edited by Zeev Weiss et al. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2010. Martínez, Florentino García. “Priestly Functions in a Community without Temple.” Pages 303–19 in Gemeinde ohne Tempel: Zur Substitutuierung und Transformation des Jerusalemer Tempels und seines Kults im Alten Testament, antiken Judentum und frühen Christentum. Edited by Beate Ego, Armine Lange, and Peter Pilhofer. WUNT 118. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999. Matassa, Lidia D. Invention of the First-Century Synagogue. Edited by Jason M. Silverman and J. Murray Watson. ANEM 22. Atlanta, SBL Press, 2018. Meyers, Eric M. “Roman Sepphoris in Light of New Archaeological Evidence and Recent Research.” Pages 321–38 in The Galilee in Late Antiquity. Edited by Lee I. Levine. New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1992. Morgenstern, Julian. “The Origin of the Synagogue.” Pages 192–201 in vol. 2 of Studi orientalistici in onore di Giorgio Levi della Vida. Pubblicazioni dell’Istituto per l’Oriente 52. Rome: Istituto per l’Oriente, 1956. Mortensen, Beverly P. The Priesthood in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan: Renewing the Profession. 2 vols. Studies in the Aramaic Interpretation of Scripture 4. Leiden: Brill, 2006. Mosser, Carl. “Torah Instruction, Discussion, and Prophecy in First-Century Synagogues.” Pages 523–51 in Christian Origins and Hellenistic Judaism: Social and Literary Contexts from the New Testament. Edited by Stanley E. Porter and Andrew W. Pitts. TENTS 10. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Naveh, Joseph. On Sherd and Papyrus. Aramaic and Hebrew Inscriptions from The Second Temple, Mishnaic and Talmudic Periods. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1992. (Hebrew). Noy, David. “Jewish Priests and Synagogue Officials in the Greco-Roman Diaspora of Late Antiquity.” Pages 313–30 in Priests and State in the Roman World. Edited by James H. Richardson and Frederico Santangelo. Potsdamer Altertumswissenschaftliche Beiträge 33. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2011. Olsson, Birger, and Magnus Zetterholm, ed. The Ancient Synagogue. From Its Origins until 200 C. E.: Papers Presented at an International Conference at Lund University, October 14–17, 2001. CBNTS 39. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2003. Ramos, Alex J. Torah, Temple and Transaction: Jewish Religious Institutions and Economic ­Behavior in Early Roman Galilee. Lanham: Lexington Books / Fortress Academic, 2020. Rivkin, Ellis. “Ben Sira and the Nonexistence of the Synagogue: A Study in Historical Method.” Pages 320–54 in In the Time of Harvest: Essays in Honor of Abba Hillel Silver on the Occasion of His 70th Birthday. Edited by Daniel J. Silver. New York: Macmillan, 1963. Rocca, Samuel. Herod’s Judaea: A Mediterranean State in the Classical World. TASJ 122. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008. Rodgers, Zuleika. “Monarchy vs. Priesthood: Josephus, Justus of Tiberias, and Agrippa II.” Pages 173–84 in A Wandering Galilean: Essays in Honour of Seán Freyne. Edited by Zuleika Rodgers with Margaret Daly-Denton and Anne Fitzpatrick McKinley. JSJSup 132. Leiden: Brill, 2009. Root, Bradley W. First Century Galilee: A Fresh Examination of the Sources. WUNT 378. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014. Runesson, Anders. “Persian Imperial Politics, the Beginning of Public Torah Readings, and the Origins of the Synagogue.” Pages 63–89 in The Ancient Synagogue. From Its Origins until 200 C. E.: Papers Presented at an International Conference at Lund University, October 14–17, 2001. Edited by Birger Olsson and Magnus Zetterholm. CBNTS 39. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2003.

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Runesson, Anders. The Origins of the Synagogue. A Socio-Historical Study. CBNTS 37. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2001. Runesson, Anders, Donald D. Binder, and Birger Olsson. The Ancient Synagogue from Its Origins to 200 C. E.: A Source Book. AJEC 72. Leiden: Brill, 2008. Ryan, Jordan. The Role of the Synagogue in the Aims of Jesus. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2017. Safrai, Shmuel. “The Synagogue.” Pages 912–18 in vol. 1 of The Jewish People in the First Century. 2 vols. Edited by Shmuel Safrai and Menahem Stern. Assen: Van Gorcum; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976. Safrai, Shmuel. “The Synagogue and its Worship.” Pages 65–98 in The World History of the ­Jewish People. 1st series, vol. VIII. Society and Religion in the Second Temple Period. Edited by ­Michael Avi-Yonah and Zvi Baras. Jerusalem: Massada Press, 1977. Sanders, E. P. “Common Judaism and the Synagogue in the First Century.” Pages 1–17 in Jews, Christians, and Polytheists in the Ancient Synagogue: Cultural Interaction during the Greco-­ Roman Period. Edited by Steven Fine. London: Routledge, 1999. Sanders, E. P. Judaism: Practice and Belief 63 BCE–66 CE. Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1992. Schwartz, Daniel R. “The Priests in Ep. Arist. 310.” JBL 97 (1978): 567–71. Schwartz, Seth. Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 B. C.E. to 640 C. E. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. Swartz, Michael D., and Joseph Yahalom, ed. Avodah: An Anthology of Ancient Poetry for Yom Kippur. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005. Sivertsev, Alexei. Private Households and Public Politics in 3rd–5th Century Jewish Palestine. TSAJ 90. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002. Sivertsev, Alexei. Households, Sects, and the Origins of Rabbinic Judaism. JSJSup 102. Leiden: Brill, 2005. Tcherikover, Victor. Hellenistic Civilization and the Jews. New York: Atheneum, 1982. Trotter, Jonathan R. The Jerusalem Temple in Diaspora Jewish Practice and Thought during the Second Temple Period. JSJSup 192. Leiden: Brill, 2019. Urman, Dan, and Paul V. M. Flesher, ed. Ancient Synagogues: Historical Analysis and Archaeological Discovery. 2 vols. StPB 47. Leiden: Brill, 1995. Weinfeld, Moshe. The Organizational Pattern and the Penal Code of the Qumran Sect. NTOA 2. Fribourg: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986. Weingreen, J. “Origin of the Synagogue.” Hermathena 98 (1964): 68–84. Weiss, Ze’ev and Ehud Netzer. Promise and Redemption: A Synagogue Mosaic from Sepphoris. Jerusalem: Israel Museum, 1996. Williamson, H. G.M. Ezra, Nehemiah. WBC 16. Waco, TX: Word Books, 1985. Yadin, Yigael. “Expedition D.” IEJ 11 (1961): 36–52. Yadin, Yigael, Jonas C. Greenfield, Ada Yardeni, and Baruch A. Levine, ed. The Documents from the Bar Kokhba Period in the Cave of Letters: Hebrew, Aramaic and Nabatean-Aramaic Papyri. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2002. Yadin, Yigael, Joseph Naveh, and Yaacov Meshorer. Masada I: The Yigael Yadin Excavations 1963–1965 Final Reports. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1989. Yahalom, Joseph. Poetry and Society in Jewish Galilee of Late Antiquity. Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1999. (Hebrew). Zeitlin, Solomon. “The Origin of the Synagogue: A Study in the Development of Jewish Institutions.” Pages 14–26 in The Synagogue: Studies in Origins, Archaeology, and Architecture. Edited by Joseph Gutmann. New York: KTAV, 1975.

Jordan Ryan

The Socio-Political Context of Public Synagogue Debates in the Second Temple Period How were legal and political decisions made in Jewish towns and villages during the late Second Temple period? How were disputes settled, and who decided which party was right and which was wrong? Recent synagogue research has helped to clarify the central role played by synagogues in local-official administration and politics during this period in Palestine. The synagogue was a venue for legal and political deliberation and debate in Jewish locales. By understanding the institutional context of late Second-Temple period synagogues and the mechanisms of legal disputes in synagogue settings, we may be better situated to understand the legal and political decision-making process of Jewish locales in the late Second Temple period.

1. Defining “the Synagogue” In order to understand the institutional context of early synagogues, we will first need to define precisely what sort of institution we are dealing with. What was a “synagogue” in the late Second Temple period? Significant progress in research on the early synagogue has been made over the past two decades. The advancements in the field have been so vast that Levine’s influential and monumental monograph, The Ancient Synagogue, which was submitted in 1998 and published in 2000,1 received a second edition in 2005,2 just five years after its original publication date. In the preface to the second edition, Levine writes, Such a revision has become a desideratum owing to the deluge of synagogue-related material that has been published since the submission of my original manuscript to the Press in 1998. Over the past six years, studies addressing every conceivable aspect of the synagogue have appeared, ranging from excavation reports and monographs to articles in edited volumes and a plethora of journals.3 1 Lee I. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000). 2 Lee I. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005). Unless otherwise indicated, all further references are to this second edition. 3 Levine, Ancient Synagogue, ix.

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Indeed, the years since 1998 have also seen a number of significant archaeological discoveries pertaining to early synagogues in the land of Israel.4 Two competing definitions of “the synagogue” arose in the late 1990s and over the first decade of the 2000s. Some scholars argued for a definition of “the synagogue” as a type of Greco-Roman voluntary association (collegium).5 Thus, according to these scholars, the synagogue would have approximated a club or a guild. Others, however, primarily on the basis of evidence drawn from the land, defined “the synagogue” as a public municipal institution similar to a town hall, which developed in the late Hellenistic period from the earlier city gate assemblies.6 Around the turn of the millennium, noting that strong sets of evidence exist for both definitions, Anders Runesson proposed that there were actually two types of institutions designated by synagogue terms: association synagogues and public synagogues.7 This hypothesis is to be preferred because it best explains the variety of the extant evidence.8 It is presumably the explanatory power of the “two types” synagogue hypothesis that has resulted in its positive reception and acceptance in recent publications.9 4 For a review of current scholarship and extant archaeological evidence dating to the Roman period, including recent discoveries, see Jordan J. Ryan, The Role of the Synagogue in the Aims of Jesus (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2017), chs. 2–3. 5 E.g., Peter Richardson, “Early Synagogues as Collegia in the Diaspora and Palestine,” in Voluntary Associations in the Ancient World, ed. John S. Kloppenborg and Stephen G. Wilson (London: Routledge, 1996), 90–109; Richard S. Ascough, “Translocal Relationships Among Voluntary Associations and Early Christianity,” JECS 5 (1997): 223–24; Philip A. Harland, Associations, Synagogues and Congregations: Claiming a Place in Ancient Mediterranean Society (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003). 6 Levine, Ancient Synagogue; Levine, “The Nature and Origin of the Palestinian Synagogue Reconsidered,” JBL 115 (1996): 425–48; Donald D. Binder, Into the Temple Courts: The Place of the Synagogues in the Second Temple Period, SBLDS 169 (Atlanta: Scholars, 1999), 204–26; Anders Runesson, The Origins of the Synagogue. A Socio-Historical Study, CBNTS 37 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2001); Mendel Silber, The Origin of the Synagogue (New Orleans: Steeg, 1915); Leopold Löw, “Der synagogale Ritus,” MGWJ 33 (1884): 97–114, 161–71, 215–24, 305–26, 364–74, 458–66; Sidney B. Hoenig, “The Ancient City-Square: The Fore-runner of the Synagogue,” in Judentum: Allgemeines, palestinisches Judentum, ed. Wolfgang Haase, ANRW 2:19:1 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1979), 448–76. 7 Runesson, Origins, passim. 8 This is an inference to the best explanation. See C. Behan McCullagh, The Logic of History: Putting Postmodernism in Perspective (London: Routledge, 2004), 49. According to McCullagh, inference to the best explanation “proceeds by judging which of the plausible hypotheses provides the best explanation of what is known about the creation of the evidence in question.” 9 E.g., Graham H. Twelftree, “Jesus and the Synagogue,” in Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus, 4 vols., ed. Tom Holmén and Stanley E. Porter (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 4:3109–10; Jonathan Bernier, Aposynagōgos and the Historical Jesus in John: Rethinking the Historicity of the Johannine Expulsion Passages, BibInt 122 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 57–60; Chris Keith, Jesus Against the Scribal Elite: The Origins of the Conflict (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014), 33, n. 59; Birger Olsson, “The Origins of the Synagogue: An Evaluation,” in The Ancient Synagogue From Its Origins Until 200 C. E.: Papers Presented at an International Conference at Lund University, Oc-

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The significance of the “two-types” hypothesis in drawing a distinction between public and association synagogues has clarified the political, local-official function of public synagogues in Second Temple-period Jewish villages, towns, and cities in the land of Israel. As such, this contribution is concerned specifically with public synagogues. This allows us to focus on the most pertinent evidence and to avoid potential problems that might be caused by anatopism. Evidence from Roman Palestine indicates that public synagogues functioned, for example, as legal-judicial courts,10 political institutions operating at the municipal level,11 and as the place where Jewish Scripture was publicly read, interpreted, and debated.12 Because it held these functions, the public synagogue was a primary venue for legal and political deliberation and debate in Jewish locales. As Carl Mosser has convincingly demonstrated, textual evidence indicates that the main activity at synagogue gatherings following the reading of the Torah and the Prophets was open discussion in which “anyone could offer insights or dispute the interpretive claims of others.”13 Recent scholarship indicates that by the Hellenistic period, the Torah was treated as though it governed various spheres of Jewish life, including both “relitober 14–17, 2001, ed. Birger Olsson and Magnus Zetterholm, CBNTS 39 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiskell, 2003), 132–38; Donald D. Binder, “The Origins of the Synagogue: An Evaluation,” in The Ancient Synagogue From Its Origins Until 200 C. E.: Papers Presented at an International Conference at Lund University, October 14–17, 2001, ed. Birger Olsson and Magnus Zetterholm, CBNTS 39 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiskell, 2003), 122–23; Eric C. Stewart, Gathered Around Jesus: An Alternative Spatial Practice in the Gospel of Mark, Matrix: The Bible in Mediterranean Context 6 (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2009), esp. 139; Eric M. Meyers and Mark A. Chancey, Alexander to Constantine: Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, Vol. 3, Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 203–4; Richard S. Ascough, “Paul, Synagogues, and Associations: Reframing the Question of Models for Pauline Christ Groups,” JJMJS 2 (2015): 39–40; Ralph J. Korner, “Ekklēsia as a Jewish Synagogue Term: Some Implications for Paul’s Socio-Religious Location,” JJMJS 2 (2015): 60–61. 10 Sir 23:24; Mark 13:9 (cf. Luke 21:12; Matt 10:17–18); Matt 23:34; Luke 12:11–12; Acts 22:19; m. Mak. 3:12. On judgment in the synagogue in the Rabbinic literature, see Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 395–96. 11 E.g., John 18:20; Josephus, Vita 276–303; Jdt 6:16–21. See also the discussion of passages from Ben Sira pertaining to the local-official function of the synagogue below. Cf., e.g., Levine, Ancient Synagogue, passim; Runesson, Origins, passim; Binder, Temple Courts, 204–26; Bernier, Aposynagōgos, 65–68. 12 Literary sources evidencing the reading of Torah in synagogues include Acts 15:21; Josephus (C. Ap. 2.175; A. J. 16.43; B. J. 2.292); the Theodotos inscription (CIJ 2:1404); and Philo (Prob. 80–83, Leg. 156). 13 E.g., Philo, Hypoth. 7.13; Somn. 2.127; Neh 8:1–8; Luke 4:22–30; Mark 6:2. Discussion of teaching based on passages from the Torah also occurs in John 6:25–59. See Carl Mosser, “Torah Instruction, Discussion, and Prophecy in First-Century Synagogues,” in Christian Origins and Hellenistic Judaism: Social and Literary Contexts for the New Testament, ed. Stanley E. Porter and Andrew W. Pitts, TENTS 10 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 550; cf. Binder, Temple Courts, 403. Later tradition also mentions interpretation (targum) following a reading, as in t. Meg. 3:20.

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gious” life and everyday life.14 Although the legal-official status of the Torah in the early Second Temple period is unclear,15 there is evidence for the legal use of the Torah from the Hellenistic period on into the late Second Temple period. At least, in this period the Torah was regarded as authoritative for matters that are difficult to consider to be strictly “religious.”16 For example, in Hellenistic period texts, it is applied to marriage contracts (Tob 1:8; 7:12–13), battle plans (1 Macc 3:48), Sabbath observance (1 Macc 2:34–41), and criminal justice (Sus  62).17 Writing in the Roman period, Josephus places Torah alongside Roman law (C. Ap. 2.176–178)18, and does not distinguish between “religious” law and secular or “political” (statutory) law (C. Ap. 2.170–171). According to him, the Torah is the “laws and the constitution of government written in a book,” (A. J. 4.194). It was the foundation for the form of Jewish government, ordained by Moses to be a “theocracy” (C. Ap. 2.165, θεοκρατία).19 The evidence indicates that transgression 14 Cf. James W. Watts, “The Political and Legal Uses of Scripture,” in From the Beginnings to 600, ed. James Carleton Paget and Joachim Schaper, Vol. 1 of The New Cambridge History of the Bible (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 356–58; Thomas Kazen, Scripture, Interpretation, or Authority? Motives and Arguments in Jesus’ Halakic Conflicts, WUNT 320 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 296–98; Anders Runesson, “Entering a Synagogue with Paul: First-Century Torah Observance,” in Torah Ethics and Early Christian Identity, ed. Susan J. Wendel and David M. Miller (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016), 15–20; Michael LeFebvre, Collections, Codes, and Torah: The Re-Characterization of Israel’s Written Law, OTS 451 (London: T&T Clark, 2006), passim, esp. 182, 239–40, 258–60. See also Philip S. Alexander, “Jewish Law in the Time of Jesus: Towards a Clarification of the Problem,” in Law and Religion: Essays on the Place of the Law in Israel and Early Christianity, ed. Barnabas Lindars (Cambridge: J. Clarke, 1988), 44–58. On this, see also Jordan J. Ryan, The Role of the Synagogue in the Aims of Jesus (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2017), 42–44. 15 See the articles contained in James W. Watts, ed., Persia and Torah: The Theory of Imperial Authorization of the Pentateuch (Atlanta: SBL, 2001); cf. also LeFebvre, Re-Characterization, passim. 16 This apparently extended beyond the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. On local Jewish law and its co-existence with Hellenistic law in regards to the second century legal papyri from the Judean desert, see Joseph Mélèze Modrzejewski, “What is Hellenistic Law? The Documents of the Judaean Desert in the Light of the Papyri from Egypt,” in Law in the Documents of the Judaean Desert, ed. R. Katzoff and D. Schaps, JSJSup 96 (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 9–14. Consider, e.g., P.Yad. 18, a marriage contract containing the phrase “you will be my wife according to the law of Moses and the Judeans.” On marriage contracts specifically, see David Instone-Brewer, “1 Corinthians 7 in the Light of the Jewish Greek and Aramaic Marriage and Divorce Papyri,” TynBul 52 (2001): 225–43. 17 As argued by Watts, “Political and Legal,” 357. 18 Similarly, he contrasts the “illegal” severe judicial laws imposed by Herod with the Mosaic law in A. J. 16.1–4, which indicates that Josephus thought of the Torah as normative legislation on par (or even more legitimate than) laws enacted by a ruler such as Herod. 19 As argued by John Barclay, this term here has to do with God’s sovereignty rather than priestly governance. See John M. G. Barclay, Against Apion: Translation and Commentary, FJTC 10 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 262. However, on priests as human government, see C. Ap. 2.185; cf. Barclay, Apion, 273–74. See also A. J. 4.196–198.

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of Torah could have serious and very real consequences (Josephus, C. Ap. 176–177; A. J. 4.210; m. Mak. 3:1–15; John 10:31–33; cf. Lev 24:10–23).20 It is in light of this understanding of Torah that we should probably also view Matt 5:21–22, which deals with legal liability to both human and divine, or the synagogue dispute over healing on the Sabbath between Jesus and an ἀρχισυναγώγος in Luke 13:10–17.21 Public reading and interpretation of Torah took place in synagogues in the land of Israel. The public synagogues were local-official institutions, and there is no evidence that they were controlled by a centralized authority. Thus, the interpretation of Torah was not decided by some outside governing body. Rather, it was open for discussion and debate within public synagogues. As Runesson observes, A certain village or town could thus be dominated by an influential group striving to control the local-official level ideologically. Such a struggle for domination is likely to have been the case in many of the villages and towns of Galilee (and elsewhere in Palestine) and it is in this context that we are to understand the mission of Jesus and other groups such as Judas the Galilean and his followers, the Herodians, the Sadducees, and the Pharisees.22

The stakes of these struggles, as they pertained to how the law should be practiced, to control, or to the direction of the town, could be very high. If the synagogue functioned as a premier local-official institution in Jewish towns and villages, how were decisions made, and who made them? How were legal matters decided when two parties disagreed? The aim of this article is to explore how legal and political debates were resolved and how decisions were made in local-official synagogue settings during the Hellenistic and early Roman periods. In order to examine this issue, we will need to consider evidence pertaining to the institutional dimension of public synagogues in the late Second Temple period.

2. Depictions of Synagogue Gatherings in Literature of the Hellenistic and Early Roman Periods Susanna 28–41 (LXX) depicts an early synagogue gathering within a legal-judicial context.23 The elders assemble with and address the townspeople in “the city’s synagogue” (τὴν συναγωγὴν τῆς πόλεως) for Susanna’s trial. The plot revolves 20 Cf. Barclay, Apion, 294–95. 21 Cf. Jordan J. Ryan, “Jesus and Synagogue Disputes: The Institutional Context of Luke 13:10–17,” CBQ 79 (2017): 41–59. 22 Runesson, Origins, 221–22. 23 In the Theodotian recension, the narrative is set in Babylon (v. 1). However the setting of the LXX (Old Greek) recension is unclear, as it likely began at v. 5b. Whatever the setting may have been, the text’s provenance is likely Palestinian. Therefore, regardless of the fictional narrative setting, LXX Susanna most likely reflects the historical realia of Palestine during the

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around Susanna being falsely accused of adultery by two elders.24 Interestingly, the outcome of this trial is not decided by the elders, but by the members of the public, referred to in v. 41 as “all the synagogue” (ἡ συναγωγὴ πᾶσα). It would appear as though the synagogue represents the entirety of the town assembly, as in v. 28, the congregated public is described as “all the Israelites” (πάντες οἱ υἱοὶ Ισραηλ) of the city. The elders direct their address not to a judge or magistrate. Rather, it would appear as though they address the assembly. In v. 41 we are told that “all the synagogue” (ἡ συναγωγὴ πᾶσα) believed the testimony of the elders because they were “elders and judges of the people.” Thus, it is they who deliver the final verdict. The Theodotian recension adds that the synagogue “condemned her [Susanna] to be killed.” Likewise, when Daniel appears in the narrative, he too addresses the assembly (ἡ συναγωγή) directly (v. 52), and presumes that the people (ὁ λαός) of the assembly will carry out justice (v. 59). The synagogue assembly carries out the sentence of the law for the false witness in vv. 60–62, throwing them into a gully where an angel casts fire into their midst. This text indicates the central role played by the congregants in local-official synagogue proceedings. Both Daniel and the elders address them because they are the ones who will need to be persuaded, since they decide the outcome of the trial. The social status of Susanna’s accusers is the deciding factor in winning the opinion of the crowd, who believe them because they are “elders and judges of the people.” Strikingly, though the elders are called judges, it is the people who pass judgment and carry out the sentence. Ben Sira (LXX) makes occasional references to a public institution that it refers to as a συναγωγή.25 This συναγωγή is apparently a public assembly in which a member of the public can seek honour, but can also potentially experience shame (1:30; 4:7).26 For example, in 41:18, the reader is told to be ashamed “of a crime, Second Temple period. See Michael A. Knibb, “The Book of Daniel in its Context,” in The Book of Daniel, Volume 1 Composition and Reception, ed. John J. Collins and Peter W. Flint, VTSup 83/1 (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 26–27. On the Palestinian provenance of Susanna, see also Carey A. Moore, Daniel, Esther, and Jeremiah: The Additions, AB 44 (New York: Doubleday, 1977), 91–92. 24 Cf. Deut 22:23–24. This indicates clearly that the synagogue had already taken over the legal-judicial function from the city gates by the time that LXX Susanna was written. This might also speak to the date of the text. 25 Sir 1:30; 4:7; 41:18. 26 The concepts of honour and shame are ubiquitous in biblical scholarship, and it is sufficient for our purposes to list just a few of the most influential works and collections of essays on this topic here. See Jean G. Peristany, ed., Honour and Shame: The Values of Mediterranean Society, The Nature of Human Society Series (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966); cf. David D. Gilmore, ed., Honor and Shame and the Unity of the Mediterranean, Special Publications of the American Anthropological Association 22 (Washington: American Anthropological Association, 1987); cf. Jean G. Peristany and Julian Pitt-Rivers, ed., Honour and Grace in Anthropology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); and Bruce J. Malina, The New Testament World: Insights From Cultural Anthropology, 3rd ed. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 27–57.

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before a judge or magistrate, and of a breach of the law, before the συναγωγή and the people.” This indicates both the judicial function of the συναγωγή in Ben Sira and points to its identity as an official institution. Ben Sira also makes a number of references to an institution designated by the term ἐκκλησία.27 Similar to the συναγωγή, the ἐκκλησία was also a public assembly, a place of judgement (23:24; 38:33), as well as a place in which one could attain honour (15:5; 21:17; 31:11; 39:10; 44:15) or experience shame (23:24; 38:33). A number of factors suggest that these terms refer to the same institution.28 First and foremost is the fact that the functions of the institutions signified by these words are not just similar, they are apparently identical. When we add to this the fact that ἐκκλησία and συναγωγή are cognate terms and that both can function as synagogue terms,29 the inference to the best explanation is that it is highly like that both ἐκκλησία and συναγωγή refer to the same assembly, which was a public synagogue. In Ben Sira, the assembly is a public stage for honour and shame discourse. Public acknowledgement of a person’s wisdom and deeds within the assembly is a highly valued ideal (15:5; 21:17). This is indicative of the importance of communal discussion within synagogue settings, without which such acknowledgement could not take place. Honour in Ben Sira, expressed in terms of wisdom,30 is construed as public communal recognition of standing or reputation. This is well in line with the definition of honour provided by Bruce Malina and Richard Rohrbaugh: “honour is public reputation. It is name or place. It is one’s status or standing in the community together with the public recognition of it.”31 Moreover, Zeba Crook has more recently shown that the honour and shame are essentially distributed by the public court of reputation as it wills.32 Thus, in Ben 27 Sir 15:5; 21:17; 23:24; 24:2; 31:11; 33:19; 38:33; 39:10; 44:15. 28 Cf. Runesson, Origins, 311–13; Korner, “Ekklēsia as a Jewish Synagogue Term,” passim; cf. Ralph J. Korner, “Before Church: Political, Ethno-Religious, and Theological Implications of the Collective Designation of Pauline Christ-Followers as Ekklēsiai” (PhD diss., McMaster University, 2014), 126–27; Bernier, Aposynagōgos, 66–67. 29 On this, see Runesson, Origins, 172; Anders Runesson, Donald D. Binder, and Birger Olsson, The Ancient Synagogue from its Origins to 200 CE: A Source Book, AJEC 72 (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 10–11; Korner, “Before Church,” 88–101. 30 Concerning the expressions of honour and shame and wisdom and folly (respectively), see William R. Domeris, “Shame and Honor in Proverbs: Wise Women and Foolish Men,” OTE 8 (1995): 86–102. On honour in Ben Sira and its relation to wisdom, see David deSilva, “The Wisdom of Ben Sira: Honour, Shame, and the Maintenance of the Values of a Minority Culture,” CBQ 58 (1996): 433–55. 31 Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh, Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 369–70. 32 Zeba Crook, “Honor, Shame, and Social Status Revisited,” JBL 128 (2009): 591–611 (esp. the conclusion, pp. 609–11). For the principles of the concept of the public court of reputation, see Julian Pitt-Rivers, “Honour and Social Status,” in Honour and Shame: The Values of Mediterranean Society, ed. J. G. Peristiany, The Nature of Human Society Series (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), 21–77. To avoid confusion, note that this term refers not to an official governing body, but to the unofficial court formed by public opinion.

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Sira, the general assembly must recognize honour for it to have meaning. For example, Sir 31:11 speaks of the assembly proclaiming the charity of a wise rich person. Likewise, 38:33 mentions the attainment of eminence in the assembly, and 44:15 says that the assembly will declare the wisdom of the descendants of godly men. The assembly also confers shame, as seen in 42:11, which warns that a headstrong daughter can put you to shame in public gatherings. Similarly, Sir 23:24 says that an adulterous woman “will be brought before the assembly and her punishment will extend to her children.” This implies not only that she will be shamed by being brought before the assembly, but also that the public assembly will be responsible for her punishment. Judith contains a depiction of the ἐκκλησία of Bethulia.33 The identification of Bethulia is uncertain. Nevertheless, even if Bethulia is a fictional locale, it is important to recognize that within the world of the narrative of Judith, Bethulia is clearly located in the region of biblical Israel (“the land”). Judith is widely recognized to feature a number of anachronistic details,34 which indicate in all likelihood that its genre is a sort of historical fiction. Ralph Korner has convincingly shown that the depiction of the ἐκκλησία in Judith is one such anachronistic detail, and that it is in fact modelled on a Hasmonean-era Judean public synagogue assembly,35 reflecting the author’s experience of Jewish public assemblies in their own time.36 In Judith, the Bethulian ἐκκλησία is a local-official assembly, and in the narrative it is convened for an issue pertaining to the whole town, that is, to discuss and make decisions concerning the threat posed by the Assyrian military. We are told that all of the young men and the women of the town also “ran together” into the ἐκκλησία, which implies that the gathering was open to the public. However, the elders of the city (τοὺς πρεσβυτέρους τῆς πόλεως) apparently formed the core of the assembly (6:16). It is worth noting that honour is publicly conferred upon a specific individual (the character Achior) by the people of Bethulia (ἐπῄνεσαν αὐτὸν σφόδρα) in the context of this assembly. This event coheres nicely with the

33 Jdt 6:16, 21; 7:29; 14:6. 34 Judith is set after the exile (4:3) but during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar (1:1), who the author incorrectly (purposefully or otherwise) identifies as the king of Assyria (1:1, 7). 35 Korner, “Before Church,” 107; Korner, “Ekklēsia as a Jewish Synagogue Term,” passim. 36 Judith is often dated to the Hasmonean period. See, e.g., Deborah Levine Gera, Judith, CEJL (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014), 44; Benedikt Otzen, Tobit and Judith (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), 132. However, if Judith were written in the Persian period, this would not create a problem. Runesson has convincingly shown that assemblies performing synagogue functions already existed during the Persian period. See Anders Runesson, “Persian Imperial Politics, the Beginnings of Public Torah Reading, and the Origins of the Synagogue,” in The Ancient Synagogue: From the Beginning to about 200 CE. Papers Presented at the International Conference at Lund University October 14–17, 2001, ed. Birger Olsson and Magnus Zetterholm (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2003), 63–89.

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depiction of the public assembly in Ben Sira, which emphasized the role of the conferral of honour in synagogue settings. Josephus recounts three synagogue gatherings that take place in Tiberias in Vita 277–303. Of these three gatherings, two are clearly local-official in nature. The third gathering is on the occasion of a public fast, and might be described as religious. However, religion and politics were intertwined in synagogue settings, and as we will see, this third gathering also turns unmistakably political. The first two gatherings, which are expressly local-official in intent, depict a core assembly of the city council (βουλή), who meet along with the public, made up of residents of Tiberias. The city magistrate (ἄρχων), Jesus ben Sapphias, convenes the gatherings. Leaders of factions within the city (Justus and Jonathan, not to mention Josephus himself) are also present. Winning the public opinion is the aim of the key players, as the ἄρχων, faction leaders, and the influential council members all make attempts to persuade the townspeople to adopt their particular recommended courses of action concerning the war. As mentioned above, the third gathering is for a public fast (Vita 290). However, as Josephus recounts, the magistrate (ἄρχων) intended to utilize the occasion of the fast to confront him, effectively turning it into a political assembly concerning how public funds had been spent. The magistrate and his allies fail to secure the support of the townspeople, who turn against them (Vita 298–300). In an attempt to salvage the situation, the ἄρχων tries to dismiss the townspeople, with the aim of turning the gathering into a private council meeting. Notably, the townspeople refuse to leave, and though the meeting threatens to turn violent, the people support Josephus, preventing him from falling into the hands of those who stood against him. This incident vividly illustrates the power held by the members of the public in synagogue settings, even over and against leading members of their city. Furthermore, the magistrate’s attempt to turn the gathering into a council meeting implies that private meetings of the council could be held in synagogue buildings. Finally, it demonstrates the necessity of persuading the public before a course of action can be adopted. This coheres with what we have seen in Susanna and with the power wielded by public opinion in Ben Sira. Luke 13:10–17 narrates a synagogue dispute between Jesus and an ἀρχι­ συναγώγος (“leader of the synagogue” in the NRSV).37 While Jesus is teaching in a synagogue on the Sabbath (v. 10), a crippled woman enters the assembly, and Jesus heals her (vv. 11–13). The act of healing on the Sabbath angers a local ἀρχισυναγώγος. This initiates a legal dispute that is notably not resolved by the opinion of the ἀρχισυναγώγος, but by the mechanisms of honour and shame acting through public opinion.

37 I have written more extensively on this passage elsewhere, in Ryan, “Jesus and Synagogue Disputes,” passim.

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We must observe that the dispute concerns the interpretation of the law, and is thus just as much a local-official issue as it is a religious one. Strikingly, the ἀρχισυναγώγος does not direct his words to Jesus, but to the crowd (v. 13, ἔλεγεν τῷ ὄχλῳ). This implies that his aim is to sway the opinion of the public, not that of Jesus. In this case, as we will see, public opinion settles the dispute, so directing words to the crowd makes a good deal of strategic sense. Ultimately, the purpose of the ἀρχισυναγώγος appears to be to persuade the public of the validity of his opinion on the practice of the law. Even though it is addressed to the crowd, the complaint of the ἀρχισυναγώγος constitutes a challenge to Jesus and his honour,38 since the implication of the charge is that Jesus’s act of healing constitutes work on the Sabbath. This initiates a dispute, requiring a riposte.39 Jesus offers his riposte to the ἀρχισυναγώγος challenge in vv. 15–16. Notably, he too seems to address the crowd rather than his challenger: “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage onh the Sabbath day?” Jesus’s response takes the recognizable form of a qal va-ḥomer argument. A qal va-ḥomer (“light and heavy”) argument works by posing that if a “lighter” thing is true, then a similar “heavier” principle must also be true. In this case, if an ox or a donkey can be untied to be given a drink on the Sabbath (the “lighter” principle), then how much more should a daughter of Abraham who has been bound by Satan be set free on the Sabbath (the “heavier” principle”)? The reception of Jesus’s riposte and the resolution of the dispute is described in v. 17: “When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame (κατῃσχύνοντο πάντες οἱ ἀντικείμενοι αὐτῷ); and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.”40 The importance of v. 17 as the resolution of the dispute should not be underestimated. The reader is meant to understand that the dispute has been decided in Jesus’s favour. This is indicated by two elements of the text. First, the fact that Jesus’s opponents, who we should infer to be the ἀρχισυναγώγος and anyone who stood with him, were “put to shame” (καταισχύνω) indicates that the assembly has rejected them. This is in clear keeping with the notion of honour and shame as things that are determined by a public court of reputation,41 and it is precisely that public court of reputation that appears to settle the matter. That the public court of reputation is in favour of Jesus in this dispute is expressed by the statement 38 Malina and Rohrbaugh, Social-Science Commentary, 282. 39 On “challenge and riposte” scenarios in the Jesus tradition, see Jerome H. Neyrey, Honor and Shame in the Gospel of Matthew (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1998), 44–52; cf. Jerome H. Neyrey, The Gospel of John in Cultural and Rhetorical Perspective (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 217–23. On the “challenge and riposte” dynamic in general, see Malina and Rohrbaugh, Social-Science Commentary, 372, 412. 40 Emphasis is my own. 41 Cf. Crook, “Honor, Shame, and Social Status Revisited,” 609–11.

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that “the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing,” which indicates the conferral of honour, that is, public recognition. Thus, we must conclude that it is the response of the public to Jesus’s riposte rather than the riposte itself that directly results in the opponents being put to shame. The status of the ἀρχισυναγώγος matters little in the resolution of the dispute. What we see instead is what Stanley Brandes has called “the tyranny of public opinion,”42 which speaks to the power of the public court of reputation in disputes involving honour and shame. Jan Lambrecht has argued that the public here has no power, because they are “attacked” by the ἀρχισυναγώγος and Jesus in their respective addresses to the crowd.43 However, this argument is problematic for several reasons. First, it ignores the well-established mechanics of honour and shame discourse and the role of the public court of reputation therein altogether, despite the explicit use of shame language (καταισχύνω) in v. 17. As Zeba Crook pointedly writes, the public court of reputation “is the final arbiter of all things honorable and shameful; it is answerable to no one. It is, ironically, not a democracy but a tyranny.”44 This is a far cry from powerlessness.45 Moreover, the synagogue context as a place of public discussion and debate is ignored, despite being widely recognized in current scholarship and supported by the parallels in the evidence considered above in this article.46 To present just one example, in discussing literary evidence for the interpretation of Scripture in synagogues, Donald Binder concludes that “members of the congregation were not passive participants in this process,” and that because the discussions could often become “heated,” “the process of interpreting scripture was a community affair, and it was not for the fainthearted.”47 Moreover, Lambrecht’s interpretation fails to take into account how v. 17 actually describes the resolution of the incident. The fact that Luke signals that the matter is resolved in Jesus’s favour not by saying so directly. Instead, the narrative states that Jesus’s opponents were “put to shame” and that the entire crowd was “rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing,” presumably referring to the healing miracle in v. 13 and to his riposte in vv. 15–16. This shows that 42 Stanley Brandes, “Reflections on Honor and Shame in the Mediterranean,” in Honor and Shame and the Unity of the Mediterranean, ed. David D. Gilmore, Special Publications of the American Anthropological Association 22 (Washington: American Anthropological Association, 1987), 131. 43 Jan Lambrecht, In Search of Meaning. Collected Notes on the New Testament (2014–2017) (Saarbrücken: Scholars, 2017), 289–94. 44 Crook, “Honor, Shame, and Social Status Revisited,” 611. 45 Further, see Pitt-Rivers, “Honour and Social Status,” passim. 46 For a full review of scholarship and evidence concerning the public synagogue as a place of public discourse and debate, refer to Ryan, Role of the Synagogue, chs. 2–3. For the classic position on this matter, refer to, e.g., Runesson, Origins, 213–23; cf. Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 135–45; cf. Mosser, “Torah Instruction,” passim. 47 Binder, Temple Courts, 403.

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the public reaction is meant to be taken by the reader to resolve the dispute. No judge, official, or any other individual makes a pronouncement ruling in favour of one side or the other. Instead, the public reaction, the decision of the public court of reputation, signals the resolution for the reader. This coheres remarkably well with Josephus’s description of the resolutions of the incidents in the Tiberian synagogue considered above, as well as with research on the role of public opinion in scholarship on honour and shame. The Markan form of Jesus’s rejection at Nazareth in Mark 6:1–6 (cf. Matt 13:54–58) may help to further clarify the role played by the public in synagogue assemblies. We are told in v. 3 that the people of Nazareth “took offense” at Jesus because they were familiar with his family background. As a result of this offense, which is expressed in v. 6 as “unbelief,” Jesus is unable to perform “deeds of power” in Nazareth, except to cure a few sick people. The premise underlying this seems to be that power is tied to public recognition, or at least that the lack of power that Jesus experiences is related to his rejection in the synagogue. This logic coheres quite well with what we have seen in the evidence so far about the role played by the assembled members of the public in synagogue disputes and discourse. Historicity of the incident aside, the narrative itself depends on the notion that power is tied to public recognition.

3. Who’s Who in the Synagogue?48 Some discussion of the functionaries, attendees, and offices related to the synagogue that appear in the texts considered above may help to further clarify the picture that is emerging from the data. For the sake of brevity, we shall limit our discussion to the sorts of attendees that appear in the evidence discussed above, though it is important to recognize that other types of synagogue attendees and functionaries also existed in antiquity.49 Luke 13:10–17 prominently features a synagogue functionary, the ἀρχισυναγώγος (synagogue leader). It is important to recognize that there is a distinction between synagogue functionaries such as the ἀρχισυναγώγος or and local officials, such as the ἄρχων (magistrate) mentioned in Josephus’s account of the incident in the synagogue at Tiberias, or the members of the local council, who also appear in the Tiberias incident. The ἀρχισυναγώγος is a functionary belonging to the institutional structure of the synagogue. This means that their duties pertain to the proceedings of the synagogue. Local officials, such as the ἄρχων (magistrate) and council members, are part of the governing structure of the municipality. Thus, 48 This section adapts portions of my work on synagogue functionaries and assembly members in Ryan, Role of the Synagogue, 50–61. 49 See also Binder, Temple Courts, 343–87.

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their function is primarily political, which differs from synagogue functionaries, such as the ἀρχισυναγώγος, whose responsibilities are primarily institutional, relating specifically to the synagogue itself. This does not mean that synagogue functionaries did not have any community influence, political clout, or recognized status. Recent scholarship has ascertained that the ἀρχισυνάγωγος was a patron and benefactor for the community,50 who may also have had some administrative, liturgical, and financial duties.51 Thus, an ἀρχισυναγώγος was a person of status and an influential member of the community, even if their role was not primarily or explicitly related to the political structure of the municipality. The term ἄρχων typically refers to someone who holds a public office.52 A number of inscriptions involving synagogues from the diaspora mention officials referred to by the term ἄρχων.53 The evidence from Roman Palestine indicates that the ἄρχοντες functioned as municipal magistrates.54 The most important data pertaining to the ἄρχων for our purposes comes from Josephus’s account of the heated meetings which took place in the synagogue at Tiberias, recounted in Vita 277–303, which we have already discussed above. These meetings were convened and presided over by the ἄρχων (Vita 134, 278, 294) of Tiberias, who was Jesus ben Sapphias. According to Josephus, the local government of Tiberias involved at least one ἄρχων,55 and a council (βουλή) with ten “leading men” (πρῶτοι)56 at the time of the First Jewish Revolt. In these meetings, ἄρχων is depicted as the head of the town assembly, as well as a primary speaker (e.g., Vita 278, 294). He appears to regard himself as having the power to dismiss the townspeople from a gathering in the synagogue (Vita 300), and to compel the council to remain. However, the townspeople disregard his order, again highlighting the power of the majority in synagogue settings. This particular meeting was a religious gathering (cf. Vita 290, 295), though the conversation is explicitly political, and once the townspeople are dismissed, it 50 E.g., Tessa Rajak and David Noy, “Archisynagogoi: Office, Title, and Social Status in the Greco-Jewish Synagogue,” JRS 83 (1993): 75–93; Louis H. Feldman, “Diaspora Synagogues: New Light from Inscriptions and Papyri,” in Sacred Realm: The Emergence of the Synagogue in the Ancient World, ed. Steven Fine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 58–59. 51 Cf. Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 415–27; Binder, Temple Courts, 352. 52 See Jean Juster, Les Juifs dans l’Emipre romain: leur condition juridique, économique et sociale (Paris: Geuthner, 1914), 443–47. In the LXX translation of the Hexateuch, the term ἄρχων is sometimes used to designate the rulers of the congregation (συναγωγή) of Israel, cf. Binder, Temple Courts, 345. 53 E.g., CJCZ 70–72; DF 33. 54 Josephus, A. J. 4.214 (cf. Binder, Temple Courts, 346); Luke 12:11, 58. 55 Josephus refers to Jesus ben Sapphias as ὁ ἄρχων in Vita 278 and 294, with a definite article, as though he is the only one. Furthermore, no other Tiberian ἄρχων or ἄρχοντες are mentioned. 56 See Vita 169, 278, and 300, and the “leading men” of the boulē mentioned in Vita 64, 69, 296, and 381. Cf. Runesson, Binder, and Olsson, The Ancient Synagogue, 78; Binder, Temple Courts, 346. See also Levine, “Synagogues of Galilee,” 34.

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is transformed into an overtly political meeting of the town council. This demonstrates the blurred line between “religion” and “politics” in synagogue gatherings, and is indicative of the political power wielded by the ἄρχων. The ἄρχοντες were part of the institutional structure of the town, not part of the institutional structure of the synagogue. Nevertheless, if Josephus’s description of these meetings can be taken as an indicator, the synagogue apparently was the customary venue for the local-official functions that the Tiberian ἄρχων presided over. Given the political power wielded by the ἄρχων, it is striking that he is unable to make a decision without the support of the people, and devotes such an effort to persuading them. Josephus’s narrative appears to describe the public synagogue as the habitual meeting place for the Tiberian βουλή. The βουλή was a part of the local government system of a Hellenistic polis.57 It was a council that had deliberative and judicial functions. In Hellenistic cities, the βουλή met with the populace (ὁ δήμος) at public assemblies and presented their recommended courses of action.58 The bouleuterion was the usual designated meetings place of the βουλή in Hellenistic (Gentile) cities. As other scholars have also observed, the architecture of public synagogue buildings, featuring quadrilateral design and stepped benches, closely resembles that of a bouleuterion,59 which may indicate a similarity in function between the two. Local councils are also attested within Jewish towns and villages.60 These bodies are referred to by various terms: the “elders” (πρεσβύτεροι, γέρων), “powerful men” (δυνατοί), or the “council” (συνέδριον).61 The elders of Bethulia are depicted in Jdt 6:16 as the core congregants of the city’s public synagogue (ἐκκλησία).62 This almost certainly reflects the earlier Iron Age traditions of the gathering of the elders at gates. The elders also appear within a synagogue context in Susanna 57 Victor Tcherikover, Hellenistic Civilization and the Jews, repr. ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011 [1959]), 107–8; Alan K. Bowman, The Town Councils of Roman Egypt (Toronto: Hakkert, 1971), 7–11; Korner, “Before Church,” 30–34. 58 Korner, “Before Church,” 30–33. 59 Cf. Yigael Yadin, “The Synagogue at Masada,” in Ancient Synagogues Revealed, ed. Lee I. Levine (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1981), 19–23. 60 Cf. Binder, Temple Courts, 360–62. 61 Cf. Emil Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (175 BC–AD 135), 3 vols., ed. Geza Vermes et al. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1973), 2:184–85; Binder, Temple Courts, 360–61. On village councils from a Roman perspective, see Junghwa Choi, Jewish Leadership in Roman Palestine from 70 C. E. to 135 C. E., AJEC 83 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 125–30. Cf. Samuel Rocca, Herod’s Judea: A Mediterranean State in the Classic World (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2008), 263–71. On uses of synedrion as a term for local councils in the land, see Mark 13:9 (cf. Matt 10:17); m. Mak. 1:10; m. Sanh. 1:6; t. Sanh. 7:1. The use of the term to refer to councils is ubiquitous in Greco-Roman sources, e.g., Aelius Aristides, Or. 13; Xenophon, Hell. 1.31; Mem. 4.2; Sophocles, Aj. 749; Diodorus Siculus, Hist. Lib. 14.82.2; 15.28.4; 17.4.2. See also Jdt 6:1; 11:9. Cf. Solomon Zeitlin, “The Political Synedrion and the Religious Sanhedrin” JQR 36 (1945): 109–40. 62 See also CIJ 2:1404.

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(the setting is made explicit in Sus 28 LXX). According to Luke 7:3–6, the elders (πρεσβύτεροι) of Capernaum are associated with the local public synagogue. The local συνέδριον is mentioned in connection with corporal punishment in synagogues in Mark 13:9, indicating their judicial function. The connection between councils and synagogues was probably somewhat practical. For example, because public synagogue buildings were designed for communal assembly, the customary use of the Tiberian synagogue by the βουλή as a venue in Josephus’s Vita 277–303 is logical. In villages or towns where there was no synagogue building, local councils could have met with the public in open-air places of communal assembly, much in the same way that Iron Age town assemblies are depicted doing in the Hebrew Bible.63 Townspeople are typically depicted as constituting the majority of the congregants. The presence of the townspeople is usually a given in typical public synagogue assemblies since it was they who constituted the “gathering.”64 The presence of the public presence is generally implied or directly mentioned in depictions of synagogue gatherings in the literary sources.65 The gatherings at the synagogue in Tiberias in Vita 277–303 includes the townspeople, and in Sus 28 (LXX), we are told that all of the “Children of Israel” who were present in the city gathered in the synagogue. A similar attestation of a public presence at a synagogue gathering can be seen in Jdt 6:16. Here, we are told that, although the principal congregants are the elders, the young men and women of the town also come to the assembly, which is indicative of the scope in terms of both age and gender of synagogue assembly attendees, at least in the author’s imagination and understanding, which likely reflects their experiences of synagogue gatherings in their own time. Likewise, the depictions of synagogue gatherings in the canonical Gospels generally include the presence of the townspeople.66 The entire population of a village or town would not have to be present for there to be a public presence at a synagogue gathering. In larger towns or cities, such as Gamla, Tiberias, or Magdala, it would not have been possible for the entire population to fit inside an enclosed synagogue building.67 Synagogues in small rural settlements, such as Qiryat Sepher or Tel Rechesh, could have potentially 63 Cf. Richard A. Horsley, Archaeology, History, and Society in Galilee: The Social Context of Jesus and the Rabbis (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1996), 131–53. 64 This is, of course, with the exception of meetings of specific groups, such as the council (as in the failed attempt to turn a full public assembly at Tiberias into a council meeting in Josephus, Vita 300). 65 E.g., Mark 6:1–6 (cf. Matt 13:54–58; Luke 4:16–30); 1:21–27 (cf. Luke 4:3–37); 1:39 (cf. Matt 4:23; 9:35; Luke 4:44); John 18:20. 66 Mark 6:1–6 (cf. Matt 13:54–58; Luke 4:16–30); 1:21–27 (cf. Luke 4:3–37); 1:39 (cf. Matt 4:23; 9:35; Luke 4:44); John 18:20. 67 See the findings of Chad Spigel, Ancient Synagogue Seating Capacities: Methodology, Analysis and Limits, TSAJ 149 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012).

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contained the majority of the populace in a single structure.68 However, this is no rationale to claim that there was no public presence in synagogues, or that synagogue buildings in larger settlements only served “sects” or elite groups,69 as this flies in the face of all of the literary evidence discussed above. The depiction of the public presence in synagogues, the presence of the townspeople, does not necessarily need to presume the presence of all the public. As we have already seen, townspeople played an important and active role in synagogue settings. They took part in the proceedings, voiced their opinions about what was being discussed,70 engaged in debate, and did not always side with their local officials. The ability to speak well in the public assembly (ἐκκλησία) is specifically counted among the desirable traits of a wise person by Ben Sira (15:5; 21:17). This presumes that anyone with something worthwhile to say could say it (cf. Sir 21:17), and moreover, that reasonable opinions were sought in the assembly. Furthermore, we have seen that the townspeople could have a decisive impact on deliberation and debate in their local public synagogue. This is illustrated by the assemblies in the Tiberian synagogue,71 and by the resolution of Jesus’s dispute with an ἀρχισυναγώγος over the legality of Sabbath healings at a synagogue gathering in Luke 13:10–17. Susanna 41 also indicates that the assembled townspeople had a significant role to play in judgment and sentencing, which coheres well with Sir 23:24. Nevertheless, we should not view late Second Temple Jewish towns as egalitarian democracies. Persuasive power comes through honour, understood as public reputation and standing with the public court of reputation, in which public offices or wealth could be influential. Thus, not everyone would have had equal footing in the assembly.

4. Conclusion Public synagogue assemblies usually involved a gathering of members of the public along with a local council (the βουλή or πρεσβύτεροι in these passages) and other people of status, such as magistrates. The people of status are usually important players in these assemblies, and it is they who do most of the speaking. Nevertheless, the evidence examined above strongly indicates that the resolution of decisions on local-official issues discussed in public synagogue assemblies 68 Cf. the discussion of Qiryat Sepher in Spigel, Seating Capacities, 293–96. 69 This idea is discussed by Richard Bauckham regarding the Magdala synagogue in Richard Bauckham, “Further Thoughts on the Migdal Synagogue Stone,” NovT 57 (2015): 131, but is ultimately rejected by Bauckham in light of the fact that the artwork of the “Magdala stone” reflects common Judaism rather than the beliefs or practices of a specific group. 70 E.g., Mark 6:2–3 (cf. Matt 13:54–56; Luke 4:22); John 6:28, 30–31, 34, 41–42, 52; Josephus, Vita 279, 299–301. 71 Josephus, Vita 277, 290.

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depended on the opinion of the public. Because of this, the townspeople needed to be persuaded in order for something to go forward. Also surprising is the fact that the townspeople were not afraid to discuss or dispute what was being presented to them.72 Interactions in a synagogue setting can frequently be conceived in terms of the acquisition of honour and shame. This is not entirely surprising, as honour and shame depend heavily on the public court of reputation, and the synagogue was the public assembly (as well as the public assembly place), and thus an arena for public discourse. In synagogue settings, honour translates to persuasive power, as standing or reputation naturally influences public opinion. It is also indicative of the resolution of disputes, insofar as it is an expression of that public opinion.

Cited Sources Alexander, Philip S. “Jewish Law in the Time of Jesus: Towards a Clarification of the Problem.” Pages 44–58 in Law and Religion: Essays on the Place of the Law in Israel and Early Christianity. Edited by Barnabas Lindars. Cambridge: J. Clarke, 1988. Ascough, Richard S. “Translocal Relationships Among Voluntary Associations and Early Christianity.” JECS 5 (1997): 223–24. Ascough, Richard S. “Paul, Synagogues, and Associations: Reframing the Question of Models for Pauline Christ Groups.” JJMJS 2 (2015): 27–52. Barclay, John M. G. Against Apion: Translation and Commentary. FJTC 10. Leiden: Brill, 2007. Bauckham, Richard. “Further Thoughts on the Migdal Synagogue Stone.” NovT 57 (2015): 113–35. Bernier, Jonathan. Aposynagōgos and the Historical Jesus in John: Rethinking the Historicity of the Johannine Expulsion Passages. BibInt 122. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Binder, Donald D. Into the Temple Courts: The Place of the Synagogues in the Second Temple Period. SBLDS 169. Atlanta: Scholars, 1999. Binder, Donald D. “The Origins of the Synagogue: An Evaluation.” Pages 122–23 in The Ancient Synagogue from Its Origins Until 200 C. E.: Papers Presented at an International Conference at Lund University, October 14–17, 2001. Edited by Birger Olsson and Magnus Zetterholm. CBNTS 39. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiskell, 2003. Bowman, Alan K. The Town Councils of Roman Egypt. Toronto: A. M. Hakkert, 1971. Brandes, Stanley. “Reflections on Honor and Shame in the Mediterranean.” Pages 121–34 in Honor and Shame and the Unity of the Mediterranean. Edited by David D. Gilmore. Special Publications of the American Anthropological Association 22. Washington: American Anthropological Association, 1987. Choi, Junghwa. Jewish Leadership in Roman Palestine from 70 C. E. to 135 C. E. AJEC 83. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Crook, Zeba. “Honor, Shame, and Social Status Revisited.” JBL 128 (2009): 591–611. deSilva, David. “The Wisdom of Ben Sira: Honour, Shame, and the Maintenance of the Values of a Minority Culture.” CBQ 58 (1996): 433–55. Domeris, William R. “Shame and Honor in Proverbs: Wise Women and Foolish Men.” OTE 8 (1995): 86–102.

72 Cf., e.g., Runesson, Origins, 214–15; Binder, Temple Courts, 403; Mosser, “Torah Instruction,” 550.

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Feldman, Louis H. “Diaspora Synagogues: New Light from Inscriptions and Papyri.” Pages 48–66 in Sacred Realm: The Emergence of the Synagogue in the Ancient World. Edited by Steven Fine. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Gera, Deborah Levine. Judith. CEJL. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014. Gilmore, David D., ed. Honor and Shame and the Unity of the Mediterranean. Special Publications of the American Anthropological Association 22. Washington: American Anthropological Association, 1987. Harland, Philip A. Associations, Synagogues, and Congregations: Claiming a Place in Ancient Mediterranean Society. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003. Hoenig, Sidney B. “The Ancient City-Square: The Fore-runner of the Synagogue.” Pages 448–76 in Judentum: Allgemeines, palestinisches Judentum. Edited by Wolfgang Haase. ANRW 2:19:1. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1979. Horsley, Richard A. Archaeology, History, and Society in Galilee: The Social Context of Jesus and the Rabbis. Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1996. Instone-Brewer, David. “1 Corinthians 7 in the Light of the Jewish Greek and Aramaic Marriage and Divorce Papyri.” TynBul 52 (2001): 225–43. Juster, Juster. Les Juifs dans l’Emipre romain: leur condition juridique, économique et sociale. Paris: Geuthner, 1914. Kazen, Thomas. Scripture, Interpretation, or Authority? Motives and Arguments in Jesus’ Halakic Conflicts. WUNT 320. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013. Keith, Chris. Jesus Against the Scribal Elite: The Origins of the Conflict. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014. Korner, Ralph J. “Before Church: Political, Ethno-Religious, and Theological Implications of the Collective Designation of Pauline Christ-Followers as Ekklēsiai.” PhD diss., McMaster University, 2014. Korner, Ralph J. “Ekklēsia as a Jewish Synagogue Term: Some Implications for Paul’s Socio-­ Religious Location.” JJMJS 2 (2015): 53–78. LeFebvre, Michael. Collections, Codes, and Torah: The Re-Characterization of Israel’s Written Law. OTS 451. London: T&T Clark, 2006. Knibb, Michael A. “The Book of Daniel in its Context.” Pages 16–35 in The Book of Daniel, Volume 1 Composition and Reception. Edited by John J. Collins and Peter W. Flint, VTSup 83/1. Leiden: Brill, 2001. Lambrecht, Jan. In Search of Meaning. Collected Notes on the New Testament (2014–2017). Saarbrücken: Scholars, 2017. Levine, Lee I. The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. Levine, Lee I. The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years. 2nd ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005. Levine, Lee I. “The Nature and Origin of the Palestinian Synagogue Reconsidered.” JBL 115 (1996): 425–48. Löw, Leopold. “Der synagogale Ritus.” MGWJ 33 (1884): 97–114, 161–71, 215–24, 305–26, 364–74, 458–66. Malina, Bruce J., The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology. 3rd ed. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2001. Malina, Bruce J., and Richard L. Rohrbaugh. Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels. 2nd ed. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003. Meyers, Eric M., and Mark A. Chancey. Alexander to Constantine. Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, Vol. 3. Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012. McCullagh, C. Behan. The Logic of History: Putting Postmodernism in Perspective. London: Routledge, 2004. Modrzejewski, Joseph Mélèze. “What is Hellenistic Law? The Documents of the Judaean Desert

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in the Light of the Papyri from Egypt.” Pages 7–21 in Law in the Documents of the Judaean Desert. Edited by R. Katzoff and D. Schaps. JSJSup 96. Leiden: Brill, 2005. Moore, Carey A. Daniel, Esther, and Jeremiah: The Additions. AB 44. New York: Doubleday, 1977. Mosser, Carl. “Torah Instruction, Discussion, and Prophecy in First-Century Synagogues.” Pages 523–51 in Christian Origins and Hellenistic Judaism: Social and Literary Contexts for the New Testament. Edited by Stanley E. Porter and Andrew W. Pitts. TENTS 10. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Neyrey, Jerome H. Honor and Shame in the Gospel of Matthew. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1998. Neyrey, Jerome H. The Gospel of John in Cultural and Rhetorical Perspective. Grand Rapids: Eerd­mans, 2009. Olsson, Birger. “The Origins of the Synagogue: An Evaluation.” Pages 132–38 in The Ancient Synagogue from Its Origins Until 200 C. E.: Papers Presented at an International Conference at Lund University, October 14–17, 2001. Edited by Birger Olsson and Magnus Zetterholm. CBNTS 39. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiskell, 2003. Otzen, Benedikt. Tobit and Judith. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002. Peristiny, Jean G., ed. Honour and Shame: The Values of Mediterranean Society. The Nature of Human Society Series. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966. Peristany, Jean G., and Julian Pitt-Rivers, ed. Honour and Grace in Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Pitt-Rivers, Julian. “Honour and Social Status.” Pages 21–77 in Honour and Shame: The Values of Mediterranean Society. Edited by Jean G. Peristany. The Nature of Human Society Series. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966. Rajak, Tessa, and David Noy. “Archisynagogoi: Office, Title, and Social Status in the Greco-Jewish Synagogue.” JRS 83 (1993): 75–93. Richardson, Peter. “Early Synagogues as Collegia in the Diaspora and Palestine.” Pages 90–109 in Voluntary Associations in the Ancient World. Edited by John S. Kloppenborg and Stephen G. Wilson. London: Routledge, 1996. Rocca, Samuel. Herod’s Judea: A Mediterranean State in the Classic World. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2008. Runesson, Anders. The Origins of the Synagogue: A Socio-Historical Study. CBNTS 37. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2001. Runesson, Anders. “Persian Imperial Politics, the Beginnings of Public Torah Reading, and the Origins of the Synagogue.” Pages 63–89 in The Ancient Synagogue: From the Beginning to about 200 CE. Papers Presented at the International Conference at Lund University October 14–17, 2001. Edited by Birger Olsson and Magnus Zetterholm. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2003. Runesson, Anders. “Entering a Synagogue with Paul: First-Century Torah Observance.” Pages 11–26 in Torah Ethics and Early Christian Identity. Edited by Susan J. Wendel and David M. Miller. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016. Runesson, Anders, Donald D. Binder, and Birger Olsson. The Ancient Synagogue from its Origins to 200 CE: A Source Book. AJEC 72. Leiden: Brill, 2008. Ryan, Jordan J. “Jesus and Synagogue Disputes: The Institutional Context of Luke 13:10–17.” CBQ 79 (2017): 41–59. Ryan, Jordan J. The Role of the Synagogue in the Aims of Jesus. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2017. Schürer, Emil. The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (175 BC–AD 135). 3 vols. Edited by Geza Vermes et al. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1973. Silber, Mendel. The Origin of the Synagogue. New Orleans: Steeg, 1915. Spigel, Chad S. Ancient Synagogue Seating Capacities: Methodology, Analysis and Limits. TSAJ 149. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012. Stewart, Eric C. Gathered Around Jesus: An Alternative Spatial Practice in the Gospel of Mark. Matrix: The Bible in Mediterranean Context 6. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2009.

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Tcherikover, Victor. Hellenistic Civilization and the Jews. Repr. ed. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011 [1959]. Twelftree, Graham H. “Jesus and the Synagogue” Pages 4:3109–10 in Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus. 4 vols. Edited by Tom Holmén and Stanley E. Porter. Leiden: Brill, 2011. Watts, James W., ed. Persia and Torah: The Theory of Imperial Authorization of the Pentateuch. Atlanta: SBL, 2001. Watts, James W. “The Political and Legal Uses of Scripture,” Pages 345–64 in From the Beginnings to 600. Edited by James Carleton Paget and Joachim Schaper. Vol. 1 of The New Cambridge History of the Bible. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Yadin, Yigael. “The Synagogue at Masada.” Pages 19–23 in Ancient Synagogues Revealed. Edited by Lee I. Levine. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1981. Zeitlin, Solomon. “The Political Synedrion and the Religious Sanhedrin.” JQR 36 (1945): 109–40.

II. Architecture and Dating

Jodi Magness

The Huqoq Synagogue A Regional Variant of the Galilean Type

Synagogues (referred to by various terms including Greek synagōgē and proseuchē; Hebrew beth knesset) are Jewish assemblies and assembly halls. Like the term church (ekklēsia), synagogue can denote both the congregation itself as well as a building (not necessarily purpose-built) to accommodate the congregation.1 When synagogues first developed before 70 CE, they were primarily assemblies for the reading and explanation of the Torah (Pentateuch), which is still at the core of a synagogue service.2 In the centuries following the destruction of the second Jerusalem temple in 70, synagogues assumed an increasingly central role in Jewish religious life, and prayers and liturgies were added to the Torah readings.3 At the same time, synagogue buildings became more monumental and were decorated with elaborate iconographic programs and symbols that alluded to the Jerusalem temple—features that first appeared before 70, as the stone table from the Magdala synagogue shows. The remains of dozens of ancient synagogue buildings have been discovered in archaeological excavations, most of them in modern Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian territories, with scattered examples around other parts of the Mediterranean world and Near East. A majority of these buildings date to the fourth to sixth centuries (Late Antiquity).4 Literary sources, inscriptions, and scattered architectural fragments attest to the existence of numerous other synagogues, the remains of which have not survived or have not yet been discovered. These synagogues—many of them monumental structures decorated with Jewish symbols and figured images—attest to the existence of vibrant Jewish communities which thrived under Christian rule. They also provide evidence of the relationship between these communities and their non-Jewish neighbors, and shed light on Judaism’s continued vitality even after the rise and spread of 1 See Emil Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (175 B. C.— A. D. 135), 3 vols. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1973–1986), 2:423–30, 439–40. 2 All dates refer to the Common Era unless otherwise indicated. 3 For ancient synagogue services and liturgies, see Schürer, History of the Jewish People, 2:447–63; Lee I. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 501–60. 4 See Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 162–63; Lee I. Levine, “Synagogues,” NEAEHL 4: 1422; also see the Bornblum Eretz Israel Synagogues Website: http://synagogues.kinneret.ac.il/.

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Christianity. This provides a valuable counterbalance to the picture painted by rabbinic literature, which relates only rarely and usually indirectly to Christianity. Synagogue buildings display much greater diversity in layout, decoration, and orientation (referring to the direction of prayer) than churches, probably because unlike Christianity, Judaism never recognized a single authority or unified legislative body. Therefore, congregations were free to commission and build synagogues which reflect different regional styles and accommodated diverse liturgies, building materials, and donor and member preferences. As Lee Levine remarks, “no two synagogues were identical in either shape, size or design, no matter how close they were to one another geographically or chronologically.”5 Nonetheless, a few features are typical of late antique synagogues, specifically, the use of certain Jewish symbols (especially the menorah, the lulav, ethrog, and Torah scrolls or the Ark of the Covenant), and a platform or niche for the Torah shrine, usually by the Jerusalem-oriented wall. In Palestine, regional styles can be distinguished due to the large number and concentration of buildings, in contrast to the diaspora where buildings are widely scattered and display greater diversity. Post-70 Palestinian synagogues can be grouped into types because they were purpose-built, whereas diaspora synagogues all differ from each other because they were installed in pre-existing buildings. One ongoing controversy surrounding ancient synagogues concerns their chronology. When did Palestinian Jews begin to build monumental basilical halls to accommodate their assemblies? The problem of dating is central to an accurate understanding of the historical context of these synagogues and the associated Jewish communities. In this paper, I review the typology and chronology of Palestinian synagogues, and discuss recent developments in light of our discoveries at Huqoq.

1. The Evidence: Synagogue Buildings in Palestine Over one hundred ancient synagogues are known in Palestine, the remains of which have been uncovered in excavations or are attested by architectural fragments or inscriptions.6 The majority of these buildings date to the fourth to sixth centuries and are located in eastern Galilee and the southern Golan, where the Jewish population was concentrated in the centuries following the Bar Kokhba revolt. Whereas towns and cities in Palestine (such as Sepphoris, Tiberias, and Caesarea) had mixed populations, villages appear to have been segregated (Jewish

5 Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 297. 6 Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 163; Kinneret College, “The Bornblum Eretz Israel Synagogues Website” (2016), http://synagogues.kinneret.ac.il. See also Ben David, this volume.

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versus Christian or pagan).7 Archaeological evidence suggests that every late-antique Jewish village had its own synagogue building, while urban centers such as Sepphoris had more than one synagogue. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Heinrich Kohl and Carl Watzinger surveyed a number of synagogues in Galilee and the Golan, and conducted excavations at eleven sites. Their study, published in 1916, contains a detailed analysis of the architectural style and decoration of these buildings, which they dated to the second and third centuries on the basis of comparisons with pagan Roman temples in Syria and Asia Minor.8 In 1929, Eleazar Sukenik and Nahman Avigad excavated the synagogue at Beth Alpha. Soon thereafter, Sukenik published a typology assigning Galilean synagogues (like Capernaum) to the second and third centuries, and synagogues that resemble Christian basilicas with an apse (like Beth Alpha) to the fifth and sixth centuries.9 The typology was later expanded by Michael Avi-Yonah, who added a transitional type dated to the fourth century (such as Hammath Tiberias).10 The result is that Galilean-type synagogues are dated to the second and third centuries, followed by Transitional synagogues of the fourth century and Byzantine synagogues of the fifth and sixth centuries.11 However, more recently excavated synagogues indicate that all three types are roughly contemporary, dating from the fourth to sixth centuries.12 The following is a review of these types, represented by one example of each.13 Although this discussion focuses on synagogues, it is important to bear in mind that these buildings did not exist in isolation but were located in the midst of settlements whose communities they served.

7 Levine, “Synagogues,” 1422. 8 Heinrich Kohl and Carl Watzinger, Antike Synagogen in Galilaea (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1916). 9 Eleazar L. Sukenik, Ancient Synagogues in Palestine and Greece, The Schweich Lectures on Biblical Archaeology 1930 (London: British Academy, 1934). 10 See Michael Avi-Yonah, “Synagogue Architecture in the Classical Period,” in Jewish Art, An Illustrated History, ed. Cecil Roth (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961), 157–90. 11 See Schürer, History of the Jewish People, 2:441–43 n. 66. 12 As already noted by Amos Kloner, “Ancient Synagogues in Israel: An Archaeological Survey,” in Ancient Synagogues Revealed, ed. Lee I. Levine (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1981), 18; also see Levine, “Synagogues,” 1422. 13 For an overview of synagogues in Palestine see Levine, “Synagogues,” for individual synagogues in Palestine see the relevant entries in NEAEHL (5 vols., 1993–2008).

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1.1 Galilean-Type Synagogues: Capernaum The synagogue at Capernaum is a classic example of the Galilean type: a monumental structure built of limestone blocks (ashlar masonry), consisting of the synagogue (a basilical hall) and a courtyard on one side.14 Engaged pilasters decorated the building’s exterior. The building was covered with a pitched, tiled roof. The main entrances, consisting of one large doorway flanked by two smaller ones, were in the south (Jerusalem-oriented) wall. The interior of the hall was surrounded on three sides (east, west, and north) by a stylobate supporting columns with Corinthian capitals on pedestals. The hall was paved with large flagstones, and stone benches lined the east and west walls. The hall was two stories high, with a second-story gallery level overlooking the nave. The inner face of the main doorway, which led into the nave, was flanked by two stone platforms for Torah shrines. The building was richly decorated with carved stone reliefs, especially on the south façade, around the doorways and windows. A large, semicircular window above the main doorway illuminated the nave. The reliefs consist mostly of geometric and floral motifs and some figured images, most of which were later damaged. A couple of intact reliefs depict two eagles facing each other and holding a garland in their beaks, and a horse with a fish tail. Another relief shows a wheeled structure with engaged pilasters on the sides, a pitched, tiled roof, and a double paneled door at one short end. This structure apparently depicts the Ark of the Covenant, and perhaps also the Torah shrine in ancient synagogues, which may have been modeled after the ark.15 Other Jewish symbols include a menorah flanked by a shofar and incense shovel carved on a Corinthian capital.

1.2 Transitional Synagogues: Hammath Tiberias Hammath Tiberias is located on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee, just south of Tiberias. Excavations in the 1960s brought to light a series of ancient synagogue buildings one above the other. The second synagogue in the series, which dates to the fourth century, is a classic example of the Transitional type.16 In contrast 14 For a description of the Capernaum synagogue and bibliography see Stanislao Loffreda, “Capernaum,” NEAEHL 1: 291–95; Jodi Magness, “The Question of the Synagogue: The Problem of Typology,” in Judaism in Late Antiquity, Part Three, Where We Stand: Issues and Debates in Ancient Judaism, Volume Four: The Special Problem of the Synagogue, ed. Allan J. Avery-Peck and Jacob Neusner, HdO I.55 (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 18–26. 15 For a discussion see Rachel Hachlili, Ancient Jewish Art and Archaeology in the Land of Israel, HdO 7.1.B.4 (Leiden: Brill, 1988), 279. 16 For the synagogue at Hammath Tiberias see Moshe Dothan, Hammath Tiberias, Vol. 1: Early Synagogues and the Hellenistic and Roman Remains (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society,

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to the Galilean type, the synagogue at Hammath Tiberias is built of roughly cut basalt stones and lacks carved reliefs. Instead the interior of the building is paved with mosaics. The building is a broadhouse, meaning that the main axis is parallel to the short walls instead of the long walls. Therefore, the south, Jerusalem-oriented wall and the north wall are the long walls. The main entrance was through a doorway in the north wall, which led into the nave. An extra row of columns created an additional aisle on one side, moving the nave and its associated doorway away from the center of the building. A stone platform in front of the south wall held the Torah shrine. Unlike the arrangement in Galilean-type synagogues, at Hammath Tiberias the Torah shrine was opposite the main entrance. The floors of the aisles and nave are covered with mosaics, most of which are decorated with geometric and floral motifs, except for the nave which contains figured images. Just inside the main doorway are donor inscriptions in Greek, which would have been seen upon entering the synagogue, flanked by a pair of lions. The mosaic in the center of the nave depicts the Greco-Roman sun god Helios surrounded by the twelve signs of the zodiac, each with his or her attributes and labeled in Hebrew with their names. In the corners are personifications of the four seasons with their attributes, also labeled in Hebrew. Above Helios and the zodiac cycle is a panel that shows a structure with a double paneled door and pitched roof, apparently representing the Ark of the Covenant and perhaps the Torah shrine, flanked by various Jewish ritual objects: menorahs, shofars, incense shovels, and lulavs and ethrogs.17

1.3 Byzantine Synagogues: Beth Alpha Beth Alpha is a classic example of a Byzantine synagogue of the fifth to sixth centuries.18 Similar to Transitional type synagogues, the building is constructed of field stones with no carved reliefs and the floors are covered with decorated mosaics. However, the building’s plan resembles an early church, with a large courtyard (atrium), a porch (narthex), and a main hall. The main hall had two rows of piers that supported an arcade and divided the interior into a nave flanked by aisles. A large semicircular niche (apse) in the south wall housed the Torah shrine.

1983), for its chronology see Jodi Magness, “Heaven on Earth: Helios and the Zodiac Cycle in Ancient Palestinian Synagogues,” DOP 59 (2005): 8–13. 17 For a discussion see Hachlili, Ancient Jewish Art and Archaeology, 279, although I believe it likely is a depiction of the Ark of the Covenant (or perhaps the Ark of the Tabernacle). 18 For the synagogue at Beth Alpha see Eleazar L. Sukenik, The Ancient Synagogue of Beth Alpha (Jerusalem: Hebrew University Press, 1932); Nahman Avigad, “Beth Alpha,” NEAEHL 1: 190–92.

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The floors of the entire structure are paved with mosaics with geometric and floral designs. The nave is paved with three panels containing figured scenes, surrounded by a decorated border. Just inside the main entrance, the mosaic contains two inscriptions flanked by a bull and a lion. One inscription, in Greek, states that the mosaic was laid by two local craftsmen named Marianos and his son Hanina, who are commemorated in other mosaics in this area.19 The second inscription, in Aramaic, is important because it is one of only three dated inscriptions associated with Palestinian synagogue buildings (the others—from Gaza and Nabratein—date to the sixth century as well).20 The inscription mentions that the mosaic was laid during the reign of Justin. Although there were two emperors named Justin (Justin I and Justin II), both ruled during the sixth century, providing a general date for the mosaic (unfortunately, the part of the inscription that specified a precise date is not preserved). The Beth Alpha congregation was a rural community (in contrast to the urban congregation at Hammath Tiberias), which paid the craftsmen in kind (produce and livestock). The area inside the decorated border is divided into three panels.21 The first panel shows the binding of Isaac by Abraham. The central panel contains a depiction of Helios, the zodiac cycle, and the four seasons. The uppermost panel is decorated with a representation of the Ark of the Covenant and / or Torah shrine flanked by Jewish ritual objects including menorahs, lulavs and ethrogs, and incense shovels. An eternal lamp is shown hanging from the top of the Ark, and the area around the Ark is filled with additional objects and figures including birds and lions. On either side of the panel two curtains are depicted as if they have been drawn aside to reveal the Ark and surrounding objects, recalling the veil in the Holy of Holies in the Jerusalem temple, as well as the later practice of hanging a curtain in front of the scrolls in a Torah shrine.

1.4 Late Ancient Synagogues: Jericho During the seventh and eighth centuries, the three Abrahamic faiths were impacted by the iconoclastic movement, which opposed the depiction of figured images in religious art. It was at this time that some of the figured images in earlier synagogues were damaged, such as the reliefs at Capernaum. A synagogue at Jericho that might date to this period is thought to reflect the impact of iconoclasm.22 The building has the same plan typical of Byzantine-type synagogues, and like 19 For these local craftsmen at Beth Alpha, see also Chakovskaya, this volume. 20 Sukenik, Beth Alpha, 43–47. 21 See Sukenik, Beth Alpha, 21–42. 22 See Dimitri C. Baramki, “An Early Byzantine Synagogue near Tell es-Sultan, Jericho,” QDAP 6 (1938): 73–77.

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them, the floors are covered with mosaics. However, the mosaics of the Jericho synagogue contain no figured images. Instead, the nave is decorated with a highly stylized depiction of the Ark of the Covenant / Torah shrine. Below is a medallion containing a menorah flanked by a shofar and lulav and ethrog, accompanied by the Hebrew phrase shalom al-Yisrael (“peace on Israel”).

2. An Evaluation of the Traditional Typology The linear evolutionary model represented by the traditional typology outlined above has been challenged by new and ongoing discoveries, and by re-evaluations of the existing archaeological evidence. For example, the excavator, Dimitri Baramki, dated the Jericho synagogue to the seventh–eighth centuries based on nine coins of the early eighth century. However, as these coins were found in a gap between the wall and the end of the mosaic in the northwest aisle, they are associated with the synagogue’s last phase of use, not its construction.23 The lack of figured images in the mosaics therefore has nothing to do with the iconoclastic movement of the seventh–eighth centuries. The biggest challenge to the traditional typology comes from Capernaum, where Franciscan archaeologists have been conducting excavations since the late 1960s. Below the paving stones of the floor of the synagogue and courtyard, they have found over 25,000 small bronze coins and large quantities of pottery dating to the fourth and fifth centuries. The latest of these finds date to approximately 500, indicating that the synagogue was built no earlier than the beginning of the sixth century—centuries later than previously thought! Because Capernaum is always cited as the classic example of a Galilean synagogue, this discovery removes the cornerstone of the traditional typology.24 The discoveries at Capernaum have created an ongoing controversy in ancient synagogue studies. To account for the fourth and fifth century pottery and coins under the floors, some scholars argue that the Capernaum synagogue originally was built in the second or third century but later was destroyed and rebuilt.25 However, the published reports give no indication of an earlier phase or evidence

23 See Baramki, “An Early Byzantine Synagogue”; the coins (described as “Cufic”) are mentioned on p. 75, and on p. 76 Baramki says, “Judging by the evidence supplied by the coins … the building can be tentatively dated to the beginning of the eighth century A. D.” Also see Steven H. Werlin, Ancient Synagogues of Southern Palestine, 300–800 C. E.: Living on the Edge, BRLA 47 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 84–90. 24 See also Tarkhanova, this volume, who discusses the dating of the Capernaum synagogue from an art historical perspective. 25 For a discussion with bibliography see Magness, “The Question of the Synagogue,” 18–26.

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that the synagogue was rebuilt. This argument also fails to account for the dating of other Galilean-type synagogues to the fourth to sixth centuries.26 The assignment of the synagogue at Capernaum to the beginning of the sixth century means it is roughly contemporary with the octagonal church built over the spot venerated by Christians as the house of St Peter.27 Thus, Capernaum is an exceptional example of a Palestinian Jewish town or village with a church as well as a synagogue, presumably due to the site’s prominence in the New Testament and therefore its importance to pilgrims. In my opinion, the church is not evidence of a Christian population at Capernaum, as Joan Taylor also proposed.28 The inescapable conclusion is that the traditional typology can no longer be considered valid. The limited data available in the first half of the twentieth century supported the typology, but today there is a wealth of additional information and many more excavated synagogues. The differences between the traditional synagogue types are due not to different dates but other factors, such as regional traditions and local building materials, congregational or donor preferences, and perhaps different movements or liturgies within Judaism. For example, Galilean-type synagogues cluster in the area to the north and northwest of the Sea of Galilee, with a related type characteristic of the Golan.29 Broadhouse buildings (the Transitional type) are concentrated especially in southern Judea (the Darom or Daroma): Eshtemoa, Susiya, Maon, and Horvat ‘Anim (all without an internal colonnade and with entrances in the eastern, broad wall), and ‘En Gedi.30 26 See, e.g., the Galilean type synagogue at Gush Halav: Eric M. Meyers, Carol L. Meyers, and James F. Strange, Excavations at the Ancient Synagogue of Gush Halav, Meiron Excavation Project Report 5 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1990); Magness, “The Question of the Synagogue,” 3–18; the Galilean type synagogue at Nabratein: Eric M. Meyers and Carol L. Meyers, Excavations at Ancient Nabratein: Synagogue and Environs, Meiron Excavation Project Report 6 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2009); Jodi Magness, “Review Article: The Ancient Synagogue at Nabratein,” BASOR 358 (2010): 61–68. Also see Chad Spigel, “Debating Ancient Synagogue Dating: The Implications of Deteriorating Data,” BASOR 376 (2016): 83–100; for a response see Daniel J. Schindler, “Late Roman and Byzantine Galilee: A Provincial Case Study from the Perspective of the Imported and Common Pottery” (PhD diss., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2017), 46–47 n. 96, 82 n. 17. 27 For the octagonal church see Virgilio C. Corbo, The House of St. Peter at Capharnaum; a Preliminary Report of the First Two Campaigns of Excavations, April 16–June 19, Sept. 12–Nov. 26, 1968 (Jerusalem: Studium Biblicum Franciscanum, 1969); Loffreda, “Capernaum,” 295. 28 Joan E. Taylor, Christians and the Holy Places: The Myth of Jewish-Christian Origins ­(Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), 293. 29 For Golan synagogues see Zvi U. Ma‘oz, “Golan: Hellenistic Period to the Middle Ages,” NEAEHL 2: 534–46; Zvi U. Ma‘oz, “The Art and Architecture of the Synagogues of the Golan,” in Ancient Synagogues Revealed, ed. Lee I. Levine (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1981), 98–115. 30 See David Amit, “Architectural plans of synagogues in the southern Judean Hills and the ‘halakhah’,” in Ancient Synagogues: Historical Analysis and Archaeological Discovery, ed. Dan Urman and Paul V. M. Flesher, StPB 47 (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 1:129–56 (at Maon internal supports were added to the hall in a second phase); for ‘En Gedi see Dan Barag, “En-Gedi, the Synagogue,”

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Although Golan synagogues resemble the Galilean type, they differ in having one doorway instead of three in the main wall (except for ed-Dikke), and typically are decorated with a greater number and variety of figured reliefs (especially lions and eagles).31 Furthermore, different types are attested even within the same region, as for example the broadhouse synagogues at Khirbet Shema‘ and Horvat Kur in Galilee.32

3. A Sub-group of Galilean Type Synagogues Whereas Galilean-type synagogues typically have flagstone pavements, a variant with mosaic floors appears to be common in Eastern Galilee, specifically in eastern Lower Galilee at Khirbet Wadi Ḥamam (henceforth Wadi Ḥamam), Horvat Huqoq (henceforth Huqoq), Horvat ‘Ammudim, and Arbel (intermediate phase), and at Meroth in Upper Galilee.33 Here I consider some of the characteristics of this variant, focusing on Wadi Ḥ amam and Huqoq. The 2007–2012 excavations at Wadi Ḥamam, directed by Uzi Leibner and assisted by Benny Arubas on behalf of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, brought to light a Galilean-type synagogue measuring around 17 × 14 meters.34 The excavators have distinguished two successive synagogue buildings (Phases I and II), the construction of which they date to ca. 200 and ca. 300, respectively. The Phase II synagogue was paved with a mosaic floor, which survives in a highly NEAEHL 2: 405–9. For a recent study of the southern synagogues, see Werlin, Ancient Synagogues of Southern Palestine. 31 See Ma‘oz, “Synagogues of the Golan,” 101–2, 110. 32 For Khirbet Shema‘ see Eric M. Meyers, A. Thomas Kraabel, and James F. Strange, Ancient Synagogue Excavations at Khirbet Shema‘, Upper Galilee, Israel 1970–1972, Meiron Excavation Project Report 1 (Durham, NC: ASOR, 1976); Jodi Magness, “Synagogue Typology and Earthquake Chronology at Khirbet Shema‘, Israel,” JFA 24 (1997): 211–20; for Horvat Kur see Jürgen K. Zangenberg et al., “Horbat Kur—2011, Preliminary Report,” Hadashot Arkheologiyot-Excavations and Surveys in Israel 125 (2013): http://www.hadashot-esi.org.il/report_detail_eng. aspx?id=2230; Jürgen K. Zangenberg et al., “The Kinneret Regional Project Excavations of a Byzantine Synagogue at Horvat Kur, Galilee, 2010–2013: A Preliminary Report,” HBAI 4 (2013): 557–76. 33 For Horvat ‘Ammudim see Lee I. Levine, “‘Ammudim, Horvat,” NEAEHL 1: 55–56. For Arbel see Zvi Ilan and Avraham Izdarechet, “Arbel,” NEAEHL 1: 87–89. For Meroth see Zvi Ilan, “Meroth,” NEAEHL 3: 1028–31; Zvi Ilan, “Meroth,” in Ancient Synagogues: Historical Analysis and Archaeological Discovery, ed. Dan Urman and Paul V. M. Flesher, StPB 47 (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 1:256–88. 34 For Khirbet Wadi Ḥamam see Uzi Leibner, Khirbet Wadi Ḥ amam, A Roman-Period Village and Synagogue in the Lower Galilee, Qedem Reports 13 (Jerusalem: Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University, 2018). For my critique of the dating, see Jodi Magness, “Review of U. Leibner, Khirbet Wadi Ḥ amam, A Roman-Period Village and Synagogue in the Lower Galilee,” JSJ 50 (2019): 427–30.

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fragmentary condition. Nonetheless, it is clear that the aisles were decorated with ten or twelve panels containing figured scenes, of which parts belonging to four panels are preserved. Since 2011, I have been directing excavations at Huqoq. The excavations are bringing to light a monumental synagogue which dates no earlier than the beginning of the fifth century.35 The orientation of the mosaics and inner colonnade indicate it is a Galilean-type synagogue, similar to Wadi Ḥamam but larger (ca. 20 × 15 m). So far, our excavations have uncovered most of the synagogue’s east aisle as well as the northern half of the nave and a small part of the west aisle. A late medieval (fourteenth–fifteenth century) public building reused the synagogue’s east wall (which it extended to the south) and the north wall (which it extended to the west), and lifted the stylobate and pedestals approximately one meter, supporting them on reused architectural fragments from the synagogue. This later building apparently was paved with mosaics (of which only small fragments with geometric and floral designs survive in the aisles), on top of a smooth, thick, concrete-like plaster make-up. Two rows of plastered stone benches lined the walls on the east, north, and west. The inner face of the Huqoq synagogue’s east wall is covered with a thick layer of white plaster. Excavations beneath the foundations of the east wall and probes under the intact bedding of mosaics in the southeast aisle and the northern end of the nave indicate that there is no earlier floor immediately below. Huqoq joins a handful of ancient synagogues that have yielded architectural fragments preserving their original painted decoration: column drums from the synagogue that were reused as supports when the stylobate was lifted in the late medieval building are plastered and painted with red and yellow vine or ivy leaves. Recently, Fanny Vitto published the decoration of the Rehov synagogue, where the interior walls were decorated with red stripes on a white background and red quatrefoils within a green grid.36 The pillars were plastered and covered with red painted Aramaic and Hebrew inscriptions, and large wreaths (ca. 90 cm in diameter) were painted on the sides of the pillars facing the interior of the nave, approximately 1.5 m above the floor level. One of the preserved wreaths contains 35 This article does not include the discoveries of the 2018–2019 excavation seasons. For the most recent reports with references to earlier reports, see Jodi Magness et al., “Huqoq—2018,” Hadashot Arkheologiyot-Excavations and Surveys in Israel 131 (2019), at http://www.hadashotesi.org.il/Report_Detail_Eng.aspx?id=25653; Jodi Magness et al., “The Huqoq Excavation Project: 2014–2017 Interim Report,” BASOR 380 (2018): 61–131. 36 Fanny Vitto, “Wall Paintings in the Synagogue of Rehov: An Account of Their Discovery,” Israel Museum Studies in Archaeology 7 (2015): 2–13. For the inscription see Jacob Sussman, “The Inscription in the Synagogue at Reḥob,” in Ancient Synagogues Revealed, ed. Lee I. Levine (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1981), 146–53; Chaim Ben-David, “The Rehov Inscription: A Galilean Halakhic Text Formula?” in Halakhah in Light of Epigraphy, ed. Albert I. Baumgarten et al. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011), 231–40.

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a sixteen-line dedicatory inscription in a tabula ansata, with a vine trellis filling the spaces between the tabula and the wreath. The inscription lists the names of donors with some of their professions or nicknames. Another wreath contains an earlier version of the famous halakhic text in the mosaic floor of the nave, ending with an address to all of the inhabitants of the locality instead of the list of exempted towns in the Sebaste region. Painted plaster decoration was also discovered in the ‘En Gedi synagogue. Although still unpublished, the excavators mention walls and columns coated with white plaster and decorated with drawings and patterns in red. On one of the pillars a painting of two ships with sails was found, and on a section of plaster an Aramaic word is preserved, apparently part of a blessing.37 Colorful frescoes have also been discovered on the walls and columns of the first century synagogue at Magdala, consisting of red, yellow, and blue panels set within black and white frames.38 As at Wadi Ḥamam, the mosaics in the aisles of the Huqoq synagogue are divided into a series of panels containing figured scenes framed by a guilloche border. Two scenes depicting the biblical hero Samson have been discovered in the southeast aisle at Huqoq: Samson and the foxes, and Samson carrying the gate of Gaza. Rabbinic literature from this period consistently reflects a negative view of Samson by emphasizing his moral failings, using his sexual transgressions as a warning against marrying Gentiles, and claiming he was punished by God for his sins. Matthew Grey suggests that the depictions of Samson at Huqoq should be understood within the context of a regional apocalypticism centered around Tiberias, which viewed the biblical hero as a prototype of a messianic redeemer. He says, “In this regional atmosphere of nationalism, localized apocalyptic hopes, and messianic speculation, depictions of Samson wreaking havoc among the Philistines easily could have had contemporary social, political, and religious significance; a biblical warrior who was born ‘to deliver Israel’ (Judg 13:5) and who fought against an occupying force may have resonated with Galilean Jews who saw themselves as being under foreign occupation and who anxiously awaited their own deliverance.”39 Shimon Fogel has noted parallels in later traditions

37 See Barag, “En-Gedi,” 408. 38 See Dina Avshalom-Gorni and Arfan Najar, “Migdal,” Hadashot Arkheologiyot-Excavations and Surveys in Israel 125 (2013): http://www.hadashot-esi.org.il/report_detail_eng.aspx ?id=2304. 39 Matthew J. Grey, “‘The Redeemer to Arise from the House of Dan’: Samson, Apocalypticism, and Messianic Hopes in Late Antique Galilee,” JSJ 44 (2013): 566; Karen C. Britt and Ra‘anan Boustan, The Elephant Mosaic Panel in the Synagogue at Huqoq: Official Publication and Initial Interpretations, JRASup 106 (Portsmouth, RI: JRA, 2017) propose a different understanding of the significance of the Samson scenes. For the mosaics discovered through 2017, see Magness et al., “The Huqoq Excavation Project.”

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surrounding Samson and Bar Kokhba (of whom the rabbis also disapproved), both of whom are portrayed as messianic warrior-redeemers.40 A mosaic in the west aisle of the Wadi Ḥamam synagogue depicts a battle scene. Shulamit Miller and Leibner, who published the mosaics, considered several interpretations, including the story of David and Goliath.41 They ultimately rejected this possibility because the mosaic shows a battle involving many figures instead of a duel between two key characters, and because it depicts the giant as victorious. Instead, Miller and Leibner identify this is as scene of Samson smiting the Philistines with the jawbone of an ass, an identification that was confirmed when the Huqoq mosaic depicting Samson and the foxes came to light. The pairs of foxes with their tails tied together and lighted torches between them leave no doubt about the identification of the scene at Huqoq. The parallels between the Samson images at Huqoq (both in the scene with the foxes and in the scene carrying the gate of Gaza) and the figure in the Wadi Ḥamam mosaic are striking: they are depicted as giants and are dressed as warriors in short tunics decorated with orbicula—the characteristic garment worn by soldiers in the later Roman army. In light of these parallels, I see no reason to doubt the identification of the Wadi Ḥamam scene as Samson smiting the Philistines with the jawbone of an ass (pace Rina Talgam, who identifies the scene as David and Goliath).42 The synagogues at Wadi Ḥ amam and Huqoq join Horvat ‘Ammudim (which was excavated by Levine in 1979) and the intermediate phase at Arbel in forming a sub-group of Galilean-type synagogues paved with mosaic floors instead of flagstones. It is possible that other Galilean-type synagogues had mosaic floors, as for example Gush Halav, where numerous tesserae found in fills led the excavators to conclude that there may have been a mosaic floor “at some point in the building’s history.”43 This sub-group of Galilean-type synagogues differs from other synagogues paved with mosaics not of the Galilean type in having figured scenes decorating the aisles. To this sub-group we may add the synagogue at Meroth in Upper Galilee, which the excavators date to the late fourth or early fifth century,

40 See Shimon Fogel, “‘Samson’s Shoulders Were Sixty Cubits’: Three Issues about Samson’s Image in the Eyes of the Rabbis,” (MA thesis, Ben-Gurion University, 2009) (Hebrew); also see Grey, “The Redeemer,” 579. 41 Shulamit Miller and Uzi Leibner, “The Synagogue Mosaic,” in Khirbet Wadi Ḥamam, A Roman-Period Village and Synagogue in the Lower Galilee, ed. Uzi Leibner, Qedem Reports 13 (Jerusalem: Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University, 2018), 157–64; Uzi Leibner and Shulamit Miller, “A figural mosaic in the synagogue at Khirbet Wadi Hamam,” JRA 23 (2010): 249–57. 42 See Rina Talgam, Mosaics of Faith. Floors of Pagans, Jews, Samaritans, Christians, and Muslims in the Holy Land (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi; University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2014), 260–61. 43 See Meyers, Meyers, and Strange, Gush Halav, 79, who believe, however, that the small number of tesserae argues against the possibility of a mosaic floor.

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and originally had a plaster floor.44 Interestingly, the excavators mention that the walls were plastered and painted in red and yellow. In the second half of the fifth century, a mosaic pavement was laid, which includes a panel at the north end of the east aisle depicting a young warrior surrounded by a sword, bronze helmet, and oval shield. As at Wadi Ḥamam and Huqoq, the Meroth panel is framed by a guilloche pattern. Levine, Talgam, and Zeev Weiss each follow scholarly consensus in identifying the Meroth figure as David, with the military equipment supposedly alluding to the weapons he took from Goliath (1 Sam 17:54).45 However, I see no reason why this figure should not be identified as Samson. The Meroth synagogue was excavated in the 1980s, long before the discovery of the Wadi Ḥamam and Huqoq mosaics. Because of this, the excavators never considered the possibility that this figure might be Samson, and since then, scholars have sought parallels in depictions of a young David. However, Talgam notes that the weapons cannot belong to David.46 The panels in the Wadi Ḥamam and Huqoq synagogues raise the possibility that the Meroth figure is Samson. First, all these synagogues are of the same architectural type and have mosaic floors with figured panels decorating the aisles. Second, the Wadi Ḥamam and Huqoq synagogues indicate that Samson was popular among some Galilean Jewish congregations. Third, like the Samson figures at Wadi Ḥ amam and Huqoq, the Meroth figure appears to be a giant, and like them he is dressed in a short military tunic decorated with orbicula and wears a red cloak that falls behind his back. Samson carrying the gate of Gaza at Huqoq and the Meroth figure are both portrayed as idealized, beardless or clean-shaven young men with short, wavy, reddish-brown hair. Therefore, I propose that the Meroth figure represents Samson in the guise of a warrior-redeemer, with the arms surrounding him serving as attributes of his military prowess. The difficulty in identifying the figures in these mosaics stems from the fact that none of them is labeled (or preserves a label). The absence of labels creates even more difficulty in identifying the scene depicted in another mosaic at Huqoq, which is located in the east aisle. The mosaic consists of a panel enclosed within a delicate wavy ribbon border, with another, outer guilloche border separating it from the stylobate. The panel is divided into three horizontal registers, each containing figured scenes oriented to the west (the opposite direction from the Samson scenes). The bottom register shows a bull pierced by spears, with blood gushing from his wounds, a fallen soldier grasping a shield, and a slain battle

44 See Ilan, “Meroth” (NEAEHL), 1029–30. 45 See Talgam, Mosaics of Faith, 323–26; Lee I. Levine, Visual Judaism in Late Antiquity: Historical Contexts of Jewish Art (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 289; Zeev Weiss, “Decorating the Sacred Realm: Biblical Depictions in Synagogues and Churches of Ancient Palestine,” in Jewish Art in Its Late Antique Context, ed. Uzi Leibner and Catherine Hezser, TSAJ 163 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 123. 46 See Talgam, Mosaics of Faith, 325.

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elephant with a dead rider (also a soldier). The middle register depicts an arcade with lighted oil lamps above the arches. Each arch frames a single figure: young men grasping sheathed swords arranged around a large seated elderly man holding a scroll. Although all these figures wear tunics and mantles with gammata or gammadia (here the Greek letter ēta, a sign of status in the Roman and late Roman world), they are differentiated by their hairstyles. The upper register depicts an encounter between two large male figures, whose size and placement indicate their importance. The right-hand figure is clearly intended to represent a military commander and ruler: he is bearded and has a corded diadem on his head, is outfitted in ornate battle dress, and wears a purple cloak. This figure leads a large bull by the horns, and he is accompanied by a row of soldiers arranged as a Greek phalanx and by battle elephants with decorated collars and shields tied to their sides. The military commander / ruler is nodding to a bearded, elderly man wearing a ceremonial white tunic and mantle adorned with a gammadion who is pointing upwards with his right index finger and holds an unidentified object in his left hand. The elderly man is escorted by young men dressed in ceremonial white tunics and mantles with gammata who are holding fully or partially sheathed swords in their left hands and are pointing upwards with their right index fingers. The elderly man and the white-robed young men accompanying him are the same figures depicted in the middle register. The increasing size and detail of the registers suggest that this is a narrative scene that was intended to be read from the bottom up, a common convention in ancient art. This mosaic differs in style, quality, and content from the Samson scenes, although it is probably related to the inscription flanked by female faces in the adjacent panel, with which it shares the same high technical quality and orientation. The identification of the figures depicted in the three registers is unclear because they are unlabeled and there are no stories involving elephants in the Hebrew Bible. In fact, this is the first non-biblical story ever discovered decorating an ancient synagogue. Because there are no parallels in other synagogues, the interpretation of this mosaic is not immediately obvious. However, battle elephants were associated with Greek armies following the conquests of Alexander the Great. Therefore, the military commander / ruler should be identified as Alexander the Great or one of his successors. If he is one of Alexander’s successors, the scene could depict a Maccabean or Hasmonean story. Karen Britt and Ra‘anan Boustan, who published this mosaic, favor the last possibility. They propose that this panel depicts the Seleucid siege of Jerusalem under Antiochus VII Sidetes and the subsequent military alliance between the Seleucids and the Hasmonaean high priest John Hyrcanus. Britt and Boustan’s interpretation is based on a careful and detailed analysis of the mosaic and literary sources. However, I believe this scene more likely depicts the legendary meeting between Alexander and the Jewish high priest, different versions of which are preserved in the writings of

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Flavius Josephus, rabbinic literature, and Pseudo-Callisthenes.47 Although no such meeting apparently ever occurred, in the centuries following Alexander’s death stories like this began to circulate as Jews sought to associate themselves with his greatness. According to these stories, the high priest (identified as Jaddua by Josephus and as Simeon the Just in rabbinic sources), dressed in white priestly garments and accompanied by other priests or nobles who were also dressed in white, went out from Jerusalem to greet Alexander. Alexander, awed by the high priest’s appearance, bowed down and offered a sacrifice to the God of Israel. Obviously, the significance of this mosaic depends on its interpretation as well as its relationship to the other mosaics in the synagogue, not all of which have been excavated yet. Even then, we can only speculate about why the Huqoq villagers chose to decorate their synagogue with this scene. The story of Alexander’s meeting with the Jewish high priest—if this is what the mosaic depicts—demonstrates that even the greatest of all kings acknowledged the power of the God of Israel.48 But the story might have been chosen by the Huqoq villagers for other reasons, such as the anti-Samaritan message which is especially prominent in the rabbinic version.49 And, no less important, thanks to the biblical book of Daniel, ­Alexander became associated with eschatological expectations, as his empire is the last before the end of days.50 Therefore, the decision to depict this story in the Huqoq synagogue mosaic might reflect tensions between Jews and Samaritans in the fifth 47 See Shaye J. D. Cohen, “Alexander the Great and Jaddus the High Priest According to Josephus,” AJSR 7/8 (1982/83): 41–68; Jonathan A. Goldstein, “Alexander and the Jews,” PAAJR 59 (1993): 59–101. For color photos and a discussion of the various interpretations of the Huqoq mosaic, see Britt and Boustan, The Elephant Mosaic. I consider their proposed interpretation overly literary. Because the figures are unlabeled, presumably the scene was readily understood by the ancient villagers. Unlike other Hellenistic kings, due to Alexander’s lasting fame he would not have required an identifying label. Furthermore, the siege of Jerusalem by Antiochus VII Sidetes is preserved only in Josephus, whereas the story of Alexander’s meeting with the Jewish high priest circulated widely and in different versions through Late Antiquity. To account for Britt and Boustan’s interpretation, we must assume that (1) other ancient versions of this story circulated but are not preserved; or (2) Josephus’s account was widely known and circulated among the Jews in fifth century Galilee. In support of their interpretation, Britt and Boustan cite more correspondences between the elements depicted in the mosaic and Josephus’s account of Antiochus VII’s siege. Even so, they cannot explain all the elements. Since different versions of the story of Alexander’s meeting with the Jews circulated, the Huqoq mosaic could depict a variant which has not been preserved. One of the most enigmatic details of the Huqoq mosaic is the dying bull in the bottom register, which appears to be part of a depiction of the aftermath of a battle. But why is a bull dying in a battle scene? And if the bull in the bottom register references the bull in the upper register, which is apparently sacrificial, why is the dying bull pierced by spears? 48 See Cohen, “Alexander the Great,” 66–67. 49 See Goldstein, “Alexander and the Jews,” 80–87, 97–98. 50 See Ory Amitay, From Alexander to Jesus (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), 104–22, esp. 110–11 and 119–20 (the story of Alexander’s meeting with the Jewish high priest); Goldstein, “Alexander and the Jews,” 89.

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century, or perhaps attests to apocalyptic or eschatological expectations among the local population, as Grey has suggested for the Samson scenes. The floor in the Huqoq synagogue’s nave is 20 cm lower than the floor in the aisles, an arrangement that seems to be unparalleled in ancient synagogues with a basilical layout. Excavations in the northern half of the nave have revealed two complete mosaic panels, with fragmentary panels above (north) and below (south). The uppermost (northern) panel, only small fragments of which are preserved, includes part of a garland, and a centaur or horse-rider holding a staff in one hand and a basket on his head in the other hand. The next panel depicts Noah’s Ark, with pairs of animals including elephants, donkeys, lions, leopards, sheep, goats, snakes, and ostriches. A small part of the ark is preserved above the head of the lioness, and a structure with red-tiled roof farther to the right (east) may be the continuation of the ark or a separate building. The panel below (south) of Noah’s Ark shows Pharoah’s soldiers (equipped as Roman soldiers) being swallowed by fish as they drown in the Red Sea, amid overturned chariots and horses. These scenes are rare in ancient synagogues. The only other examples that have been found are at Gerasa / Jerash in Jordan and Mopsuestia / Misis in Turkey (Noah’s Ark);51 and at Wadi Ḥ amam in Israel and Dura Europos in Syria (the Parting of the Red Sea).52 The parting of the Red Sea at Wadi Ḥamam (only a small part of which is preserved) is very similar to the Huqoq mosaic, whereas the other examples of these scenes are quite different.53 In his recent book, Lee Levine states that “[i]t is noteworthy that biblical scenes and figures depicted in the synagogues of Palestine, excluding the early fifth-century Sepphoris synagogue, are all found in sixth-century structures, more or less contemporary to that of Bet Alpha.”54 However, the Wadi Ḥamam, Huqoq, and Meroth mosaics (whether the Meroth figure is David or Samson) indicate that biblical scenes and figures were a feature of synagogue decoration before the sixth century.55

51 For a recent discussion with references, see Talgam, Mosaics of Faith, 319–21. 52 Miller and Leibner, “The Synagogue Mosaic,” 164–68; Carl H. Kraeling, The Synagogue: The Excavations at Dura Europos: Final Report 8/1 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1956), 74–86. 53 See Miller and Leibner, “The Synagogue Mosaic,” 164–68; also see Britt and Boustan’s discussion in Magness et al., “The Huqoq Synagogue,” 102–6. 54 Levine, Visual Judaism, 289. 55 For a recent discussion of biblical themes in ancient synagogue art, see Weiss, “Decorating the Sacred Realm.”

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4. Conclusion: Diversity in Synagogue Types The diversity of interior arrangements, furniture, decoration, and orientation represented in ancient synagogues hints at diversity in late-antique Judaism. Although most synagogues have one or more platforms for Torah shrines or an apse in the Jerusalem-oriented wall, a number of buildings are oriented along an east–west axis (including several Golan synagogues, the synagogue at Horvat Sumaqa in the Mount Carmel range, and the synagogue at Japhi‘a in Lower Galilee), and the synagogues at Sepphoris and Beit Shean face northwest. Most synagogues have stone benches lining at least one and usually two or three walls, but Sepphoris and Huqoq have no traces of benches (unless they were of wood). In typical Byzantine-type synagogues, the main doorway is in the wall opposite the Torah shrine, meaning that worshippers faced the direction of prayer upon entering the building, whereas in broadhouse synagogues the entrance(s) is at a right angle to the direction of prayer, and in Galilean-type synagogues those entering the building had to turn 360 degrees to face Jerusalem. In some synagogues the floor was richly decorated with geometric or figured mosaics, whereas in others the decoration consisted of carved stone reliefs decorating the building’s exterior and the upper parts of the interior. Figured decoration in mosaics is usually confined to the nave, but the synagogues at Wadi Ḥamam, Meroth, and Huqoq have figured panels in the aisles. All these features impacted the experience of worshippers and may reflect different liturgies (and therefore perhaps different movements) among these congregations. Thus, archaeology provides valuable evidence of Judaism’s continued diversity and vitality in the centuries after 70.

Cited Sources Amit, David. “Architectural Plans of Synagogues in the Southern Judean Hills and the ‘Halakhah’.” Pages 129–56 in vol. 1 of Ancient Synagogues, Historical Analysis and Archaeological Discovery. Edited by Dan Urman and Paul V. M. Flesher. StPB 47. Leiden: Brill, 1995. Amitay, Ory. From Alexander to Jesus. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010. Avigad, Nahman. “Beth Alpha.” NEAEHL 1: 190–92. Avi-Yonah, Michael. “Synagogue Architecture in the Classical Period.” Pages 157–90 in Jewish Art, An Illustrated History. Edited by Cecil Roth. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961. Avshalom-Gorni, Dina, and Arfan Najar. “Migdal.” Hadashot Arkheologiyot-Excavations and Surveys in Israel 125 (2013). http://www.hadashot-esi.org.il/report_detail_eng.aspx?id=2304. Barag, Dan. “En-Gedi, the Synagogue.” NEAEHL 2: 405–9. Baramki, Dimitri C. “An Early Byzantine Synagogue near Tell es-Sultan, Jericho.” QDAP 6 (1938): 73–77. Ben-David, Chaim. “The Rehov Inscription: A Galilean Halakhic Text Formula?” Pages 231–40 in Halakhah in Light of Epigraphy. Edited by Albert I. Baumgarten et al. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011.

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Britt, Karen C., and Ra‘anan Boustan. The Elephant Mosaic Panel in the Synagogue at Huqoq: Official Publication and Initial Interpretations. JRASup 106. Portsmouth, RI: JRA, 2017. Cohen, Shaye J. D. “Alexander the Great and Jaddus the High Priest According to Josephus.” AJSR 7/8 (1982/83): 41–68. Corbo, Virgilio C. The House of St. Peter at Capharnaum; a Preliminary Report of the First Two Campaigns of Excavations, April 16–June 19, Sept. 12–Nov. 26, 1968. Jerusalem: Studium Biblicum Franciscanum, 1969. Dothan, Moshe. Hammath Tiberias, Vol. 1: Early Synagogues and the Hellenistic and Roman ­Remains. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1983. Fogel, Shimon. “‘Samson’s Shoulders Were Sixty Cubits’: Three Issues about Samson’s Image in the Eyes of the Rabbis.” MA thesis, Ben-Gurion University, 2009. (Hebrew). Goldstein, Jonathan A. “Alexander and the Jews.” PAAJR 59 (1993): 59–101. Grey, Matthew J. “‘The Redeemer to Arise from the House of Dan’: Samson, Apocalypticism, and Messianic Hopes in Late Antique Galilee.” JSJ 44 (2013): 553–89. Grey, Matthew J., and Chad Spigel. “Huqoq in the Late Hellenistic and Early Roman Periods.” Pages 362–78 in Galilee in the Late Second Temple and Mishnaic Periods, Vol. 2: The Archaeological Record from Cities, Towns, and Villages. Edited by David A. Fiensy and James Riley Strange. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015. Hachlili, Rachel. Ancient Jewish Art and Archaeology in the Land of Israel. HdO 7.1.B.4. Leiden: Brill, 1988. Haparchi, Ishtori. Caftor wa-pherach. Edited by Zevi Hirsch Edelmann. Berlin: Julius Sittenfeld, 1852. Ilan, Zvi. “Meroth.” NEAEHL 3: 1028–31. Ilan, Zvi. “Meroth.” Pages 256–88 in vol. 1 of Ancient Synagogues, Historical Analysis and Archaeological Discovery. Edited by Dan Urman and Paul V. M. Flesher. StPB 47. Leiden: Brill, 1995. Ilan, Zvi, and Avraham Izdarechet. “Arbel.” NEAEHL 1: 87–89. Kinneret College. “The Bornblum Eretz Israel Synagogues Website.” 2016. http://synagogues. kinneret.ac.il. Kloner, Amos. “Ancient Synagogues in Israel: An Archaeological Survey.” Pages 11–18 in Ancient Synagogues Revealed. Edited by Lee I. Levine. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1981. Kohl, Heinrich, and Carl Watzinger. Antike Synagogen in Galilaea. Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1916. Kraeling, Carl H. The Synagogue: The Excavations at Dura Europos: Final Report 8/1. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1956. Leibner, Uzi. Khirbet Wadi Ḥ amam, A Roman-Period Village and Synagogue in the Lower Galilee. Qedem Reports 13. Jerusalem: Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University, 2018. Leibner, Uzi, and Shulamit Miller. “A figural mosaic in the synagogue at Khirbet Wadi Hamam.” JRA 23 (2010): 238–64. Levine, Lee I. “Synagogues.” NEAEHL 4: 1421–24. Levine, Lee I. “‘Ammudim, Horvat.” NEAEHL 1: 55–56. Levine, Lee I. The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. Levine, Lee I. Visual Judaism in Late Antiquity: Historical Contexts of Jewish Art. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012. Loffreda, Stanislao. “Capernaum.” NEAEHL 1: 291–95. Magness, Jodi. “Heaven on Earth: Helios and the Zodiac Cycle in Ancient Palestinian Synagogues.” DOP 59 (2005): 1–52. Magness, Jodi. “Review Article: The Ancient Synagogue at Nabratein.” BASOR 358 (2010): 61–68. Magness, Jodi. “Review of U. Leibner, Khirbet Wadi Ḥ amam, A Roman-Period Village and Synagogue in the Lower Galilee.” JSJ 50 (2019): 427–30. Magness, Jodi. “Synagogue Typology and Earthquake Chronology at Khirbet Shema‘, Israel.” JFA 24 (1997): 211–20.

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Magness, Jodi. “The Question of the Synagogue: The Problem of Typology.” Pages 1–48, 79–91 in Judaism in Late Antiquity, Part Three, Where We Stand: Issues and Debates in Ancient Judaism, Volume Four: The Special Problem of the Synagogue. Edited by Allan J. Avery-Peck and Jacob Neusner. HdO I.55. Leiden: Brill, 2001. Magness, Jodi, Shua Kisilevitz, Dennis Mizzi, Jocelyn Burney, Karen Britt, and Ra‘anan Boustan. “Huqoq—2018.” Hadashot Arkheologiyot-Excavations and Surveys in Israel 131 (2019): http:// www.hadashot-esi.org.il/Report_Detail_Eng.aspx?id=25653. Magness, Jodi, Shua Kisilevitz, Matthew Grey, Dennis Mizzi, Daniel Schindler, Martin Wells, Karen Britt, Ra‘anan Boustan, Shana O’Connell, Emily Hubbard, Jessie George, Jennifer Ramsay, Elisabetta Boaretto, and Michael Chazan. “The Huqoq Excavation Project: 2014–2017 Interim Report.” BASOR 380 (2018): 61–131. Ma‘oz, Zvi U. “The Art and Architecture of the Synagogues of the Golan.” Pages 98–115 in Ancient Synagogues Revealed. Edited by Lee I. Levine. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1981. Ma‘oz, Zvi U. “Golan: Hellenistic Period to the Middle Ages.” NEAEHL 2: 534–46. Meyers, Eric M., and Carol L. Meyers. Excavations at Ancient Nabratein: Synagogue and Environs. Meiron Excavation Project Report 6. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2009. Meyers, Eric M., Carol L. Meyers, and James F. Strange. Excavations at the Ancient Synagogue of Gush Halav. Meiron Excavation Project Report 5. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1990. Meyers, Eric M., A. Thomas Kraabel, and James F. Strange. Ancient Synagogue Excavations at Khirbet Shema‘, Upper Galilee, Israel 1970–1972. Meiron Excavation Project Report 1. Durham, NC: ASOR, 1976. Miller, Shulamit, and Uzi Leibner, “The Synagogue Mosaic.” Pages 144–86 in Khirbet Wadi Ḥ amam, A Roman-Period Village and Synagogue in the Lower Galilee. Qedem Reports 13. Edited by Uzi Leibner. Jerusalem: Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University, 2018. Schindler, Daniel J. “Late Roman and Byzantine Galilee: A Provincial Case Study from the Perspective of the Imported and Common Pottery.” PhD diss., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2017. Schürer, Emil. The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (175 B. C.—A. D. 135). 3 vols. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1973–1986. Spigel, Chad. “Debating Ancient Synagogue Dating: The Implications of Deteriorating Data.” BASOR 376 (2016): 83–100. Sukenik, Eleazar L. Ancient Synagogues in Palestine and Greece. The Schweich Lectures on Biblical Archaeology 1930. London: British Academy, 1934. Sukenik, Eleazer L. The Ancient Synagogue of Beth Alpha. Jerusalem: Hebrew University Press, 1932. Sussman, Jacob. “The Inscription in the Synagogue at Reḥob.” Pages 146–53 in Ancient Synagogues Revealed. Edited by Lee I. Levine. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1981. Talgam, Rina. Mosaics of Faith. Floors of Pagans, Jews, Samaritans, Christians, and Muslims in the Holy Land. Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi; University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2014. Taylor, Joan E. Christians and the Holy Places: The Myth of Jewish-Christian Origins. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. Vitto, Fanny. “Wall Paintings in the Synagogue of Rehov: An Account of Their Discovery.” Israel Museum Studies in Archaeology 7 (2015): 2–13. Weiss, Zeev. “Decorating the Sacred Realm: Biblical Depictions in Synagogues and Churches of Ancient Palestine.” Pages 121–37 in Jewish Art in Its Late Antique Context. Edited by Uzi Leibner and Catherine Hezser. TSAJ 163. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016. Werlin, Steven H. Ancient Synagogues of Southern Palestine, 300–800 C. E.: Living on the Edge. BRLA 47. Leiden: Brill, 2015. Zangenberg, Jürgen, Stefan Münger, Raimo Hakola, Rick Bonnie, and Patrick Wyssmann. “Hor-

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bat Kur—2011, Preliminary Report.” Hadashot Arkheologiyot-Excavations and Surveys in Israel 125 (2013). http://www.hadashot-esi.org.il/report_detail_eng.aspx?id=2230. Zangenberg, Jürgen K., Stefan Münger, Raimo Hakola, and Byron R. McCane.“The Kinneret Regional Project Excavations of a Byzantine Synagogue at Horvat Kur, Galilee, 2010–2013: A Preliminary Report.” HBAI 4 (2013): 557–76.

Chaim Ben David

On the Number of Synagogues and Their Location in the Holy Land Many books and articles put the number of ancient synagogues from the Roman and Byzantine periods emerging from archaeological data at one hundred. About eighty percent of these synagogues are known from the Byzantine province of Palaestina Secunda, mainly in the districts of Galilee and the Golan. Most of the synagogues date to the late Roman and Byzantine periods, while only ten are dated to the early Roman period. Of the latter, more were found in Judea than in Galilee. This article will attempt to explain this geographical distribution of synagogues, note their main types, and show the difference between those found in archaeological surveys and those found only through excavations. Synagogues belonging to the Galilean-, Golan-, and southern Judea-types have been easily detected in surveys, whereas those dated to the late Second Temple period, or located in the Jordan Valley, in the Beit Shean Valley or in larger cities, have usually been discovered only through excavations, many by chance. Using data from high-resolution surveys conducted in the area of historic Palaestina Secunda, this article will evaluate the potential number of synagogues from different periods and types that may be found in the future.

1. The Number of Synagogues Documented in Earlier Research The first modern research that identified and produced plans of ancient synagogues was carried out by the Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF) in the late nineteenth century.1 The PEF scholars noted seventeen synagogues—sixteen in Galilee and one on Mount Carmel (Table 1). In 1906, Heinrich Kohl and Carl Watzinger investigated and documented the synagogues of Galilee and published twenty of them.2 They identified fifteen out of seventeen synagogues that had been documented earlier by the PEF surveyors, plus two more on the Golan Heights and three along the Mediterranean coast. From the sites along the 1 Claude R. Conder and Horatio H. Kitchener, The Survey of Western Palestine, vol. 1: Galilee. Memoirs of the topography, orography, hydrography (London: Palestine Exploration Society, 1881). 2 Heinrich Kohl and Carl Watzinger, Antike Synagogen in Galilaea (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1916).

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coast they did not find actual construction, but rather only fragments that they attributed to synagogues. In 1934, Eleazar Sukenik published a map on which he marked forty-three synagogue sites, of which twenty-six were in the northern part of Palestine.3 Of these, twenty-four sites featured buildings, while at nineteen sites only fragments attributed to synagogues were found. Sukenik’s research revealed that thirty-three sites were known from surveys, while only ten through excavations. Table 1: Number of synagogues found according to different publications, 1876–2016. Source: Conder and Kitchener, Survey (1881); Sukenik, Ancient Synagogues (1934); Avi-Yonah, “Synagogues” (1978); Hüttenmeister and Reeg, Die Antiken Synagogen (1977); Ilan, Ancient Synagogues (1991); Tsafrir, Di Segni, and Green, Tabula (1994); Levine and Magen, “Synagogues” (1993); Levine, Ancient Synagogue (2005); Bornblum Website (2016). Year of publication

No. of sites

Survey

Excavation

Northern Israel

Early Roman

Samaritan

Mosaic4

1881

17

17

–

17

–

–

–

1934

43

33

10

26

1

2

4

1978

47

28

19

31

3

2

19

1977

100

75

25

71

4

10

20

1991

180

153

27

133

4

4

26

1994

124

95

29

91

3

11

25

1993

77

58

26

50

4

7

28

2005

89

57

32

60

7

5–9

29

2016

128

88

40

98

10

8

38

In the first edition of the Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land, forty-seven synagogue sites were noted.5 Seventeen sites that were earlier marked on Sukenik’s map do not appear here, while twenty new sites are documented. Of these new sites, six were found in surveys and fourteen in new excavations. The majority (thirty-one sites) are located in the northern part of Israel. In 1977, Hüttenmeister and Reeg noted ninety synagogue sites, fifty-six of which were marked as “Archäologisch sicher,” or certain, and thirty-four as “Archä­ 3 Eleazar L. Sukenik, Ancient Synagogues of Palestine and Greece, The Schweich Lectures on Biblical Archaeology 1930 (London: British Academy, 1934). 4 In ca. 85 percent of the synagogue sites where mosaics have been found, the sites themselves were discovered only in excavation. At the other 15 percent of sites where mosaics have been found, the site was first discovered by survey and the mosaic was revealed later during excavation. 5 Michael Avi-Yonah, “Synagogues,” EAEHL 4 (1978): 1130.

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ologisch unsicher,” or uncertain.6 On another map in the same volume, the two scholars identified ten Samaritan synagogues based on archaeological evidence.7 The new edition of the abovementioned archaeological encyclopedia mentions seventy-seven synagogue sites.8 The map published by Tsafrir, Di Segni, and Green marks 124 synagogue sites.9 Lee Levine cites eighty-nine ancient synagogues,10 although he also noted: “To date, remains of well over one hundred buildings throughout Roman Palestine have been identified.”11 A particularly large number of synagogue sites—180—were marked by Zvi Ilan;12 I shall refer to this high number later on. Most of the maps published by the abovementioned scholars distinguish between Jewish and Samaritan synagogues,13 while some do not.14

2. The Bornblum Eretz Israel Synagogue Website In 2015 the Department of Holy Land Studies at Kinneret College on the Sea of Galilee launched the Bornblum Eretz Israel Synagogues Website,15 which cites 128 known ancient synagogues (Fig. 1). Out of this number, 74 have been excavated (some only partially), and 54 remain unexcavated.16 Of the 74 excavated sites presented on the website (Table 2), doubts were raised in academic research regarding only 2 of them. The late Second Temple period synagogue at Jericho17 was rejected by Ma‘oz and doubted by Levine.18 Moreover, 6 Frowald Hüttenmeister and Gottfried Reeg, Die Antiken Synagogen in Israel, 2 vols., Beihefte zum Tübinger Atlas des Vorderen Orients B.12 (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1977). 7 Hüttenmeister and Reeg, Die Antiken Synagogen, map IV. 8 Lee I. Levine and Itzhak Magen, “Synagogues,” NEAEHL 4: 1421–27. 9 Yoram Tsafrir, Leah Di Segni, and Judith Green, Tabula Imperii Romani: Iudaea-Palaestina (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences, 1994). 10 Lee I. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 178. 11 Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 177. 12 Zvi Ilan, Ancient Synagogues in Israel (Tel Aviv: Defense Ministry, 1991) (Hebrew). 13 Hüttenmeister and Reeg, Die Antiken Synagogen, vol. 2; Levine and Magen, “Synagogues”; Tsafrir, Di Segni, and Green, Tabula; Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 177. 14 Avi-Yonah, “Synagogues”, 1130; Ilan, Ancient Synagogues (maps in the book). 15 Kinneret College, “The Bornblum Eretz Israel Synagogues Website” (2016), http://syna gogues.kinneret.ac.il. 16 For the full list of excavated and unexcavated synagogues see, respectively, tables 2 and 3, at the end of this article. Two maps are included (Figs 3 and 4) in order to locate each individual synagogue by site number. 17 Ehud Netzer, “A Synagogue from the Hasmonean Period Recently Exposed in the Western Plain of Jericho,” IEJ 49 (1999): 203–21; Ehud Netzer, Rachel Laureys-Chachy, and Yakov Kalman, “The Synagogue Complex,” in The Hasmonean and Herodian Palaces at Jericho, Final Report of the 1973–1987 Excavations (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2004), 159–92. 18 Zvi U. Ma‘oz, “The Synagogue that Never Existed in the Hasmonean Palace at Jericho. Remarks Concerning an Article by E. Netzer Y. Kalman, and R. Laureys,” Qadmoniot 118 (1999): 120–21 (Hebrew); Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 72–73.

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the presence of a late Second Temple period synagogue at Horvat ‘Ethri19 was rejected by Amit, Netzer, and Levine.20 In my opinion, both sites should be omitted from the list because both lack remains of benches. As for the evidence for identifying the excavated public structures as synagogues, I note the following: Omitting the ten early Roman structures that will be dealt with separately below, we count fifty-eight excavated Jewish synagogues. Jewish inscriptions, i. e., inscriptions in Hebrew or Aramaic, or Greek inscriptions in a Jewish context, were found in thirty-seven of these, a menorah design was found in twenty-seven, benches in twenty, and thirty-eight were oriented toward Jerusalem. It should be noted that at nine sites the excavated building was devoid of Jewish symbols or inscriptions (Arbel, Horvat ‘Anim, ed-Dikke, Meiron, Sasa, Shura, Shikin, Khirbet Qana, and Horvat Sumaqa). These were identified as synagogues mainly because of their resemblance to other such structures in their vicinity, their orientation toward Jerusalem, the presence of benches, and their setting in what was clearly a Jewish settlement area, namely, consisting of areas densely populated by Jews. In the early Roman period, these areas were located within three well-defined regions: Judea, Galilee, and Peraea, referred to in rabbinical sources as the “Three Lands”—‫ שלוש ארצות‬and described in detail by Josephus. After the Bar Kokhba revolt and all through the Late Roman and Byzantine periods, Galilee (including Gaulanitis) was the only region with a dense Jewish population. The seven Samaritan synagogues listed on the Bornblum website were identified as such according to five indicators: (1)  Structures that were found in Samaria in areas where no Jewish population is attested in the Roman or Byzantine periods; (2) Structures oriented toward Mount Gerizim and not toward Jerusalem; (3) Structures completely devoid of human and animal figures; (4) The discovery of Samaritan script; (5) The appearance of the formula Eis Theos in Greek dedication inscriptions. The fifty-four unexcavated sites (Table 3) can be subdivided between those sites where synagogue structures were found in surveys and those in which only architectural fragments were found in surveys. In one unique instance in Jerusalem, a single stone was found—bearing the famous Theodotos inscription—which sufficed to identify it as a synagogue.

19 Boaz Zissu and Amir Ganor, “Horvat ‘Ethri—A Jewish Village from the Second Temple Period and the Bar Kokhba Revolt in the Judean Foothills,” JJS 60 (2009): 90–136. 20 David Amit, “Village Synagogues from the Second Temple Period,” Michmanim 20 (2007): 28–29 (Hebrew); Ehud Netzer, “The Synagogue from the Second Temple Period According to Archaeological Finds and in Light of the Literary Sources,” in One Land—Many Cultures: Archaeological studies in Honour of S. Loffreda OFM, SBFMa 41, ed. G. Claudio Bottini, Leah Di Segni, and L. Daniel Chrupcała (Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing Press, 2003), 277–84; Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 74.

On the Number of Synagogues and Their Location in the Holy Land 

Fig. 1: Map of all synagogues in the Holy Land (map by Dina Shalem).

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Chaim Ben David

I suggest the following four categories by which unexcavated synagogues may be identified (see also Table 3): A. Remains of a monumental public structure in a rural site with clear Jewish archaeological finds and no Christian or pagan remains (three sites); B. Sites with clearly Jewish archaeological remains – a menorah or a Jewish inscription from a monumental public structure (and not from a grave), and indications of settlement in the late Roman and / or Byzantine period (twenty-six sites); C. Remains of a monumental structure in a rural site; no Jewish archaeological remains present on site, but the site is located within an obvious Jewish settlement area in the Byzantine period (seven sites); D. Fragments from a monumental public structure; no Jewish archaeological remains, but the site is within an obvious Jewish settlement area in the Byzantine period (eighteen sites). The above-mentioned large number of 187 synagogues noted by Ilan is obviously mainly due to the unexcavated synagogues he included; the Bornblum website counts 54 unexcavated synagogue sites, while Ilan noted more than 100.21 Where are the approximately 50 sites that we omitted in our list? Thirty of them are in two geographical areas—the Judean Shephelah (17) and the western Lower Galilee (13). Ilan’s main argument was that these sites were in a Jewish settlement area and if architectural fragments from public structures are found in such areas, they should be identified as synagogues. Indeed, I also use this argument (cat. D), but I apply it only to the Byzantine period, where we can very clearly detect Jewish archaeological remains as opposed to Christian remains in the areas of Upper Galilee,22 eastern Lower Galilee,23 and the western Golan.24 As for the Judean Shephelah, in the early Roman period it was part of Jewish Judea. However, after the Bar Kokhba revolt, Jewish settlement was almost wiped out in that area and for the Byzantine period a Christian presence is known there. Thus, the fragments from public structures found in the Judean Shephelah could have come from churches rather than synagogues. Moreover, no synagogue sites from the early Roman period have been discovered in surveys anywhere in Israel (see below). 21 Ilan, Ancient Synagogues. 22 Mordechai Aviam, Jews, Pagans and Christians in Galilee: 25 Years of Archaeological Excavations and Surveys: Hellenistic to Byzantine Periods (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester, 2004), 202–4. 23 Uzi Leibner, Settlement and History in Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine Galilee. An Archaeological Survey of the Eastern Galilee, TSAJ 127 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009). 24 Chaim Ben David, “Late Antique Gaulanitis Settlement Patterns of Christians and Jews in Rural Landscape,” in Settlements and Demography in the Near East, ed. Ariel S. Lewin and Pietrina Pellegrini (Pisa: Istituti Editoriali e Poligrafici Internazionali, 2006), 35–50.

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The western Galilee was indeed Jewish at least during the second half of the second century CE, but the Byzantine period saw a Christian presence in some of the former Jewish sites, as in the cases of Shefar‘am,25 Bet-Lehem Ha-Gelilit (Bethlehem of Galilee),26 and Horvat Zefat ‘Adi.27 The other sites mentioned by Ilan were rejected for any of the following three main reasons: (A) They were located in another geographical area that we do not consider as clearly Jewish settlement areas, like the Hippos and Beit Shean / Scythopolis districts; (B) The sites also revealed a Christian presence; (C) The presence of architectural fragments from a public building was uncertain.

3. Identifying Synagogues through Survey or Excavation? Of the seventy-four excavated synagogues, thirty-four were identified first through surveys while forty were identified only during excavation, most of the latter were by chance. Adding the number of the unexcavated synagogues, we reach a figure of eighty-eight synagogues discovered through surveys and forty through excavations. It should be noted that all the Galilean-type synagogues and those on the Golan Heights and southern Hebron Hills were identified in surveys while all the late Second Temple-period synagogues and most of those found in the Beit Shean / Scythopolis district, the Jordan Valley, along the coast and in cities were identified only in excavations, most of them by chance. This observation, regarding synagogue types discovered in surveys as opposed to those discovered only in excavations, is key to understanding the small number of some of the types and for estimating how many more synagogues we can expect to find in the future, as will be discussed below.

4. Why Have So Few Synagogues from the Late Second Temple Period Been Discovered? Although the Theodotos inscription from a late Second Temple period synagogue in Jerusalem has been known since 1920, the first archaeological discovery of a late Second Temple period synagogue building occurred only in 1964 during the Masada excavations. By that time about fifty synagogues from later periods were already known. In the following decades about ten synagogues from that 25 Aviam, Jews, Pagans and Christians, 291–95. 26 Aviram Oshri, “Bet Lehem of Galilee,” Excavations and Surveys in Israel 18 (1998): 42–43. 27 Edna J. Stern and Howard Smithline, “Horbat Zevat ‘Adi,” Hadashot Arkheologiyot-Excavations and Surveys in Israel 116 (2004): http://www.hadashot-esi.org.il/Report_Detail_Eng. aspx?id=5.

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period were revealed only through excavation (Fig. 2). There were no clues to the presence of such a structure prior to excavation. When we seek a common denominator at sites where late Second Temple period synagogues have been discovered we find that they have been found at sites destroyed or abandoned after major clashes between the Jews and the Roman Empire during the early Roman period. These include Masada, Gamla, Magdala, and Diab in the First Revolt, and Herodium, Qiryat Sepher, Khirbet Umm el-‘Umdan (Modi‘in), Tawani, and Tel Rekhesh in the Bar Kokhba revolt. That may explain why the late Second Temple period synagogues have so far been found mainly in Judea. After the Bar Kokhba revolt, the Jewish population concentrated mainly in Galilee, and considering that more than ninety percent of the synagogues identified so far have been dated to periods later than the Bar Kokhba revolt, it should come as no surprise that most synagogues have been found in Galilee. Before the Bar Kokhba revolt the main Jewish population was concentrated in Judea and many more settlements were destroyed or abandoned in Judea after the Bar Kokhba revolt than in the Galilee after the First Jewish Revolt. Thus, the area with the greatest potential for finding early Roman synagogues is Judea, not Galilee. As for detecting remains of early Roman synagogues under the later Roman or Byzantine synagogue buildings, this has been suggested in the past regarding Capernaum,28 and more recently for Khirbet Wadi Ḥamam29 and other Galilean-type synagogues.30 It seems that in the future we will hear more about this direction of research. Following Hachlili,31 Netzer,32 and Amit,33 I suggest four main features for identifying synagogues from the early Roman period: 1. Public building in a clearly defined Jewish settlement dating to the late Second Temple period and / or up to the Bar Kokhba revolt (135 CE); 2. Stepped benches along the wall / s of the building;

28 Rachel Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues—Archaeology and Art: New Discoveries and Current Research, HdO 105 (Brill: Leiden, 2013), 23–26. 29 Uzi Leibner, “Khirbet Wadi Hamam in the Early and Middle Roman Periods,” in Galilee in the Late Second Temple and Mishnaic Periods, Vol. 2: The Archaeological Record from Cities, Towns, and Villages in Galilee, ed. David A. Fiensy and James Riley Strange (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015), 348–50. 30 Benjamin Y. Arubas and Rina Talgam. “Christians and ‘Minim’: Who Really Built and Used the Synagogue at Capernaum—A Stirring Appraisal.” in Knowledge and Wisdom: Archaeological and Historical Essays in Honour of Leah Di Segni. Edited by Giovanni C. Bottini, Lesław D. Chrupcała, and Joseph Patrich (Milano: Edizioni Terra Sancta, 2014), 272 n. 81. 31 Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues, 43–47. 32 Netzer, “The Synagogue.” 33 Amit, “Village Synagogues,” 29.

On the Number of Synagogues and Their Location in the Holy Land 

Fig. 2: Map of late Second Temple-period synagogues (map by Dina Shalem). Site numbers on the map correspond to tables 2 and 3 below.

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3. No distinctive architectural features visible on the exterior of the structure and ornamentation is rare; 4. No clear orientation toward Jerusalem. At this phase of late Second Temple synagogue research, I would be cautious and would not rule out the necessity of finding benches in order to identify public buildings from this period as synagogues.

5. How Many More Synagogues from the Early Roman Period Can We Expect to Find? I estimate that a few hundred Jewish settlements existed in the Roman province of Judea during the early Roman period. Josephus’s figure of 204 cities and villages in Galilee seems accurate34 and so does Cassius Dio’s report that 985 Jewish settlements were destroyed during the Bar Kokhba revolt.35 Was there a synagogue in every settlement in the early Roman period? From the historical sources (Josephus, the Gospels) we know of synagogues in larger cities (Caesarea, Tiberias) and in Galilean villages (Nazareth, Capernaum). As for archaeological remains, synagogues have been found in a major city (Jerusalem), urban centers (Gamla and Magdala), rural villages (Qiryat Sepher, Khirbet Umm el-‘Umdan [Modi‘in], Tawani), and very small villas (Diab and Tel Rekhesh). One would therefore expect to find many more late Second Temple period synagogues than the twelve known at present. Yet, as explained above, in settlements where life continued during the late Roman and Byzantine periods, we have failed to identify early Roman synagogues. We do find them, as noted, in settlements that were destroyed or abandoned during the First Revolt and the Bar Kokhba revolt. Despite the abovementioned potential for finding ancient synagogues in Judea (as well as in Perea), synagogues from this period have not been found in surveys and so, even if we were to possess a list of villages destroyed or abandoned in the Bar Kokhba revolt, we would have no clue where to start digging. Thus, we will need to wait patiently for more salvage excavations and random discoveries.

34 Josephus, Vita 235. For discussion, see Chaim Ben David, “Were There 204 Settlements in Galilee at the Time of Josephus Flavius?” JJS 62 (2011): 21–36. 35 Cassius Dio 69.14.1.

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6. How Many More Synagogues from the Byzantine Period Can We Expect to Find? Data coming from three surveys in northern Israel,36 all from areas that were part of Palaestina Secunda in the Byzantine period, can provide a fairly accurate picture of the number of rural sites that existed in these areas during the Byzantine period. If we have the number of villages in a surveyed area, we can compare it to the number of synagogue sites in that area. In these three areas in Galilee and the Golan, fifty-four synagogues dated to the Byzantine period were found, constituting fifty-two percent of all the known synagogues dated to that period. It should be noted that apparently only one monumental synagogue has been found in a rural village—at Bar‘am, where already decades ago scholars identified two synagogues. Aviam has noted, however, that the small Bar‘am synagogue is in a different village, not in Bar‘am.37 We find the same phenomenon in Gush Halav, where Aviam noted that the two synagogues are at two different village sites.38 The Upper Galilee survey documented twenty-two sites in this Jewish area, at seventeen of which synagogues were found.39 In the western Golan survey,40 out of twenty-nine sites from the Byzantine period, twenty-six revealed synagogues. In the eastern Galilee survey,41 fifteen settlements sites from the Byzantine period have been found, in eleven of which synagogues were found. Thus, in terms of Galilean- and Golan-type synagogues, we can estimate that so far around eighty percent of the monumental synagogues have been found in the three areas surveyed. As for other synagogue types that have been found only in excavations, we are far from knowing the percentage of the finds and the true number we can expect to find in the future. For example, we cannot know whether the four synagogues in the Beit Shean / Scythopolis district, which all were found randomly during excavations, are a hundred percent of the true number or perhaps only twenty percent. The same goes for synagogues in the major cities—the two Jewish ones 36 Rafael Frankel et al., Settlement Dynamics and Regional Diversity in Ancient Upper Galilee: Archaeological Survey of the Upper Galilee, IAA Reports 14 (Jerusalem: IAA, 2001); Chaim Ben David, The Jewish Settlements on the Golan in the Roman and Byzantine Period (Qasrin: Golan Research Institute, 2005) (Hebrew, English abstract); Ben David, “Late Antique Gaulanitis”; Leibner, Settlement and History. 37 Mordechai Aviam, “The Ancient Synagogues at Bar‘am,” in Judaism in Late Antiquity, Part Three, Where We Stand: Issues and Debates in Ancient Judaism, Volume Four: The Special Problem of the Synagogue, ed. Jacob Neusner and Allan J. Avery-Peck, HdO I.55 (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 168. 38 Mordechai Aviam, “The Ancient Synagogues of Baram,” Qadmoniot 124 (2002): 125 (Hebrew). 39 Frankel et al., Settlement Dynamics. 40 Ben David, “Late Antique Gaulanitis.” 41 Leibner, Settlement and History.

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(Sepphoris, Tiberias) and the pagan and Christian cities (e.g., Caesarea, Beit Shean / Scythopolis).

7. Conclusion Modern research has updated the number of ancient synagogues from 17 synagogues known in the late nineteenth century to 128 synagogues. Most of them have been found in the Galilee and neighboring areas. While 118 Synagogues were dated to the Late Roman and Byzantine periods only 10 were dated to the

Fig. 3: Map of excavated and surveyed synagogues in northern Israel and the Golan Heights (map by Dina Shalem).

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Fig. 4: Map of excavated and surveyed synagogues in southern part of the Holy Land (map by Dina Shalem).

early Roman period. All of the early Roman period synagogues were found in excavations with no clues before the excavation contra to many late Roman and Byzantine synagogues that were detected already in surveys The academic community will certainly be pleased with every new synagogue site that comes to light, but in my view, the main thrust of research should be to expand the number of synagogues from the late Second Temple period and those from the second to fourth centuries CE.

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Table 2: Data regarding excavated synagogues. Legend: Only found in excavation (Exc.); Early Roman (ER); Samaritan (Sam.); Menorah ornament (Men.); Jewish inscription (J.Inscr.) refers to inscriptions in Hebrew, Aramaic, and / or Greek with a Jewish context. In the case of Samaritan synagogues, a Samaritan inscription will be marked by an s instead of an x and an Eis Theos formula is marked et. No. 2 3 4 6 8 10 11 13 15 17 18 22 24 35 38 42 46 48 49 50 54 55 56 57 58 60 61 62 64 65 66 67 69 70

Site name Yesud Hamala Bar‘am Bar‘am Small Sasa Gush Halav Lower Meroth Nabratein ‘En Nashut Dabiyye Khirbet Shema‘ Meiron Qasrin Shura Akbara ed-Dikke Chorazin Gamla Huqoq Horvat Kur Capernaum Horvat Kanaf Deir Aziz Majduliya Yodefat Khirbet Qana Wadi Ḥ amam Magdala Kursi Umm el-Qanatir Horvat ‘Ammudim Arbel Tiberias Shikhin Hammath Tiberias North

Exc. x

Survey

ER

x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x

Sam.

Men.

x x x x

J.Inscr. x? x x x x x x

x x

x

x

x

Mosaic

x

x x x x x x

x x

x x x x x

x

x x

x

x x x x

x x x x

x x x

x

x x x

x

x

x

x x

x

x

189

On the Number of Synagogues and Their Location in the Holy Land  No. 71 74 75 76 77 78 81 84 85 86 87 88 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 108 109 111 115 117 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128

Site name Hammath Tiberias Sepphoris west Sepphoris Kfar Kana Raqit Isfia Beth-She‘arim Japhi‘a Ḥ ammath-Gader Horvat Sumaqa Kefar Misr Tel Rekhesh Caesarea Beth Alpha Beit Shean Beit Shean Leontis Maoz Hayim Rehov Tirat Tzvi Samara Tzur Natan Khirbe Tel Qasileh Qiryat Sepher Umm el-‘Umdan Naran Shalavim Jericho Diab Herodium Gaza ‘En Gedi Eshtemoa Susiya Maon Tawani Rimon Horvat ‘Anim Nirim Masada

Exc. x x x x x x

Survey

ER

Sam.

Men. x x

x

x x

x x

x

J.Inscr. x x x x et x x x x

Mosaic x x x x x x

x

x

x x s x

x x x x x x x x

x x

x x x x x x x x x x

x

x

x x x

x x x x

x x x x x x x x x x x x

x

et s

x x

x x x

x s x

x x x

x x x x

x x x x

x

x x

x x x x x x x x x

x x x x

x x x

x x

x x x x x

x x x

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Table 3: Data regarding unexcavated synagogues. No.

Site name

Men.

J.Inscr.

Categories for identification (see text) A

B

1

Alma

x

x

5

Daburah

x

x

7

Gush Halav Upper

9

Dalton

C

D

x x

x

12

Bnot Yaakov

x

14

Akhmadiyye

x

x

x

16

Ekiin

x

x

x

19

Firam

x

20

Iyee Mearoth

x

21

Dura

x

23

Jauni

x

25

Tuba

x

26

Natur

27

Aasaliya

28

Qasabiyye

x

29

Horvat Simwai

x

30

e-Rafid

x

31

Jarabe

x

32

Zumeimra

x

33

Taybeh

34

Rama

36

Yehudiya

37

Kefar Hananya

39

Zavitan

40

Salabe

41

Wahshara

43

Dardara

44

Huseniya

45

Batra

47

Tzalmon

x x

x

x

x x x x

x

x

x x x x x

x x x x x

On the Number of Synagogues and Their Location in the Holy Land  No.

Site name

Men.

J.Inscr.

Categories for identification (see text) A

51

Hoha

52

Zeita

191

B

C

D x

x

53

Mimlakh

x

59

Beth Netofa

x

63

Lawiye

x

68

Iblin

72

Aphek

x

73

Qoshet

x

x

79

Ilut

x

x

80

Sarona

x

x

82

Yama

x

x

83

Tel Yizchaki

89

Dana

x

90

Kochav Hayrden

x

91

Gebul

x

99

Fahma

x

x

x

x

x

x x

x

x x x

107

Duheisha

x

x

110

Habra

x

x

112

Ashdod

x

x

x

113

Jerusalem

x

x

114

Ashkelon

x

x

x

116

Beit Guvrin

x

x

x

118

Kishor

x

x

119

Yata

x

x

Cited Sources Amit, David. “Village Synagogues from the Second Temple Period.” Michmanim 20 (2007): 21–32 (Hebrew). Arubas, Benjamin Y., and Talgam Rina. “Christians and ‘Minim’: Who Really Built and Used the Synagogue at Capernaum—A Stirring Appraisal.” Pages 237–74 in Knowledge and Wisdom: Archaeological and Historical Essays in Honour of Leah Di Segni. Edited by Giovanni C. Bottini, Lesław D. Chrupcała, and Joseph Patrich. Milan: Edizioni Terra Sancta, 2014.

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Aviam, Mordechai. “The Ancient Synagogues at Bar‘am.” Pages 155–73 in Judaism in Late Antiquity, Part Three, Where We Stand: Issues and Debates in Ancient Judaism, Volume Four: The Special Problem of the Synagogue. Edited by Jacob Neusner and Allan J. Avery-Peck. HdO I.55. Leiden: Brill, 2001. Aviam, Mordechai. “The Ancient Synagogues of Baram.” Qadmoniot 124 (2002): 118–25 (Hebrew). Aviam Mordechai. Jews, Pagans and Christians in Galilee: 25 Years of Archaeological Excavations and Surveys: Hellenistic to Byzantine Periods. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester, 2004. Avi-Yonah, Michael. “Synagogues.” EAEHL 4 (1978): 1129–38. Ben David, Chaim. The Jewish Settlements on the Golan in the Roman and Byzantine Period: Qasrin: Golan Research Institute, 2005 (Hebrew, English abstract). Ben David, Chaim. “Late Antique Gaulanitis Settlement Patterns of Christians and Jews in Rural Landscape.” Pages 35–50 in Settlements and Demography in the Near East. Edited by Ariel S. Lewin and Pietrina Pellegrini. Pisa: Istituti Editoriali e Poligrafici Internazionali, 2006. Ben David, Chaim. “Were There 204 Settlements in Galilee at the Time of Josephus Flavius?” JJS 62 (2011): 21–36. Conder, Claude R., and Horatio H. Kitchener. The Survey of Western Palestine, vol. 1: Galilee. Memoirs of the topography orography, hydrography. London: Palestine Exploration Society, 1881. Frankel, Rafael, Nimrod Getzov, Mordechai Aviam, and Avi Degani. Settlement Dynamics and Regional Diversity in Ancient Upper Galilee: Archaeological Survey of the Upper Galilee. IAA Reports 14. Jerusalem: IAA, 2001. Hachlili, Rachel. Ancient Synagogues—Archaeology and Art: New Discoveries and Current Research. HdO 105. Brill: Leiden, 2013. Hüttenmeister, Frowald, and Gottfried Reeg. Die antiken Synagogen in Israel. 2 vols. Beihefte zum Tübinger Atlas des Vorderen Orients B.12. Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1977. Ilan, Zvi. Ancient Synagogues in Israel. Tel Aviv: Defense Ministry, 1991. (Hebrew). Kinneret College. “The Bornblum Eretz Israel Synagogues Website.” 2016. http://synagogues. kinneret.ac.il. Kohl, Heinrich, and Carl Watzinger. Antike Synagogen in Galilaea. Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1916. Leibner, Uzi. Settlement and History in Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine Galilee. An Archaeological Survey of the Eastern Galilee. TSAJ 127. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009. Leibner, Uzi. “Khirbet Wadi Hamam in the Early and Middle Roman Periods.” Pages 346–61 in Galilee in the Late Second Temple and Mishnaic Periods: The Archaeological Record from Cities, Towns, and Villages in Galilee. Edited by David A. Fiensy and James Riley Strange. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015. Levine, Lee I., and Itzhak Magen. “Synagogues.” NEAEHL 4: 1421–27. Levine, Lee I. The Ancient Synagogue, The First Thousand Years. 2nd ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005. Ma‘oz, Zvi U. “The Synagogue that Never Existed in the Hasmonean Palace at Jericho. Remarks Concerning an Article by E. Netzer, Y. Kalman, and R. Laureys.” Qadmoniot 118 (1999): 120–21 (Hebrew). Netzer, Ehud. “A Synagogue from the Hasmonean Period Recently Exposed in the Western Plain of Jericho.” IEJ 49 (1999): 203–21. Netzer, Ehud. “The Synagogue from the Second Temple Period According to Archaeological Finds and in Light of the Literary Sources.” Pages 277–84 in One Land—Many Cultures: Archaeological Studies in Honour of S. Loffreda OFM. SBFMa 41. Edited by G. Claudio Bottini, Leah Di Segni, and L. Daniel Chrupcała. Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing Press, 2003. Netzer, Ehud, Rachel Laureys-Chachy, and Yakov Kalman. “The Synagogue Complex.” Pages 159–92 in The Hasmonean and Herodian Palaces at Jericho, Final Report of the 1973–1987 Excavations. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2004.

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Oshri, Aviram. “Bet Lehem of Galilee.” Excavations and Surveys in Israel 18 (1998): 42–43. Stern, Edna J., and Howard Smithline. “Horbat Zevat ‘Adi,” Hadashot Arkheologiyot-Excavations and Surveys in Israel 116 (2004). http://www.hadashot-esi.org.il/Report_Detail_Eng. aspx?id=5. Sukenik, Eleazar L. Ancient Synagogues of Palestine and Greece. The Schweich Lectures on Biblical Archaeology 1930. London: British Academy, 1934. Tsafrir, Yoram, Leah Di Segni, and Judith Green. Tabula Imperii Romani: Iudaea . Palaestina: Maps and Gazetteer. Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1994. Zissu, Boaz, and Amir Ganor. “Horvat ‘Ethri—A Jewish Village from the Second Temple Period and the Bar Kokhba Revolt in the Judean Foothills.” JJS 60 (2009): 90–136.

Svetlana Tarkhanova

The Friezes with the “Peopled Scrolls” Motif in the Capernaum Synagogue Dating by Stylistic Method and Some Aspects of the Reconstruction

The Capernaum synagogue is arguably the best-known monument of its kind; in part this is due to the high quality of its artwork.1 It can be compared to the most prominent late Roman and early Byzantine (at least, if the latter are archaic enough) monuments of the Near East, though neither its exact prototypes, nor its parallels have been revealed. Probably, it was about a synagogue of such a style that it was written in the Babylonian Talmud: “Shall we say that one thought it [sc. an idolatrous shrine] to be a synagogue and bowed down to it—then his heart was to Heaven!” (b. Šabb. 72b). The marvelous artistic style, the elegance of its architectural planning, and the decorative elements of the “white pearl” of Galilee always attracted special scientific interest. Finally, it turned into volumes of research and even into a kind of scientific detective story. The bibliography of all those discussions is vast, so only the crucial points of almost two centuries of investigation will be mentioned. The stumbling block of all discussions is the dating of the synagogue and its decorative style. The first Western traveler to discover the synagogue was Edward Robinson in 1852.2 He dated the monument to the first century CE and associated it with the synagogue of the centurion (Luke 7:2–5). The initial archaeological excavations were conducted under the direction of Charles Wilson in 1865, though the exact impact of those works is not quite clear. Wilson mentioned that

1 This article is based on part of my PhD dissertation: Svetlana Tarkhanova, “Architecture of the Late Antique Synagogues (3rd–7th centuries CE) on the Territory of Northern Palestine: Typology, Compositions, Decoration” (PhD diss., Institute of Arts in Moscow, 2016), 251–70 (Russian). This article was prepared in the framework of the theme no. 1.2.24 “The interpretation of the images of antiquity in the medieval architecture and their analogies in the Modern Age architectural creativity,” on behalf of Scientific Research Institute of Theory and History of Architecture and Urban Planning, branch of the Central Institute for Research and Design of the Ministry of Construction and Housing and Communal Services of the Russian Federation. I thank Dr. Jodi Magness for discussing this article, which helped me concentrate on the most crucial issues, as well as Dr. Suzana Hodak and Dr. Alin Suciu for their assistance. 2 Edward Robinson, Later Biblical Researches in Palestine, and in the Adjacent Regions: A Journal of Travels in the Year 1852 (Boston: Crocker and Brewster, 1856), 350, 360.

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“Materials have been collected for making … plans, with detailed drawings … of seven synagogues.”3 In 1857, Robinson returned to the research of the synagogue, as did Wilson in 1865 and Kitchener in 1881. Those activities led to sad consequences: Arab squatters started to dismantle the remains of the synagogue, protesting against its further research.4 In 1894, the territory of ancient Capernaum became the private property of the Franciscan Order, members of which had to cover the ruins in order to prevent their further depredation. By their permission, further research was continued by Heinrich Kohl and Carl Watzinger in 1905. The synagogue was finally excavated, restored, and published. Based on the stylistic analyses of the rich sculptural decoration, the synagogue was dated to the late second century CE.5 That dating became the basis for the evolutional theory of synagogue architectural development, proposed by Eleazar Sukenik and Michael Avi-Yonah.6 Further works were interrupted by World War I and were only resumed in 1921 under the supervision of Gaudenzio Orfali.7 In 1968, excavations were started again under the direction of Virgilio Corbo and Stanislao Loffreda. By that time, the dating of the German archaeologists had already become commonly accepted, though some doubts about it were expressed.8 Nevertheless, the discovery of early Byzantine coins in the foundation of the synagogue and its atrium by Corbo and Loffreda overturned the scientific community in Israel and abroad.9 Since that moment, 3 Charles W. Wilson, “Preliminary Report of Captain C. W. Wilson, Royal Engineers, on the Result of the First Expedition Under His Charge—1865–6,” PEQ 1 (1865–66): 3. See also Charles W. Wilson, Picturesque Palestine, Sinai and Egypt, vol. 2 (London: D. Appleton & Co., 1883), 81–84. 4 Mordechai Aviam, Jews, Pagans and Christians in the Galilee: 25 Years of Archaeological Excavations and Surveys: Hellenistic to Byzantine Periods (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2004), 148. 5 Heinrich Kohl and Carl Watzinger, Antike Synagogen in Galilaea (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1916), 14–21. 6 Eleazar L. Sukenik, Ancient Synagogues in Palestine and Greece, The Schweich Lectures on Biblical Archaeology 1930 (London: British Academy, 1934); Michael Avi-Yonah, Geschichte der Juden im Zeitalter des Talmud (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1962), 76; see historiography of classification in David Milson, Art and Architecture of the Synagogue in Late Antique Palestine: In the Shadow of the Church, AJEC 65 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 18; Svetlana Tarkhanova, “Synagogues of Late Antique Palestine: Architectural Plans and Questions of Classification,” in “Questions of World History of Architecture”: NIITIG RAASN Materials of the International Conference, May 29–30, 2014 (Moscow, 2014), 36–57 (Russian). 7 Gaudenzio Orfali, Capharnaum et ses ruines d’après les fouilles accomplies a Tell-Houm par la custodie franciscaine de Terre Sainte (1905–1921) (Paris: Picard, 1922). 8 Alfons M. Schneider, “Die altchristliche Bischofs- und Gemeindekirche und ihre Benennung,” Kunstchronik 4 (1951): 110. 9 Stanislao Loffreda, “The Late Chronology of the Synagogue of Capernaum,” IEJ 23 (1973): 37–42; Stanislao Loffreda, “Coins from the Synagogue of Capernaum,” LASBF 47 (1997): 223–44; Stanislao Loffreda, Cafarnao. VI: Tipologie e contesti stratigrafici della ceramica (1968–2003), SBFCMa 48 (Jerusalem: Studium Biblicum Franciscanum, 2008). Krautheimer, “The Constantinian

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scholars have been divided into two parties: one dated the synagogue by the earlier period (second–third century CE). Yoram Tsafrir, admitting the early Byzantine features of some of the capitals,10 still insisted that it was better to search for the interpretation of the exclusions than to break out of the existing system.11 Gideon Foerster and James F. Strange at first also supported the early date.12 Zvi Ma‘oz proposed that the synagogue was built in the early Byzantine period, but from spolia that were collected from several earlier monuments.13 In fact, he was trying to reconcile the late stratigraphic data and the apparently early style of the details, explaining their origin as alien. However, on the basis of archaeological observations, most scholars accepted a later date for the synagogue (fourth–fifth century CE). After the article of Loffreda, Jodi Magness, based on the analysis of the ceramics, pushed the date of the Capernaum synagogue to the first half of the sixth century14 and also proposed that it could have been reconstructed during the early Islamic period.15 The early Byzantine date of the synagogue was accepted by David Milson,16 Lee Levine,17 and Marilyn Chiat.18 Doron Chen has studied the architectural proportions of

Basilica,” DOP 21 (1967): 124, referred to the Capernaum synagogue in his work on the genesis of the Christian basilica. Consulted by Avi-Yonah, he agreed with a date in the third century CE. 10 Yoram Tsafrir, “On the Source of the Architectural Design of the Ancient Synagogues in the Galilee: A New Appraisal,” in Ancient Synagogues: Historical Analysis and Archaeological Discovery, ed. Dan Urman and Paul V. M. Flesher, StPB 47 (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 1:73–76. 11 Yoram Tsafrir, “The Synagogues at Capernaum and Meroth and the Dating of the Galilean Synagogue,” in The Roman and Byzantine Near East, Volume I, ed. John H. Humphrey, JRASup 14 (Ann Arbor: JRA, 1995), 151–61. 12 Gideon Foerster, “Notes on Recent Excavations at Capernaum,” IEJ 21 (1971): 207–11; Gideon Foerster, “Synagogue Studies: Metrology and Excavations,” ZDPV 102 (1986): 134–43; James F. Strange, “The Capernaum and Herodium Publications,” BASOR 226 (1977): 65–73. 13 Zvi U. Ma‘oz, “The Synagogue at Capernaum: A Radical Solution,” in The Roman and Byzantine Near East: Some Recent Archaeological Research, Vol. II, ed. John H. Humphrey, JRASup 31 (Portsmouth, RI: JRA, 1999), 137–48; see critics: Benjamin Y. Arubas and Rina Talgam, “Jews, Christians and ‘Minim’: Who Really Built and Used the Synagogue at Capernaum—A Stirring Appraisal,” in Knowledge and Wisdom: Archaeological and Historical Essays in Honour of Leah Di Segni, ed. Giovanni C. Bottini, L. Daniel Chrupcała, and Joseph Patrich, SBFCMa 53 (Milan: Edizioni Terra Sancta, 2014), 237–41. 14 Jodi Magness, “The Question of the Synagogue: The Problem of Typology,” in Judaism in Late Antiquity, Part Three, Where We Stand: Issues and Debates in Ancient Judaism, Volume Four: The Special Problem of the Synagogue, ed. Allan J. Avery-Peck and Jacob Neusner, HdO I.55 (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 1–48. 15 Jodi Magness, “The Chronology of Capernaum in the Early Islamic Period,” JAOS 117 (1997): 481–86. 16 Milson, Art and Architecture, 45–47. 17 Lee I. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 196. 18 Marilyn J. S. Chiat, “A Corpus of Synagogue Art and Architecture in Roman and Byzantine Palestine,” 4 vols. (PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 1983), B:3, I–1.

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the Capernaum synagogue and concluded that the synagogue had been built using the Byzantine pous (32 cm) as a scale.19 But still there is no stylistic reconciliation of these various suggestions. As Rachel Hachlili recently wrote, “Scholars still insist that the decorations at Capernaum belong to the third to early fourth century CE artistic setting rather than to a later period.”20 The main problem is an apparent contradiction between the late archaeological / stratigraphic / numismatic data and the early stylistic observations. This article is an attempt to reconcile these two poles by arguing that a considerable part of the sculptural decoration of the synagogue appears to date to the early Byzantine period. Here a detailed analysis of one particular group of decorative details is presented: friezes with the so-called “peopled scrolls” motif. This motif, sometimes also referred to as “inhabited scrolls,” is in its original definition characterized by floral scrolls peopled with living creatures. The motif developed during the Hellenistic period and became a widespread decorative phenomenon throughout the Near East during the Roman and Byzantine periods.21 Hence, these friezes of the Capernaum synagogue are comparatively extensive and noteworthy because they form a homogeneous array. As a part of the entablature, they had an important constructive role and, most probably, belonged to the core building phase of the synagogue (or to the extensive rebuilding of it), thus, their dating is very important.

1. The Sculptural Decoration of the Capernaum Synagogue The friezes with the “peopled scrolls” motif are only one part of the rich sculptural decoration of the edifice, which includes pilasters topped by Attic capitals and set on Attic bases, Corinthian capitals,22 bases with pedestals, door lintels,23 19 Doron Chen, “On the Chronology of the Ancient Synagogue at Capernaum,” ZDPV 102 (1986): 134–43; Doron Chen, “Dating Synagogues in Galilee: On the Evidence from Meroth and Capernaum,” LASBF 40 (1990): 349–55. 20 Rachel Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues—Archaeology and Art: New Discoveries and Current Research, HdO 105 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 592. 21 See the seminal paper by Jocelyn M. C. Toynbee and John B. Ward-Perkins, “Peopled Scrolls: A Hellenistic Motif in Imperial Art,” Papers of the British School in Rome 18 (1950): 1–43. See below for further discussion on the “peopled scrolls” motif in antiquity. 22 Moshe Fischer, “The Corinthian Capitals of the Capernaum Synagogue: A Revision,” Levant 18 (1986): 131–42; Hanswulf Bloedhorn, Die Kapitelle der Synagoge von Kapernaum: Ihre zeitliche und stilistische Einordnung im Rahmen der Kapitellentwicklung in der Dekapolis und in Palaestina, ADPV 11 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1993); Robert H. Rough, “A New Look at the Corinthian Capitals at Capernaum,” LASBF 39 (1989): 119–28. 23 Roni Amir, “Style as a Chronological Indicator: On the Relative Dating of the Golan Synagogues,” in Jews in Byzantium: Dialects of Minority and Majority Cultures, ed. Robert Bonfil et al., Jerusalem Studies in Religion and Culture 14 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 364; Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues, 229, 235–38; Ma‘oz, “The Synagogue at Capernaum,” 140–41.

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voussoirs, and windows. All of them are stylistically heterogeneous and can be dated from the second to the sixth century CE. Several explanations for such stylistic diversity were published in a recent article of Benyamin Arubas and Rina Talgam.24 This feature of diversity is somewhat strange if we take into account the more or less uniform scale of the decorative details, and, more so, the stable and sustained architectural skeleton of the synagogue with its strict proportions close to the Roman canons. To add to the vast chronological sequence, the lintels and pilaster capitals, which have been restored along the eastern wall of the atrium, might be early Islamic in date. Probably they appeared during the restoration of the synagogue in the seventh or eighth century CE. This theory coordinates with the conclusions by Magness and the excavations of Vassilios Tzaferis, which have revealed that the town remained active for quite a long time after the early Byzantine period.25 There are several works where the “peopled scrolls” friezes were mentioned or analyzed, but none of them did so exhaustively. All the authors who will be referred to below date the friezes of Capernaum to the second–third or to the very beginning of the fourth century CE. Usually, they are compared with the similar friezes of the Chorazin synagogue. To this short list of analogies among late-antique Jewish art, the synagogues at ed-Dikke and Jarabā should also be added.26 Several variants of the classification for the Capernaum friezes were proposed. Already Kohl and Watzinger divided them into three main groups: (1) small friezes that decorated the main façade, with the defaced protomes of lions springing from the acanthus medallions;27 (2–3) large friezes with differently executed medallions with various central patterns.28 Hachlili has repeated this classification by Kohl and Watzinger, adding only a separate group of plain friezes comprised of three fasciae that were restored with the whole entablature over the main colonnades of the hall.29 Hachlili considers the friezes of Capernaum and Chorazin contemporaneous, though she notes the more classical character and higher quality of the former, explaining these difference mainly by the various materials in which they were executed (respectively, limestone and basalt). Asher Ovadiah and Yehudit Turnheim also briefly mentioned the Capernaum friezes in their monograph on the “peopled scrolls” friezes from Beit Shean,30 distinguishing among them two 24 Arubas and Talgam, “Jews, Christians and ‘Minim’.” 25 Magness, “The Chronology of Capernaum,” 481–86; Vassilios Tzaferis, “Excavations in the Area of the Greek Orthodox Church,” NEAEHL 1: 295–96. 26 Zvi U. Ma‘oz, Khirbet Dikke and the Synagogues in and around Bethsaida Valley, Archaostyle Scientific Research Series 7 (Qasrin: Archaostyle, 2009), 30, fig. 20. 27 Kohl and Watzinger, Antike Synagogen, 26–28. 28 Kohl and Watzinger, Antike Synagogen, 29–33, Abb. 54–64. 29 Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues, 239, 483. 30 Asher Ovadiah and Yehudit Turnheim, “Peopled” Scrolls in Roman Architectural Decoration in Israel: The Roman Theatre at Beth Shean / Scythopolis, Rivista di Archeologia suppl. 12 (Rome: Giorgio Bretschneider, 1994); for the “peopled scrolls” of the Beth Shean theater, see

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main types: “Type I. Consists of windblown leaves which appear only inside the medallion … Type II. The medallions are formed of four acanthus leaves.”31 Roni Amir presented a wider overview through all the decorative details of the Capernaum synagogue. Due to the general character of her description, all its friezes, “those of the façade and those of the interior walls,” were joined into a common group of decorative elements, executed by a second group of artisans.32 Amir also supposed that the Chorazin synagogue, dated to the fourth century CE, had been an intermediate link between Galilean and Golan synagogues. By this theory, the Capernaum synagogue should be the earliest in this sequence, dated to the second–third century CE, while the Golan synagogues are the latest, dated to the fifth–sixth centuries CE. The main evolution of the decorative style was concentrated in the phasing out of the illusion and plasticity in favor of more simplicity and flatness. Amir noted that already in the Capernaum synagogue a distinctive early Byzantine feature, known as horror vacui (“fear of empty space”), had appeared.33 All of these stylistic observations are very valuable. However, concerning the suggested chronological evolution of the synagogues, we should be aware that the sequence was reversed: the Chorazin synagogue, by stratigraphic testimony, was first built in the fourth century CE, with a serious rebuilding phase in the fifth–sixth century.34 So, the Chorazin synagogue was either contemporary with the Capernaum synagogue or earlier, but not later and imitative, as is conventionally suggested.35 Arubas and Talgam adopted the classification of the Capernaum friezes from Amir, but differed in their conclusions: they considered that the three main groups of decoration reflect not only a division between the artisans, but also a chronological sequence in the execution of the synagogue.36 Concerning the dating, they suggested the following: Acanthus scrolls adorned by animals are common in Roman art of the second and third centuries AD (found for example in the scaenae frons decorations of the theatre in Beth Shean and in the decorations of the complex of the temple of Artemis in also Gabi Mazor, “The Architectural Elements,” in Nysa Scythopolis: The Southern and Severan Theaters. Part 2: The Architecture. Bet She’an III, ed. Gabi Mazor and Walid Atrash, IAA Reports 58/2 (Jerusalem: IAA, 2015), 381–495. 31 Ovadiah and Turnheim, “Peopled” Scrolls, 141. 32 Amir, “Style as a Chronological Indicator,” 364. 33 Amir, “Style as a Chronological Indicator,” 351. 34 Ze’ev Yeivin, The Synagogue at Korazim. The 1962–1964, 1980–1987 Excavations, IAA Reports 10 (Jerusalem: IAA, 2000), 30*–31*. 35 See, e.g., Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues, 483: “The comparison of the Capernaum architectural ornamentation with that of the Korazim synagogue, which is dated to the fourth century, confirms an earlier date for the Capernaum decor and suggests that it probably influenced the Korazim artists.” 36 Arubas and Talgam, “Jews, Christians and ‘Minim’,” 248.

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Gerasa). The reliefs of Capernaum may not be as protrusive as those of the great metropoleis of Palestine and Arabia, although the gradual carving, the sensation of movement and the reliefs’ naturalism indicate that they belong in the same period.37

In this article, the new stylistic analysis and the new dating for the Capernaum synagogue friezes are presented, which will not be possible without the preceding investigations. The traditional division of the large friezes into two main groups is preserved and methodologically used. The group of the small friezes with the lion protomes will also be mentioned, though they are not in the focus this time, as they are considered ancillary in relation to the main friezes. I will mainly concentrate on the morphological structure of the motif, which is deeply rooted in the order canons of the Greco-Roman tradition. Some observations on the stylistic features will be added as well.

2. The Capernaum “Peopled Scrolls” Friezes In the first group of friezes the acanthus medallions were inscribed inside the circles (Fig. 1). These circles are formed by two plain stems without leaves, interlacing with each other and interconnected by small links in the shape of a funnel with a flexible rounded spout, which can be called cauliculi, although there is no special term for this very detail. Simple vertical one-leaf fleurons, rounded or heart-shaped on one side and pointed on the other, with a slightly protrusive loberib, are springing out of these cauliculi. They are turned alternately upward and downward at every other interlacing beam. The single acanthus stem, sprouting with lobed plain leaves, forms a closed medallion inside the circle. The lobes are serrated; they are concave and have an angular lobe-rib (a sort of sinuate leaf). It is hardly noticeable, but every acanthus medallion is divided into four segments by small eyes / canneluras between the lobes. Each segment comprises four of them. Near the canneluras the axis of the lobes is slightly changing, forming an oblique angle. Thus, these divisions form the diagonal axes, in a form of crux decussata. Leaves are growing from the internal side of the medallion only, their tips are turned inside and curling, so that a wind-blown effect is created; the direction of this curling changes alternately in every adjacent medallion. A deeply carved groove separates the outer and inner medallions. Thus, this type of frieze has a picturesque, though logically organized, rhythm. In the second group of friezes there are no interlacing stems for the outer medal­lions (Fig.  2). Each medallion of the “peopled scrolls” pattern is formed by an isolated, closed acanthus branch, which is divided into four smaller branches / segments with leaves. The medallions are connected to one another 37 Arubas and Talgam, “Jews, Christians and ‘Minim’,” 248.

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Fig. 1: First group of friezes with “peopled scrolls” pattern in the Capernaum synagogue (photo by A. Kazaryan, used by permission).

Fig. 2: Second group of friezes with “peopled scrolls” pattern in the Capernaum synagogue (photo by author).

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with chains, formed by five identical small beads. The same beads, only three in a row, separate the medallions in their upper and lower parts. Thus, the lockets of each medallion form horizontal and vertical axes, in the form of a plain crux quadrata. The shape of the beads is peculiar: one side is semicircular, the other is straight and even as if it was a segment of a circle with elongated shoulders. Their direction is alternating from downward to upward (horizontal lockets), or from leftward to rightward (vertical lockets), in every adjacent medallion. Other than these rather symbolical chains, the medallions are independent of each other. The leaves are noticeably growing on both sides of the stems, four lobes on each side of the quarter segment, terminating in a common lobe at the end. The style of their modeling differs from that of the first group: the lobes are not concave, but convex, with slightly protruding lobe-rib. The midrib is formed by a groove. The pointed tips of the leaves are curling and the direction of this curling alternates in the adjacent medallions. Most of the motifs, which were described already by Kohl and Watzinger, are placed inside the ancillary smaller medallions, or discs, with the extensive rim in the form of a fillet. In that case, when the motif is voluminous enough, the additional disc is absent. The triangular-like segments of the surface which are left between the medallions were left empty in the upper range, but in the lower range they were filled with elegant and horizontally-composed fleursde-lis. Their direction also alternates from leftward to rightward. In several cases, the trefoils are replaced with tiny acanthus branches. The character of their leaves differs from that of the medallions of the present group of friezes, resembling the acanthus leaves of the so-called small friezes: they are wind-blown, small, and pointed. Bead-lockets that are similar to those described here are also used in a group of small friezes, indicating the same master’s hand.38 Both groups of friezes were carved from the same piece of stone as was used for the cornices. Such a feature is not characteristic of the classical Greco-Roman tradition, according to which friezes were united with an architrave and separated from a cornice.39 Notwithstanding the differences between the decoration of the frieze part in both groups, the cornices are absolutely identical and bear the same “Syrian sequence” decoration.40 Overall, the compositional methods, based on certain numbers of lobes and the sequential alternation of their curling and the coordinated proportions of the friezes suggest that both groups, notwithstanding 38 The same hand is also proven by the next detail: the type of acanthus medallion characteristic of the second group is used for the framing of the semi-capitals, incorporated into the friezes of the first group, with the difference that there are not four, but five lobes on each side of the quarter segment (Fig. 1). 39 Yehudit Turnheim, “Formation and Transformation of the Entablature in Northern Eretz Israel and the ‘Golan’ in the Roman and Byzantine Periods,” ZDPV 112 (1996): 195. 40 For a detailed description of this type of decoration, with further references, see Turnheim, “Formation and Transformation,” 127–31; Arubas and Talgam, “Jews, Christians and ‘Minim’,” 251.

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their differences, were executed during the same period, by specialized masters from a single workshop.

3. The Development of “Peopled Scrolls” Friezes in Greco-Roman and Byzantine Art To understand the place of the Capernaum “peopled scrolls” friezes in the Greco-​ Roman and Byzantine realm of art, it is necessary to mention at least some main points of the origin, development, and classification of the pattern. First the composition and morphology of the pattern is important, after which we will proceed to the stylistic features and texture. Jocelyn Toynbee and John Ward-Perkins, whose 1950 article on the “peopled scrolls” motif in Hellenistic and Roman art still remains relevant, noted that the roots of the motif can be found “in the late classical Greek and Hellenistic worlds.”41 Its emergence was inspired by the belief in the spirits that inhabited trees and plants. The “peopled scrolls” pattern was first attested on metal artifacts from Hellenistic Alexandria, from where the pattern spread around the Mediterranean (e.g., a cast of a Hellenistic Helmet found at Memphis, a gold diadem from a tomb near the Dardanelles, a silver tankard from the Hildesheim Treasure).42 In architectural decoration, the earliest examples might also be connected with the Alexandrian school, though they also appeared in Italy (a limestone pediment fragment from Ceglie, near Bari, late fourth century BCE) and in Asia Minor (the temple of Artemis Leukophryene in Magnesia, 220 BCE).43 Toynbee and Ward-Perkins emphasized the stylistic uniformity of the contemporaneous artifacts, even though they were executed on different materials and with different techniques (e.g., sculptures, mosaics, paintings, metal, woodwork, and textiles). They divided the “peopled scrolls” motifs from the Hellenistic and Roman periods into three basic groups: the free scroll, in which the stem winds across the available ground in a free pattern; the single running scroll, horizontal or vertical, with a single stem looped alternately to fill a narrow strip of pattern, such as a frieze or pilaster; and the double scroll or medallion-scroll, horizontal or vertical, in which two stems interlace to form circular or oval medallions.44

This classification is mostly general and universal and covers all possible examples, even related to the early Byzantine period. 41 Toynbee and Ward-Perkins, “Peopled Scrolls,” 1. 42 Toynbee and Ward-Perkins, “Peopled Scrolls,” 4, pl. I, 1; pl. IV, 1. 43 Toynbee and Ward-Perkins, “Peopled Scrolls,” pl. III, 1 (Ceglie), pl. II, 2 (Magnesia). 44 Toynbee and Ward-Perkins, “Peopled Scrolls,” 2.

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In Roman–Byzantine Palestine, as elsewhere in the Near East, the “peopled scrolls” motif was a widespread phenomenon, used in the sculptural decoration of a variety of Roman building-types, though mostly in temples and theaters. Accord­ ing to the classification of Toynbee and Ward-Perkins, the majority of patterns found in the region fall into the second group of the “single running scroll.” However, the motif on Greco-Roman moldings is so vivid and realistic, and the stem covers the surface so freely, that sometimes it is difficult to distinguish whether there is one, two, or even more stems. The third group of the “double scrolls” was equally widespread in the Syro-Palestinian region, and in early Byzantine times it seems to have become even more popular. Ovadiah and Turnheim proposed a specific classification for the vast collection of “peopled scrolls” friezes in the Beit Shean theater, giving six groups: 1. round, open and freely designed scrolls, with additional branches and a variety of leaves and shoots … 2. closed round scrolls forming medallions of crossed branches … 3. freely designed oval scrolls … 4. closed contiguous oval scrolls … 5. flattened extremely elliptical, rigidly and schematically designed … 6. alternating oval and round scrolls …45

The motif in the interpretation of the Beit Shean masters was rooted in the classical tradition in every sense, including morphology, composition and style, but differed from it in a number of features. Ovadiah and Turnheim concluded that those types had been created as an amalgam of foreign and local traditions,

45 Ovadiah and Turnheim, “Peopled” Scrolls, 25. In my opinion, based on its similarity with those from the Beit Shean theater, the decorative frieze with a lion inside the floral medallion that was reused as a bench in the Rehov synagogue (Fanny Vitto, “A Byzantine Synagogue in the Beth Shean Valley,” in Temples and High Places in Biblical Times, ed. Avraham Biran [Jerusalem: Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archaeology, 1981], pl. 24.1), derived originally from the Beit Shean theater. When the city deteriorated after a number of earthquakes and rebellions in the fourth–fifth centuries CE, it became possible to use the city as a quarry with ready-made details. Such a practice was widespread in the empire and even legalized by laws (Cod. theod. XV.1. 14 (a. 365); 19 (a. 376); 37 (a. 398); Novella Maioriani IV). This phenomenon has been widely discussed in the bibliography on the use of spolia throughout the early Byzantine period. The number of such monuments, with both spolia and specially executed details (so-called varietas), reaches hundreds in the Mediterranean area. Among the Palestinian examples the South-East (Cathedral) Church (591 CE) and the North-West Church (fifth–sixth centuries CE) in Hippos-Sussita, the Church of Multiplying of Fishes and Loaves in Heptapegon (mid-fifth century CE) might be mentioned. One of the most comprehensive works on spolia belongs to Helen G. Saradi, “The Use of Ancient Spolia in Byzantine Monuments: The Archaeological and Literary Evidence,” International Journal of the Classical Tradition 3 (1997): 395–423. See also Tarkhanova, “Architecture of the Late Antique Synagogues,” 307–24.

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and it had become a basis for the decoration of the later monuments in the region, including synagogues.46 One more important work on the development of the “peopled scrolls” pattern in the Near East during the Roman and early Byzantine periods belongs to Claudine Dauphin.47 She repeated and extended the classification of Toynbee and Ward-Perkins with a long list of examples from every possible field, including not only sculptural and mosaic decoration but also chancel screens and Coptic textiles. Dauphin described the evolution of the motif from the first to the seventh century CE with particular attention to such compositional features as the difference between the decoration of frames and fields, the individual development of either ivy, acanthus, or vine scrolls, and the points of departure of the scrolls. The early Byzantine examples did not receive a classification that is different from the Greco-Roman period, although according to the applied innovations of this era such a distinct classification seems warranted. In ecclesiastical art, the “peopled scrolls” motif was also frequently used, especially in the architectural decoration of Syrian and Egyptian churches, and in mosaics across the Syro-Palestine area and North Africa (see below for examples).

4. Contextualizing the Capernaum “Peopled Scrolls” Friezes All of the aforementioned classifications clarify the artistic style of the Capernaum synagogue friezes and their place in Roman and late-antique art. By many formal features, they are very similar to their Greco-Roman prototypes. According to the classification of Toynbee and Ward-Perkins, both groups belong to the third category of “the horizontal double scroll or medallion-scroll.” According to the classification of Ovadiah and Turnheim, they belong to the “closed, oval scrolls.” These classifications, however, do not consider all the features of the friezes in question. The first group of friezes in Capernaum is more traditional and less original than the second one. More precisely, it combines the features of the second and third groups according to Toynbee and Ward-Perkins’s classification: the interlacing vine or ivy stems enclose the inner acanthus medallions, so that external and internal medallions are created (this seems to be an early Byzantine feature).48 The combination of two Greco-Roman traditions resulted in a separation of the inner medallions at the synagogue frieze. So, these double medallions resembled 46 Ovadiah and Turnheim, “Peopled” Scrolls, 112; Turnheim, “Formation and Transformation.” 47 Claudine Dauphin, “The Development of the “Inhabited Scroll” in Architectural Sculpture and Mosaic Art from Late Imperial Times to the Seventh Century A. D.,” Levant 19 (1987): 183. 48 In the second group, there are actually also two medallions: inside the medallions, discuses, or plates with profiled edges, were inserted.

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that particular type of Roman or early Byzantine “peopled scrolls” in which a single curling stem formed a double spiral. In Syro-Palestinian monuments of the Roman period, such a feature of forming double medallions by long, integral and deeply curling shoots was already well articulated, as can be seen in the mosaic of the early third-century House of Dionysos in Sepphoris,49 in reliefs of the monument in ‘Atil (Djebel Haurân), in the temple of Bel in Palmyra (first–second centuries CE),50 or in the Beit Shean theater.51 This feature of forming a double medallion by an integral stem was inherited, developed, and transformed by early Byzantine masters (e.g., the South church in Bawit,52 the Monastery of Apa Jeremiah at Saqqara53). The doorframes in the churches in Qalb Lozeh54 (late fifth century) and Moudjeleia, a house in el-Barah (Fig. 3; fifth century),55 and a decorative frieze in the church of St Simeon in Qalat Seman (ca. 480–490 CE, details of the apse)56 in Syria are mostly close to the first group of the Capernaum friezes, as in these monuments the internal and external medallions are independent of each other and formed by stems of different species (ivy and acanthus); the internal medallions are formed by four separated stems. To be sure, this analogy is far from direct, as the plasticity and some small compositional peculiarities are variable. The second group of the Capernaum friezes is hardly to be associated with any of the abovementioned groups. Its main feature is an articulated four-part division of the acanthus medallions by means of beaded lockets, which form straight horizontal and vertical axes,57 and tips of the leaves, which are growing from both sides of the stem. There seem to be no analogies for this peculiarity in the sculptural “peopled scrolls” friezes in either Roman or early Byzantine art. The divisions of the endless medallions were usually nominal, but not morphological.

49 Rina Talgam, Mosaics of Faith: Floors of Pagans, Jews, Samaritans, Christians, and Muslims in the Holy Land (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi; University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2014): 40–41, figs. 50–53. 50 Toynbee and Ward-Perkins, “Peopled Scrolls,” pl. XX 1–2. 51 Ovadiah and Turnheim, “Peopled” Scrolls, 49, 87, figs. 10, 16. 52 Judith McKenzie, The Architecture of Alexandria and Egypt, c. 300 BC to AD 700, Pelican History of Art (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 301 figs. 501, 505. On fig. 505 the “peopled scrolls” frieze is formed by a row of triple medallions (two medallions inside one). 53 McKenzie, Architecture of Alexandria and Egypt, 309 fig. 519. 54 Jean Lassus, Sanctuaires chrétiens de Syrie. Essai sur la genèse, la forme et l’usage liturgique des édifices du culte chrétien, en Syrie, du IIIe siècle à la conquête musulmane, Bibliothèque Archéologique et Historique de l’Institut Français d’Archéologie de Beyrouth 42 (Paris: Geuthner, 1947), 193 pl. XXXIII 1. 55 Melchior M. De Vogüé, Syrie centrale: architecture civile et religieuse du Ier au VIIe siècle, 2 vols. (Paris: J. Baudry, 1865–77), 1:82, 2:pl. 32, 45. 56 De Vogüé, Syrie centrale, 1:192. 57 In the first group this division by means of small canneluras / dents / eyes between the leaves is not so evident and forms diagonal axes.

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Fig. 3: Doorlintel from Moudjeleia, central Syria (after De Vogüé, Syrie centrale, Vol. 2, pl. 32).

In rare late-antique examples the stem of the medallions was divided into two parts / shoots in those points / lockets where they were adjacent to one another, such as can be seen in the mosaics of the synagogues in el-Khirbe (fourth–fifth centuries),58 the Hall of Hippolytus, the Burnt Palace, the church of the Apostles (578 CE), the chapel of Martyr Theodor (562 CE), the Baptistery Chapel, the el-Khadir church, the Hall of Seasons in Madaba, the chapel in Suwayafiah, the chapel in Khirbet al-Kursi (mostly sixth century),59 the Basilica Church in Shiloh,60 the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem,61 and many others.62 In the band-friezes, there was no compositional need for the ancillary division of the medallions with the perpendicular axis. So, where does this feature derive from?

58 Yitzhak Magen, “Samaritan synagogues,” in The Samaritans and the Good Samaritan, ed. Yitzhak Magen, Judea and Samaria Publications 7 (Jerusalem: Staff Officer of Archaeology— Civil Administration of Judea and Samaria; IAA, 2008), 134–35, 156–57, 160–63, figs. 28–29, 67–68, 71–79. 59 Michele Piccirillo, The Mosaics of Jordan, ed. Patricia M. Bikai and Thomas A. Dailey, American Center of Oriental Research Reports 1 (Amman: American Center of Oriental Research, 1993), 58–61, 67, 74–76, 78–79, 98–103, 112, 114, 117, 129, 264–65, figs. 26–28, 41–42, 49–51, 100, 103, 111, 142, 470–75. 60 Michael Dadon, “The ‘Basilica Church’ at Shiloh,” in Christians and Christianity III. Churches and Monasteries in Samaria and Northern Judea, ed. Noga Carmin, Judea and Samaria Publications 15 (Jerusalem: Staff Officer of Archaeology—Civil Administration of Judea and Samaria; IAA, 2012), 228 fig. 7. 61 Talgam, Mosaics of Faith, 83 fig. 110. 62 These two-part medallions with dense asymmetrical tips of the leaves seem to be characteristic of late-antique mosaics of the Transjordan region.

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Fig. 4: The Church of Bishop Sergius in Umm al-Rasas (Kastron Mefaa, Jordan, 5­ 87–588 CE). Note that the acanthus medallions, which decorate the central field, are divided into four segments for convenient covering of the surface (photo by author).

Dauphin noted that the “peopled scrolls” motif was frequently used for the decoration of frames. However, the vine scrolls as a field became prevalent from the late first to the late third century CE in North African pavements and from the fourth to the seventh century in Asian, Syrian and Palestinian ones. Most importantly, Dauphin writes that “An innovation characteristic of Palestine and Transjordan in the sixth century is the combination on the same pavement of an inhabited scroll border framing an inhabited scroll field, the border being acanthus and the field vine.”63 Only rarely the fields were decorated with acanthus-scrolls instead of vine-scrolls. Some of them are especially noteworthy because the medallions on them are divided not into two, but into four parts. This compositional feature is limited to the early Byzantine period and even for this era the feature remains rare and is only attested in a few monuments: the Upper Chapel of John the Priest (565 CE) at Khirbet el-Mukhayyat on Mount Nebo, the church of Bishop Sergios (587–588 CE) (Fig. 4), the Church of Lions (574 or 589 CE), and the Church of the Palm Tree in Umm al-Rasas.64 The mosaics are dated by inscriptions. The composition of these overall acanthus scrolls comprises a net of interconnected

63 Dauphin, “The Development of the “Inhabited Scroll”,” 184–85. 64 Piccirillo, The Mosaics, 174–75, 234–35, 242 pl. 227, 230, 365–71, 375–79, 394–95.

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medallions. Their four-part division was intended to form lateral and transverse axes with which the rows of acanthus circles were organized to cover the field in a proper order. Other picturesque examples of the four-part division of the medallions were revealed among Coptic textiles from the collection of the Hamburg Museum of Arts and Industry. In one tapestry, four monochrome medallions decorate the field. In another textile, which is more curious, a range of medallions decorates the border frame (fourth–fifth centuries CE).65 Each circle is formed by two shoots that are divided into two smaller parts by means of different colors. So, every medallion is sequentially painted in four colors—violet and green, red and yellow, with a chess-board alteration of this sequence in the adjacent circles. One more outstanding feature of the second group of the Capernaum friezes is the separation of the scroll into independent, integral medallions that become almost similar to the wreaths. Such an artistic decision was unknown in the Roman period, where the stems of the “peopled scrolls” usually stayed continuous and endless. On rare mosaics the surface was covered with several rows of laurel medallions (e.g., a mosaic from Barcelona),66 but this motif was morphologically quite different from the “peopled scrolls.” The composition of the adjacent laurel medallions was also repeated on the frieze from the Bawit Monastery in Egypt.67 For the connection of the medallions, certain lockets / cauliculi were used in both groups. The cauliculus was originally a classical element in the form of a funnel, but in Late Antiquity its morphology became more flexible. In the first group of the Capernaum friezes lockets / cauliculi were depicted as funnels with fleurons sprouting from them. It is not difficult to find analogies for this shape: the same funnels were used on the mosaics of the Hall of Seasons in Madaba and on the relief frieze from the Coptic monastery of St Jeremiah in Saqqara.68 On the central field of the mosaic floor in the Church of the Apostles in Madaba, lockets are depicted as “double lips,” resembling protruding funnels. The lockets of the second group of friezes of the Capernaum synagogue, which comprise three or five beads, are more unusual. There is no direct analogy, but there are some 65 Renate Germer and Gisela Körberlin, Kleider aus dem Wüstensand. Die koptischen Textilien des Museums für Kunst und Gewerbe (Hamburg: Europäischer Hochschulverlag, 2012); Arne Effenberger et al., ed., Ägypten, Schätze aus dem Wüstensand: Kunst und Kultur der Christen am Nil. Katalog zur Ausstellung im Gustav-Lübcke-Museum, Hamm (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1996), 352 no. 401. See also the website of the museum: http://www.mkg-hamburg.de/en/collection/ permanent-collection/ancient-art/clavus.html. 66 Eduardo Ripoll Perellό, “El Museo Arqueolόgico de Barcelona y sus nuevas salas,” Ampurias: Revista de arqueologia, prehistoria y etnografia 17–18 (1955–56): 304 lam. III. 67 McKenzie, The Architecture of Alexandria, 301 pl. 502. 68 Piccirillo, The Mosaics, 76 figs. 41–42. Massimo Capuani and Otto F. A. Meinardus, Christian Egypt: Coptic Art and Monuments Through Two Millennia (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2002), 29.

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identical decisions. In the reliefs of the Coptic church in Oxyrhynchus69 lockets are represented by protruding three-petalled cauliculi with three-beaded buttons. On the frame of the mosaic from the Church of the Apostles in Madaba the medallions are connected with very similar cauliculi. The cauliculi are completed with a row of five small white beads (pearls?), and the buttons are represented with a row of three large ochre beads. Such cauliculi are comparatively monumental, being close to the typical Roman cauliculi. The lockets of the second group of friezes from Capernaum probably derived from such prototypes, which were simplified and adapted by its masters. In this list of examples, it should be highlighted that the early Byzantine “peopled scrolls” friezes were based on the morphology of Greco-Roman prototypes. The Byzantine patterns repeated the general compositional basis and elements, but the manner and style of interpretation were quite different. The Greco-Roman stems are more picturesque and natural, as if they were realistically growing, with free sprouts and fleurons (from inside and outside). There are numerous asymmetrical details, such as small shoots, in the flora and fauna motifs. The “peopled scrolls” are usually unpredictable, and in every new segment of the frame or field there is always a place for the master’s imagination. In comparison, the early Byzantine “peopled scrolls” are much more logical and consequent. Such a feature as alteration of clockwise and counter-clockwise medallions and the asymmetry of small motifs were inherited from Greco-Roman art. But in Greco-Roman prototypes this alternation of the medallions (curling clockwise and counter-clockwise and asymmetrical details) usually appeared on the friezes, adorned by the integral stem where lateral sprouts curled differently in every other medallion. In Byzantine patterns the alteration of curling was preserved, but the integral stem disappeared and the frieze was comprised by the separated and independent medallions, so the feature lost its logic and naturalism and became purely mechanical. In this sense, the Capernaum friezes follow more closely the early Byzantine artistic style than the Greco-Roman one, though their composition is even more schematic and predictable than anywhere else. The relapse of the main and ancillary details and their asymmetry appears to be calculated with much accuracy. One more outstanding feature of the Capernaum friezes is the plasticity of its motifs. The division into branches and leaves is well articulated, the leaves have notable pointed or semicircular edges that are well recognizable from the mosaics of the aforementioned churches in Transjordan (the earliest example, the Nablus mosaic floor, dates to the third quarter of the third century CE).70 It is possible that

69 Gawdat Gabra and Marianne Eaton-Krauss, The Illustrated Guide to the Coptic Museum and Churches of Old Cairo (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2007), 120. 70 Talgam, Mosaics of Faith, 56–57 figs. 79–80.

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the masters who executed the friezes of the synagogue, and especially the masters of the second group, used a pattern book that was originally prepared for mosaics. The only difference is that they had to extract a single row of acanthus medallions from the multi-level mosaic composition. The emulation of mosaics does not seem odd. Levine has underlined that the main creative strength of late-antique art in the Syro-Palestinian region was concentrated in mosaic art,71 which was “the vehicle” of the artistic development and influenced every other kind of art, including architectural sculpture.

5. The Carving Style of the Capernaum “Peopled Scrolls” Friezes The last notable feature that allows us to clarify the dating of the friezes from Capernaum is the style of their carving, which implies mainly the volume and texture of the motifs. As is visible in the typical Greco-Roman “peopled scrolls” friezes, whether sculptural or mosaic—such as the pilaster from the Tomb of Haterii (first century CE),72 the mosaics from the House of Dionysos in Sepphoris (early third century),73 and a porphyry sarcophagus of Constantina (third or beginning of the fourth century)74—I would point out that the stems on them are voluminous, with a precisely detailed and realistic texture where even crust folds are traceable. In Late Antiquity, these vivid “occasional” elements of the Greco-Roman “peopled scrolls” were reduced or completely abolished. Turnheim noted such trends for schematization and simplification for the early Byzantine entablatures found in northern Israel.75 Considering this axiom, she suggested that the Roman friezes of the Beit Shean theater became the basis for the development of late-antique entablatures in both synagogues and churches. She noted the following features for the “evolution”: 1. Reduction of the dimensions of the entablature. 2. Abandonment of some component-moldings. 3. Discarding or simplification of some of the ornament bands of sequence. 4. Changes in the dimensions and proportions of the different ornaments.76

71 Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 337. 72 Toynbee and Ward-Perkins, “Peopled scrolls,” pl. XIII and XVI 1–2. 73 Talgam, Mosaics of Faith, 40–41 figs. 50–53. 74 Hugo Brandenburg, Ancient Churches of Rome from the Fourth to the Seventh Century. The Dawn of Christian Architecture in the West, Bibliothèque de l’Antiquité Tardive 8 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), 273, fig. 15. 75 Turnheim, “Formation and Transformation.” In fact, this trend occurred throughout Late Antiquity. 76 Turnheim, “Formation and Transformation,” 124–25.

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She analyzed the general form of the entablature in Capernaum and noticed that: The ornaments were also subject to a process of simplification, reduction and flattening, which is most evident in the following details: 1. The dentils were noticeably reduced in size. 2. The modillions lost their frame of egg-ornament. 3. The height of the corona was so reduced that its flute-ornament degraded into a line of small arcs.77

Finally, with these reductions the entablatures of the Capernaum synagogue became much lower when compared to the Beit Shean friezes—not because of scale, but because of morphology. The same processes characterized the development of the “peopled scrolls” pattern from the Roman period to Late Antiquity: the most general basis of the classical morphology, which included the row of medallions and various motifs inserted into them, was preserved, but it was systematically structured in another manner and differently interpreted stylistically. The plastic effects were replaced by optic ones, so that three-dimensional images were transmuted into two dimensions and became flattened. Based on these observations, a relatively late dating for the friezes of the Capernaum synagogue can be suggested: late fifth or sixth century CE. This means that there would be no contradiction between stratigraphic and stylistic data. Other architectural details that are stylistically earlier might be spolia, as was suggested already above. The frequent use of spolia during Late Antiquity led to the development of the aesthetic principle of varietas,78 so that even specially executed details were cut differently. For example, the friezes in Syrian (e.g., in Moudjeleia, in the Cathedral of Bosra)79 and Coptic churches and monasteries (e.g., in the South Church of Bawit, the Monastery of Apa Jeremiah at Saqqara, the church in Oxyrhynchus)80 might be classified into two to four groups at every monument.

77 Turnheim, “Formation and Transformation,” 128. 78 Saradi, “The Use of Ancient Spolia,” 395–423. 79 De Vogüé, Syrie centrale, 2:pl. 24, 31, 45. 80 Alexander Badawy, Coptic Art and Archaeology: The Art of the Christian Egyptians from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1978): 82, 90, 100, 118, 171, 181, pl. 2.48, 2.57, 2.65, 3.1–4, 3.100–1, 3.119–20.

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6. Reconstructing the Position of the “Peopled Scrolls” Friezes in the Capernaum Synagogue The sculptural “peopled scrolls” friezes during the Hellenistic and Roman periods could appear in any part of the decoration, including pilasters and coffers, but most frequently they decorated the external entablatures of temples and mausolea, the scaenae frons of theaters, and the entablatures of the inner colonnades in basilicas. In the early Byzantine period the sculptural “peopled scrolls” friezes declined in popularity, although they were still used in the decoration of capitals, niches, chancel screen panels, doorways, and friezes above the inner colonnades of churches or above their external walls (mostly in Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt; e.g., the Coptic Bawit Monastery is extremely lavishly decorated). This itemizing of all possible positions of the friezes clarifies the reconstruction of the friezes in the Capernaum synagogue. In the early twentieth century, Kohl and Watzinger proposed that at Capernaum the “peopled scrolls” friezes decorated the walls of the upper galleries.81 However, there was little evidence to support that theory; the state of preservation of the monument was poor and confusing. The halfcapitals incorporated into the friezes supposedly rested on the half-columns of the walls of the second story, but the alternative idea that the half-columns could also decorate the clerestory has not yet been suggested. Kohl and Watzinger’s theory was repeated from one work to another without verification.82 By the new theory, these friezes, as the most outstanding part of the decoration, were inserted above the main colonnades of the synagogue.83 Thereby, the friezes might accentuate the space of the nave. The closest parallel to such a decorative program can be found in the typologically similar Chorazin synagogue, where the reconstruction is more precise due to the absence of a second story. The friezes in Capernaum, as well as in Chorazin, might have a pi-shaped (П) configuration, repeating the configuration of the three main colonnades (two parallel and one transverse), but could also have continued over the southern wall, forming an interlocked rectangle. Probably the main motifs, such as the menorah, eagles, Capricorn, and the “Tabernacle chariot,” were situated above or near the sacral focus of the synagogue—the Torah shrine abutting the southern wall near the grilled central doorway. This illusive isolation of the nave was also accentuated with monumental stylobates and pedestals. To complete the description, the half-capitals that are incorporated into the friezes (Fig. 1), like at Chorazin, might 81 Kohl and Watzinger, Antike Synagogen, 28–33, taf. 9. 82 E.g., Sukenik, Ancient Synagogues, 16–18; Chiat, “A Corpus,” 89–97; Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 66–67, 163; Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues, 235–48. 83 Kohl and Watzinger reconstructed the plain Corinthian entablature with three fasciae above the colonnades, but it could decorate the colonnades of the atrium as well.

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be rhythmically coordinated with the lower shafts of the colonnades, with the upper colonnettes of the galleries, and the half-columns of the clerestory, thereby forming common vertical axes. The intercolumnation between the external pilasters of the walls approximately coincided with the intercolumnation between the main columns. Thus, a strict and strong architectural skeleton, based on the interconnected vertical and horizontal axes, was created. Inside it, any decorative varietas was allowed.

7. Conclusion Based on a stylistic comparison with Greco-Roman and early Byzantine monuments of all kinds, a new dating for the “peopled scrolls” friezes from the Capernaum synagogue has been proposed. As these friezes are rather monumental, they played an important constructive role in the synagogue and thus were executed during the main building phase or during an extensive reconstruction. Finally, a reconstruction of their position over the main colonnades of the synagogue was proposed, though for more precision on this matter further investigation is still needed. A variety of stylistic parallels for the friezes showed a vast circle of cultural influences, mainly from architectural sculpture and mosaics of early Byzantine churches from Transjordan, Syria, and Coptic Egypt. It leads to several conclusions. The Capernaum synagogue had unique decoration (and a rather traditional plan) among synagogues, having only two known parallels: Chorazin and ed-Dikke. Due to its outstanding quality, the Capernaum synagogue should be considered as the culmination of their development—not its inception. Its location near Tiberias, a center of late-antique Judaism, forces us to suggest that its stylistic peculiarities visualized the main artistic self-identity of Judaism, which in contrast to the innovations of dominant Christian art was based on archaic trends. Notwithstanding the strong Greco-Roman basis and intentional archaizing of features, new artistic trends and technical abilities penetrated into the style. Though they are extremely eclectic, the early Byzantine features allow us to remove, at least partially, the discrepancy between the archaeological evidence (numismatic and ceramics) and stylistic characteristics of the synagogue. Most of the influences come not from local, but from regional ecclesiastical architecture.

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Schneider, Alfons M. 1951. “Die altchristliche Bischofs- und Gemeindekirche und ihre Benennung.” Kunstchronik 4 (1951): 110. Strange, James F. “The Capernaum and Herodium Publications.” BASOR 226 (1977): 65–73. Sukenik, Eleazar L. Ancient Synagogues in Palestine and Greece. The Schweich Lectures on Biblical Archaeology 1930. London: British Academy, 1934. Talgam, Rina. Mosaics of Faith: Floors of Pagans, Jews, Samaritans, Christians, and Muslims in the Holy Land. Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi; University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2014. Tarkhanova, Svetlana. “Architecture of the Late Antique Synagogues (3rd–7th centuries CE) on the Territory of Northern Palestine: Typology, Compositions, Decoration.” PhD diss., Institute of Arts in Moscow, 2016. (Russian). Tarkhanova, Svetlana. “Synagogues of Late Antique Palestine: Architectural Plans and Questions of Classification.” Pages 36–57 in “Questions of World History of Architecture”: NIITIG RAASN Materials of the International Conference, May 29–30, 2014. Moscow, 2014. (Russian). Toynbee, Jocelyn M. C., and John B. Ward-Perkins. “Peopled scrolls: A Hellenistic Motif in Imperial Art.” Papers of the British School at Rome 18 (1950): 1–43. Tsafrir, Yoram. “On the Source of the Architectural Design of the Ancient Synagogues in the Galilee: A New Appraisal.” Pages 70–86 in vol. 1 of Ancient Synagogues: Historical Analysis and Archaeological Discovery. Edited by Dan Urman and Paul V. M. Flesher. StPB 47. Leiden: Brill, 1995. Tsafrir, Yoram. “The Synagogues at Capernaum and Meroth and the Dating of the Galilean Synagogue.” Pages 151–61 in The Roman and Byzantine Near East, Volume I. Edited by John H. Humphrey. JRASup 14. Ann Arbor: JRA, 1995. Tzaferis, Vasilios. “Excavations in the Area of the Greek Orthodox Church.” NEAEHL 1: 295–96. Turnheim, Yehudit. “Formation and Transformation of the Entablature in Northern Eretz Israel and the Golan in the Roman and Byzantine Periods.” ZDPV 112 (1996): 122–38. Vitto, Fanny. “A Byzantine Synagogue in the Beth Shean Valley.” Pages 164–68 in Temples and High Places in the Biblical Times. Edited by Avraham Biran. Jerusalem: Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archaeology, 1981. De Vogüé, Melchior M. Syrie centrale: architecture civile et religieuse du Ier au VIIe siècle. 2 vols. Paris: J. Baudry, 1865–77. Wilson, Charles W. “Preliminary Report of Captain C. W. Wilson, Royal Engineers, on the Result of the First Expedition Under His Charge—1865–6.” PEQ 1 (1865–66): 1–6. Wilson, Charles W. Picturesque Palestine, Sinai and Egypt, Vol. 2. London: D. Appleton & Co., 1883. Yeivin, Ze’ev. The Synagogue at Korazim. The 1962–1964, 1980–1987 Excavations. IAA Reports 10. Jerusalem: IAA, 2000. (Hebrew, English suppl.).

III. Leadership, Power and Daily Life

Karen B. Stern

Prayer as Power Amulets, Graffiti, and Vernacular Writing in Ancient Levantine Synagogues

Remarkable archaeological and epigraphic discoveries continue to transform our understandings of the role of the synagogue in the daily lives of Levantine Jews in Late Antiquity. The most exciting and notable of these findings, however, are best described as monumental: smoothly dressed architectural features, carefully tessellated polychromatic mosaics, and precisely carved inscriptions recording the generous activities of synagogue officials and donors. Such architectural, artistic, and epigraphic elements, exacted by professionally trained artisans for display to passersby, embed historical information critical for reconstructing the communal activities once conducted inside synagogue buildings, including those of prayer, donation, dedication, and assembly. But other types of finds were also discovered inside and around synagogues of late ancient Palestine and Syria. These include writings scratched in spidery scripts onto thin metal sheets, traditionally grouped as “materia magica,” and others found roughly carved into the finished plaster walls of synagogue exteriors and assembly halls, more commonly classified as graffiti.1 Long overlooked as incidental writings, aesthetically inferior to their monumental counterparts, these texts remain scattered in disparate site reports and compendia of magical and epigraphical materials. When considered collectively, however, these vernacular inscriptions and their modes of deposition yield rare insights into Jews’ uses of synagogue spaces in antiquity. This essay highlights shared features of these apparently incongruent texts (inscribed amulets and graffiti) and interprets them through the lenses of anthropological and spatial theories. Doing so reveals otherwise unrecognized ways that ancient Jews, ranging from the hoi polloi to the elites, consistently used variegated acts of writing as powerful forms of prayer within Levantine synagogues.

1 Defining features of graffiti considered in Karen B. Stern, Writing on the Wall: Graffiti and the Forgotten Jews of Late Antiquity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018), 13–20. Extensive methodological critique and consideration of terms related to “materia magica” in Andrew Wilburn, Materia Magica: The Archaeology of Magic in Roman Egypt, Cyprus, and Spain (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012), 2–8.

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What are the benefits of focusing specifically on these so-called vernacular forms of writing, rather than on the monumental texts displayed more prominently on synagogue floors and walls, which typically commemorate activities of donors and synagogue officials in mosaic and stone inscriptions? One advantage of shifting the focus to seemingly mundane types of texts includes the resulting diversification of the data pool. Monumental dedicatory inscriptions, for example, were largely produced by moneyed local elites to memorialize their exceptional abilities to donate their surplus wealth to synagogues.2 Associated writings were exacted by scribes and artisans and often commemorate limited ranges of activities (and vocabularies) of dedication and donation.3 But I argue that we might learn even more about the disparate uses of synagogues, exacted by broader swaths of ancient Jewish populations, by also interrogating the locations and the contents of additional types of writings, including vernacular ones, regardless of whether such examples are found on movable features (such as amulets) or fixed ones (such as graffiti).4 While such inscriptions equally conform to limitations of their respective genres and might also reflect the production or commission of wealthier individuals, their examinations shed light on additional behaviors once performed inside synagogues, which bridged spaces public and private, sacred and mundane. I suggest further, that by considering relationships between the media, semantic contents, and find spots of some of these vernacular writings, we can develop additional and interconnected insights concerning how individuals once moved through and used the totality of synagogue spaces and conducted activities upon, within, and even underneath them. These findings substantively enhance efforts to investigate the daily activities once conducted inside (and beneath!) ancient synagogues, freed from the limitations scholars commonly (if inadvertently) impose by disproportionately relying on monumental epigraphic evidence. Three features of the following approach to writing in the synagogue remain distinctive. First, while many scholars treat inscriptions primarily as documents

2 As Andrea Berlin has reminded me in conversation, however, many of the inscriptions in the floors of Galilean synagogues often commemorated the work performed by individuals who built and decorated them. The seminal collection of dedicatory inscriptions inside synagogues includes Baruch Lifshitz, Donateurs et Fondateurs dans les Synagogues Juives: répertoire des dédicaces grecques relatives à la construction et à la réfection des synagogues (Paris: Gabalda, 1967). 3 Discussions of dedications and votive practices among Jewish populations in Michael Satlow, “Giving for a Return: Jewish Votive Offerings in Late Antiquity,” in Religion and the Self in Antiquity, ed. David Brakke, Michael Satlow, and Steve Weitzman (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005), 91–95. 4 The term vernacular, according to the following usage, suggests that texts so-designated are often written during the courses of individuals’ daily lives; they are not necessarily the result of commemorative activities, but rather of diachronic and iterative activities and uses of spaces.

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of communication, which constitute products of past human action, the following discussion regards acts of writing (even of multiple sorts) as processual, dialogical, performative, and spatially engaged. Such notions draw heavily from Alfred Gell’s advocacy of “reading” data, not merely within their social settings, but rather, as embedded within (and embodied by) the “network of relationships surrounding … [their] specific interactive settings.”5 The following treatment of vernacular inscriptions, in parallel to Gell’s approach to art, thus envisions writings, whether carved or painted, as expressions of a writers’ agency but also as enduring documents of human activity, whereby synagogue visitors used writing to forge relationships between their Divine and human audiences, with and within their shared devotional environments. Second, I expand the category of writing to encompass both legible and apparently illegible texts, figures, and geometric signs. Writing in antiquity (as in modernity) was a powerful skill, which people exacted for multiple intents and purposes.6 Sometimes people painted or carved words, but did so in ways that appear clumsy or incomprehensible to modern eyes; indeed, at times, their ensuing letter-forms might betray their authors’ lack of ability or scribal training. But, at other times, the obscurity of some writings was purposeful: it did not result from defective skills, but from deliberate choices of highly trained ancient specialists, who intentionally obscured words they wrote in targeted ways. Indeed, these specialists (copying from recipes and working on behalf of others who hired them) often manipulated phrases, words, and letters (and letter-like shapes), by composing them in reverse (retrograde)  or through letter sequences or signs that seem sloppy or nonsensical to most viewers; these include voces magicae, charactêres, and geometric designs.7 Moreover, their work often contained series of words, which they carved to form pictures or geometric shapes, or interspersed texts with images; these esoteric presentations commonly look as much like gibberish to modern scholars as they would to their writers’ most functionally literate contemporaries.8 The capaciousness of the category of writing, as used

5 In his work, Alfred Gell advocated a shift in anthropological approaches to art, which entailed the replacement of aesthetic categories of evaluation with active and functional ones; Alfred Gell, Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998), 8. 6 David Frankfurter, “The Magic of Writing and the Writing of Magic: The Power of the Word in Egyptian and Greek Traditions,” Helios 21 (1994): 189–221; John Gager, Curse Tablets and Binding Spells in the Ancient World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 9; S. J. Tambiah, “The Magical Power of Words,” Man 3 (1968): 175–208. 7 Seminal treatment of this topic in Patricia Cox Miller, “In Praise of Nonsense,” in World Spirituality, Vol. 15: Classical Mediterranean Spirituality, ed. A. Hilary Armstrong (New York: Crossroads / Continuum Press, 1986), 481–505; Wilburn, Materia Magica, 88. 8 Discussion of related points in Wilburn, Materia Magica, 74–83.

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below, thus intends to accommodate these ancient elisions of letter, word, and image, whose interconnections were often instrumental for their efficacy.9 Enhanced attention to spatial dimensions of texts also directs a third aspect of this approach: the consideration of writings, conducted and deposited in specific spaces and places, as reflections of writers’ (and commissioners’) acts of production, performance, architectural modification, as well as interpersonal and spatial dialogue. Just as applications of modern tags in public spaces can appropriate walls of buildings from their legal owners for the purposes of their writers or associated groups, so too could improvised and deposited modes of ancient writing transform and appropriate areas of synagogues for their inscribers, commissioners and audiences. After all, “social space,” as Henri Lefebvre once described it, is that which specifically “‘incorporates’ social actions, the actions of subjects both individual and collective.”10 Applications of writing (whether monumental or non-monumental, official, or unofficial) could serve as tools to galvanize (and to Lefebvre, “incorporate”) the practical and the spatial—for the hoi polloi as well as for elites—to shape the intersecting social, communal, and devotional spaces of synagogues.11 Attention to inscribed vernacular texts, whether scratched or painted, exposed or concealed, thus offers a means to vivify forgotten features of ancient Jews’ behaviors and their efforts to master, personalize, and interact with their social and devotional environments.

1. Vernacular Writings on Movable Objects Archaeologists discovered certain types of vernacular writings scratched into thin metal sheets (lamellae), once deposited on and inside of synagogue floors.12 The largest cache of such objects, which scholars often describe as amulets, derives 9 See also discussion in Joseph Naveh, “Lamp Inscriptions and Inverted Writing,” IEJ 38: 36–43. 10 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, transl. D. Smith (Oxford: Blackwell, 2012), 33. 11 Cf. Lefebvre, Production of Space, 38: “The spatial practice of a society secretes that society’s space: it propounds and presupposes it; it produces it slowly and surely as it masters and appropriates it.… [T]he spatial practice of a society is revealed through the deciphering of its space.” 12 These and additional amulets considered in Ann Jeffers, Magic and Divination in Ancient Palestine and Syria (Leiden: Brill, 1996); Shaye J. D. Cohen, “The Temple and the Synagogue,” in The Temple in Antiquity, ed. Truman G. Madsen (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 1984), 151–81; Shaye J. D. Cohen, “Pagan and Christian Evidence on the Early Synagogue,” in The Synagogue in Late Antiquity, ed. Lee I. Levine (Philadelphia: ASOR, 1987), 159–81; Leo Mock, “The Synagogue as a Stage for Magic,” Zutot 3 (2003): 3–14; and Karen B. Stern, “Harnessing the Sacred: Hidden Writing and ‘Private’ Spaces in Levantine Synagogues,” in Inscriptions in the Private Sphere in the Graeco-Roman World, ed. Rebecca Benefiel and Peter Keegan (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 213–47.

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from a synagogue uncovered in ancient Maon, near Kibbutz Nirim in the western Negev. Excavators found nineteen such inscribed metal sheets upon the floor of the synagogue apse, although others were also identified nearby.13 While only three of these lamellae have been unrolled, transcribed, and published, most appear to follow the same patterns of treatment and deposit: each of the published examples were tightly rolled; one was folded; all were deposited on the floor of the apse in antiquity.14 The transcribed and published lamellae include common lexical features and consistently include requests to the Jewish God to restore the health of named individuals. One partially preserved inscription invokes the “great name” of the “Holy, Holy, Holy, Holy, Holy…God of Israel,”15 while others additionally detail individuals’ ailments and proposed means of curing them. One incorporates a vox magica and endeavors to rid Natrun, the daughter of Sarah, of a head pain (“kephalargia”), which radiates painfully.16 Still another prayer, for a certain Esther, daughter of ṭ’ṭys, requests divine protection from evil tormentors, from demon shadow-sprints, and the evil eye.17 The closing formula of the latter text (lines 12–22), quotes a biblical passage (Exod 15:26) to reinforce its role as a healing recipe, as it concludes: “I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians. For I am the Lord that heals you.”18 Pieces of fabric or thread remained visible on some of the excavated lamellae; one of these retained a full string.19 Such elements have led some to conjecture 13 Gideon Bohak, Ancient Jewish Magic: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 315, 152, Fig. 3.2, 249, 260, 315–17, 318, 319–20, 348, 372, 379; Joseph Naveh and Shaul Shaked, Amulets and Magic Bowls: Aramaic Incantations of Late Antiquity, 3rd ed. (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1998), Amulet no. 13.19–22, 90. As noted elsewhere (Stern, “Harnessing the Sacred,” n. 75), additional lamellae from the cache may be in private collections; I am unaware of whether any additional lamellae have been published following the discussion of Bohak (Ancient Jewish Magic, 315). 14 Bohak, Ancient Jewish Magic, 315; published amulets (numbered as Naveh and Shaked, Amulets and Magic Bowls, Amulet nos. 11–13), correspond with Israel Department of Antiquities nos. 57.733, 57.739, 57.744. Subsequent transcriptions and translations of amulets follow those of Naveh and Shaked (Amulets and Magic Bowls and Magic Spells and Formulae: Aramaic Incantations of Late Antiquity [Jerusalem: Magnes, 1993]) unless otherwise noted. 15 Naveh and Shaked, Amulets and Magic Bowls, Amulet no. 12.15–18. 16 Naveh and Shaked, Amulets and Magic Bowls, 91, Amulet no. 11.4–5, 10; fig. 13; Bohak, Ancient Jewish Magic, 260. 17 Naveh and Shaked, Amulets and Magic Bowls, 99, Amulet no. 13.2–10, translate: “An amulet proper for Esther, daughter of ṭ’ṭys / to save her from / her evil tormentors / from evil eye / ​ from spirit, from demon / from shadow-spirit, from / [all] evil tormentors, / from evil eye….” 18 Naveh and Shaked, Amulets and Magic Bowls, 99, Amulet no. 13.12–22. I follow the perspective of David Frankfurter that these texts should not necessarily be designated as a separate category of “spells” versus “prayers”; see Frankfurter “The Magic of Writing,” 189–211; Gager, Curse Tablets, 24–25. 19 Bohak, Ancient Jewish Magic, 315.

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that they were originally worn around individuals’ necks;20 others have differently surmised that the affixed strings physically suspended the rolled lamellae from a “wall behind an ark of the law,” where Torah scrolls were once stored and accessed.21 Similarities in the semantic contents in the published texts from this deposit betray agents’ comparable objectives (to effect healing from a physical malady) and common efforts to resolve associated problems, by scratching supplications on metal sheets, which they subsequently deposited in designated locations. These similarities have led some scholars to argue that the amulets, as a group, might have constituted a type of Geniza amidst a repository for sacred Torah scrolls.22 Gideon Bohak interprets the cache differently. He compares these deposits to those of healing amulets found in pagan shrines and regards the entire group as comprised of lamellae deposited only after the successful resolutions of their agents’ described maladies.23 Without additional information, it remains unclear which hypothesis best accounts for the original modes of deposit of these amulets in the synagogue’s apse. At minimum, however, the presumably open display of a cache of the rolled Nirim lamellae, as well as their relatively quantity (which likely exceeded significantly the officially reported number), suggests that the Jews in one town might have institutionalized, or at least sanctioned, the practice of collecting and, possibly, exhibiting, in a semi-public way, sealed prophylactic and / or healing lamellae, inside spaces associated with Torah scrolls inside their synagogue.24 This practice of collecting healing texts inside synagogues may have been replicated elsewhere. Perhaps this was the case in Horvat Kanaf, in the Golan, where excavators found additional healing prayers carved into metal sheets close to the local synagogue. For instance, while its original context of deposit remains unknown, one bronze lamella, found in the fill of building 300 directly below the Horvat Kanaf synagogue, was scratched with “a song of praise,” directed to 20 As Bohak, Ancient Jewish Magic, 150, 315 suggests, such amulets were often worn around individuals’ necks. 21 Naveh and Shaked, Amulets and Magic Bowls, 91. 22 For related discussions, see references above in n. 1. See also Nili Ahipaz, “Floor Foundation Coin Deposits in Byzantine-Period Synagogues,” in Hoards and Genizot as Chapters in History, ed. Ofra Guri-Rimon, Catalogue no. 33 (Haifa: Hecht Museum, University of Haifa, 2013), 63–68; Steven Fine, ed., Sacred Realm: The Emergence of the Synagogue in the Ancient World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 33; Jodi Magness, “The Date of the Sardis Synagogue According to the Numismatic Evidence,” AJA 109 (2005): 443–75. 23 See Bohak, Ancient Jewish Magic, 315–17. 24 For discussion of the “private” and “semi-public” contexts of synagogues, see Stern, “Harnessing the Sacred,” 221. Considerations of the locations of deposit of amulets in Joseph Naveh, “Lamp Inscriptions and Inverted Writing,” IEJ 38: 42, n. 37, wherein Naveh notes that one Geniza text recommends the burial of an amulet beneath an ark in a synagogue (ref. Geniza T-S K.1.162); also Bohak, Ancient Jewish Magic, 317. John Chrysostom also accuses Christians of using synagogues as places for healing (Adv. Iud. I.6.2–3; I.8.1).

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the “King of the Worlds: Yah, Yah, Yah … I am who I am …” followed by the imprecation: “Blessed are you our Lord, the Healer of all (people on) earth, send healing and cure to Eleazar … the angels that are…over fever and shivering, cure Eleazar by a holy command!”25 Was this inscribed healing prayer originally deposited in the local synagogue in a position similar to those of the lamellae in the Nirim synagogue? This remains a possibility: the state of the archaeological site, indeed, suggests that tectonic shifts, combined with modifications to ancient buildings and city structures, might account for its displacement from an original location inside the Horvat Kanaf synagogue. Still other types of non-monumental texts were found elsewhere in regional synagogues, but were already concealed in antiquity inside their very foundations. One text so deposited and scratched onto a flattened piece of bronze, was discovered in the small synagogue at Bar‘am in the Galilee. The Bar‘am lamella does not, at first glance, read so differently than others found at Nirim and also appears to adjure angels and marshal them to defend a suffering person against the evils committed by others and from the evil eye.26 Part of Naveh’s literal reading and translation of its eighteen lines includes: “… on the heart of Gabriel … by him [I]adjure / you Naḥamel, the angel, that you should guard / the … of Judan, son of Nonna and you should guard [him] / from the (evil) speech of the mouth and from [the] evil gaze …27 According to Professor Mordechai Aviam, who originally excavated the site, the lamella was found in situ, in a sealed context, inside the western stylobate of the synagogue.28 The secretion of the lamella was therefore purposeful. This burial of an inscribed metal sheet inside a synagogue might seem only incidental, perhaps, if similar patterns did not recur elsewhere. But archaeologists have uncovered many analogous items in comparable subterranean locations. For example, one bronze lamella—whose inscription follows the conventions of 25 Naveh and Shaked, Amulets and Magic Bowls, 51. 26 It continues: “… [open] / (broken / illegible, lines 7–11) Ṣuriel. I have written you (the amulet?) … / in order that God shall be because of you(?) … / … from it until the time of … / that Judan son of Nonna … / magic words / magic characters / Amen.” Transcription and translation from Joseph Naveh, “An Aramaic Amulet from Bar‘am,” in Judaism in Late Antiquity, Part Three, Where We Stand: Issues and Debates in Ancient Judaism, Volume Four: The Special Problem of the Synagogue, ed. Alan J. Avery-Peck and Jacob Neusner, HdO I.55 (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 179–80; Mordechai Aviam, “Ancient Synagogues at Bar‘am,” in Judaism in Late Antiquity, Part Three, Where We Stand: Issues and Debates in Ancient Judaism, Volume Four: The Special Problem of the Synagogue, ed. Alan J. Avery-Peck and Jacob Neusner, HdO I.55 (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 169, n. 25; Bohak, Ancient Jewish Magic, 319. 27 Aviam hypothesizes that in a later phase of the use of the synagogue, these walls were constructed to block a northern isle of the building, and a door was built on the northern stylobate to access a narrow room; Aviam, “The Synagogues at Bar‘am,” 169; also Naveh, “An Aramaic Amulet from Bar‘am,” 179–85. Bohak, Ancient Jewish Magic, 156 classifies this spell as an aggressive one, because it is a text “intended to silence one’s enemies.” 28 Aviam, “The Synagogues at Bar‘am,” 169.

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a traditional defixio (binding spell)—was also discovered inside the synagogue of ancient Meroth in the Upper Galilee, beneath the threshold of a door.29 Joseph Naveh and Shaul Shaked transcribed and translated the Hebrew and Aramaic text, composed in 26 lines, as follows: ‘For your mercy and for your truth’ (Ps. 115:1; 138:2) In the name of YHWH we shall do and succeed. Strong and mighty God! May your name be blessed and may your kingdom be blessed. As you have suppressed the sea by your horses and stamped the earth with your shoe, and as you suppress trees in winter days and the herb of the earth in summer days, so may [there be suppressed] […] before Yose son of Zenobia. May my word and my obedience be imposed on them. Just as the sky is suppressed before God, and the earth is suppressed before people, and people are suppressed before death, and death is suppressed before God, so may the inhabitants Of this town be suppressed And broken and fallen Before Yose son of Zenobia. In the name of ḥtw ̣ ‘‘ the angel Who was sent before Israel I make a (magic) sign. Success, Success, Amen Amen, Selah Hallelujah.30

Despite occasional breaks in the text, the strident objectives of its commissioner (Yose son of Zenobia) are lucid: to ensure that the “inhabitants of this town” (lines 17–18), should obey, break, and fall, before him. The lexical contents of the preceding text, when divorced from their find context, remain conventional for this genre of defixio. Archaeologists have discovered countless examples of similar types throughout the Mediterranean, many of which were carved into lead and deposited in varied architectural and practical environments, including tombs, cemeteries, and wells; some were nailed to floors

29 Bohak, Ancient Jewish Magic, 318; Joseph Naveh and Shaul Shaked, Magic Spells and Formulae, Amulet no. 16, fig. 1; this amulet is presently on display in the Israel Museum. 30 Naveh and Shaked, Magical Spells and Formulae, Amulet no. 16, 45. The amulet measures 4.8 × 13.8 cm.

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beneath hippodromes.31 Such writings also summoned gods and demons of all sorts to bind, defeat, and master the identified victims (or targets) on the agent’s behalf. One distinguishing feature of the lamella from Meroth, of course, is its find context: it was found inside a synagogue, where it had been buried in a sealed location, beneath the threshold of the main doorway to the assembly hall of the structure. Written in Aramaic, it adjures the Jewish God and an angel (one “sent before Israel”) and links the means of the recipe’s activation to the actions of the community it targets. Indeed, as Naveh and Shaked note, the use of the unusual verb (rk‘) from lines 5–6 (“As you have suppressed the sea by your horses and stamped the earth with your shoe…”), may predict and reference the trampling that would take place, above the deposited amulet, whenever people entered and exited the synagogue through the doorway above.32 This recipe, after all, is composed to forcefully control, or “suppress,” the entire community “of the town”. Indeed, this is the very same community, which entered the assembly hall by treading upon the associated threshold.33 Several additional features of this defixio, however, particularly deviate from conventions of the binding-spell genre. For instance, it does not adjure Hekate in Greek, as do many comparable inscriptions, but instead invokes the Jewish God in Aramaic. The text of the defixio is also carved into bronze, rather than lead, a material commonly used for similar genres of writing.34 The precise lexical contents of the inscribed message, the community it targets, and the epithets and identity of the God it adjures (and perhaps, its carving into bronze), also respond specifically to its implementation in a Jewish devotional space.35 31 On the latter category, see discussion in Gager, Curse Tablets, 42–77; juridical curses considered in Christopher Faraone and Joseph L. Rife, “A Greek Curse against a Thief from the Koutsongila Cemetery at Roman Kenchrai,” ZPE 160 (2007): 141–57. 32 Naveh and Shaked, Magic Spells and Formulae, 48. 33 Excavators accidentally found this rolled lamella buried directly beneath the stone threshold of the eastern entrance to the synagogue during the process of dismantling its northern wall in order to remove the adjacent decorative mosaic; Zvi Ilan, “The Synagogue and ‘Beth Midrash’ of Meroth,” in Ancient Synagogues in Israel: Third to Seventh Centuries CE. Proceedings of Symposium, University of Haifa, May 1987, ed. Rachel Hachlili, BARIS 499 (Oxford: Archaeopress, 1989), 29; Zvi Ilan, “The Synagogue and Study House at Meroth,” in Ancient Synagogues: Historical Analysis and Archaeological Discovery, ed. Dan Urman and Paul V. M. Flesher, StPB 47 (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 1:270. As Naveh and Shaked suggest, the defixio seems to have been deliberately hidden inside the threshold in order to be trod upon, perhaps as part of the associated ritual or by the victims it targeted (lines 5–6); Bohak, Ancient Jewish Magic, 318–19. See also David Frankfurter, “Spell for a Man to Obtain a Male Lover,” in Ancient Christian Magic: Coptic Texts of Ritual Power ed. Marvin Meyer and Richard Smith (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 177. The latter Coptic spell (“Spell for a Man”) also implies that its proper placement should be inside a doorway or under the threshold of a house (l. 5–6). I thank David Frankfurter for this reference. 34 Bohak discusses the absence of lead amulets among collections associated with Jewish populations (Ancient Jewish Magic, 155). 35 Ilan, “The Synagogue and ‘Beth Midrash’,” 29. The defixio was not the only object found buried in the synagogue and beneath its structure. Other objects were also buried within the

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Placements of materials, such as this defixio, remain challenging to interpret in synagogue contexts. After all, what is particularly strange and most resonant if not potentially disturbing to some, is that portions of the “prayer formulas” in texts, such as this one, might have been nearly identical to those recited by visitors to the synagogue above, even if, in the case of the defixio, they were deployed for selfish or malevolent purposes.36 It is thus tempting to focus disproportionately on the violent expressions that accompany the biblical and liturgical phrases inside the text, to endeavor to develop satisfying explanations for them. For example, Ilan and Damati, who excavated and published the site, took pains to rationalize the spell’s vitriolic language as retribution for injustices previously sustained by the agent (Yose, son of Zenobia) at the hands of his community.37 But the text bears little evidence to support such hypotheses about preliminary and provocative injustices.38 Yose’s quest for unbridled power, after all, could have been entirely unprovoked and might have responded to his penchant for unbridled megalomania.39 Moreover, while the act of implanting such a violent text into structural elements of a synagogue might seem anathema to modern dispositions, this type of practice might have been relatively commonplace in late ancient Palestine; indeed, the specific act of burying a lamella beneath a synagogue, for

synagogue during periods contemporaneous to its use, including 485 coins, 245 of which were gold (and the remainder bronze), hidden under a stone with a slot. 36 After all, the epithets attributed to the Divine are repeated in an amulet from Nirim, as discussed below (Naveh and Shaked, Amulets and Magic Bowls, Amulet no. 12.17–19), which appeals to the “Holy, Holy, Ho[ly, Holy] … God of Vengeance (Ps. 94:1) … God of Israel (Gen. 33:20)”; these derive from biblical scripture, and therefore recur in Jewish liturgies from both earlier and later periods. See parallel discussions in Wilburn, Materia Magica, 17–18 and in Fine, Sacred Realm, 31–35. See also Stern, “Harnessing the Sacred,” 229. 37 Ilan considers this to be “further proof of the tremendous significance of the local community. A power struggle such as the one implied in the amulet indicates a successful and prosperous community: internal struggles like this do not occupy this kind of attention when a poor community is struggling against an outside threat” (“The Synagogue and ‘Beth Midrash’,” 29). See also Ilan and Damati, “Excavations at Kh. Marus,” 257. For the general discussion of synagogue in the context of the town, see Zvi Ilan and Emanual Damati, ed., Meroth the Ancient Jewish Village (Tel Aviv: Society for the Protection of Nature, 1987); Lee I. Levine, Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 428. 38 Excavators assume that Yose must have been one of the synagogue founders. This, they suggest, offers the only possible explanation for his unusual access to the foundations of the building while it was under construction, which, in turn, permitted his insertion of the binding spell. Ilan concludes: “He had competition or because libel was spoken against him. He was probably involved in establishing the synagogue, which explains how he had the opportunity to hide the amulet in the wall while it was being constructed. Perhaps he intentionally put it under the threshold so that his request would rise to G-d through the bodies of those who entered the synagogue” (“The Synagogue and ‘Beth Midrash’,” 29). 39 Bohak, too, is skeptical of such explanations (Ancient Jewish Magic, 156, n. 28).

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similar ends, is commended in Jewish magical recipes from later periods (such as the Sword of Moses).40 When one regards this lamella alongside other examples of similarly inscribed and deposited metal sheets, one can begin to generalize a bit about the carving and emplacements of inscribed objects, commonly classified as materia magica, inside synagogues of Roman and Byzantine Palestine. Foremost, evidence for acts of writing and depositing lamellae, such as these, recurs with sufficient degrees of frequency to merit notice and inclusion in lists of activities more conventionally associated with Levantine synagogues. The lexical contents of these texts are certainly diverse: they include prayers for healing, for protection from the evil eye (which might amount to a similar request), and supplications to a strong and mighty God to facilitate an individual’s violent dominance over a community. Still, like prayers once recited inside synagogues verbally and collectively and for distinct purposes, those scratched into metal sheets directly call upon the Jewish God by invoking His attributes, quote biblical texts as analogy, and request Divine assistance. Traditional reliance on magical nomenclature to classify such objects and texts, however, has artificially divided them from other aspects of synagogue life. But much like their liturgical counterparts, these lamellae bear written messages of supplication—or prayer—directed to Jewish angels and the Divine.41 Inscriptions, such as these, therefore, ought not to be isolated as “magical” but should be included in lists of ancient prayer activities once conducted within synagogues (whether recited or inscribed and deposited), which varied considerably more than scholars commonly imagine. Moreover, one of the most significant features of these types of writings is their individuated nature. Paytanim or synagogue visitors might have composed and recited piyyutim or prayers inside Palestinian synagogues, individually or collectively, but they seem to have done so in public or semi-public ways inside communal space. Unlike the latter modes of expression, however, deposited writings and prayers (in the form of lamellae) request the fulfilment of personal and specific, rather than collective and generalized requests to the Divine.42 Their distinct placements (sometimes upon the floor of a synagogue apse beside Torah scrolls, at other times, inside a stylobate, or beneath a doorway) only underscore the degrees 40 Bohak translates this text to read: “And if you want your fear to be upon people, write on a lead lamella from X to Y and bury it in a synagogue in the western direction”; see Yuval Harari, Harba de-Moshe (The Sword of Moses): A New Edition and a Study (Jerusalem: Academon, 1997), 44 no. 105; Bohak, Ancient Jewish Magic, 319; Moses Gaster, The Sword of Moses (London: Nutt, 1896), 86. 41 Gager, Curse Tablets, 24. 42 On piyyutim, their development and recitation, see discussion in Ophir Münz-Manor, “Narrating Salvation: Verbal Sacrifices in Late Antique Liturgical Poetry,” in Jews, Christians, and the Roman Empire: The Poetics of Power in Late Antiquity, ed. Nathalie E. Dohrmann and Annette Yoshiko Reed (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 154–66.

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to which the positioning of each set of prayers was designed to perform critical functions for their creators and commissioners. The locations of these deposits, indeed, are neither metaphorical, nor incidental, but are physically instrumental to their efficacy: people deposited them inside spaces where the Jewish Deity and His angels, invoked in their prayers, were considered to be particularly resident or proximate. For complementary reasons they also buried them in spaces upon which their targets (and agents) stood or traversed. The contents and locations of these texts thereby commemorate the challenges of and the remedies for the sufferings of individuals, who re-shaped (and re-purposed) the communal spaces of Levantine synagogues by strategically depositing writings upon and inside of them. While comparisons abound for practices of depositing amulets for healing and remedy inside pagan sanctuaries and shrines in Roman Palestine, as well as elsewhere in the Mediterranean, scarce evidence attests to similar practices inside diaspora synagogues, or inside, around, and beneath Palestinian churches.43 The discovery of such comparanda would be extremely useful in determining whether acts of inscribing and depositing healing or binding prayers in synagogues were cross-regional Jewish practices, or whether they might be distinctly Palestinian ones. In tandem, one might wish to know if similar practices recurred inside regional Christian devotional spaces. Multiple contingencies, however, explain the absence of such information in the latter settings, including poor excavation techniques in the earlier and mid-twentieth century (when many regional churches were discovered), lack of proper documentation of finds, rampant looting, and the subsequent sale of smaller finds from sites on the antiquities market. But other good reasons exist for the relative paucity of such objects in the archaeological record. For instance, only rarely might occasions justify the dismantling of architectural features of ancient buildings, such as stylobates or lintels, aside from efforts to consolidate or preserve related features, or to transfer them to museum holdings.44 Impoverished records for the presence of similar amulets in diaspora synagogues and Palestinian churches, likewise, need not reflect limitations in the practice in antiquity. Rather, they suggest that, if conditions of excavation, record-keeping, or preservation had been somewhat different when the ancient buildings were discovered, archaeologists might have preserved and catalogued

43 Burials, of course, are not uncommon in the synagogues of Palestine or the diaspora. Many caches of coins have been found beneath synagogue floors and inside synagogue walls; the door sockets from the Dura Europos synagogue were also filled with deposits of tooth and bone, largely following regional custom. For discussion of buried objects in synagogues and other buildings see Magness, “The Date of the Sardis Synagogue,” 144; Karen B. Stern, “Opening Doors to Jewish Life in Syro-Mesopotamian Dura Europos,” Journal of Ancient Judaism 9 (2018): 178–200; see also n. 24 above. 44 I appreciate very much the comments of Professor Mordechai Aviam, at the conference in Helsinki in September 2016, where he reminded me of these important points.

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more data attesting to comparable behaviors of depositing prayer amulets, whether in ancient synagogues outside of Palestine or inside regional churches. So what more could one say about this practice of depositing writing—or written imprecations, as I have described them—upon, inside, and beneath Palestinian synagogues? I suggest that a seemingly unrelated collection of inscriptions might offer additional and complementary insights. To this end, we turn eastward and back in time, from the boundaries of late Roman and Byzantine Palestine of the fifth to seventh centuries C. E. to third-century Roman Syria and to a diverse corpus of texts from the synagogue of Dura Europos.

2. Vernacular Writing on Architectural Surfaces The outcomes of Yale University’s excavations in Dura Europos in Syria far exceeded the expectations of the team who had begun their exploration of the ancient town in the 1930s. More remarkable still was the unexpected discovery of an ancient synagogue in Dura: it was the best preserved building from the town and included a beautifully decorated assembly hall, on whose walls were conserved roughly seventy painted panels depicting scenes from the Hebrew Bible.45 Additionally and quite unusually for most Mediterranean synagogues, this one also retained nearly a hundred examples of vernacular drawings and writings, including those in Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek, Middle Persian, Parthian, and Pahlavi scripts. Examples of vernacular writing from the structure considerably outnumber the monumental dedicatory inscriptions also found inside.46 These texts encompassed multiple types. One genre included words painted directly onto the decorative wall paintings, which served as interpretive labels for their subjects. Certain of these identify the figures of Moses or Aaron (attired as high priest), while still other types combined labels of individual images with those of scenes, including a caption identifying Moses at the parting of the Red Sea.47 Other writings in ink, expressed in middle Persian and Pahlavi, reflect Persian visitors’ responses to the impressive murals that decorated the assembly hall of the later phase of the building.48 Of greater relevance to this discussion, however, are different types of inscriptions that seem to have performed distinct functions for 45 Carl H. Kraeling, The Synagogue: The Excavations at Dura Europos: Final Report 8/1, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), i–ix. 46 David Noy and Hanswulf Bloedhorn, ed, Inscriptiones Judaicae Orientis. Vol. III: Syria and Cyprus (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004); dedicatory inscriptions from the synagogue include Syr84–86 [subsequent references to pages from this work follow the abbreviation of IJO III, while inscriptions from this catalogue are designated following the Syr prefix]. 47 Syr98; other labels and captions on paintings include Syr96–105. 48 Stern, Writing on the Wall, 43–57; translations of the Persian and Pahlavi inscriptions in Syr111–26.

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their writers and viewers: those that apparently record the presence of visitors to the space, who sometimes wrote their names, and at other times, offered written requests for their own remembrance and for that of their families. More than sixty percent of writings from the synagogue conform to the latter category. Carvings of names (signatures) are among the most common types of such writing recovered on plaster fragments and walls from multiple phases of the synagogue; they account for one quarter of these identified examples.49 These simply declare: “I am so-and-so,” in Aramaic (“ana” + personal name), such as three comparable lines of Aramaic graffiti to document a certain “Ḥiyya” multiple times: Ḥiyya, son of… | I Ḥiyya, son of … (am) their father / chief | Yo[ab?/I]” (Syr93). Such graffiti appear most commonly on or around the synagogue doorways, or upon diagnostic architectural fragments of doorjambs.50 These types of signatures, moreover, do not qualify as dedicatory inscriptions, as were texts carefully painted upon terracotta tiles once suspended from the synagogue ceiling.51 As we see below, rather, their presence and contents serve to reflect their writers’ basic efforts to document and memorialize themselves, their families, and their visits to the space in other ways. Among these texts are those that emphasize the importance of writing one’s own name with one’s own hand. One such graffito declares: “This is the inscription which Mattenai wrote” (Syr83a).52 Boasting that one has carved one’s own name is an epigraphic cliché, commonly attested in inscriptions in Dura and elsewhere. Nonetheless, such sentiments, however stylized, might have reflected something 49 Discussion in Eleazar L. Sukenik, The Synagogue of Dura Europos and Its Frescoes (Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 1948), 45. Other examples of this pattern of graffiti from the earlier synagogue include names in Aramaic scripts (Syr81; letters 2.5–4 cm); only graffiti from the later synagogue include examples in Greek and Persian scripts and languages. One Persian graffito was discovered on a doorjamb, which also may contain a name (Syr126). A graffito scratched in Greek onto the so-called Dado below panel WD7(S), may also replicate this pattern of incised names (Syr107); its size and position, however, suggest a distinct function in the synagogue space. Due to the precise location of the letters on the border of a painted image and to its significantly larger size (ca. 4–9.7 cm), it may, as Roth-Gerson suggests, serve as a name of a worker or a painter, even if interpretations remain inconclusive; see Lea Roth-Gerson, The Jews of Syria as Reflected in the Greek Inscriptions (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar Le-toldot Yiśra’el, 2001), 22. 50 Karen B. Stern, “Tagging Sacred Space in the Dura Europos Synagogue,” JRA 25 (2012): 171–94. 51 Compare these types with dedicatory and votive inscriptions discussed in Satlow, “Giving for a Return,” 91–105. 52 This inscription initially appears to resemble the previous genre of name graffiti, but additionally emphasizes its inscriber. Du Mesnil du Buisson translates ktbh as “painted,” rather than wrote, Robert Du Mesnil du Buisson, Les Peintures de la Synagogue de Doura-Europos, 245–246 après J.-C (Rome: Scripta Pontificii Instituti Biblici, 1939), 160, n. 14. My translation of the French reads: “I Menahem, son of Adam, made this painting.” Cf. Roth-Gerson, Jews of Syria, 29. This syntax appears in other graffiti in Dura, which emphasize that the named individual actually wrote or painted the images nearby; see Syr83.

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more individualized: either true points of pride (since the sheer ability to write was presumably not universal); or, in complement, that quite possibly the act of writing one’s own message (rather than asking a literate friend for the favor) might have been considered, somehow, more effective or powerful. We shall return to the latter point below. Another equally common genre of writing records the names of individuals, but additionally request that they “be remembered” or, “be remembered for good” (variously transcribed as dkyr lw; or dkyr lw l’tb). One graffito reads: “By your leave; Ḥanani and Dakka and Naḥmani, may he be remembered,”53 and another pleads: “May Minyamin be remembered, the apothecarius”.54 While most of these types of writings are in Aramaic, others use equivalent terms in Greek, such as mnēsthē, which more closely resemble analogues found elsewhere in Dura.55 What are these terse inscriptions and what accounts for their recurrences on walls and around doorframes within the Dura Europos synagogue? Traditional explanations focused on their lexical contents. Similarities between the phrases in these graffiti and in so many of the monumental inscriptions found on walls and mosaic floors of Syrian and Palestinian synagogues, for instance, have supported hypotheses that all of such writings were somewhat equivalent. Their syntax, some argue, attests to their potential functions as abbreviated dedicatory inscriptions, which would solicit the public remembrance of individuals, whose gifts or good works merited a written memorial inside the synagogue.56 As I have demonstrated elsewhere, however, such types of writing do not conform to common types of dedicatory inscriptions, such as those seen throughout the Roman east, let alone inside the very same synagogue. Instead, they are vestiges of distinct genres of writing, which record the simple wishes of their inscribers: for passersby to heed their acts of carving by reading their signatures and memorials 53 Orthography and grammatical irregularities obscure the sense of many inscriptions such as these. 54 These inscriptions derive from the same fragment (Syr83b and Syr83c). Perhaps it was important for Minyamin to distinguish himself from other similarly named individuals through the inclusion of his profession. Noy and Bloedhorn consider the latter inscription to be one of dedication. They declare that “[t]his inscription survived from the earlier synagogue and seems to be an acknowledgement of some sort of benefaction. Outside a funerary context, wishes that someone ‘be remembered’ are invariably the quid pro quo for a good deed to the community” (IJO III, 138). 55 One ceiling dipinto includes the term; see discussion in IJO III (Syr86–89); cf. Syr90. The color of the plaster suggests that it may have originated in the final phase of the assembly hall. 56 These types of dedicatory inscriptions, which explicitly describe donors’ activities, appear on tiles from the synagogue ceiling (Syr85–88) and around the architectural niche on the western wall of the structure (Syr89). Similarly worded Greek dedicatory inscriptions from Jewish and non-Jewish contexts in Dura and throughout the Levant, request that a named donor be remembered or be remembered ‘for good’ in exchange for his or her gifts, see, e.g., Lea Roth Gerson, The Greek Inscriptions from the Synagogues of Eretz Yisrael (Jerusalem: Yad Ben Zvi, 1989), 19, 29. 

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in the precise space where writers deposited them, perhaps out loud, before a human and / or divine audience. Graffiti found elsewhere in Dura support similar interpretations. Written signatures and remembrance formulas, such as those described above, account for at least one ninth of the 1,400 extant textual graffiti documented throughout Dura Europos. While these types also appear in public spaces, patterns in some of their locations remain equally distinctive: they are clustered, most densely, on significant architectural features of local temples and shrines. Inside the local Aphlad temple, for example, graffiti with comparable lexical contents (signatures and remembrance formulas) were carved most densely and directly inside and around shrines, altars, and painted cultic scenes; these constitute the vast majority of the textual graffiti from the entire building interior.57 Such written sentiments are sufficiently conventional, moreover, that their formulas are most commonly abbreviated from the full Greek term, mnēsthē (calling “for remembrance”), to the initial letters of the word (mu and nu)58 Comparable patterns emerge in the Greek graffiti in the so-called Temple of Azzanathkona, where paired names and abbreviated remembrance inscriptions abound, particularly clustered around cultic images, shrines, altars, and architectural niches.59 Those found on layers of plaster in the local Mithraeum follow similar patterns, with slightly altered syntax (the acclamation “Nama!” replaces “mnēsthē”).60 While pictorial graffiti appear in all contexts throughout the city, therefore, clusters of textual graffiti of names and remembrance requests, upon and around altars and cultic niches,61 deviate 57 These tabulations and discussions of different genres of graffiti from Dura in Jennifer D. Baird, “The Graffiti of Dura Europos: A Contextual Approach,” in Ancient Graffiti in Context, ed. Jennifer D. Baird and Claire Taylor (New York: Routledge, 2011), 49–69. For location and transcriptions of graffiti from the synagogue, see Michael Ivanovitch Rostovtzeff et al., ed., The Excavations at Dura-Europos; Preliminary Report of the 5th Season of Work October 1931–March 1932: Conducted by Yale University and the French Academy of Inscriptions and Letters (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1934), 125, no. 439. Some of these graffiti include drawings of male heads or torsos alongside inscriptions, see P. V.C. Baur et al., ed., The Excavations at Dura-Europos: Conducted by Yale University and the French Academy of Inscriptions and Letters. Preliminary Report of the Fourth Season of Work (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1933), 160, 165. 58 These consistently precede one or more personal names and occasionally accompany incised figural images. For examples see Rostovtzeff et al., Preliminary Report of the Fifth Season, 121; 458; no. 463–66; 131–200; also 21; no. 387; and, 16; no. 373. Examples of this appear in Durene fortifications—those part of the precinct of the so-called Temple of Azzanthkona (ibid., 14–16); Rostovtzeff et al., Preliminary Report of the Fifth Season, nos. 423, 424, 426, 427, 430. 59 Several acclamations were found scratched onto the background of one cultic niche in the room labeled as D6 and surrounding the altar of room W7. A cultic niche and wall were in D6; Hopkins in Rostovtzeff et al., Preliminary Report of the Fifth Season, 132, 139. 60 See Eric David Francis, “Mithraic Graffiti from Dura Europos,” in Mithraic Studies: Proceedings of the First International Congress of Mithraic Studies, ed. John R. Hinnells (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1975), 432. 61 Graffiti inside domestic spaces can also be associated with cultic contexts; domestic shrines and altars were common in Dura and elsewhere in the Mediterranean (e.g., Rostovtzeff,

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significantly (in medium, location, and purpose) from monumental dedicatory inscriptions, which otherwise nominate gifts given to temples or directly label dedicated objects (such as votive statues, altars, and cultic reliefs).62 How best, then, to interpret some of these most popular types of vernacular writing in Dura Europos, whether the signature or remembrance graffiti transcribed in Aramaic or Greek in the synagogue, or in Greek in the Temple of the Aphlad, the Mithraeum, or local Christian building? Foremost, their syntax and locations suggest, as Joseph Naveh once convincingly argued, that they constituted written prayers, rather than abbreviated dedications.63 Greek versions of such graffiti-prayers are most common in Dura, but equivalents in Semitic languages and scripts (rendered accordingly as dkr or zkyr) abound, not only in Dura’s synagogue and elsewhere in Syria, but also in surrounding regions of modern Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Palestine, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. These types of graffiti, therefore, are not random or incidental at all: they conform to genres of written prayers, or petitions, which individuals commonly carved into synagogues, temples, and cultic spaces, during the courses of their daily lives. Such types of graffiti-petitions, as I have suggested elsewhere, merit consideration as prayers in multiple respects. First, the very acts of inscribing one’s name and / or requesting remembrance for good could document an individual’s efforts to directly initiate communication with a divinity: this is likely why, in pagan shrines, such messages appear most densely in places where people anticipated that deities were most likely to interface with earthly spaces and supplicants, such as around altars and cult shrines. But such writings, whether positioned in the synagogue or in other buildings that incorporated sacrificial activities, were not displayed privately. Instead, people deliberately and clearly drew them to be accessible to audiences of passersby. In fact, in the Durene Mithraeum and the synagogue, so many identical names compete for attention on identical surfaces, scratched in multiples in similar hands, that it is clear that their writings were competitive; supplicants wanted their names and remembrance requests to be more visible than others as they vied for sacred real estate.64 Preliminary Report of the Fifth Season, 15; Baur et al., Preliminary Report of the Fourth Season, no. 401). Clusters of written graffiti often appear around spaces associated with sacrifice and devotional practices in Hatra (e.g., PAT nos. 101, 53, 23:4 f). 62 Rostovteff et al., Preliminary Report of the Fifth Season, 135. Discussions of early, middle, and late phases of the Mithraeum in Rostovtzeff et al., Preliminary Report of the Fifth Season, and Francis, “Mithraic Graffiti,” 432. See also memorials in room W11 graffiti to the right of an altar (ibid., 149–50). On examples in local Christian contexts, see C. Bradford Welles, in Carl H. Kraeling and C. Bradford Welles, The Christian Building: The Excavations at Dura Europos, Final Report 8/2 (New Haven: Dura-Europos Publications, 1967), nos. 9 and 10; see also 95–96, no.17; also see no. 18. 63 Joseph Naveh, “Graffiti and Dedications,” BASOR 235 (1979): 27–28. 64 Francis, “Mithraic Graffiti,” 432–38.

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But what was the point? Why did visitors to these spaces write in such ways in such places? Certain of their features support at least two possible explanations. First, perhaps, writing signatures “worked” by entreating visitors of surrounding spaces both to view the carved names and, when viewers were capable, to read them out loud. Analogous inscriptions underscore a common expectation among graffiti-writers, whether in the Persian east or Roman west, whereby writers anticipated that literate passersby would read out loud their names and messages upon viewing them.65 Second, audiences’ ensuing vocalizations of these scrawled writings could play additional and significant roles in their efficacy; the vocalization of an individual’s name or remembrance request could ultimately “activate” an associated request for memorialization.66 The spatial dimension of the graffito thus plays an important role in these readings, whereby a viewer would read a written name or prayer, precisely where it was inscribed, in a specific spatial and geographic location, for a particular set of reasons, including its association with targeted populations and resident deities. Both writers and readers thus played different and equally critical roles in these proceedings, which they performed inside and around devotional spaces. Even so, one might wonder: why in the Dura synagogue would such graffiti cluster around doorways, as opposed to say, the aedicula on its western wall, where many scholars surmise that Torah scrolls were kept or displayed? This curious distribution, I suggest, tells us something distinctive about Jewish behavior in Dura: that Jews in the synagogue, just like their peers elsewhere in Dura, deposited their graffiti-prayers strategically, in the places where their intended audiences (both God / gods and other devotees) were most physically present and empowered to activate the requests written beside or beneath them.67 Clear patterns in the spatial distribution of graffiti, therefore, suggest that such writings were not randomly applied: they were deliberately carved and painted in places where writers anticipated the best access to their intended audiences.68 In the synagogue, 65 This is, apparently, true in the Roman East and West, from Hatra to Pompeii. On dialogical features of graffiti from Pompeii, see Rebecca Benefiel, “Dialogues of Graffiti in the House of Maius Castricius at Pompeii,” AJA 114 (2010): 59–101; Rebecca Benefiel, “The Culture of Writing in Dometic Spaces at Pompeii,” in Inscriptions in the Private Sphere in the Greco-Roman World, ed. Rebecca Benefiel and Peter Keegan (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 80–112. 66 Both the use of voces magicae and the discussion of the importance of speech and magic are discussed in Bohak, Ancient Jewish Magic, 159. For voces magicae and vowel sequences, see also Naveh and Shaked, Magic Spells and Formulae, Amulet nos. 18, 27, 29. 67 Joan Branham, “Vicarious Sacrality: Temple Space in Ancient Synagogues,” in Ancient Synagogues: Historical Analysis and Archaeological Discovery, ed. Dan Urman and Paul V. M. Flesher, StPB 47 (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 2:319–45; Ann Marie Yasin, Saints and Church Spaces in the Late Antique Mediterranean: Architecture, Cult and Community (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 288. 68 In Dura and regions farther east throughout the Persian world, writings, as well as votive deposits, were often emplaced around doorways; Stern, “Opening Doors,” 199–200.

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doorways are a most common location for these graffiti and the reasons for this distribution remain multifactorial. One explanation for the connection between writing, prayers, and doorways likely relates to biblical precedent: these activities and spaces are specifically linked in biblical texts and in multiple Jewish traditions in Late Antiquity.69 The subsequent and related emplacement of mezuzot on doorframes reflect these complementary understandings. Durene Jews, as well as synagogue visitors in Palestine, however, might have also crowded their written prayers around doorways, for related reasons, according to customs that merged the local and cross-regional, among Jews and non-Jews alike. They might have understood doorways to be places that were specifically resonant or, somehow, more appropriate or powerful: the best places for individuals to make their personal requests, prayers, or remembrance most visible (and audible) to the Divine in a powerful and communal setting.

3. Conclusion What new information can this evaluation of vernacular writing practices offer for the renewed discussions of Levantine synagogues, whether exacted in late ancient Palestine or in earlier periods in Roman Syria? Such a discussion, at a most basic level, optimally integrates broader ranges of writing and prayer activities into renewed considerations of ancient Jewish behaviors inside synagogues. It illustrates how diverse were the ways that ancient individuals emplaced, embedded and applied writing inside the communal spaces of synagogues and for strategic and individualized purposes. By casting a wide net in the examination of vernacular texts to encompass so-called materia magica as well as graffiti, and considering the disparate contents, materials, methods, and places of their deposits, this treatment suggests that acts of writing, conducted on both daily and exceptional bases, served powerful functions for their agents within synagogues. The implications of this observation can be profound—particularly when attempting to advance insights into the ranges of activities that once took place inside synagogues—but for which literary and epigraphic records remain otherwise sparse. Prayers scratched onto metal sheets and those scratched onto walls, of course, neither reflect identical acts nor intents; their appearances in different media and find contexts reflect their creators’ variable practices and purposes. Nonetheless, there is something exceptionally useful in gathering together these disparate types of written prayers for collective evaluation. Their forms demonstrate distinct, but complementary ways that visitors to synagogues throughout the Levant used non-monumental writing—above or below ground and on movable or fixed 69 Bernard Goldman, The Sacred Portal: A Primary Symbol in Jewish Art (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1966), 22. 

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surfaces—to try to ensure that their wishes were granted. Implicitly or explicitly, their imprecations called for audiences of humans, the Divine, and His angels, to hearken to their writers’ requests and to assist the fulfilments of their desires, amidst surrounding spaces and communities. Consideration of these types of writing practices also facilitates the examination of populations frequently overlooked within ancient synagogue contexts. Jews (and neighbors) of elevated or humbler status, likely visited synagogues simultaneously. Donor inscriptions, however, mostly retain information about Jews from the upper echelons of their communities. But, in most cases, amulet-commissioners or graffiti-writers could be of any social or economic status. Individuals of lower or upper social classes could inveigle specialists to write out recipes of ritual power, while anyone rich or poor could engage in graffiti-writing behaviors.70 Thus, despite our inabilities to access the biographies of inscribers, drawing attention to vernacular types of writing more substantively variegates the quality and nature of the information available for investigating diverse ways that ancient Jews (whether wealthy and esteemed, or impoverished of reputation, status, or money) used their synagogues in antiquity. People could pray inside synagogues as groups and assembled as communities. Wealthier people could commission inscriptions to commemorate their vows or dedications to surrounding spaces.71 Through writing, however, even the most impecunious visitor to a synagogue might be able to personalize and document her prayer inside the space, without preliminary donation or purchase, by carving (or asking someone else to carve) specific or general messages, directed to the Jewish God and His Divine entourage. In this way, she could draw attention to her wishes, among those which others proffered within the devotional space. The patterns and ensuing predictability of the locations of these written prayers, whether written on movable or fixed objects, moreover, reveals additional information about the geography and spatiality of sanctity within synagogues. Several monumental inscriptions in mosaics and stone throughout Palestine and elsewhere in the diaspora describe synagogues as sacred or holy (sancta / hagia). Inside these spaces, however, sanctity was neither absolute nor monolithic; it could be variegated, localized and dialogical, drawing from the powerful activities taking place inside synagogues (biblical recitation, translation, or liturgical repetition), objects kept inside them (the Torah scrolls themselves), or (to use contemporaneous churches as a point of comparison), the people who assembled within them 70 While many today might associate graffiti writing with those of lower socio-economic status, this was not necessarily true in antiquity. On questions concerning links between graffiti-writing, class, and status, see discussion in Stern, Writing on the Wall, 28–29; concerning similar questions in Pompeii, consider the analysis of Kristina Milnor, Graffiti and the Literary Landscape in Roman Pompeii (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 71 Satlow, “Giving for a Return,” 103–5.

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(holy people might make a surrounding space commensurately holy).72 Such conclusions, moreover, suggest why people might have privileged specific architectural features of these spaces, including doorways and thresholds, for the application of their writing; these were places where biblical texts had already enjoined people to write God’s name, and where certain requests (prayers) to divine or human audiences might be considered particularly powerful and efficacious. Such realities are undocumented in literary sources, but are attested particularly through patterns evident in the epigraphic and archaeological record. These approaches to writing prove useful, because they ultimately ameliorate our understandings of the diversity of devotional practices once conducted inside ancient synagogues in other ways. For instance, both rabbinic texts and the study of piyyutim reveal the importance of ancient synagogues for conducting acts of scriptural recitation, interpretation, and prayer.73 But attention to vernacular inscriptions—on lamellae and on doorways—offer insights into the ranges of prayer practices once considered to be possible or normative in these spaces. Because while countless verbal prayers were uttered inside synagogues in Roman Palestine, as well as in Roman Syria, only documentation of the latter types of written prayers could survive, whether carved or painted onto metal or plaster. Attention to various genres of vernacular inscriptions thus illuminates a wide range of precatory practices in ancient synagogues that many specialists inadvertently overlook. But, regardless, we have to imagine that the relationships between texts and their locations of deposit were truly functional ones. Today, people often imagine “sanctity” to be an abstraction—an idea—rather than a corporeal concept. Sanctity, in many parts of the ancient and medieval worlds, however, was something physical, tactile, and transferrable (and translatable).74 Jews who clustered their amulets around Torah scrolls (such as at Nirim) might have done so to help compile a type of sacred graveyard. But they also might have done so to accelerate the efficacy of healing amulets by positioning them inside or beside a room with objects of consummate sanctity and connection to Divinity (which might, in turn, also accelerate their efficacy). Even the violent prayer of Yose son of Zenobia was deposited beneath a doorway for a comparable reason. Much like graffiti from Dura Europos, if for complementary reasons, placement beneath a doorway (as opposed to around it) might have rendered Yose’s aggressive prayers more powerful. The activation of Yose’s prayer related directly to the activities of those who traversed the threshold above, just as, in the Dura Europos synagogue, 72 Ann-Marie Yasin discusses these points in Christian contexts; Yasin, Saints and Church Spaces, 212–75. 73 Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 150. 74 Yasin, Saints and Church Spaces, 246; Jonathan Z. Smith, Map is Not Territory: Studies in the History of Religions, SJLA 23 (Leiden: Brill, 1978), 1–10.

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writings on doorjambs partly anticipated foot traffic beside them and through their expanse. Of course, there are many other ways to “read” prayers of ritual power, including those described above, once found in Palestinian synagogues. One could primarily emphasize find contexts in interpreting them—underscoring their selective functions as burials—much like the coin hordes commonly found in similar places. But unlike coin hordes discovered beneath synagogue floors or within their walls, which many view as resulting from efforts to hide and protect communal funds, or quite possibly, from efforts to protect the synagogue above by functioning as apotropaia, deposits of inscribed materials might reflect slightly different activities and sensibilities. They might document certain individuals’ efforts to take advantage of the potency of select movable and architectural features inside synagogues, to deposit messages for their own gain. Thus, while studies of the synagogue frequently emphasize the communal dimensions of their spaces, this essay encourages an opposite (if complementary) approach: to draw greater attention to how individual Jews deposited vernacular writings in targeted places for their own purposes. These acts of writing and depositing inscribed objects encompassed otherwise overlooked types of localized prayer, to heal the sick, to be remembered by the community or by the Divine, or even to control one’s peers by violent means. But amulets, graffiti, and their spatiality demonstrate something else and something more. Surely, they demonstrate the power of writing, the heterogeneity of sacred space, and the individuated uses of synagogues. But they also signify something additional that is equally rarely documented. They preserve (whether directly or indirectly) the mediated voices of individuals, whose needs, desires, and hopes are often left silent in the study of the ancient synagogue. They document perspectives of the sick and of their worried families, the ravings of the desperate and the crazy, and the dreams of the megalomaniacal and the hopeful. Vernacular writings, no matter who incised or painted them, offer a comparatively rare means for scholars to approach the emotional and sensory lives of ancient individuals, of variegated affective states, social statuses and intents, who used the synagogues they visited in diverse ways.75 Acts of carving and depositing writing, in associated spaces, mediated their writers’ and commissioners’ efforts to exact consummate agency over their environments. They used their writings to stridently re-purpose the spaces surrounding them, communicating with (if not manipulating) the forces and spaces of Jewish communities, angels, and the Divine. 75 Concerning the emotional states and expressions of practitioners of ritual power, often on behalf of their agents, see Bronislaw Malinowski, “Magic, Science, and Religion,” in Magic, Science, and Religion and Other Essays (Boston, MA: Beacon Press; Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1948). 52–53. I gratefully thank David Frankfurter for his perspective on this point and his suggestion to review Malinowski’s approach.

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Cited Sources Ahipaz, Nili. “Floor Foundation Coin Deposits in Byzantine-Period Synagogues.” Pages 63–70 in Hoards and Genizot as Chapters in History. Edited by Ofra Guri-Rimon. Catalogue no. 33. Haifa: Hecht Museum, University of Haifa, 2013. Aviam, Mordechai. “Ancient Synagogues at Bar‘am.” Pages 155–78 in Judaism in Late Antiquity, Part Three, Where We Stand: Issues and Debates in Ancient Judaism, Volume Four: The Special Problem of the Synagogue. Edited by Alan J. Avery-Peck and Jacob Neusner. HdO I.55. Leiden: Brill, 2001. Baird, Jennifer D., “The Graffiti of Dura Europos: A Contextual Approach.” Pages 49–69 in Ancient Graffiti in Context. Edited by Jennifer D. Baird and Claire Taylor. New York: Routledge, 2011. Baur, P. V.C., M. I. Rostovtzeff, and A. R. Bellinger. The Excavations at Dura-Europos: Conducted by Yale University and the French Academy of Inscriptions and Letters. Preliminary Report of the Fourth Season of Work. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1933. Benefiel, Rebecca. “Dialogues of Graffiti in the House of Maius Castricius at Pompeii.” AJA 114 (2010): 59–101. Benefiel, Rebecca. “The Culture of Writing in Dometic Spaces at Pompeii.” Pages 80–122 in Inscriptions in the Private Sphere in the Greco-Roman World. Edited by Rebecca Benefiel and Peter Keegan. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Bohak, Gideon. Ancient Jewish Magic: A History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Bohak, Gideon. “The Jewish Magical Tradition from Late Antique Palestine to the Cairo Geniza.” Pages 321–39 in From Hellenism to Islam: Cultural and Religious Change in the Roman Near East. Edited by Hannah Cotton et al. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Branham, Joan. “Vicarious Sacrality: Temple Space in Ancient Synagogues.” Pages 319–45 in vol. 2 of Ancient Synagogues: Historical Analysis and Archaeological Discovery. Edited by Dan Urman and Paul V. M. Flesher. StPB 47. Leiden: Brill, 1995. Cohen, Shaye J. D. “Pagan and Christian Evidence on the Early Synagogue.” Pages 159–81 in The Synagogue in Late Antiquity. Edited by Lee I. Levine. Philadelphia: ASOR, 1987. Cohen, Shaye J. D. “The Temple and the Synagogue.” Pages 151–81 in The Temple in Antiquity. Edited by Truman G. Madsen. Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 1984. Cox Miller, Patricia. “In Praise of Nonsense.” Pages 481–505 in World Spirituality, Vol. 15: Classical Mediterranean Spirituality. Edited by A. Hilary Armstrong. New York: Crossroads / Continuum Press, 1986. Du Mesnil du Buisson, Robert. Les Peintures de la Synagogue de Doura-Europos, 245–246 après J.-C. Rome: Scripta Pontificii Instituti Biblici, 1939. Sukenik, Eleazar L. The Synagogue of Dura Europos and Its Frescoes. Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 1948. Faraone, Christopher, and Joseph L. Rife. “A Greek Curse against a Thief from the Koutsongila Cemetery at Roman Kenchrai.” ZPE 160 (2007): 141–57. Fine, Steven, ed. Sacred Realm: The Emergence of the Synagogue in the Ancient World. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Francis, Eric David. “Mithraic Graffiti from Dura Europos.” Pages 424–45 in Mithraic Studies: Proceedings of the First International Congress of Mithraic Studies. Edited by John R. Hinnells. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1975. Frankfurter, David. “Spell for a Man to Obtain a Male Lover.” Page 177 in Ancient Christian Magic: Coptic Texts of Ritual Power. Edited by Marvin Meyer and Richard Smith. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. Frankfurter, David. “The Magic of Writing and the Writing of Magic: The Power of the Word in Egyptian and Greek Traditions.” Helios 21 (1994): 189–221.

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Gager, John. Curse Tablets and Binding Spells in the Ancient World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. Gaster, Moses. The Sword of Moses. London: Nutt, 1896. Gell, Alfred. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Clarendon, 1998. Goldman, Bernard. The Sacred Portal: A Primary Symbol in Jewish Art. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1966. Guri-Rimon, Ofra, ed. Hoards and Genizot as Chapters in History. Catalogue no. 33. Haifa: Hecht Museum, University of Haifa, 2013. Harari, Yuval. Harba de-Moshe (The Sword of Moses): A New Edition and a Study. Jerusalem: Academon, 1997. Harari, Yuval. “What is a Magical Text? Methodological Reflections Aimed at Redefining Jewish Magic.” Pages 91–124 in Officina Magica: Essays on the Practice of Magic in Antiquity. Edited by Shaul Shaked. Leiden: Brill, 2005. Ilan, Zvi. “Meroth.” NEAEHL 3: 1028–31. Ilan, Zvi. 1995. “The Synagogue and Study House at Meroth.” Pages 256–88 in vol. 1 of Ancient Synagogues: Historical Analysis and Archaeological Discovery. Edited by Dan Urman and Paul V. M. Flesher. StPB 47. Leiden: Brill, 1995. Ilan, Zvi and Emanuel Damati. “Excavations: Kh. Marus, 1983 and 1984.” IEJ 34 (1984): 256–58. Ilan, Zvi and Emanuel Damati, ed. Meroth the Ancient Jewish Village. Tel Aviv: Society for the Protection of Nature, 1987. Ilan, Zvi. “The Synagogue and ‘Beth Midrash’ of Meroth.” Pages 21–42 in Ancient Synagogues in Israel: Third to Seventh Centuries CE. Proceedings of Symposium, University of Haifa, May 1987. Edited by Rachel Hachlili, BARIS 499. Oxford: Archaeopress, 1989. Jeffers, Ann. Magic and Divination in Ancient Palestine and Syria. Leiden: Brill, 1996. Kraeling, Carl H., and C. Bradford Welles. The Christian Building: The Excavations at Dura ­Europos, Final Report 8/2. New Haven: Dura-Europos Publications, 1967. Kraeling, Carl. The Synagogue: The Excavations at Dura Europos: Final Report 8/1. 2nd ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979. Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Translated by D. Smith. Oxford: Blackwell, 2012. Levine, Lee I. Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years. 2nd ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005. Lifshitz, Baruch. Donateurs et Fondateurs dans les Synagogues Juives: répertoire des dédicaces grecques relatives à la construction et à la réfection des synagogues. Paris: Gabalda, 1967. Magness, Jodi. “The Date of the Sardis Synagogue According to the Numismatic Evidence.” AJA 109 (2005): 443–75. Malinowski, Bronislaw. “Magic, Science, and Religion.” Pages 1–67 in Magic, Science, and Religion and Other Essays. Edited by Bronislaw Malinowski. Boston, MA: Beacon Press; Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1948. Mayor, Adrienne, J. Colarusso, and D. Saunders. “Making Sense of Nonsense Inscriptions Associated with Amazons and Scythians on Athenian Vases.” Hesperia 83 (2014): 447–93. Milnor, Kristina. Graffiti and the Literary Landscape in Roman Pompeii. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Mock, Leo. “The Synagogue as a Stage for Magic.” Zutot 3 (2003): 3–14. Münz-Manor, Ophir. “Narrating Salvation: Verbal Sacrifices in Late Antique Liturgical Poetry in Late Antique Liturgical Poetry.” Pages 154–66 in Jews, Christians, and the Roman Empire: The Poetics of Power in Late Antiquity. Edited by Nathalie E. Dohrmann and Annette Yoshiko Reed. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013. Naveh, Joseph. “A Good Conquest. One of a Kind. An Ancient Amulet from Galilee.” Tarbiz 54 (1954): 367–82 (Hebrew). Naveh, Joseph. “An Aramaic Amulet from Bar‘am.” Pages 179–85 in Judaism in Late Antiquity, Part Three, Where We Stand: Issues and Debates in Ancient Judaism, Volume Four: The Spe-

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cial Problem of the Synagogue. Edited by Alan J. Avery-Peck and Jacob Neusner. HdO I.55. Leiden: Brill, 2001. Naveh, Joseph. “Graffiti and Dedications.” BASOR 235 (1979): 27–30. Naveh, Joseph. “Lamp Inscriptions and Inverted Writing.” IEJ 38 (1988): 36–43. Naveh, Joseph and Shaul Shaked. Magic Spells and Formulae: Aramaic Incantations of Late Antiquity. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1993. Naveh, Joseph and Shaul Shaked. Amulets and Magic Bowls: Aramaic Incantations of Late ­Antiquity. 3rd ed. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1998. Noy, David, and Hanswulf Bloedhorn, ed. Inscriptiones Judaicae Orientis. Vol. III: Syria and ­Cyprus. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004. [IJO III]. Rostovtzeff, Michael Ivanovitch, Clark Hopkins, Carl H. Kraeling, Arthur Darby Nock, E. T. Silk, Henry T. Rowell, P. V.C. Baur, C. Bradford Welles, Alfred R. Bellinger, and Susan M. Hopkins, ed. The Excavations at Dura-Europos; Preliminary Report of the 5th Season of Work October 1931–March 1932: Conducted by Yale University and the French Academy of Inscriptions and Letters. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1934. Roth-Gerson, Lea. The Greek Inscriptions from the Synagogues of Eretz Yisrael. Jerusalem: Yad Ben Zvi, 1987. (Hebrew). Roth-Gerson, Lea. The Jews of Syria as Reflected in the Greek Inscriptions. Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar Le-toldot Yiśra’el, 2001. (Hebrew). Satlow, Michael. “Giving for a Return: Jewish Votive Offerings in Late Antiquity.” Pages 91–105 in Religion and the Self in Antiquity. Edited by David Brakke, Michael Satlow, and Steve Weitzman. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005. Smith, Jonathan Z. Map is not Territory: Studies in the History of Religions. SJLA 23. Leiden: Brill, 1978. Stern, Karen B. “Harnessing the Sacred: Hidden Writing and ‘Private’ Spaces in Levantine Synagogues.” Pages 213–47 in Inscriptions in the Private Sphere in the Greco-Roman World. Edited by Rebecca Benefiel and Peter Keegan. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Stern, Karen B. “Opening Doors to Jewish Life in Syro-Mesopotamian Dura Europos.” Journal of Ancient Judaism 9 (2018): 178–200. Stern, Karen B. “Tagging Sacred Space in the Dura Europos Synagogue.” JRA 25 (2012): 171–94. Stern, Karen B. Writing on the Wall: Graffiti and the Forgotten Jews of Antiquity. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018. Tambiah, S. J. “The Magical Power of Words.” Man 3 (1968): 175–208. Wilburn, Andrew. Materia Magica: The Archaeology of Magic in Roman Egypt, Cyprus, and Spain. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012. Yasin, Ann Marie. Saints and Church Spaces in the Late Antique Mediterranean: Architecture, Cult and Community. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

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Meals in the Synagogue Reassessing the Evidence

Late antique synagogue buildings facilitated the public reading of the Torah and, disputably after 70 CE, public prayer as well. Moreover, synagogue buildings hosted communal affairs and social activities.1 For at least some synagogues, housing travellers is clearly attested as well.2 However, what about the synagogue as a location for communal meals? Here the picture remains rather unclear. Lee Levine deals with the issue in his discussions of architecture and the synagogue’s function as a community centre. In this essay, we review the evidence available and relate this to the rabbinic ban on eating and drinking in the synagogue. In doing so, we will assess the relation between synagogue architecture and the spatial rhetoric of the textual evidence. First, we will address material and textual evidence on meals in synagogues, to be followed by reviewing material evidence for the existence of upper rooms in synagogues. After discussion of the textual evidence for upper rooms, we make a proposal for spatial differentiation in reading the rabbinic ban. In effect, we propose that accommodating meals was one possible function of the synagogue’s upper room.

1. Meals in Synagogues 1.1 Meals in Synagogues: Material Evidence The archaeological record suggests that some synagogues housed facilities for cooking and dining, although it is unclear by whom and for what purposes these facilities were used. The Ostia synagogue, in its first building phase from the late 1 Cf. Lee I. Levine, “The First Century Synagogue in Historical Perspective,” in The Ancient Synagogue from Its Origins until 200 C. E.: Papers Presented at an International Conference at Lund University, October 14–17, 2001, ed. Birger Olsson and Magnus Zetterholm, CBNTS 39 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2003), 1–24. Levine offers a summary of early synagogues which, albeit partly, may apply to later synagogues as well. 2 Zeev Safrai, “The Communal Functions of the Synagogue in the Land of Israel in the Rabbinic Period,” in Ancient Synagogues: Historical Analysis and Archaeological Discovery, ed. Dan Urman and Paul V. M. Flesher, StPB 47 (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 1:181–204; Lee I. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 140–45, 194–95, 316–19, 381–411.

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first century CE, features a room with benches, arguably functioning as a triclinium. In its second phase, two rooms were probably used for dining, and kitchen facilities were also found, amongst which were an oven and storage vessels, both found in situ.3 The Jericho building identified by Ehud Netzer as a Hasmonean synagogue shows a beautiful triclinium in an added room at the western wall and with an open view on the central hall. The identification as a synagogue is disputed, however, and mainly rests on the parallels in spatial structure with the Gamla synagogue.4 These parallels are not convincing, and other functions such as a convening hall or a villa have been argued as well.5 Actually, Ostia provides the only evidence we have of a physically identified, separate dining room in a synagogue complex.6 We may, however, include inscriptions referring to dining spaces as part of the synagogue complex: the first century CE Theodotos inscription mentions “a guest room, the chambers and the water fittings, as an inn for those in need from foreign parts,” which must have included dining facilities as well.7 The Stobi inscription, belonging to the earlier phase of this diaspora synagogue and probably dating to the second century CE, mentions a triclinium as part of the building complex donated to the community.8 A triclinium is mentioned as well 3 Foerster mentions two rooms, “apparently a kitchen with an oven and storage vessels in situ, and the other larger, with benches along the southern and eastern wall,” see Gideon Foerster, “A Survey of Ancient Diaspora Synagogues,” in Ancient Synagogues Revealed, ed. Lee I. Levine (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1981), 170. However, a kitchen or two dining rooms are not mentioned in Anders Runesson, Donald D. Binder, and Birger Olsson, The Ancient Synagogue from its Origins to 200 C. E.: A Source Book, AJEC 72 (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 225–30. On the problems of dating the Ostia synagogue, see Lee I. Levine, “The First Century Synagogue: Critical Reassessments and Assessments of the Critical,” in Religion and Society in Roman Palestine: Old Questions, New Approaches, ed. Douglas R. Edwards (New York: Routledge, 2004), 89–90. 4 Ehud Netzer, “A Synagogue from the Hasmonean Period Recently Exposed in the Western Plain of Jericho,” IEJ 49 (1999): 219. It houses a triangle shaped kitchen and a triclinium, see Netzer, “Synagogue,” 213. 5 Yehudah Rapuano, “The Hasmonean Period ‘Synagogue’ at Jericho and the ‘Council Chamber’ Building at Qumran,” IEJ 51 (2001): 48–56. Cf. Levine, “Critical Reassessments,” ­87–89; Eric M. Meyers and Mark A. Chancey, Alexander to Constantine: Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, Vol. 3, Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 216. 6 Note that contrary to the Jericho building, the dining facility of Ostia is separated by a wall from the central aula. 7 Walter Ameling et al., ed., Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaeae / Palaestinae, Volume II: C ­ aesarea and the Middle Coast, 1121–2160 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011), 1404. The translation in John Kloppenborg, “The Theodotos Synagogue Inscription,” in Jesus and Archaeology, ed. James H. Charlesworth (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 253, and note 57 for the translation of δῶματα. Kloppenborg reassesses and confirms a pre-70 CE dating. 8 Hannah M. Cotton et al., ed., Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaeae / Palaestinae, Volume I: Jerusalem, Part 1: 1–704 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011), 694. Cf. Foerster, “Survey,” 168. Habas argues for a dating in 163/164 CE, see Ephrat Habas, “The Dedication of Polycharmos from Stobi: Problems of Dating and Interpretation,” JQR 92 (2001): 41–78.

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in a synagogue mosaic found in Caesarea and dated to the fifth or sixth century CE; the mosaic has a Greek inscription mentioning donation by an archisynagogue named “Berylus son of Iustus.”9 An inscription found in the Susiya synagogue mentions a banquet, probably held on one of the premises.10 An inscription found in the Qasrin synagogue mentions “Uzi made this revua.” Urman interprets this as referring to a spatial facility for reclining, but it should be noted that the rabbinic texts discussed in this connection mention rabbinic academies, not synagogues.11 Finally, both the Ostia evidence and the Theodotos inscription clearly indicate that dining facilities were a long existing function of synagogue complexes.12 So judging from material finds, one gets the impression that dining may actually have been a practice in at least some synagogue complexes, and for a long period of time. Moreover, differentiating the dining room as a separate space suggests that this function did not take place in the nave or the central hall of the synagogue building.

1.2 Meals in Synagogues: Textual References Remarkably, in light of the material evidence discussed, eating in a synagogue is not explicitly attested in first-century CE literary sources, although some texts (see further) may allude to it.13 Amoraic rabbinic sources, on the contrary, suggest 9 Ameling et al., Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaeae / Palaestinae II, 1140. The text mentions: “Beryllos, son of Justus, administrator and head of the synagogue, laid the mosaic floor of the triclinium with his own funds.” Cf. Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 318; Marylinda Govaars, Marie Spiro, and L. Michael White, Field O: The “Synagogue” Site, The Joint Expedition to Caesarea Maritima Excavation Report 9 (Boston: ASOR, 2009) question the identification as a synagogue. However, Ameling et al., Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaeae / Palaestinae II, 58–59 accept a synagogue housing common meals. 10 Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 394. 11 Dan Urman, “The Lower Golan,” in Ancient Synagogues: Historical Analysis and Archaeological Discovery, ed. Dan Urman and Paul V. M. Flesher, StPB 47 (Leiden: Brill), 2:469–72. Cf. Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 193–95, 316–19. Eric M. Meyers, Alf T. Kraabel, and James F. Strange, Ancient Synagogue Excavations at Khirbet Shema‘, Upper Galilee, Israel 1970–1972, AASOR 42 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1976), 85–87, speak about the North Building at Khirbet Shema‘, also mentioning the side rooms at ‘En Gedi, which have been identified by archaeologists as guesthouses. Cf. Gill P. Klein, “Torah in Triclinia: The Rabbinic Banquet and the Significance of Architecture,” JQR 102 (2012): 341, n. 51. 12 A similar argument is developed by Matthew J. Martin, “Communal Meals in the Late Antique Synagogue,” in Feast, Fast or Famine: Food and Drinks in Byzantium, ed. Wendy Mayer and Silke Trzcionka (Brisbane: Australian Association for Byzantine Studies, 2005), 137–40. 13 Levine’s reference to Josephus for meals in the synagogues of Sardis and Delos (A. J. 14:214; 16:164) is not convincing. Both passages mention Julius Caesar’s decrees on the Jews of Delos and Asia Minor strengthening their right to raise money for “common meals” and perform their sacred rites, normally forbidden for foreign collegia, but he nowhere explicitly mentions that these meals took place in synagogues. Cf. Andrew R. Krause, Synagogues in the Works of Flavius

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that eating in the synagogue was regular practice. Festive meals could be held in the synagogue on the occasion of the New Moon or the night of the Sabbath, by associations (ḥavurot) or other meal communities of the local community.14 The Babylonian Talmud mentions a synagogue serving as a hostel for travellers.15 In other instances, no specific occasions seem intended, and the reference to the location only serves to introduce a disagreement about legal disputes, e.g. reciting the afternoon prayer.16 A fine example of a synagogue serving diners, probably in its upper rooms, may be provided in a tradition that recounts how “R. Mesha and R. Shmuel bar Rav Yitzhaq were eating in one of the upper rooms of the synagogue (‫)בחדאמן כנישתא עילייתא‬.”17 More compellingly, epigraphic and literary references mention hostels being part of a synagogue complex.18 A number of passages explicitly relate lodging to eating, either of guests or of a synagogue functionary.19 This textual evidence reverberates in the material evidence. In the Stobi inscription the upper chambers are reserved apparently as living quarters for the donor Claudius Tiberius Polycharmos.20 This seems to be the result of the fact that Polycharmos renovated his private home in order to turn it over for public use as a synagogue. It is clear, however, that the upper room could be associated either with lodging or with meals. Interesting in this respect is that the term of the Theodotos inscription (κατάλυμα, “lodging”) recurs in Synoptic narrative traditions on the Last Supper. In Mark 14:14, par. Luke 22:11, Jesus instructs his

Josephus: Rhetoric, Spatiality, and First Century Jewish Institutions, AJEC 97 (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 84–85. 14 y. Pesaḥ. 1:1, 27b; y. Mo‘ed Qat.̣ 2:3, 81b; y. Sanh. 8:2, 26a–b; b. Sanh. 81b; Gen. Rab. 65:15; Lam. Rab., Proem 17. An upper room in a study house is mentioned in y. Sanh. 6:3, 23b. Cf. Safrai, “Common Functions,” 190, 197; Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 316–19, 393–95. 15 b. Pesaḥ. 100b/101a. 16 y. Mo‘ed Qat.̣ 2:3, 81b (R. Yochanan); y. Ber. 2:9, 5d; and parallel y. Šabb. 1:2, 3a; priests in y. Ber. 3:1, 6a; y. Naz. 7:1, 56a; compare the general reference Lam. Rab., Proem 17 (p. 14); on this last source, see Günter Stemberger, Einleitung in Talmud und Midrasch, 9th ed. (Munich: Beck, 2011), 310, 317. We leave out the arguably late source Otsar Midrashim Eisenstein 515. 17 y. Šabb 1:2, 3a; parallel y. Ber. 2:3, 5d. The Aramaic is elusive and may mean “upper synagogue,” but see n. 40 below. 18 See y. Meg. 3, 74a; Gen. Rab. 92:6, and 65:16. Cf. Safrai, “Common Functions,” 190–91. An inscription from Kefar Rama may mention a hostel, Andrei M. Sivertsev, Households, Sects, and the Origins of Rabbinic Judaism, JSJSup 102 (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 167. However, this is disputed, cf. Safrai, “Common Functions,” 190 n. 34; Meyers, Kraabel, and Strange, Khirbet Shema‘, 85–87. On hostels and synagogues, see Ben-Zion Rosenfeld and Joseph Menirav, Markets and Marketing in Roman Palestine, JSJSup 99 (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 223–26. 19 b. Pesaḥ. 100b–101a; t. Ma‘aś. 2:20; b. ‘Erub., 55b, 74a. See also Rosenfeld and Menirav, Markets and Marketing, 225–26. 20 Cotton et al., ed., Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaeae / Palaestinae I:1, 694: “[I] have decided, or provided [that]) the complete disposition of all the upper rooms and the(ir) (full) ownership (τὴν δὲ ἐξουςίαν τῶν ὑπερώων πάντων πάσαν); I, Claudius Tiberius Polycharmos shall have, and (my) heirs (as well), for all life. The translation follows Habas, “Polycharmos,” 45.

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disciples to find lodging to eat the Passover meal. The disciples are to ask for a lodging (κατάλυμα), and are subsequently led to the “upper room” (ἀνάγαιον) of the building.21 The building may have been a lodgment for pilgrims, possibly located in the Essene quarter of the city.22 After Jesus’ death the disciples take their lodging (καταμένοντες, Acts 1:13) and go up in the upper room (εἰς τὸ ὑπερῷον ἀνέβησαν, Acts 1:13) of a house (οἶκος, Acts 2:2), a space identified by tradition with a (Jewish-Christian) synagogue.23 Traditions like these suggest that functions such as dining and lodging were restricted to side rooms or upper stories of either private or public buildings.24 In contrast to these references, early rabbinic legal tradition voices a rather massive ban on eating, drinking, and lodging in the synagogue: Synagogues, one does not behave frivolously in them (‫)אין נוהגין בנן קלות ראש‬. One should not go into them on a hot day on account of the heat, or on a cold day because of the cold, or on a rainy day because of the rain. And they do not eat and they do not drink in them, and they do not sleep in them, and they do not take a stroll in them, and they do not derive benefit from them. (t. Meg. 2:18, ed. Lieberman 353).25

The ban mentions frivolous behaviour, eating, drinking, sleeping, and seeking shelter against harsh weather conditions. It is unclear whether we should understand the opening—not behaving frivoulously—as a heading of the ban on seeking shelter mentioned in the following line, or whether not behaving frivolously constitutes the general principle governing all of the subsequent rules listed in this baraita. In any case, the ban on eating etc. is mentioned with the copula “and”, which somehow distinguishes this rule from the foregoing.26

21 Luke differentiates between κατάλυμα (compare Luke 2:7) and “inn” (πανδοχεῑον), as mentioned in the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:34). 22 Brian Capper, “Essene Community Houses and Jesus’ Early Community,” in Jesus and Archaeology, ed. James H. Charlesworth (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 472–502 23 Bargil Pixner, “Mount Zion, Jesus, and Archaeology,” in Jesus and Archaeology, ed. James H. Charlesworth (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 313–15; Jerome Murphy O’Connor, “The Cenacle: Topographical Setting for Acts 2:44–45,” in The Book of Acts in its First Palestinian Setting, ed. Richard Bauckham, vol. 1 of The Book of Acts in Its First Century Setting, ed. Bruce W. Winter (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 304–21. 24 Safrai, “Common Functions,” 191. Cf. Rosenfeld and Menirav, Markets and Marketing, 225; Kloppenborg, “Theodotos Synagogue Inscription,” 252–53. A reference from Acts 20:7–11, where Paul ascends an upper room where he has dinner and where he teaches the local community, is not discussed by Levine and others but may be added here, provided the scene took place in a synagogue. Given the fact that the house is not named after a family, like elsewhere in Acts, this reading is feasible. 25 Cf. y. Meg. 3:4, 4a; b. Meg. 28a–b; cf. also t. Ma‘aś. 2:20. Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 193–95, 393–95. 26 See on this Saul Lieberman, Tosephta Ki-fshutah, A Comprehensive Commentary on the Tosephta (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1955–88), 1162.

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The intended functions of the space are also mentioned: But they read (Scripture) in them, learn in them and expound in them. A public lamentation is made in them. R. Yehuda said: in what circumstances? When they are in service. But when they are destroyed, they leave them and grow grass in them because of anguish.

Reading scripture, learning and teaching, as well as publicly lamenting a dead person are the allowed and central functions of the synagogue. It can hardly offer an extensive list of all possible functions.27 The omission of prayer may be reflective of public prayer as part of the Palestinian synagogue liturgy only from the third century CE onwards.28 However, other functions of the synagogue that are attested by inscriptional evidence, such as dealing with charity and other social or juridical community affairs, are absent as well. This suggests that the ban focusses on those elements that were religiously sensitive because they might touch on the sacred status of the public parts of the synagogue.29 Could such rhetoric be implied by the ban? Its focus on the religious status of public physical space is underlined in the gloss of R. Yehuda, pupil of R. Akiva and a mid-second century CE teacher.30 His differentiation between standing and ruined buildings underlines the rhetoric of the ban as regulating public dealing with the building or its remains. Again, usage of the public parts of the building should respect their sacred status. The Yerushalmi, however, suggests that the activities discussed are examples of frivolous behaviour.31 It understands the ban as referring to etiquette while being inside a synagogue, rather than regulating the public use of the building. It moreover extends this etiquette, followed in this respect by some manuscripts of the Babylonian Talmud, to the Beith Hamidrash, the rabbinic Academy.32 The addition of “Academy” reflects its development as a religious institution in competition with the synagogue.

27 Lieberman, Tosephta Ki-fshutah, 1163, comments the ban on deriving profit from them as referring to gaining public standing by donating or maintaining the building. 28 Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 378. 29 Martin, “Communal Meals,” 140, refutes this option since “there is no such specificity in the rabbinic statement.” 30 This teacher has more rulings on the public status of the synagogue, cf. Habas, “Polycharmos,” 67–78. 31 Some commentators rather see “talking” as an example of frivolousness, cf. Lieberman, Tosephta Ki-fshutah, 1162. 32 Lieberman, Tosephta Ki-fshutah, 1163, on not sleeping in the academy in the Babylonian versions.

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1.3 No Meals in the Synagogue? The Tannaitic ban on eating and drinking poses a problem, as Levine admits, in understanding the practice of regular meals as taking place in synagogues. Levine suggests three possibilities to assess the ban in light of the opposing material and textual evidence.33 First, the ban was early, and the practice of eating evolved in later generations. This explanation, however, lacks any textual underpinning or reverberation in the material evidence, as we have seen. A second explanation assumes that the rabbinic ban was trying to curtail general practice, and was not very successful in doing so. This option presupposes a rift between the rabbis as a rather marginal elite and the synagogue as reflective of “common Judaism.”34 Scholars recently have argued that the influence of the rabbis on synagogue practices was rather ephemeral until (late) Talmudic times.35 However, if this were to be the case for the ban on eating and drinking in the synagogue, one wonders why the ban would not have received some critical appraisal. Moreover, if the ban was issued, at least the rabbis would be narrated as complying with it, and others criticized for not doing so. However, not only is any comment lacking, Palestinian narratives on eating and drinking in the synagogue criticize specific etiquette, but not the location as such. A good example may be the tale on a company of servants who had dinner in the synagogue every Friday evening, and were throwing bones to a scribal teacher (safra)  present there as well.36 The narrative stresses that the poor fellow receives award, for one of the servants passes his possessions to the teacher when the servant dies, on account of the fact that he could trust only

33 Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 394. 34 Martin, “Communal Meals” argues for this option. For “common Judaism” after 70 CE, see excellent discussion of the literature and the social tensions between rival elites and the population in Anders Runesson, “Rethinking Early Jewish-Christian Relations: Matthean Community History as Pharisaic intra-Group Conflict,” JBL 127 (2008): 95–132. 35 Cf. David Levine, “Between Leadership and Marginality: Models for Evaluating the Role of the Rabbis on the Early Centuries CE,” in Jewish Identities in Antiquity: Studies in Memory of Menahem Stern, ed. Lee I. Levine and Daniel R. Schwartz, TSAJ 130 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 205: “Indeed, the synagogue of the first centuries CE can best be seen as an institution in which rabbinic presence is visible but with undefined and incomplete authority.” Marginality of the rabbinic movement is gaining dominancy, see Hayim Lapin, “The Rabbinic Movement,” in The Cambridge Guide to Jewish History, Religion, and Culture, ed. Judith. R. Baskin and Kenneth Seeskin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 58–84. For a critical assessment, see Miller, “Epigraphical Rabbis, Helios and Psalm 19: Were the Synagogues of Archaeology and the Synagogues of the Sages One and the Same?” JQR 94 (2004): 27–76. For a response, see Hayim Lapin, “Epigraphical Rabbis: A Reconsideration,” JQR 101 (2011): 311–46. Clearly, this debate is far from being settled. 36 Gen. Rab. 65:16 (ed. Theodor / Albeck 728). See discussion in Rosenfeld and Menirav, Markets and Marketing, 225–26.

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this pious person instead of his rogue friends.37 The behaviour of these crude servants is not applauded, but the narrative does not criticize them for eating in the synagogue as such. The problem is hurling bones at a person present there, thus desecrating the solemn atmosphere of the Sabbath. The third explanation Levine offers limits the rabbinic ban as aimed at the heart of the public synagogue, the space invested with the highest level of sanctity: the assembly hall where the Torah scrolls were read and which later came to host the Holy Ark, housing the Torah scroll (m. Meg. 3:1).38 However, this proposal has not been assessed so far. Indeed, if synagogues did house communal meals, where would these be located? As we saw, some inscriptions mention a triclinium as a separate part of a synagogue complex. Synagogue complexes feature side-chambers or, like the Susiya and Ostia synagogues, a room with benches, possibly to be used as a triclinium.39 The second option is the upper room, but we lack explicit textual evidence for this possibility.40 What about material evidence?

2. Upper Rooms: Material Evidence In most scholarly research, the existence and functions of second story rooms in a synagogue is discussed in the context of the alleged women’s gallery. The gendered perspective of the discussion may have impeded viewing such spaces in a broader, or even multifunctional, context. Nevertheless, Rachel Hachlili’s discussion may still be very helpful for our purposes as well. She discusses three features that may indicate the existence of upper levels: staircases and the arrangement and sizes of

37 Some manuscripts (a.o. MS Vatican 30) and the printed edition reads a band of rogues (‫)פריצין‬, Theodor prefers the minority reading and considers ‫ פריטין‬to be derived from Greek ὑπηρέτης, “servant.” MS Vatican 60, not available for Theodor and Albeck, lacks this part. Rosenfeld and Menirav, Markets and Marketing, 226 interpret ‫ פריצין‬as referring to the “uneducated,” and the story as telling about “workers” housed for several days in the synagogue to do their job. These are harassing the scribe-teacher who, at Sabbath, uses the same premises for teaching his pupils. 38 According to Eric M. Meyers, “The Torah Shrine in the Antique Synagogue: Another Look at the Evidence,” JSQ 4 (1997): 303–38, the Ark became an architectural feature in the third century CE. 39 For discussions of the annexes, see Foerster, “Survey”; Rosenfeld and Menirav, Markets and Marketing, 223–29. 40 Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 342–43, refers to y. Ber. 2:9, 5d; parallel y. Šabb. 1:5, 3a. Levine’s reading of Aramaic knishta alyata (‫ )כנישתא עלייתה‬as “in one of the upper rooms of a synagogue” is not shared by all, compare Frowald G. Hüttenmeister, Shabbat, Übersetzung des Talmud Yerushalmi 2/1 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004): “in einer der oberen Synagogen zusammensaßen und aßen;” Jacob Neusner, ed., The Jerusalem Talmud: A Translation and Commentary (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2010): “were sitting and eating in one of the upper synagogues.”

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columns.41 We will follow her discussion, focusing on the material evidence and without being forced to pigeonhole space into any function yet.

2.1 Arrangement and Size of Columns Both the arrangement and the different sizes of the columns may indicate the existence of second stories and upper rooms, but are not decisive evidence. The arrangement of pillars along two or three sides of the interior facilitates the construction of an “open gallery above the nave” with an unobstructed view of the “center of the main hall.”42 The spatial separation from and an unobstructed view of the main hall are the main arguments to claim the existence of galleries intended for women.43 However, space does not necessarily indicate function, and, moreover, engineering roof constructions spanning more than four of five meters in width in any case necessitates supporting columns. Further evidence for the existence of upper levels are the remains of columns of different sizes.44 Smaller columns and capitals were found at “most Galilee and Golan synagogues,” and could have formed the colonnades of galleries, according to Hachlili.45 Notable in this context is the Aramaic inscription from Dabbura in the Lower Golan, which reads “Elazar the son of (Ra)bbah made the columns above the arches and beams….” Although this inscription could indeed refer to the “columns of an upper story or gallery,” it is not very specific.46 Often only a limited number of remains of smaller columns are found, which would not have 41 Rachel Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues—Archaeology and Art: New Discoveries and Current Research, HdO 105 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 151–55. 42 Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues, 151. 43 Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues, 154–55. Hachlili herself appears to be undecided on the issue. Chad Spigel, “Reconsidering the Question of Separate Seating in Ancient Synagogues,” JJS 63 (2012): 62–83 argues that there was no “uniform situation where men and women either sat together or sat separately in ancient synagogues” and that therefore “synagogue seating must be considered on a case-by-case basis.” 44 Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues, 154; cf. Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 342. 45 Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues, 154, mentions the synagogues of Arbel, Bar‘am, Capernaum, Khirbet Shema‘, Nabratein, Chorazin, ed-Dikke, ‘En Neshut, Qasrin and Umm el-Qanatir in this context. The remains of smaller columns at these sites are described by Bernadette J. Brooten, Women Leaders in Ancient Synagogues: Inscriptional Evidence and Background Issues, BJS 36 (Chico, TX: Scholars, 1982), 104–23. 46 Text quoted in Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues, 154. For the full text of the inscription, see Brooten, Women Leaders, 119–20. Brooten proposes alternative interpretations suggesting the possibility of “demi-columns built into the wall or the columns of a pseudo-gallery, i. e., a row of columns placed on the architrave for decoration and giving the appearance of a gallery.” She also suggests that the inscription may refer to columns in the porch, given the fact that Palestinian synagogues are normally reconstructed “being trabeated rather than arcuated.” However, she concedes that these interpretations also do not solve “all the architectural problems” and that “it must be concluded that this inscription is possible evidence for a gallery.”

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been sufficient to form an entire gallery. Although such remains could have been removed from the sites for secondary use elsewhere,47 it is questionable whether this suffices to explain the relatively small amount of remains from allegedly upper levels compared to those of the ground levels.48 Furthermore, smaller columns that do not seem to have a place in the ground floor plan of the main hall of a synagogue may have had other functions as well. Smaller columns could be part of other architectural features, such as a portico, narthex, aedicula or courtyard, which would better explain the small number of remains found.49 Another option is that smaller columns were used as part of the construction of a clerestory roof.50 Brooten also mentions that staircases are often lacking at sites where remains of smaller columns have been found. Obviously, this does not exclude the possibility that wooden staircases were used, which would later have decayed.51

2.2 Staircases Remains of stone staircases offer the most compelling evidence for upper levels in synagogues.52 Hachlili mentions nine synagogues where such remains have been found—Horvat Kanaf, ‘En Nashut, Gush Halav, Bar‘am, Hammath Tiberias, Capernaum, Chorazin, Susiya, and Khirbet Shema‘.53 To this list can be added the synagogues at ‘En Gedi, Meroth, Deir ‘Aziz, and, recently, probably Horvat Kur.54 47 Cf. Eric. M. Meyers, Carol L. Meyers, and James F. Strange, Excavations at the Ancient Synagogue of Gush Halav, Meiron Excavation Project 5 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1990), 115–16. They suggest the possibility of looting for secondary use, but also conclude that “generally speaking, columns are the architectural fragments least desirable to looters; they tend to stay where they fall” (112). 48 Brooten, Women Leaders, 122. 49 Brooten, Women Leaders, 109, 113, 122. 50 Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues, 151, 154, referring also to the Gush Halav synagogue. However, Meyers, Meyers, and Strange, Gush Halav, 115–16, abandoned a reconstruction with a clerestory roof in favor of a simple, low-pitched shed roof built upon a wooden superstructure above the ground floor columns since no “second-level stone columns and capitals” were found at the site. 51 Cf. Brooten, Women Leaders, 112–13, 122. See, e.g., Meyers, Meyers, and Strange, Gush Halav, 108, who tentatively suggest wooden steps leading up to the proposed mezzanine level in the Gush Halav synagogue. 52 Cf. Brooten, Women Leaders, 120–21: “The best candidates for having had galleries are those synagogues where traces of staircases have been found. A staircase is at least solid evidence that people ascended to something.” 53 Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues, 152. Brooten, Women Leaders, 111–12, 121–22, discerns only six synagogues, namely Capernaum, ‘En Gedi, Khirbet Susiya, Chorazin, Khirbet Shema‘ and Gamla where the stairs are “the culmination of a road leading up to the synagogue.” 54 For ‘En Gedi, see Steven H. Werlin, Ancient Synagogues of Southern Palestine, 300–800 C. E.: Living on the Edge, BRLA 47 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 91–134 (103, 113). For Meroth, Zvi Ilan, “The Synagogue and Study House at Meroth,” in Ancient Synagogues: Historical Analysis and

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However, the existence of a staircase on a number of these sites is disputed, or their exact purpose is difficult to determine. For at least five synagogues mentioned by Hachlili, no actual remains of staircases could be related to an upper level: Horvat Kanaf and ‘En Nashut,55 Gush Halav,56 Bar‘am,57 and Hammath Tiberias (Synagogue of Severus).58 The synagogues at Capernaum and Chorazin, on the other hand, clearly show evidence of staircases aligning the synagogue wall. Both synagogues feature an Archaeological Discovery, ed. Dan Urman and Paul V. M. Flesher, StPB 47 (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 1:469, 259, 268. For Deir ‘Aziz, Zvi U. Ma‘oz and Chaim Ben-David, “Deir Aziz,” NEAEHL 5: 1691–92. For Horvat Kur, Jürgen K. Zangenberg et al., “Horbat Kur, Kinneret Regional Project—2012, 2013,” Hadashot Arkheologiyot-Excavations and Surveys in Israel 128 (2016), http:// www.hadashot-esi.org.il/report_detail_eng.aspx?id=24903. 55 Zvi U. Ma‘oz, “The Art and Architecture of the Synagogues of the Golan,” in Ancient Synagogues Revealed, ed. Lee I. Levine (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1981), 103, 108, does not mention a staircase at Horvat Kanaf or ‘En Nashut, but assumes a second story based on differences between remains of columns. With regard to Horvat Kanaf he even states: “Only the outline of the plan has been preserved.… The interior plan of the synagogue has not been preserved.” At both sites, there are very few remains that would support the proposal of a gallery or upper story, cf. Marilyn Chiat, Handbook of Synagogue Architecture, BJS 29 (Chico, TX: Scholars, 1982), 265–67, 276. The reconstruction of the synagogue as presented on the Bornblum Eretz Israel Synagogues Website still features a staircase outside the building: http://synagogues. kinneret.ac.il/synagogues/en-nashut/. For a more restrained view, see Chad Spigel, Ancient Synagogue Seating Capacities: Methodology, Analysis and Limits, TSAJ 149 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 191. 56 In the final report, the excavators, in the absence of remains of staircases (except the steps leading up to the northern entrance which open up directly into the sanctuary), propose a wooden stair leading up to a mezzanine level, which they prefer over a reconstruction with a gallery, see Meyers, Meyers, and Strange, Gush Halav, 103–16. Cf. Chiat, Synagogue Architecture, 24–25. 57 At Bar‘am, the staircase was proposed by Heinrich Kohl and Carl Watzinger. However, they marked it with question marks in their reconstruction, since no remains of such a staircase is found at the site. See the discussion in Brooten, Women Leaders, 110–11; Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues, 152. Cf. also Mordechai Aviam, “The Ancient Synagogues at Bar‘am,” in Judaism in Late Antiquity, Part Three, Where We Stand: Issues and Debates in Ancient Judaism. Volume Four: The Special Problem of the Synagogue, ed. Alan J. Avery-Peck and Jacob Neusner, HdO I.55 (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 155–73. Aviam omits the staircase in his reconstruction. 58 Moshe Dothan, “The Synagogue at Hammath-Tiberias,” in Ancient Synagogues Revealed, ed. Lee I. Levine (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1981), 64–65, only mentions the possibility of a staircase having existed in “a room adjoining the northern site of the building,” which could have led up to the roof or an upper story in his Stage IIb. In Stage IIa, this room no longer existed and Dothan conjectures that “access to the roof (or a second story, if there was one) was by way of a small room at the southeastern corner.” However, he makes no mention of actual remains of a staircase and it is not found in the reconstructed plan. The room in the southeast could apparently only be reached through the side room containing the bema. This suggests that if there was an upper level it may not have been publicly accessible. Cf. further Zeev Weiss, “Stratum II Synagogue at Hammath Tiberias: Reconsidering Its Access, Internal Space, and Architecture,” in A Wandering Galilean: Essays in Honour of Seán Freyne, ed. Zuleika Rodgers, with Margaret Daly-Denton and Ann Fitzpatrick McKinley, JSJSup 132 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 321–22.

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annex on the northwest corner. In Capernaum, where the annex is made of black basalt in contrast to the white limestone of the synagogue, there is evidence of an external staircase. Although these stairs are related by some to a gallery, it is possible that they only belonged to the annex.59 The remains of the Chorazin synagogue similarly show stairs between the outside of the northwest annex and the courtyard wall. However, just like at Capernaum it is uncertain what its precise function was.60 In both cases, the staircases located on the outside of the synagogue do suggest having served as a connection with galleries or upper rooms over at least part of the building. At the six other synagogues where remains of staircases were found, these can indeed be related to an upper level belonging to the synagogue itself: Khirbet Shema‘, ‘En Gedi, Khirbet Susiya, Deir ‘Aziz, and Meroth. The situation at Khirbet Shema‘ is unique because the architecture is strongly influenced by the natural surroundings. Here a gallery level is found in the western end of the synagogue, which is built into the side of a hill. On this level, there is an entrance in the western wall and a staircase against the southern wall descends from this level into the main hall. The main hall has an entrance in the northern wall, where an external flight of stairs on the outside leads up to another entrance in this wall on the gallery level.61 59 Donald D. Binder, Into the Temple Courts: The Place of the Synagogues in the Second Temple Period, SBLDS 169 (Atlanta: SBL, 1999), 186–87, indicates some uncertainty in the identification of a staircase. Chiat, Synagogue Architecture, 92, mentions an “external double staircase” on the exterior of the eastern and western sides of the northwest annex. She states that these may have been used to enter the annex, but discards the possibility of a gallery. Similarly, given the lack of remains from a gallery and the narrowness of the stairs, Virgilio Corbo, Stanislao Loffreda and Augusto Spijkerman argue that the “basalt staircase served the basalt structure to which it is attached,” leading up to “an upper level of the storage area,” see Brooten, Women Leaders, 108. The argument that the foundations of the synagogue “appear too weak to support an upper floor” (Chiat, Synagogue Architecture, 92; cf. Sharon L. Mattila, “Where Women Sat in Ancient Synagogues: The Archaeological Evidence in Context,” in Voluntary Associations in the Graeco-Roman World, ed. John S. Kloppenborg and Stephen G. Wilson [London: Routledge, 1996], 269) sounds less convincing. 60 Chiat, Synagogue Architecture, 99, mentions “several steps … preserved between the annex and the courtyard wall,” which “may have formed part of a staircase that led to a gallery.” Zeev Yeivin, The Synagogue at Korazim: The 1962–1964, 1980–1987 Excavations, IAA Reports 10 (Jerusalem: IAA, 2000), 211, suggests that the stairs functioned to access two rooms located on the north–western corner of the synagogue (L508 and 723). Cf. Jodi Magness, “Did Galilee Decline in the Fifth Century?” in Religion, Ethnicity, and Identity in Ancient Galilee, ed. Jürgen Zangenberg, Harold W. Attridge, and Dale B. Martin, WUNT 210 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007), 262–63. Magness states that the synagogue probably featured a clerestory, or “less likely, a second storey with a gallery.” Cf. Yeivin, Synagogue at Korazim, 194–96. 61 Meyers, Kraabel, and Strange, Khirbet Shema‘, 57–58, suggest that the area was intended for women, despite recognizing the serious objections raised against the existence of women’s galleries. Brooten, Women Leaders, 111–12, 121–22 suggests that it served as an “area for storage or some other purpose.” Cf. similarly Mattila, “Where Women Sat,” 269–72.

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The staircase found at ‘En Gedi is located in a small courtyard to the north-west of the synagogue, next to the northern entrance to the narthex. According to the excavators this stairway “ascending to the south … may have led up to a story above the narthex and western aisle, possibly including a women’s gallery.”62 Brooten accepts the possibility of a gallery, but since the stairs are located “among a number of rooms surrounding the synagogue proper” she points out that they “could just as easily have led to the roof or second story of one of the adjoining structures.”63 At the synagogue of Khirbet Susiya remains of two staircases were found. One staircase was located in the southern end of the narthex and led up, according to the excavators, to a “second story which lay above the south wing.” This southern wing ran across the full length of the main hall, and probably rose up to the full height of the synagogue.64 It may have been the case that this level extended over the narthex and perhaps even the western wall. This would have created a gallery on three sides of the synagogue hall with a view of the two bimot located along the northern wall.65 However, the only firm evidence seems to point to a second story above the southern wing.66 Similarly, at Deir ‘Aziz a staircase along the outside of the eastern wall is related by the excavators to a second story gallery.67 The staircase may have been connected with a gallery space above the northern aisle. Although it is possible that another gallery existed over the southern aisle, this does not appear to be likely.68 Meroth shows clear evidence for a gallery in Stage C (620–1200 CE), according to Zvi Ilan. Ilan argues that a gallery was perhaps already present in the first stage of the synagogue (fifth century CE), because “more architectural items were found than are required for a single story.” He suggests that this gallery was added to

62 See Dan Barag, Yosef Porat and Ehud Netzer, “The Synagogue at ‘En-Gedi,” in Ancient Synagogues Revealed, ed. Lee I. Levine (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1981), 119. The authors further note that “the thickness of the piers of the western aisle tends to support this assumption.” Also an Aramaic donative inscription of a later date than the other inscriptions was found mentioning “the upper (or great) step,” but it is not clear if this refers to the stairs in the courtyard, see Chiat, Synagogue Architecture, 223; cf. Brooten, Women Leaders, 118. 63 Brooten, Women Leaders, 121. Cf. Werlin, Ancient Synagogues, 103, 113–14. 64 Shmaryahu Gutman, Zvi Yeivin, and Ehud Netzer, “Excavations in the Synagogue at Horvat Susiya,” in Ancient Synagogues Revealed, ed. Lee I. Levine (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1981), 124. 65 Chiat, Synagogue Architecture, 231–32, argues for a gallery above the western wall. Brooten, Women Leaders, 118, mentions that the gallery may also have extended above the narthex. 66 Werlin, Ancient Synagogues, 146, 170–71 does mention that the location of the stairs suggests the possibility of a second story above the central hall, but argues that without an internal colonnade the second story or gallery could only be located above the southern rooms. Cf. Spigel, Synagogue Seating, 312. 67 Ma‘oz and Ben-David, “Deir ‘Aziz,” 1691–93. 68 See Spigel, Synagogue Seating, 186–88.

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increase the capacity of worshippers.69 However, only Stage C seems to preserve clear remains of the top of an external staircase along the western wall, with a landing above the western storeroom, which may have led to a gallery.70 Finally, the Byzantine synagogue of Horvat Kur, still under excavation, shows steps aligning the south wall of the building, either giving access to an adjacent building or consisting of the remains of a staircase leading to a second floor of the building.71

2.3 Summary: Archaeological Evidence for Galleries or Upper Stories From our brief survey of the archaeological remains, it can be concluded that especially the staircases suggest the existence of upper levels, either in the form of galleries or of upper rooms, in ancient synagogues. However, the function of these upper-level spaces remains elusive. While in some cases it is not clear whether the staircases mounted to a room as part of the synagogue itself or as part of an adjacent building, others point to the presence of a gallery or an upper room situated right above the nave of the synagogue. This may be the case especially in Khirbeth Shema‘, ‘En Gedi, Susiya, Deir ‘Aziz, and Meroth, and, possibly, Horvat Kur. Levine argues that such second stories, rather than being balconies or galleries for women, may have served as a facilities for “festive meals” or as “the residence of a hazzan, a place for study, or possibly for litigation.”72 In private homes, upper rooms could serve for storage of food (m. Ma‘aś. 5:2), and this function may have been present in public buildings as well. Upper chambers or stories of synagogues may therefore be related to a cluster of communal functions of the ancient synagogue, possibly involving dining and lodging. Such a proposal seems to fit well with the archaeological situation at Susiya, where staircases lead up to an upper story above the southern wing. Similarly the staircase at ‘En Gedi 69 Ilan, “Synagogue and Study House,” 259. 70 Ilan, “Synagogue and Study House,” 259, 268. However, the remains of the staircase are discussed under Stage B, and it is even suggested that the gallery already existed in the first stage of the building, although the staircase itself is partially constructed with sections of columns from the first stage. The arcuated construction of the western storeroom apparently served to support the staircase, which could indeed suggest that the staircase was already present in an earlier stage. However, it is also possible that the gallery was introduced when the synagogue was remodeled during the seventh century CE, see William Horbury, “Women in the Synagogue,” in The Cambridge History of Judaism, Volume Three: The Early Roman Period, ed. William Horbury, William D. Davies, and John Sturdy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 383 n. 69. 71 Zangenberg et al., “Horbat Kur,” describe that “remains of a narrow platform with three steps were found (W7338). This stepped platform may originally have provided access to a neighboring building or to an upper story of the synagogue.” 72 See Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 343.

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and Deir ‘Aziz could be explained in this manner, and the gallery space at Khirbet Shema may also have had a similar function.73

3. Legal Rhetoric of Spatial Division The existence of upper galleries or other second story spaces such as upper rooms in synagogues may shed new light on the rabbinic ban on eating in the synagogue. As we already suggested, this ban may have been aimed to regulate the public use of the nave of the synagogue, the central hall where the Torah scroll was read in public gatherings.74 The legal rhetoric of the ban suggests a differentiation of space between public and non-public use.75 Indeed, the mentioning of distinct spatial structures as part of a synagogue complex, noted in both the Theodotos and Stobi insciptions, may be not coincidental in this perspective. Theodotos mentions the assembly hall (τὴν συναγωγ[ή]ν), and (καί) the guest room and the chambers (τ[ὸ]ν ξενῶνα, κα[ὶ τὰ] δώματα), and the water fittings, as a lodgement (εἰς κατάλυμα). The Stobi inscription distinguishes parts of the complex as well.76 These rooms represent different spaces within a building complex with different functions. The genre of inscriptions bears weight to the rhetoric as well: besides being a display of commemoration and social honour, legal differentiation is 73 The gallery space at Khirbet Shema‘ measures 3 × 7 m, see Meyers, Kraabel, and Strange, Khirbet Shema‘, 57–58. These dimensions are very similar to those of triclinia found in private houses in for example Pompeii, see Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, St. Paul’s Corinth: Texts and Archaeology, 3rd rev. and exp. ed. (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2002), 178–82. Rabbinic sources give similar dimensions of ca. 5 × 5 m for triclinia, see, e.g., y. Ber. 3, 6d; 8, 12c. Although the upper stories of the other synagogues discussed have different dimensions, these are not unlike the triclinia in private houses in the land of Israel identified by Yizhar Hirschfeld, The Palestinian Dwelling in the Roman-Byzantine Period, SBFCMi 34 (Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing Press, 1995), 260–65. Spigel, Synagogue Seating, 130–32, argues that the limited increase in seating capacity offered by a second level can be explained by changing practices of the community separating women and men. The limited capacity could be explained by suggesting that women did not participate in synagogue worship in equal measure, see Spigel, “Reconsidering,” 78 n. 70. However, the limited capacity could also be explained by reference to other uses as discussed here. 74 The ban is discussed by teachers from the generation of Usha, and probably originated in their generation. This is, however, before the introduction of the Aron HaKodesh in the synagogue’s central hall in the third century, cf. Meyers, “The Torah Shrine.” 75 m. Ned. 5:5: “and what belongs to that city? (Property) such as the (public) space and the (public) bath and the synagogue and the (Torah) shrine and the scrolls.” Translation follows Habas, “Polycharmos,” 67. 76 “[donated?] the rooms for the holy place (τῶ ἁγίῳ τόπῳ) and the triclinium (καὶ τὸ τρίκλεινον) with the tetrastoon out of personal resources….” For the original Greek text and a slightly different translation, see Runesson, Binder, and Olsson, The Ancient Synagogue, 241. For the translation of οἴκους as “rooms” or “chambers” of one building complex, see Habas, “Polycharmos,” 48.

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part of the inscription’s rhetoric, a feature explicit in the stipulation of the Stobi inscription that the upper stories remain in private use and the synagogue may not be used for other purposes.77 Legal rhetoric is echoed as well in reports on the public legal status of a synagogue building in Josephus. In one of Augustus Caesar’s edicts concerning the rights of the Jews, the emperor warns against stealing books or money: “If anyone is caught stealing their holy books or holy monies from a synagogue (σαββατεῖον) or (ἤ) a banqueting hall (ἀνδρώνος) he shall be regarded as sacrilegious, and his property shall be confiscated to the public treasury of the Romans.”78 Whereas it is debated whether the edict aims at two different spaces in one building, we have seen that inscriptions suggest that synagogue and triclinium or upper room could be parts of one architectural ensemble. Rabbinic law likewise perceives different spaces within a building, either public or private ones. Legal rulings on damages distinguish upper rooms from other parts of the house. In cases of damage or issues of restitution, the obligations of the owner of the house and owner of the upper room are stipulated by differentiating the stones and beams originating in the two spaces.79 Moreover, the term “house” in a legal sense does not include by necessity the upper room, as becomes clear from a dispute on vows: If a man vowed not to enter the house, he is permitted to enter the upper room. So R. Meir. But the Sages say: An upper room is included in the term “house.” But if a man vowed not to enter the upper room he is permitted to enter the house. (m. Ned. 7:4)

Vows and oaths, under specific circumstances, constitute a legal state of affairs. The sages dispute whether the utterance “house” implies the upper room as well. The upper room differs from “house,” according to R. Meir, while the majority of the sages see it as included in the term “house.” Architecture offers a simple solution to understand the debate: R. Meir’s differentiation reflects the spatial division of the upper room from the underlying rooms by means of a different, outwardly located, entrance. In his view, house refers to the space functionally designated as such.80 Consequently, a person does not violate his vow not to 77 This legal dimension, combining “Jewish” and Roman legal rules, makes the inscription unique. Habas, “Polycharmos,” 65–70, argues that Polycharmos combines Roman and Jewish legal rulings in stipulating both the status of the synagogue as a public institution and keeping private ownership of the upper rooms. 78 Josephus, A. J. 16:162–165, text follows Runesson, Binder, and Olsson, The Ancient Synagogue, 151–52. On Levine’s translation of the two rooms as belonging to a similar building, see Krause, Synagogues, 82, 84–85, criticizing the proposal of Zeitlin to see the two spaces as different buildings. 79 m. B. Meṣ. 10:1–3. 80 “Beith” (‫ )בית‬like in “beith haKnesseth” may also indicate a functional space rather than an architectural ensemble. This is similar to compounds with “house” such as an olive press installation (‫)בית הבד‬, where “house” is only indicative of an industrial use of a space.

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enter the upper room if he enters the upper room by means of a flight of stairs. The Sages, however, argue that “house” includes all other forms of entrance as well, and deem the whole of the building to be implied in the vow.

3.1 Upper Rooms, Religious Gatherings, and Politics The legal differentiation of space is noticeable in rabbinic regulations of meals as well, and the upper room is explicitly mentioned in this context. The Mishna regulates how several meal companies may share the same building, it but differentiates the adjoining rooms and the upper rooms from the main triclinium: If five companies (ḥavurot) kept the Sabbath in the same triclinium, the House of Shammai say: Eruv is needful for each company. And the House of Hillel say: One eruv suffices for all. But they agree that if some of them occupied chambers or upper rooms, an eruv is needful for each company. (m. ‘Erub. 6:6)

An eruv is a symbolic action that enables one to cross the boundaries between private and public space during the Sabbath.81 Crucial for the eruv is its spatial as well as social rhetoric, combining and distinguishing social groupings either in a neighbourhood or in one building complex, either a private house or a public building.82 The issue between the Houses of Hillel and Shammai is whether meal groups, occupying a triclinium (Hebrew traqlin, ‫)טרקלין‬, each should execute this action, or whether one action suffices for all. Separate “chambers” or “upper rooms” create visual separation, and this signifies the room or upper chamber as a space of a different “household.”83 So, in several contexts, in issues of ownership or property maintenance or in cultic legislation, the “upper room” can be perceived as denoting a distinct legal space.

81 Cf. Catherine Hezser, “‘Privat’ und ‘öffentlich’ im Talmud Yerushalmi in der griechisch-römischen Antike,” in The Talmud Yerushalmi and Graeco-Roman Culture I, ed. Peter Schäfer, TSAJ 71 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998), 423–579. Hezser discusses Palestinian Talmud traditions and shows the importance of the public / private divide in cultic religious legislation. 82 In line with Charlotte E. Fonrobert, “From Separatism to Urbanism: The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Origins of the Rabbinic ’Eruv,” DSD 11 (2004): 71, who focusses on urban neighborhoods, we can qualify the eruv as a ritual “constructing, maintaining and re-enacting a collective identity,” but now in a public building’s space. 83 Klein, “Torah in Triclinia,” 350–51. Visibility may be informing the Hillelites on their lenient decision; cf. m. Pesaḥ. 7:13, where two companies share a triclinium but, in order for them to fulfill their obligation of the seder meal as separate meal communities, they must be separated visually from each other by means of physical posture or the placing of a kettle between them. According to Fonrobert, “From Separatism to Urbanism,” 46, the eruv labels a group as Rabbinic, either in distinction to non-Jews or to other Jews.

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3.2 “Going Up” A connection of the upper room with spaces used for dining is plausible, since the triclinium could be located on the second story, whereas the ground floor was the location of food preparation and the oven.84 Whereas the guests are received in a waiting room or vestibule, and are seated on cushions (‫ )ספסלים‬and chairs (‫)קתדראות‬, the actual meal starts when all guests “come up” (‫ )עלו‬and recline on dining couches. The spatial implications of the verb “come up” (‫)עלו‬, the action before entering the triclinium to recline on the dining couches, may indeed be understood literally in some contexts. In a tradition about the first century Pharisaic Schools of Hillel and Shammai, the Shammaites violently hamper the Hillelites from ascending (‫ )עלו‬the stairs to the upper room where religious policy will be decided; again, it is unclear whether we are dealing here with a private house or a public building.85 Nonetheless, the upper room is a space for religious authorities to exercise their power.86 This is suggested in narratives of religious-political decisions made by companies of sages in times of crisis or political turmoil: R. Yohanan said in the name of R. Shimon ben Yotsedeq: they voted and agreed and taught in the upper room of the House of Nitza in Lydda: “All transgressions in the Torah, if one says to someone: transgress and you will not be killed he should transgress and not be killed, except for idolatry, fornication and bloodshed.”87

These discussions could take place during common meals, as suggested by rabbinic ideology on common meals (m. ’Abot 3:3), and we find several of such decisions located in an upper room gathering of sages.88 These meetings could take place in a private house or in a public building.89 This spatial location of a dinner occurs in both diaspora and Palestinian contexts. Acts 1:13 references a Jerusalem context: “When they had entered the 84 Hirschfeld, The Palestinian Dwelling, 263–64, mentions a fitting report in y. Šabb. 3, 5d: “I was serving the great Rabbi Hiyya and I used to take hot water from the lower story to the upper story and return it to the stove.” For the spatial rhetoric of ‘going up’ in the context of meals, see Eric Ottenheijm, “Prepare yourself: Spatial Rhetoric in Rabbinic and Synoptic Meal Parables,” in A Handbook to Early Christian Meals in the Greco-Roman World, ed. Peter-Ben Smit and Soham Al Suadi (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2019), 75–89. 85 t. Soṭah 13:3; y. Soṭah 9:13, 24b; y. Šabb. 1:4, 3c (MS Leiden 1:7); Sipre Num 115 (ed. Horovitz, p. 124); b. Menaḥ. 41b; b. Šabb. 25; b. Bek. 39b; b. Yebam. 46; b. Qidd. 40a; Sipre Deut 41 (ed. Finkelstein, p. 85). 86 m. Roš Haš. 2:6 (Rabban Gamliel). 87 b. Sanh. 74a; t. Šabb. 15:7; y. Sanh. 3:6, 21b; Sipra Achare Mot on Lev 18:5. 88 Compare m. Šabb. 1:4 (MS Kaufmann 1:7); t. Šabb. 1:16; y. Šabb. 1:4, 3c; b. Šabb. 17a/153b. Cf. Sivertsev, Households, 169–72. 89 Cf. Hezser, “‘Privat’ und ‘öffentlich’,” 567: “Es ist gut vorstellbar, daß Rabbinen, die in insulae wohnten, bei Zusammenkünften vorn mehr als fünf Kollegen versuchten, in geräumigere Unterkünfte auszuweichen.”

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city, they went to the room upstairs (εἰς τὸ ὑπερῷον ἀνέβησαν) where they were staying.” A diaspora context connecting the upper room with dining is offered in Acts 20:11: “Then Paul went upstairs (ἀναβὰς δέ), and after he had broken bread and eaten, he continued to converse with them until dawn; then he left” (Acts 20:11). We already saw the Last Supper taking place in an upper room, and the apostles lodged in an upper room as well (Acts 1:13, ὑπερῷον). In those cases, the division between the vestibule, the location of the initiatory phase of the banquet, and the proper dining hall could be literally vertical, in two-level buildings.90 Nonetheless, in archaeological contexts such as the Ostia synagogue (and Jericho), triclinium and the adjoining rooms were on the same level and separated only by a doorway. In this instance, Semitic “come up” (‫ )עלו‬is idiomatic use for “entering the triclinium”.91

4. Conclusion Rabbinic sources provide contradictory evidence as to dining in synagogues. Some narratives and incidents suggest the synagogue are a space able to host diners as well, either regularly or on specific occasions. The rabbinic ban on eating in its precincts, however, seems to contradict these stories. One way to explain this discrepancy in a historical perspective is to accept the restricted social force of Rabbinic legislation. A second point of departure, taken in this essay, is to view the synagogue as roofing separate, multi-functional rooms, and the ban as addressing only part of the building. Of the annexes related to in literary sources and attested in material culture, in this article we focussed on the upper room or the gallery, as a distinct upper-level space. Material evidence, both inscriptions and architectural remains, offered compelling proof for the existence of second story spaces in late antique synagogues. These could be the ones referred to in rabbinic narratives on eating and lodging in a synagogue. In cultic or ownership issues, upper rooms were perceived by Rabbinic halakha as a distinct space, and this distinction enabled them to host lesser sacral or even mundane functions.92 This differentiation, which may be reflected in inscriptions and historical reports 90 Katharina Galor “Domestic Architecture,” in The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Daily Life in Roman Palestine, ed. Catherine Hezser (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 430. Interestingly, Matt 22:11–12 (εἰσελθών) is rendered in Curetonian Syriac and Syriac Sinaiticus with ‫ܐܠ‬, “go up,” Hebrew ‫עלה‬. For a similar understanding of Hebrew ‫עלה‬, see Klein, “Torah in Triclinia,” 354 n. 93. 91 Klein, “Torah in Triclinia,” 370 n. 153. 92 This conclusion buttresses the proposal of Safrai, “Communal Functions,” 196, that “eating was forbidden in the synagogue proper but permitted in the side rooms.” Cf. Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 194–95. Depending on their location vis-à-vis the main synagogue hall, size and layout, ancillary rooms could also function as side room for women, schoolrooms for children or batei midrashot: cf. Brooten, Women Leaders, 123.

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as well, helps us to assess the rabbinic ban on specific actions performed in a public synagogue building as regulating the proper use of the sacred, public space, while leaving aside the auxiliary rooms and upper rooms. The ban addresses activities that might infringe on the holiness of its most public dimensions, the nave and its immediate surroundings. In this respect, it is no coincidence that the core of the synagogue’s sanctity is defined by the presence and location of the Torah Scrolls (m. Meg. 3:1), and this principle is pivotal for any public buying or selling of the building or its surroundings. Dining halls were by definition exempt and upper rooms could even attain a private status. Given our findings and discussion of the rather scarce evidence, Levine’s hypothesis is plausible and the synagogue complex could host communal dining.93

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Ma‘oz, Zvi U., and Chaim Ben-David. “Deir Aziz.” NEAEHL 5 (2008): 1691–93. Martin, Matthew J. “Communal Meals in the Late Antique Synagogue.” Pages 135–46 in Feast, Fast or Famine: Food and Drinks in Byzantium. Edited by Wendy Mayer and Silke Trzcionka. Brisbane: Australian Association for Byzantine Studies, 2005. Mattila, Sharon L. “Where Women Sat in Ancient Synagogues: The Archaeological Evidence in Context.” Pages 266–86 in Voluntary Associations in the Graeco-Roman World. Edited by John S. Kloppenborg and Stephen G. Wilson. London: Routledge, 1996. Meyers, Eric M. “The Torah Shrine in the Antique Synagogue: Another Look at the Evidence.” JSQ 4 (1997): 303–38. Meyers, Eric M., and Mark A. Chancey. Alexander to Constantine: Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, Vol. 3. Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012. Meyers, Eric M., Alf T. Kraabel, and James F. Strange. Ancient Synagogue Excavations at Khirbet Shema‘, Upper Galilee, Israel 1970–1972. AASOR 42. Durham: Duke University Press, 1976. Meyers, Eric M., Carol L. Meyers, and James F. Strange. Excavations at the Ancient Synagogue of Gush Halav. Meiron Excavation Project 5. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1990. Miller, Stuart. S. “‘Epigraphical’ Rabbis, Helios and Psalm 19: Were the Synagogues of Archaeology and the Synagogues of the Sages one and the same?” JQR 94 (2004): 27–76. Murphy-O’Connor, Jerome. St. Paul’s Corinth: Texts and Archaeology. 3rd rev. and exp. ed. Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2002. Murphy O’Connor, Jerome. “The Cenacle: Topographical Setting for Acts 2:44–45.” Pages 304–21 in The Book of Acts in Its Palestinian Setting. Edited by Richard Bauckham. Vol. 1 of The Book of Acts in Its First Century Setting. Edited by Bruce W. Winter. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995. Netzer, Ehud. “A Synagogue from the Hasmonean Period Recently Exposed in the Western Plain of Jericho.” IEJ 49 (1999): 203–21. Neusner, Jacob, ed., The Jerusalem Talmud: A Translation and Commentary. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2010. Ottenheijm, Eric. “Prepare yourself: Spatial Rhetoric in Rabbinic and Synoptic Meal Parables.” Pages 75–89 in A Handbook to Early Christian Meals in the Greco-Roman World. Edited by Peter-Ben Smit and Soham Al Suadi (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2019). Pixner, Bargil. “Mount Zion, Jesus, and Archaeology.” Pages 309–22 in Jesus and Archaeology. Edited by James H. Charlesworth. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006. Rapuano, Yehudah. “The Hasmonean Period ‘Synagogue’ at Jericho and the ‘Council Chamber Building at Qumran.” IEJ 51 (2001): 48–56. Rosenfeld, Ben-Zion, and Joseph Menirav. Markets and Marketing in Roman Palestine. JSJSup 99. Leiden: Brill, 2005. Runesson, Anders. “Rethinking Early Jewish-Christian Relations: Matthean Community History as Pharisaic intra-Group Conflict.” JBL 127 (2008): 95–132. Runesson, Anders, Donald D. Binder, and Birger Olsson. The Ancient Synagogue from its Origins to 200 C. E.: A Source Book. AJEC 72. Leiden: Brill, 2008. Safrai, Zeev. “The Communal Functions of the Synagogue in the Land of Israel in the Rabbinic Period.” Pages 181–204 in vol. 1 of Ancient Synagogues: Historical Analysis and Archaeological Discovery. Edited by Dan Urman and Paul V. M. Flesher. StPB 47. Leiden: Brill, 1995. Sivertsev, Andrei. M. Households, Sects, and the Origins of Rabbinic Judaism. JSJSup 102. Leiden: Brill, 2005. Spigel, Chad. Ancient Synagogue Seating Capacities: Methodology, Analysis and Limits. TSAJ 149. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012. Spigel, Chad. “Reconsidering the Question of Separate Seating in Ancient Synagogues.” JJS 63 (2012): 62–83. Stemberger, Günter. Einleitung in Talmud und Midrasch. 9th ed. Munich: Beck, 2011. Urman, Dan. “The Lower Golan.” Pages 423–553 in vol. 2 of Ancient Synagogues: Historical

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Analysis and Archaeological Discovery. Edited by Dan Urman and Paul V. M. Flesher. StPB 47. Leiden: Brill, 1995. Weiss, Zeev. “Stratum II Synagogue at Hammath Tiberias: Reconsidering Its Access, Internal Space, and Architecture.” Pages 321–42 in A Wandering Galilean: Essays in Honour of Seán Freyne. Edited by Zuleika Rodgers, with Margaret Daly-Denton and Ann Fitzpatrick McKinley. JSJSup 132. Leiden: Brill, 2009. Werlin, Steven H. Ancient Synagogues of Southern Palestine, 300–800 C. E.: Living on the Edge. BRLA 47. Leiden: Brill, 2015. Yeivin, Zeev. The Synagogue at Korazim: The 1962–1964, 1980–1987 Excavations. IAA Reports 10. Jerusalem: IAA, 2000. Zangenberg, Jürgen K., Stefan Münger, Raimo Hakola, Byron McCane, Tine Rassalle, Damian Kessi, Yinon Shivti’el, James Ballard, Lise den Hertog, Anneke Berkheij-Dol, Frank Neumann, Philip Bes, and Ulla Tervahauta. “Horbat Kur, Kinneret Regional Project—2012, 2013.” Hadashot Arkheologiyot-Excavations and Surveys in Israel 128 (2016): http://www.hadashot-esi. org.il/report_detail_eng.aspx?id=24903.

Raimo Hakola

Galilean Synagogues as Local Responses to Cultural Globalization in Late Antiquity Various excavations conducted in the eastern Galilee during the past decade have unearthed remains of public buildings identified as synagogues. These excavations have brought to light local communities that are mentioned in ancient literary sources only in passing (Huqoq) or that were previously completely unknown (Horvat Kur). Recent discoveries show that these communities thrived in Late Antiquity and decided to invest significantly in the construction, decoration and maintenance of their public buildings. Newly found synagogues add to our knowledge based on the earlier excavated Galilean synagogues (e.g., Capernaum, Chorazin). This new information is welcome because extant literary sources quite rarely provide direct and definite data on the historical, social or economic tapestry of this region that was once regarded as out of the way and insular. Because of the fragmentary nature of the surviving literary and material evidence, it must be asked whether parallel materials from elsewhere or recent theoretical experiments made in the study of the ancient world could prove helpful in clarifying why many Galilean rural communities launched ambitious public building projects. In this essay, I introduce some recent discussions dealing with ancient euergetism (εὐεργετέω, “to do good things”) to shed light on the role of benefactors within local synagogue communities. The term refers to widespread practices of high-status and wealthy individuals distributing part of their wealth to local communities and receiving various tributes. It has often been claimed that ancient Jews adopted a critical attitude towards values related to reciprocal exchanges of gifts and honors. I suggest that the practices among various Jewish synagogue communities may not have been completely opposed to the rest of the Mediterranean world, even though it has been suggested that the role of civic benefaction in many public building projects was more limited than was earlier thought. In addition, I try to situate Galilean synagogues in their wider late antique cultural context by focusing on the interaction between the globalizing Roman world and local Galilean culture. I suggest that recent studies dealing with globalization in the ancient world help us appreciate the continuing use of various Greek mythological themes and scenes in late antique synagogues. These studies indicate that a heightened sense of one’s own distinctiveness and various cross-cultural influences are not mutually exclusive but different aspects of identity formation in an increasingly multicultural world. From this theoretical perspective, I argue

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that Galilean synagogues not only expressed the distinct identities of various local communities but, at the same time, their wish to belong to the wider late antique society and culture.

1. Newly Found Galilean Synagogues The following discussion is prompted by the discoveries of the synagogues in the villages of Wadi Ḥ amam, Horvat Kur, and Huqoq in the area north of Tiberias in the eastern lower Galilee. These newly found synagogues have complemented the repertoire of impressive rural late Roman or early Byzantine synagogues represented earlier in the region by the synagogues of Capernaum and Chorazin. The discovery of these synagogues has corroborated the revisions that have been ongoing in the study of Galilee during the past decades. While many Galilean synagogues were earlier dated to the third or early fourth century, it is now clear that synagogues were built, renovated and in use in the region from the late fourth to the seventh century. The dating of the Wadi Ḥamam synagogue is debated and proposals for the origin of the synagogue with a richly decorated mosaic floor range from the late third to the late fourth century.1 At Horvat Kur, the first synagogue with the mosaic floor depicting the upper parts of the menorah’s branches and an inscription is preliminarily dated to the second half of the fourth century.2 At the time of writing, the architectural layout of this early building is still unclear because the building was replaced by a basilical broadhouse synagogue sometimes in the first half of the fifth century. The broadhouse synagogue was extensively repaired at least once and remained in use until the late sixth or early seventh century. The Huqoq synagogue was constructed in the early fifth century but it is not yet clear when and why the synagogue went out of use.3

1 See Uzi Leibner and Shulamit Miller, “A Figural Mosaic in the Synagogue at Khirbet Wadi Hamam,” JRA 23 (2010): 238–64; Uzi Leibner, “Khirbet Wadi Ḥamam in the Early and Middle Roman Periods,” in Galilee in the Late Second Temple and Mishnaic Periods, Vol. 2: The Archaeological Record from Cities, Towns, and Villages, ed. David A. Fiensy and James Riley Strange (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015), 343–61. Based on the pottery found under the mosaic’s plaster bedding, the excavators date the floor to the late third or early fourth century. Jodi Magness has contested this dating and suggests that the floor dates to the mid or late fourth century; see Jodi Magness, “The Pottery from the Village of Capernaum and the Chronology of Galilean Synagogues,” Tel Aviv 39 (2012): 238–50. 2 Jürgen K. Zangenberg, “The Menorah on the Mosaic Floor from the Late Roman / Early Byzantine Synagogue at Ḥ orvat Kur,” IEJ 67 (2017): 110–26. The dating of the mosaic floor is mainly based on a bronze coin found in the plaster bedding of the mosaic. The coin features Constantine the Great and was minted in 335–337 CE. 3 Jodi Magness et al., “The Huqoq Excavation Project: The 2014–2017 Interim Report,” BASOR 380 (2018): 86–92.

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Even before the recent findings, many scholars had already challenged the early date of the synagogues at Capernaum and at Chorazin and argued that these buildings were built in the fifth century if not later.4 The revised dating has led scholars to reject an earlier view that different types of synagogues in Galilee followed each other chronologically because synagogues representing different types are nowadays commonly dated approximately to the same period.5 The available evidence points to a considerable amount of variety in the layout and decoration of the Galilean synagogues. The recent findings at Wadi Ḥamam, Horvat Kur and Huqoq have added to the range of diverse Galilean synagogues. These synagogues originally had mosaic floors like earlier excavated synagogues at Horvat ‘Ammudim and Meroth, while plastered or flagstone floors were more usual in other excavated late antique Galilean synagogues.6 This shows that decorated mosaic floors belonged to regional artistic variations not only in urban centers but also in more remote villages. Karen Britt and Ra‘anan Boustan have recently concluded that new discoveries, most notably at Huqoq, demonstrate how synagogue mosaics did not follow programmatic and uniform patterns with a limited range of available imagery but provided flexible means of communal self-fashioning.7 The new, later dating of Galilean synagogues, together with the evidence for other Byzantine synagogues in Palestine, has challenged the older view according to which Jewish communities and the Jewish population were in decline from the late fourth century on.8 The growing amount of imported pottery in the eastern 4 For Capernaum, see Stanislao Loffreda, “The Late Chronology of the Synagogue of Capernaum,” IEJ 23 (1973): 37–42; Rachel Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues—Archaeology and Art: New Discoveries and Current Research, HdO 105 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 63. Jodi Magness has proposed a sixth-century date for the Capernaum synagogue; see Magness, “The Pottery,” 238–50. Magness has suggested, on the basis of numismatic and ceramic evidence, that the synagogue in Chorazin should be dated to the fifth century. Jodi Magness, “Did Galilee Decline in the Fifth Century? The Synagogue at Chorazin Reconsidered,” in Religion, Ethnicity, and Identity in Ancient Galilee, ed. Jürgen K. Zangenberg, Harold W. Attridge, and Dale B. Martin, WUNT 210 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007), 259–74. 5 See, with further references, Raimo Hakola, “Galilean Jews and Christians in Context: Spaces Shared and Contested in the Eastern Galilee in Late Antiquity,” in Spaces in Late Antiquity: Cultural, Theological and Archaeological Perspectives, ed. Juliette Day et al. (London: Routledge, 2016), 155–56. See also Jodi Magness’s article in this collection. 6 For a new interpretation of the Meroth synagogue mosaic, see Jodi Magness’s article in this volume. 7 Karen Britt and Ra‘anan Boustan, The Elephant Mosaic Panel in the Synagogue at Huqoq: Official Publication and Initial Interpretations, JRASup 106 (Portsmouth, RI: JRA, 2017), 22. 8 Levine, The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 212. Based on detailed archaeological surveys, Uzi Leibner has revived the view that Jewish settlements and population were in decline in Galilee in the fifth through seventh centuries. See Uzi Leibner, “Settlement Patterns in the Eastern Galilee: Implications Regarding the Transformation of Rabbinic Culture in Late Antiquity,” in Jewish Identities in Antiquity: Studies in Memory of Menahem Stern, ed. Lee I. Levine and Daniel R. Schwartz, TSAJ

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Galilee from the fifth century on speaks for a developed economic infrastructure and expanding participation of local communities in international trade networks.9 This evidence lends support to Hayim Lapin’s conclusion that there was “substantial population continuity” if not long-term growth in Palestine in the fifth century, which is consistent with increasing urbanization and the building of monumental synagogues even in many rural sites.10 There are many striking features in Galilean synagogues. The Capernaum synagogue gives the impression of being quite unparalleled, which likely explains the attempts to understand how this kind of magnificent building was ever constructed in this Galilean town. The funding of the Capernaum synagogue has been attributed either to more affluent rabbinic circles in Tiberias or even to Christian church authorities who wanted to foster Christian pilgrimage to this important Christian holy site.11 However, other late antique synagogues in eastern Galilee have remarkable features of their own. The Chorazin synagogue is known for its southern façade that represents the Syrian-style gable based on ornate sculptured fragments.12 As said earlier, the synagogues at Wadi Ḥamam and Huqoq had impressive mosaic floors. The Horvat Kur synagogue originally had a mosaic floor, and at some point, a platform that supported a chest holding Torah scrolls was added to the building. While the rest of the building was made of black basalt, the platform was made of carefully dressed high-quality limestone and included several decorations.13 The archaeological remains of Galilean synagogues demonstrate how these village communities were willing to devote significant resources, both in terms of material and human capital, to build, decorate and maintain these monumental 130 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 269–95. Leibner acknowledges that there are in his survey material examples of settlements that “evidently remained in existence throughout most or all of the Byzantine period” (p. 277). The newly found settlements at Huqoq and Horvat Kur should be counted among those sites that continued to flourish in Late Antiquity. For a recent evaluation of Leibner’s study, see Hayim Lapin, “Population Contraction in Late Roman Galilee: Reconsidering the Evidence,” BASOR 378 (2017): 127–43. Lapin suggests that changes in local pottery production sites and their size can account for the developments evident in Leibner’s pottery survey material. This means that it may be problematic to take varying proportions of pottery recovered at different sites as an indicator of demographic changes. 9 Lapin, “Population Contraction,” 141. For the data, see Uzi Leibner, Settlement and History in Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine Galilee: An Archaeological Survey of the eastern Galilee, TSAJ 127 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 55–56. 10 Lapin, “Population Contraction,” 141. 11 For a discussion with references, see Hakola, “Galilean Jews and Christians,” 160–61. 12 Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues, 126–27. 13 Jürgen K. Zangenberg, “Performing the Sacred in a Community Building: Observations from the 2010–2015 Kinneret Regional Project Excavations in the Byzantine Synagogue of Horvat Kur (Galilee),” in Spaces in Late Antiquity: Cultural, Theological and Archaeological Perspectives, ed. Juliette Day et al. (London: Routledge, 2016), 183–86. See also Ulla Tervahauta’s article in this collection.

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buildings. The newly found synagogues support Lee Levine’s conclusion that late antique synagogues were communal centers whose nature was determined by the needs and resources of local communities that bore the responsibility for their construction, maintenance and repairs and whose chosen representatives had authority over running these institutions.14 The question is why these communities, living in a rather modest rural environment, made such great investments in these monumental buildings. It is still unclear where local communities generated the resources needed in the planning and construction of these ambitious public buildings. Various inscriptions mention people who contributed to synagogues but some recent discussions have corrected an earlier view according to which individual benefactors were a driving force in the building of civic infrastructure in various cities and towns in the Roman imperial period.

2. Galilean Synagogues and Civic Benefaction Many inscriptions name individuals or larger groups and commemorate their gifts given for the construction or decoration of local synagogues.15 One such inscription was recently found in a stretch of the mosaic floor in the synagogue at Horvat Kur and it contains an Aramaic name El῾azar son of Yudan son of Susu (or Qoso / Qusu).16 This discovery points to a donor who contributed to the local synagogue or its mosaic floor even though this particular inscription does not contain any dedicatory formula known from other synagogues. This kind of evidence shows that even many rural communities benefited from the resources of their affluent sponsors. This local habit could be taken as a variation of a widespread cultural pattern whereby wealthy benefactors personally financed civic buildings, competitions, festivals or spectacles and, in exchange for their gifts, received a recognized status and were honored with public displays of gratitude such as inscriptions, or in some cases, even statues. It is disputed, however, how broadly or if at all, various Jewish communities participated in the culture of reciprocal exchanges and shared the values of the larger Mediterranean world. Tessa Rajak has argued that some passages in the works of Philo and Josephus show a reserved attitude towards Greco-Roman civic euergetism and the related culture of honors.17 Rajak also finds resistance to the euergetic ethos in Jewish syn 14 Cf. Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 381–90. 15 For an overview of dedicatory synagogue inscriptions, see Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 371–75; Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues, 517–20. 16 Zangenberg, “The Menorah,” 114. 17 Tessa Rajak, The Jewish Dialogue with Greece and Rome: Studies in Cultural and Social Interaction, AGJU 48 (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 373–91. Rajak says that a reserved attitude to euergetism is evident, for example, in the following passages: Philo, Decal. 4–7: “So too in cities there arises that most insidious of foes, Pride admired and worshipped by some who add dignity to

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agogue inscriptions, especially in the diaspora. These inscriptions may m ­ ention the name of a giver but often without conferring on him / her any honorific title or visible sign of special status. According to Rajak, this shows that Jews tried to find acceptable ways to express benefaction and that there were “limits beyond which Jewish communities could not allow themselves to go in adopting local modes of giving and of honouring.”18 Like Rajak, Seth Schwartz sees that civic benefaction reflects exchange-based social values that were widespread in the Mediterranean world but in a core tension with biblical models of solidarity.19 Schwarz maintains that such Jewish writers as Ben Sira, Josephus, and Palestinian rabbis participated in the culture of reciprocity and honor, but, at the same time, sought ways to arouse symbolic resistance towards the norms implied in civic euergetism. Schwartz argues that certain passages in the Palestinian Talmud, where some rabbis seemingly express contempt for using large amounts of money for building synagogues, are part of this symbolic resistance.20 Schwartz finds in these passages an antithesis between wasting money on monumental synagogue buildings, on the one hand, and charity and the study of the Torah, on the other. According to Schwartz, there was “the gulf between rabbinic values and the general Jewish values” because the rabbis “regarded the construction of massive synagogues by individuals with disdain: far from demonstrating the piety or securing the memorialization of the donors, they were a waste of money that might otherwise have been used to support Torah study.”21 Local Jewish communities “had internalized the values of Romanstyle municipal benefaction,” and these values encouraged “the construction of vain ideas by means of gold crowns and purple robes and a great establishment of servants and cars, on which these so-called blissful and happy people ride aloft, drawn sometimes by mules and horses, sometimes by men, who bear the heavy burden on their shoulders, yet suffer in soul rather than in body under the weight of extravagant arrogance.” (Translated by F. H. Colson in LCL). Josephus, C. Ap. 2.217–218: “For those, on the other hand, who live in accordance with our laws the prize is not silver or gold, no crown of wild olive or of parsley with any such public mark of distinction. No; each individual, relying on the witness of his own conscience and the lawgiver’s prophecy, confirmed by the sure testimony of God, is firmly persuaded that to those who observe the laws and, if they must needs die for them, willingly meet death, God has granted a renewed existence and in the revolution of the ages the gift of a better life.” (Translated by H. St. J. Thackeray in LCL.) 18 Rajak, “Benefactors,” 388. 19 Seth Schwarz, Were the Jews a Mediterranean Society? Reciprocity and Solidarity in Ancient Judaism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010). 20 Cf. y. Šeqal. 5:6, 49b: “R. Hama bar Haninah and R. Hoshaia the Elder were strolling in the synagogues in Lud. Said R. Hama bar Haninah to R. Hoshaia, ‘How much money did my forefathers invest here [in building these synagogues]!’ He said to him, ‘How many lives did your forefathers invest here! Were there not people who were laboring in Torah [who needed the money more]?’” See also y. Pe’ah 8:9, 21b. The translation is from The Jerusalem Talmud: A Translation and Commentary, ed. Jacob Neusner (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2010). 21 Schwartz, Were the Jews, 130, 163.

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monumental synagogues” whereas the rabbis could not do anything to prevent these building projects.”22 In a similar vein, Gregg Gardner has interpreted some rabbinic passages (e.g., m.  Yoma 3:9–10) as expressing aversion to competitive giving, which proves that certain aspects of euergetism “ran counter to Jewish ideals.”23 The above interpretations resemble recent discussions dealing with the alleged tension between Greco-Roman euergetism and early Christian gift conceptions or charity practices.24 However, many scholars have argued that Jewish—or Christian—ideals and practices should not be placed in binary opposition to ­Greco-Roman values related to civic benefaction.25 Steven Weitzman refers to certain passages in Josephus and Philo that clearly show how they did not understand the Torah to forbid honors given to benefactors but only tributes in the form of images and statues.26 Weitzman also shows how scholars have portrayed ancient benefactions one-sidedly as self-interested transactions even though many phi­ losophical writers, most notably Seneca, specifically say that benefactors should act only out of sincere generosity and even recommend anonymous benefaction.27 The same culture that allegedly supported only self-promotion and intra-communal rivalry was also capable of producing severe critiques of its own agonistic tendencies.28 Seen from this perspective, various Jewish responses to civic benefaction appear as a variation of common cultural negotiations rather than as 22 Schwartz, Were the Jews, 170. 23 Gregg E. Gardner, “Competitive Giving in the Third Century CE: Early Rabbinic Approaches to Greco-Roman Civic Benefaction,” in Religious Competition in the Third Century CE: Jews, Christians, and the Greco-Roman World, ed. Jordan D. Rosenblum, Lily C. Vuong, and Nathaniel P. DesRoniers, JAJSup 15 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), 92. 24 Cf. John M. G. Barclay, Paul and the Gift (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015). Barclay has been criticized for taking Paul’s ideas of the gift as exceptional in comparison to related Greco-Roman or Jewish ideas; see Margaret M. Mitchell, “Gift Histories,” JSNT 39 (2017): 304–23. The patterns of Christian giving and charity that started to take shape in Late Antiquity are often seen to stand in contrast to earlier Greco-Roman euergetism; see Peter Brown, Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2002); Peter Brown, “Remembering the Poor and the Aesthetic of Society,” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 35 (2005): 513–22. For an overview of Brown’s ideas and other theories about giving and gifts in the ancient world, see Ilana F. Silber, “Neither Mauss, Nor Veyne: Peter Brown’s Interpretative Path to the Gift,” in The Gift in Antiquity, ed. Michael Satlow (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), 202–20. 25 Cf. Michael L. Satlow, “Introduction,” in The Gift in Antiquity, ed. Michael Satlow (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), 7: “Greeks, Romans, Christians, Jews and ancient Israelites all had a notion of the ‘free gift,’ an offering given without expectation of repayment.” 26 Steven Weitzman, “Mediterranean Exchanges: A Response to Seth Schwartz’s Were the Jews a Mediterranean Society,” JQR 102 (2012): 491–512. Cf. Josephus, C. Ap. 2.74–77; Philo, Decal. 165–167. 27 Weitzman, “Mediterranean Exchanges,” 504–7. For Seneca’s views on euergetism, see further Miriam Griffin, “De Beneficiis and Roman Society,” JRS 93 (2003): 92–113. 28 Mitchell, “Gift Histories,” 320.

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an outright rejection of conventional practices. It is likely that well-off Jews in Galilean centers like Tiberias and Sepphoris contributed to the funding of various municipal institutions and civic buildings as part of their participation in the late Roman and early Byzantine urban culture.29 Recent theoretical discussions have conceptualized the wide “repertoires of giving” which means that it is often impossible and even pointless to separate benefactors’ mundane motives and social ramifications of gifts from idealized understandings of some gifts as free of any obligations and interests.30 The above discussion suggests that the role of various individuals, or in some cases groups, who contributed to the synagogues or their decoration could be understood as a local adoption of the widespread cultural convention. One form of tribute paid to wealthy donors may have been a recognized seating place in the synagogue because, for example, the different phases of the Horvat Kur synagogue allowed for hierarchical differentiation among those who participated in synagogue gatherings.31 Be that as it may, these kinds of social repercussions of synagogue gifts do not rule out a genuine interest by donors to benefit their local co-religionists and reinforce shared communal values. The synagogue donations as memorialized in inscriptions could be taken both as expressions of the piety and munificence of the named individuals and as marks of their social standing in the local hierarchy.32 In earlier scholarship, it was common to think that euergetism played a key role in the financing of civic infrastructure and the economic life of provincial cities and towns in the Roman east. In his study focusing mainly on second- and third-century CE inscriptional evidence from Asia Minor, Arjan Zuiderhoek has challenged earlier scholarly approaches and argued that most provincial cities could have managed without elite munificence that was fairly modest, “the icing on the cake,” and not essential to the economic survival of cities.33 According to Zuiderhoek, municipal governments did not rely on the private money of their elite citizens but were able to pay for urban infrastructure and amenities from public revenues through various taxes. Zuiderhoek sees civic benefaction as a political and ideological act that gave public expression to the legitimation of a particular distribution of power and inequality among urban populations and for 29 Thus Zeev Weiss, Public Spectacles in Roman and Late Antique Palestine (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014), 199. 30 Cf. Silber, “Neither Mauss, nor Veyne,” 208–15. 31 For hierarchical seating arrangements in the Horvat Kur synagogue, see Zangenberg, “Performing the Sacred,” 176–83. 32 Cf. Michael L. Satlow, “Giving for a Return: Jewish Votive Offerings in Late Antiquity,” in Religion and the Self in Antiquity, ed. David B. Brakke, Michael L. Satlow, and Steven Weitzman (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005), 102. 33 Arjan Zuiderhoek, The Politics of Munificence in the Roman Empire: Citizens, Elites and Benefactors in Asia Minor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 37–52.

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the subordinates’ consent to this prevailing system.34 Zuiderhoek says that his proposal is not a denial of an earlier theory according to which civic euergetism was “a field of intense competition among members of local elites,” and “a source of prestige and symbolic capital for individual benefactors.”35 Onno van Nijf has explained the function of civic benefaction from this latter perspective and shown how various dedicatory inscriptions bear witness to practices that helped wealthy benefactors manifest their solidarity with the values of the local population and make a claim to public recognition.36 In this sense, honorific inscriptions were expressions of “symbolic exchange” through which donors achieved “symbolic capital: a source of prestige, on which their position of social and political promi­ nence relied.”37 I think that the function of dedicatory inscriptions in various synagogues can be interpreted along the lines of “symbolic exchange” outlined above. High-­ status and wealthy individuals were willing to distribute part of their wealth to local building projects and, in return, had their names honored in the form of inscriptions. However, as Zuiderhoek’s research implies, we cannot take individual benefactors as the sole force behind various provincial public buildings. Lee Levine refers to some rabbinic passages that illustrate how communities assumed a central role in launching new building projects, which suggests that individual benefactions existed side by side with communal contributions.38 A late midrashic text even suggests that the construction of public buildings became “a cause of rivalry between neighbouring communities, and at times envy motivated one to imitate and even outdo the achievements of the other.”39 In the following, I suggest that monumental building projects in many Galilean villages helped regional communities imitate larger cultural trends and in this way claim common and widespread cultural capital. This is especially seen in how the synagogue art continued to appropriate various motifs drawn from the classical Greek tradition.

34 Zuiderhoek, The Politics of Munificence, 113–53. 35 Zuiderhoek, The Politics of Munificence, 12. 36 Onno M. van Nijf, The Civic World of Professional Associations in the Roman East (Amsterdam: Gieben, 1997), 111–28. 37 Van Nijf, The Civic World, 128. The idea that wealthy people are able to transmute any kind of economic capital into “symbolic capital” goes back to Pierre Bourdieu’s ideas. For Bourdieu’s gift theory, see Ilana F. Silber, “Bourdieu’s Gift to Gift Theory: An Unacknowledged Trajectory,” Sociological Theory 27 (2009): 173–90. 38 Cf. Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 448. Levine refers in this connection to t. B. Mes.̣ 11:23: “The townspeople (‫ )בני העיר‬may compel one another to build a synagogue and to buy a scroll of the Torah and prophets.” 39 Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 384. Cf. S. Eli. Rab. 11: “[Regarding] a small town in Israel, they [the townspeople] built for themselves a synagogue and academy and hired a sage and instructors for their children. When a nearby town saw [this], it [also] built a synagogue and academy, and likewise hired teachers for their children.”

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3. Galilean Synagogues and Globalization in Late Antiquity One of the most intriguing and widely discussed features of late antique synagogues is the continued use of various Greco-Roman themes and motifs in the synagogue art and decoration.40 In addition to various geometric, animal and floral motifs that were widespread throughout the Mediterranean, synagogue lintels depict an extensive range of stone-carved figures drawn from Greek mythology such as sea goats or capricorns, centaurs, medusas and wreaths flanked by Nikai or eagles.41 The uncovering of the Huqoq mosaic has added to this collection winged putti (cupids) holding roundels with theatre masks and harpies, birds with female heads representing storm winds.42 Some fragments of the mosaic found at Wadi Ḥamam as well as the mosaic at Huqoq suggest that the figure of the sun god Helios and the accompanying Zodiac cycle was a widely used motif in the mosaic floors not only in urban centers but also in many rural synagogues.43 The influence of wider cultural stimuli is also apparent in the Horvat Kur synagogue. The excavations have unearthed a basalt stone table that is associated with the last use of the synagogue at some time in the very late sixth or very early seventh century CE. The table contains decorative elements that refer to Greco-Roman banquet practices; in this way, the table is an example of the local adaptation “of one of the most central social practices of the Greco-Roman world: cultivated dining.”44 The menorah depicted in the mosaic floor stemming from the second half of the fourth century demonstrates that the local community was in connection with the larger Greco-Roman world already earlier. According to Jürgen Zangenberg, the menorah reflects various influences and “an iconographic diversity” that presuppose communication beyond regional spheres and ideological boundaries.45 40 For Greco-Roman motifs in Jewish art, see Lee I. Levine, Visual Judaism in Late Antiquity: Historical Contexts of Jewish Art (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 317–36. 41 For an overview, see Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues, 435–72. 42 For putti and harpies in the Huqoq mosaic, see Magness et al., “The Huqoq Excavation Project,” 36–38, 53. 43 For the possible Zodiac mosaic at Wadi Ḥamam, see Leibner and Miller, “A Figural Mosaic,” 239–40. For the Zodiac at Huqoq, see Jodi Magness et al., “The Huqoq Excavation Project,” 106–11. Mosaics depicting the sun god Helios and the Zodiac signs have earlier been found in several Palestinian synagogues; see Levine, Visual Judaism, 319–33; Rick Bonnie, “The Helios-and-Zodiac Motif in Late Antique Synagogues,” in Magic in the Ancient Eastern Mediterranean: Cognitive, Historical, and Material Perspectives on the Bible and Its Contexts, ed. Nina Nikki and Kirsi Valkama, Mundus Orientis 3 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021), 299–311. 44 Jürgen K. Zangenberg, “A Basalt Stone Table from the Byzantine Synagogue at Ḥorvat Kur, Galilee: Publication and Preliminary Interpretation,” in Arise, Walk through the Land: Studies in the Archaeology and History of the Land of Israel in Memory of Yizhar Hirschfeld on the Tenth Anniversary of his Demise, ed. Joseph Patrich, Orit Peleg-Barkat, and Erez Ben-Yosef (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2016), 75. 45 Zangenberg, “The Menorah,” 124.

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It is not just some specific themes or individual details drawn from Greek traditions that appear in various local synagogues, but the plans of these buildings quite often resemble other contemporary sacred buildings. For example, the ornate façades of many Galilean and Golan synagogues have been compared to similar structures in many Syrian pagan temples or Christian churches.46 In addition to archaeological evidence, similarities in the exterior features of the buildings are reflected in a rabbinic discussion of whether persons are guilty of committing an intentional or unintentional sin if they bow towards a pagan temple thinking it is a synagogue.47 Scholarly responses to the adaptation of various Greek stimuli in synagogues quite often reflect thinking that there was an unresolved conflict between Jewish and Greco-Roman cultures. Some ancient sources (e.g., Tacitus, Hist. 5.5.1–2; Tertullian, Praescr. 7.9) already imply that conflict and antagonism characterize the relationship of Jews to their larger sociocultural background and many scholarly reconstructions have reverberated this idea until quite recently.48 Instead of seeing Jewish and Greek cultures as inherently in tension, however, many scholars have recently emphasized a great range of Jewish negotiations with the larger Greco-Roman world.49 Various Jewish communities were able to cultivate their inherited traditions while, at the same time, they absorbed and internalized many elements from surrounding cultures through selection, adoption and adaptation.50 I think that this perspective opens up the possibility of appreciating the constructive role of various “foreign” elements in the way many local Jewish synagogue communities understood their place in the wider and increasingly multicultural late antique world. The recycling of various themes and motifs originally derived from classical Greek culture was not only characteristic of various late antique Jewish communities but a part of the inherited cultural koine of the era. Glen W. Bowersock has shown in his classic book Hellenism in Late Antiquity how Hellenism had become “an extraordinarily flexible medium of both cultural and religious expression.” It was not regarded as “antithetical to local or indigenous traditions but “it provided a new and more eloquent way of giving voice to them.”51 In a similar vein, 46 Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues, 224–28. 47 Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 615. Cf. b. Šabb. 72b. 48 For a discussion, see Raimo Hakola, “Jewish Cultural Encounters with the Greco-Roman Worlds: A Critical History of Research and New Theoretical Perspectives,” in Scriptures in the Making: Texts and Their Transmission in Late Second Temple Judaism, ed. Raimo Hakola, Jessi Orpana, and Paavo Huotari, CBET (Leuven: Peeters, forthcoming). 49 For the references see Hakola, “Jewish Cultural Encounters,” forthcoming. 50 See Lee. I. Levine, Judaism and Hellenism in Antiquity: Conflict or Confluence? (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1998), 182–83. 51 Glen W. Bowersock, Hellenism in Late Antiquity (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991), 7.

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Tim Whitmarsh has concluded that Greek cultural production in the Roman imperial world was not driven by “an obsessive urge to define the boundaries of Hellenism” but Greek was “a label that, while always maintaining a strong contigu­ ous connection to mainland culture, was extraordinarily flexible and adaptable to local contexts.”52 Jaś Elsner has further explicated how Greek and Roman classical artistic traditions were developed in Late Antiquity when a new type of “pick-and-mix visual culture … defined by its eclecticism” was born. In this culture, “the visual styles that Roman Classicism adopted are not only elevated and appreciated by virtue of their being borrowed but they are also stripped of any indigenous meaning and reduced to being one further option in an empire-wide range of decorative choices.”53 If seen in this way, late antique art could be understood as “a cultural memory bank of numerous earlier styles and forms (eclectic and wide-ranging in type and provenance) that could be marshalled in different contexts and by different groups for a variety of different ends.”54 From this perspective, Jewish appropriation of various classical Greek themes and motifs is nothing unusual but part of “the cumulative aesthetic of late antique art” where elements are adapted from various past traditions and creatively placed in new contexts. In this way, the past is transformed through a new framing.55 The use of various Greek motifs in synagogues should not be understood as much as the Jewish adaptation of “pagan” images but as another variation of the common, late antique visual language.56 As Karen Britt and Ra‘anan Boustan have concluded in relation to the Huqoq elephant mosaic panel, the amalgamation of various stimuli in synagogue art could be taken as evidence for “the porous boundaries of late antique Judaism” and as “a localized Jewish expression of material that circulated in Late Antiquity at the messy and unstable intersections of classical, Jewish and Christian traditions, pointing to the much wider world in which modest [Galilean] communities participated.”57 The way late antique Jews appropriated elements from classical traditions in their communal buildings could be compared to how Christians modified various local civic cultures in the increasingly Christianized late antique world. In the ancient world, various civic communities had local stories that helped these 52 Tim Whitmarsh, Beyond the Second Sophistic: Adventures in Greek Postclassicism (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2013), 211–12. 53 Jaś Elsner, “Classicism in Roman Art,” in Classical Pasts: The Classical Traditions of Greece and Rome, ed. James I. Porter (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 272. 54 Elsner, “Classicism,” 274. 55 Cf. Jaś Elsner, “Late Antique Art: The Problem of the Concept and the Cumulative Aesthetic,” in Approaching Late Antiquity: The Transformation from Early to Late Empire, ed. Simon Swain and Mark Edwards (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 304. 56 Cf. Catherine Hezser, “‘For the Lord God a Sun and a Shield’ (Ps. 84:12): Sun Symbolism in Hellenistic Jewish Literature and in Amoraic Midrashim,” in Jewish Art in Its Late Antique Context, ed. Uzi Leibner and Catherine Hezser, TSAJ 163 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 233. 57 Britt and Boustan, The Elephant Mosaic Panel, 81.

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communities fix their regional histories within the widely circulated classical myths. Aude Busine has discussed various literary and archaeological evidence that reveals how traditional discourses about gods, heroes and founders were still carried on in Late Antiquity and how numerous cities continued to monumentalize their mythical past in the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries.58 While many Christian theologians took an uncompromising attitude towards pagan myths, Busine shows that there is also evidence for a more flexible adaptation of regional civic histories. According to Busine, Christians managed to re-appropriate various civic myths because these myths were considered part of the common culture shared by both pagan and Christian Greeks. Busine argues that Christians were able to integrate into the traditional civic culture “thanks to the secularisation and / or Christianisation of pagan mythology.”59 I suggest that similar kinds of dynamics were at play when various Jewish communities appropriated elements from Greek mythology in their communal buildings. Various Christian authorities and communities were increasingly able to manipulate the civic urban landscape in Late Antiquity, whereas Jews showed their belonging to wider late antique culture through adopting numerous things Greek in their synagogues. The continuing appeal of Greek styles and themes for various synagogue communities can be further clarified with recent discussions related to globalization in the ancient world. In recent years, many scholars have used analytical tools first developed for the study of globalization in the modern world to illuminate diverse dynamics between various local cultures and ancient globalized cultures.60 Seen from this perspective, local cultures are not “static, ‘authentic’, immured against change but in constant dialogue with … the ‘globalising’ forces that create, structure and (to an extent oppose)” them.61 This framework has made it possible to recognize seemingly contradictory tendencies that occur hand in hand when representatives of local cultures try to cope with their exposure to globalizing forces. While the expansion of a global culture quite evidently involves a significant degree of cultural homogenization, this process also quite often increases cultural variation and thus promotes cultural heterogeneity.62 As Justin Jennings 58 Aude Busine, “The Conquest of the Past: Christian Attitudes towards Civic History,” in Religion and Competition in Antiquity, ed. David Engels and Peter van Nuffelen, Collection Latomus 343 (Leuven: Peeters, 2014), 220–36. 59 Busine, “The Conquest of the Past,” 232. 60 Tim Whitmarsh, “Thinking Local,” in Local Knowledge and Microidentities in the Imperial Greek World, ed. Tim Whitmarsh (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 1–16; Justin Jennings, Globalizations and the Ancient World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Martin Pitts and Miguel John Versluys, “Globalisation and the Roman World: Perspectives and Opportunities,” in Globalisation and the Roman World: World History, Connectivity and Material Culture, ed. Martin Pitts and Miguel John Versluys (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 1–31. 61 Whitmarsh, “Thinking Local,” 3–4. 62 Pitts and Versluys, “Globalisation,” 14.

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explains, this seeming paradox emerges because global cultures are “a mixture of ideas, products, and practices from areas throughout the system so that foreign elements, to one degree or another, are introduced into each culture.” As a result, “the cultural boundaries of all cultures are blurred through these exchanges.”63 In globalization research, cultural heterogeneity is closely understood to be related to the re-embedding of local cultures.64 The process of globalization predictably produces a heightened sense of local identity and often leads to reaffirmation of one’s cultural roots.65 Cross-cultural communication and connectivity increases the perceived similarity between cultures but a concomitant of this process is frequent articulations of boundaries between different groups affected by globalization.66 I suggest that these observations are highly relevant in the study of ancient Judaism because many scholars have taken both adoption and resistance as characterizing various Jewish responses to Hellenistic and Roman cultures.67 This dual perspective is not peculiar to ancient Jews but typical of all local cultures that try to define themselves anew in a world turned multicultural. In the context of late antique synagogues, the insistent use of various distinctively Jewish motifs such as visual representations of biblical scenes and symbols (menorah, the Torah ark) could be understood as an attempt to reaffirm the cultural roots of local communities in an increasingly globalized world. The mixing of various Greek themes with these native characteristics implies that entrepreneurs of local identities wanted to see themselves and their communities as distinctive but, at the same time, as participating in the predominant cultural chic of their time. Miguel John Versluys has further explicated the role of Roman visual culture as a globalizing koine in the ancient world. Versluys argues that in the Roman empire “things Greek were not mere materials representative of a culture (‘things’) anymore, but possessions that carried socio-economic and cultural values within a world-system.”68 For Versluys this means that we need to go “beyond historical representation” and not only focus on what some motifs or themes meant but what they did in a certain context.69 I suggest that various Greek elements in late antique synagogues helped local communities connect with the globalized late antique world while these communities also made a claim to be authentic 63 Jennings, Globalizations, 134. 64 Jennings, Globalizations, 136–39. 65 Whitmarsh, “Thinking Local,” 3. 66 Cf. Tamar Hodos, “Global, Local and in Between: Connectivity and the Mediterranean,” in Globalisation and the Roman World: World History, Connectivity and Material Culture, ed. Martin Pitts and Miguel John Versluys (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 242. 67 Cf. Hakola, “Jewish Cultural Encounters,” forthcoming. 68 Miguel John Versluys, “Roman Visual Material Culture as Globalising Koine,” in Globalisation and the Roman World: World History, Connectivity and Material Culture, ed. Martin Pitts and Miguel John Versluys (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 159. 69 Versluys, “Roman Visual Material Culture,” 165.

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cherishers of their inherited native culture. These kinds of cultural negotiations most often remain implicit but it is interesting that the recently published elephant mosaic panel at Huqoq seems to thematize cultural negotiations between Jews and their larger Greco-Roman world. Karen Britt and Ra‘anan Boustan have remarked that the meeting of a Hellenistic ruler and a representative of the Jewish people depicted in the mosaic could be understood as “an exemplum” that envisioned the place of the local community in the Christianizing Roman empire. The mosaic offered a model from the past for “honorable accommodations” between the Jewish people and foreign kings and empires.70

4. Conclusion The point of departure for my essay is various synagogues exposed in eastern Galilee in the last decade. These findings have given further evidence of the investments local communities made to construct, decorate and maintain these massive public buildings. Referring to recent discussions related to ancient euergetism, I suggest that the role of various individuals mentioned in synagogue inscriptions could be understood as a local variation of the widespread Mediterranean culture of benefaction. While the heyday of civic benefaction in Asia Minor, for example, was in the second and third centuries, local benefactors continued to have important roles in various building projects in late antique Galilee. These patrons showed through their benefactions their piety and commitment to the values of their local communities but also increased their personal social and cultural capital when they were honored in synagogues. The role of these individuals should not be exaggerated because synagogues were primarily expressions of the accomplishments of local communities. I suggest, however, that similar kinds of dynamics that were in play when various individuals contributed to synagogues can be seen in how various indigenous Jewish motifs were blended with Greek stimuli in the decoration and art of these buildings. By constructing these buildings, local communities wished to portray themselves as loyal custodians of their own traditions while they also claimed to possess widespread and global cultural capital that connected them to the honored traditions shared and cherished by their various contemporaries.

70 Britt and Boustan, The Elephant Mosaic Panel, 81. Britt and Boustan interpret the elephant mosaic as a reference to the military alliance between the Seleucids and the Hasmonean high priest John Hyrcanus. However, Jodi Magness (in this volume) argues that the scene in the mosaic depicts the encounter between Alexander the Great and the Jewish high priest. In both these interpretative options, the idea of cultural negotiations between Jewish and Hellenistic worlds is evident.

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Cited Sources Barclay, John M. G. Paul and the Gift. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015. Bonnie, Rick. “The Helios-and-Zodiac Motif in Byzantine Synagogues.” Pages 299–311 in Magic in the Ancient Eastern Mediterranean: Cognitive, Historical, and Material Perspectives on the Bible and Its Contexts. Edited by Nina Nikki and Kirsi Valkama. Mundus Orientis 3. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021. Bowersock, Glen W. Hellenism in Late Antiquity. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991. Britt, Karen, and Ra‘anan Boustan. The Elephant Mosaic Panel in the Synagogue at Huqoq: Official Publication and Initial Interpretations. JRASup 106. Portsmouth, RI: JRA, 2017. Brown, Peter. Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2002. Brown, Peter. “Remembering the Poor and the Aesthetic of Society.” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 35 (2005): 513–22. Busine, Aude. “The Conquest of the Past: Christian Attitudes towards Civic History.” Pages ­220–36 in Religion and Competition in Antiquity. Edited by David Engels and Peter van ­Nuffelen. Collection Latomus 343. Leuven: Peeters, 2014. Elsner, Jaś. “Classicism in Roman Art.” Pages 270–97 in Classical Pasts: The Classical Traditions of Greece and Rome. Edited by James I. Porter. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. Elsner, Jaś. “Late Antique Art: The Problem of the Concept and the Cumulative Aesthetic.” Pages 271–309 in Approaching Late Antiquity: The Transformation from Early to Late Empire. Edited by Simon Swain and Mark Edwards. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Gardner, Gregg E. “Competitive Giving in the Third Century CE: Early Rabbinic Approaches to Greco-Roman Civic Benefaction.” Pages 81–92 in Religious Competition in the Third Century CE: Jews, Christians, and the Greco-Roman World. Edited by Jordan D. Rosenblum, Lily C. Vuong, and Nathaniel P. DesRoniers. JAJSup 15. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014. Griffin, Miriam. “De Beneficiis and Roman Society.” JRS 93 (2003): 92–113. Hakola, Raimo. “Galilean Jews and Christians in Context: Spaces Shared and Contested in the Eastern Galilee in Late Antiquity.” Pages 141–65 in Spaces in Late Antiquity: Cultural, Theological and Archaeological Perspectives. Edited by Juliette Day, Raimo Hakola, Maijastina Kahlos, and Ulla Tervahauta. London: Routledge, 2016. Hakola, Raimo. “Jewish Cultural Encounters with the Greco-Roman Worlds: A Critical History of Research and New Theoretical Perspectives. Forthcoming in Scriptures in the Making: Texts and Their Transmission in Late Second Temple Judaism. Edited by Raimo Hakola, Jessi Orpana, and Paavo Huotari. CBET. Leuven: Peeters. Hachlili, Rachel. Ancient Synagogues—Archaeology and Art: New Discoveries and Current Research. HdO 105. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Hezser, Catherine. “‘For the Lord God a Sun and a Shield’ (Ps. 84:12): Sun Symbolism in in Hellenistic Jewish Literature and in Amoraic Midrashim.” Pages 312–36 in Jewish Art in Its Late Antique Context. Edited by Uzi Leibner and Catherine Hezser. TSAJ 163. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016. Jennings, Justin. Globalizations and the Ancient World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Lapin, Hayim. “Population Contraction in Late Roman Galilee: Reconsidering the Evidence.” BASOR 378 (2017): 127–43. Leibner, Uzi. “Khirbet Wadi Ḥamam in the Early and Middle Roman Periods.” Pages 343–61 in Galilee in the Late Second Temple and Mishnaic Periods, Vol. 2: The Archaeological Record from Cities, Towns and Villages. Edited by David A. Fiensy and James Riley Strange. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015. Leibner, Uzi. “Settlement Patterns in the Eastern Galilee: Implications Regarding the Transformation of Rabbinic Culture in Late Antiquity.” Pages 269–95 in Jewish Identities in Antiquity:

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Studies in Memory of Menahem Stern. Edited by Lee I. Levine and Daniel R. Schwartz. TSAJ 130. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009. Leibner, Uzi, and Shulamit Miller. “A Figural Mosaic in the Synagogue at Khirbet Wadi Hamam.” JRA 23 (2010): 238–64. Levine, Lee I. The Ancient Synagogue. The First Thousand Years. 2nd ed. New Haven: Yale Uni­ versity Press, 2005. Levine, Lee I. Visual Judaism in Late Antiquity: Historical Contexts of Jewish Art. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012. Loffreda, Stanislao. “The Late Chronology of the Synagogue of Capernaum.” IEJ 23 (1973): 37–42. Magness, Jodi. “Did Galilee Decline in the Fifth Century? The Synagogue at Chorazin Reconsidered.” Pages 259–74 in Religion, Ethnicity, and Identity in Ancient Galilee. Edited by Jürgen K. Zangenberg, Harold W. Attridge, and Dale B. Martin. WUNT 210. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007. Magness, Jodi. “The Pottery from the Village of Capernaum and the Chronology of Galilean Synagogues.” Tel Aviv 39 (2012): 238–50. Magness, Jodi, Shua Kisilevitz, Matthew Grey, Dennis Mizzi, Daniel Schindler, Martin Wells, Karen Britt, Ra‘anan Boustan, Shana O’Connell, Emily Hubbard, Jessie George, Jennifer Ramsay, Elisabetta Boaretto, and Michael Chazan. “The Huqoq Excavation Project: 2014–2017 Interim Report.” BASOR 380 (2018): 61–131. Mitchell, Margaret M. “Gift Histories.” JSNT 39 (2017): 304–23. Nijf, Onno M. van. The Civic World of Professional Associations in the Roman East. Amsterdam: Gieben, 1997. Pitts, Martin, and Miguel John Versluys. “Globalisation and the Roman World: Perspectives and Opportunities.” Pages 3–31 in Globalisation and the Roman World: World History, Connectivity and Material Culture. Edited by Martin Pitts and Miguel John Versluys. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Pitts, Martin, and Miguel John Versluys, ed. Globalisation and the Roman World: World History, Connectivity and Material Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Rajak, Tessa. The Jewish Dialogue with Greece and Rome. Studies in Cultural and Social Interaction. AGJU 48. Leiden: Brill, 2000. Satlow, Michael L. “Giving for a Return: Jewish Votive Offerings in Late Antiquity.” Pages 91–108 in Religion and the Self in Antiquity. Edited by David B. Brakke, Michael L. Satlow, and Steven Weitzman. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005. Satlow, Michael L. “Introduction.” Pages 1–11 in The Gift in Antiquity. Edited by Michael L. Satlow. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013. Silber, Ilana F. “Bourdieu’s Gift to Gift Theory: An Unacknowledged Trajectory.” Sociological Theory 27 (2009): 173–90. Silber, Ilana F. “Neither Mauss, nor Veyne: Peter Brown’s Interpretative Path to the Gift.” Pages 202–20 in The Gift in Antiquity. Edited by Michael L. Satlow. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013. Schwarz, Seth. Were the Jews a Mediterranean Society? Reciprocity and Solidarity in Ancient ­Judaism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010. Versluys, Miguel John. “Roman Visual Material Culture as Globalising Koine.” Pages 141–74 in Globalisation and the Roman World: World History, Connectivity and Material Culture. Edited by Martin Pitts and Miguel John Versluys. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Weiss, Zeev. Public Spectacles in Roman and Late Antique Palestine. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014. Weitzman, Steven. “Mediterranean Exchanges: A Response to Seth Schwartz’s Were the Jews a Mediterranean Society.” JQR 102 (2012): 491–512.

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Whitmarsh, Tim. Beyond the Second Sophistic: Adventures in Greek Postclassicism. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2013. Whitmarsh, Tim. “Thinking Local.” Pages 1–16 in Local Knowledge and Microidentities in the Imperial Greek World. Edited by Tim Whitmarsh. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Zangenberg, Jürgen K. “A Basalt Stone Table from the Byzantine Synagogue at Ḥ orvat Kur, Galilee: Publication and Preliminary Interpretation.” Pages 61–75 in Arise, Walk through the Land: Studies in the Archaeology and History of the Land of Israel in Memory of Yizhar Hirschfeld on the Tenth Anniversary of his Demise. Edited by Joseph Patrich, Orit Peleg-Barkat, and Erez Ben-Yosef. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2016. Zangenberg, Jürgen K. “Performing the Sacred in a Community Building: Observations from the 2010–2015 Kinneret Regional Project Excavations in the Byzantine Synagogue of Horvat Kur (Galilee).” Pages 166–89 in Spaces in Late Antiquity: Cultural, Theological and Archaeological Perspectives. Edited by Juliette Day, Raimo Hakola, Maijastina Kahlos, and Ulla Tervahauta. London: Routledge, 2016. Zangenberg, Jürgen K. “The Menorah on the Mosaic Floor from the Late Roman / Early Byzantine Synagogue at Ḥorvat Kur.” IEJ 67 (2017): 110–26. Zuiderhoek, Arjan. The Politics of Munificence in the Roman Empire: Citizens, Elites and Benefactors in Asia Minor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Chad Spigel

A Quantitative Analysis of House-Synagogues in Ancient Palestine Although scholars will probably never know exactly when synagogue buildings first appeared in Palestine, the archaeological and literary evidence suggest that by the first century they were commonly found throughout the region.1 The fact that synagogues were already well established in Palestine in the first century certainly helped ease the transition from sacrificial worship in the Jerusalem temple to worshiping through prayer and scriptural readings in synagogues after the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. Yet, despite the increasingly important role synagogues played as places of Jewish worship during the first few centuries, few “monumental” synagogue buildings have been excavated in ancient Palestine.2 Only a handful of synagogue buildings have been dated to the first century and only a few have been dated to the second or early third centuries.3 And while dozens of fourth–fifth century synagogues have been excavated,4 there are very few villages or cities where enough synagogue buildings have been excavated to suggest that monumental synagogues could have accommodated the majority 1 See Anders Runesson, Donald D. Binder, and Birger Olsson, The Ancient Synagogue from Its Origins to 200 C. E.: A Source Book, AJEC 72 (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 20–117. 2 “Monumental” is a term that is thrown around in the scholarship of ancient synagogues, but is rarely defined. By “monumental” I am referring to any synagogue building that was clearly intended as a public structure for public use. The actual size or shape of the building is not as important as the fact that the structure was designed, decorated and most likely used for communal activities. In other words, both the synagogue in Qiryat Sepher, which was a rather modest structure that could only accommodate around 100 worshippers, and the massive synagogue in Gaza, which could accommodate over 1,000 worshippers, should be understood as “monumental” synagogue buildings because the interiors of both structures were clearly designed for communal activities. See Chad Spigel, Ancient Synagogue Seating Capacities: Methodology, Analysis and Limits, TSAJ 149 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 208–11 and 93–97. According to my definition, a synagogue that was constructed from what had originally been domestic architecture does not preclude it from being identified as a “monumental” synagogue. The synagogue in Dura Europos is a case in point. What was once a house with several small rooms was altered to create a rather sizable assembly hall without changing the appearance or “monumental” nature of the outside of the building. Nonetheless, the synagogue itself—i. e., the place where the community met—had been converted into a large meeting space, making it “monumental” for the community that used it. 3 See Lee I. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 42–69, 75–118. 4 See Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 195–231.

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of the local Jewish populations.5 It is easy to account for the lack of archaeological evidence of synagogues prior to the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70 CE, but when the Temple was no longer a center of worship it makes sense to ask where most Jews in Palestine could feasibly have participated in communal worship on a regular basis. Several scholars have raised, and tried to answer, this very question. Responding to the near absence of archaeological evidence of synagogues in the second century, Yoram Tsafrir asks, “where, then did the Galilean Sages of the Mishnah, of the generation of Usha and their heirs, and Rabbi Judah the Prince, pray?”6 His answer: the synagogues in which the tannaim prayed in the second century and even those used by the early amoraim were located in houses with the plan and façade of private homes. These buildings usually included one hall larger than the rest for study and prayer, and often had additional rooms which served the community. In terms later used to characterize the Christian community, one can say that this was a sort of ‘religious community building’—domus ecclesiae.7

Regarding the third–fifth centuries in Palestine, Stuart Miller described the situation in this manner: Interestingly, only rarely have archeologists uncovered more than a single structure in a given town. True, no Talmudic town has been fully excavated and, in any case, the population during different periods could have varied in size; but one still wonders where it was that most people prayed and studied.8

Unlike Tsafrir, Miller did not have to account for the lack of clear evidence of ancient synagogue buildings. Nonetheless, since he was working from the assumption that most Jews would have worshipped regularly in synagogues, he had to account for the lack of enough synagogue space. His answer, like Tsafrir’s, was that most Jewish communities would have met in private houses during times of worship.9 5 See Spigel, Synagogue Seating, 346–50. The issue is whether synagogues could have provided enough worship space for regular synagogue worship, which would likely have taken place on Sabbaths and festivals. 6 Yoram Tsafrir, “On the Source of the Architectural Design of the Ancient Synagogues in the Galilee: A New Appraisal,” in Ancient Synagogues: Historical Analysis and Archaeological Discovery, ed. Dan Urman and Paul V. M. Flesher, StPB 47 (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 1:79. 7 Tsafrir, “On the Source of the Architectural Design.” Responding to Tsafrir’s suggestion, Lee Levine correctly points out that it is unlikely that house synagogues were ever exclusively used as places of worship by Jews living in ancient Palestine. Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 171. 8 Stuart S. Miller, “The Rabbis and the Non-Existent Monolithic Synagogue,” in Jews, Christians and Polytheists in the Ancient Synagogue, ed. Steven Fine (London: Routledge, 1999), 58. 9 Stuart S. Miller, “On the Number of Synagogues in the Cities of ‘Erez Israel,” JJS 49 (1998): 65; Miller, “Non-Existent Monolithic Synagogue,” 60.

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The reliance on house synagogues to provide worship space for Jewish communities in the early centuries of the Common Era should not be surprising. Both ­Tsafrir and Miller raise the possibility of house synagogues because of the well-known practice of Christian communities worshipping in private homes at this time in history. Although Edward Adams has recently made a strong argument refuting the idea that Christians worshipped exclusively in house churches,10 there is no denying the fact that there is plenty of literary evidence, and even some archaeological evidence, to suggest that private houses were commonly used for communal Christian worship throughout Late Antiquity.11 Suggesting many Jewish communities worshipped in a similar manner makes sense on this parallel example alone. The problem for Tsafrir, Miller, and others who suggest that Jews worshipped communally in unconverted private houses during the first few centuries of the Common Era, is that other than the parallel in Christian communities, there is little evidence to support this hypothesis for ancient Palestine.12 By definition, there is a lack of archaeological evidence, since unconverted private houses are not distinguishable in the archaeological record. The lack of explicit literary evidence of regular Jewish communal worship taking place within unconverted private domestic space, either in the diaspora or in Palestine, however, is what raises the biggest question about the extensive use of house synagogues for communal worship. The lack of explicit literary evidence of house synagogues is noteworthy for two reasons. First, there are contemporary literary sources that discuss house churches.13 Second, contemporary literary sources discuss communal worship in synagogues, but they describe synagogues as public structures and the possibility of synagogue activities taking place in houses is never implied or explicitly mentioned.14 10 Edward Adams, The Earliest Christian Meeting Place: Almost Exclusively Houses?, LNTS (London: Bloomsbury T & T Clark, 2013). For the argument that much of the material evidence of Christian House Churches is overstated, see Kim Bowes, “Early Christian Archaeology: A State of the Field,” RC 2 (2008): 279–82. 11 Adams, Earliest Christian Meeting Place, 17–111. 12 For the diaspora, Michael White has argued that several public synagogue buildings were originally houses that were converted into public structures used for communal worship. L. Michael White, The Social Origins of Christian Architecture, Vol. 1: Building God’s House in the Roman World: Architectural Adaptation among Pagans, Jews, and Christians, Harvard Theological Studies 42 (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1996), 62–77. As Edward Adams has pointed out, however, the use of the original houses as synagogues for communal worship has not been proven, but rather hypothesized. Adams, Earliest Christian Meeting Place, 131. The only explicit evidence we have of houses being used for synagogues—e.g., Dura Europos and the Kyrios Leontis synagogue—are because the houses had been converted to reflect their use as places of Jewish worship. There is no evidence that the pre-converted forms of these houses were used as house synagogues. 13 See Adams, Earliest Christian Meeting Place, 17–88. 14 For a collection of the Tannaitic and Amoraic sources that mention synagogues, see Tzvee Zahavy, Studies in Jewish Prayer (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1990). There are

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Furthermore, texts that discuss both houses and synagogues usually make a distinction between the two types of architecture. For example, in m. Ned. 9:2 there is a discussion about what happens if someone regrets a vow they made to not enter a house (‫ )בית‬because the house is subsequently made into a synagogue (‫)ונעשה בית כנסת‬. R. Eliezer permits the person to enter what is now a synagogue, but the sages forbid. As Tzvee Zahavy has suggested, the purpose of the example is to illustrate how “changing circumstances affect a vow,”15 but in the process the passage implies that there is a physical change to the house to turn it into synagogue. Houses could become synagogues, but they had to be made into synagogues like the house in Dura Europos that was converted into a public synagogue.16 Tosefta Ma‘aś. 2:22 is another place where synagogues and domestic structures are discussed at the same time. Here, the issue is whether one can eat untithed food inside living quarters that are located within a synagogue (‫בית הכנסת ובית התלמוד‬ ‫)אם יש בהן בית דירה‬. The concern here is with apartments attached to synagogues, not communal worship that takes place in private houses. If private houses were well known as places of communal worship, one would think this passage would include eating in houses that were used as synagogues in the discussion. The goal of this article is not to prove that Jews never participated in communal worship in private houses. Although the literary evidence does not provide explicit references to house synagogues, it should be pointed out that there are very few late antique sources that explicitly discuss ancient synagogues,17 and those that do were mostly written by rabbis, who may have discussed, but did not control local synagogue practices.18 Relying on the lack of this type of literary evidence to make a few rabbinic passages where one would expect to find references to house synagogues if they were common. For example, t. Meg. 3:7 argues that synagogues should only be used for reading the Torah, studying, and delivering public eulogies, but not for frivolous activities like escaping bad weather, or eating and sleeping (see also m. Meg. 3:3). If unconverted house synagogues were common, then presumably houses would have been explicitly identified as an exception to this rule or singled out as inappropriate places for communal worship. 15 Zahavy, Studies in Jewish Prayer, 61. 16 For a discussion of the conversion of the house in Dura Europos into a synagogue, see Carl H. Kraeling, The Synagogue: The Excavations at Dura Europos: Final Report 8/1, 2nd ed. (New York: Ktav, 1979), 26–32. Although the earlier synagogue building at Dura is often called a house synagogue, it is important to point out that it is not what scholars mean when they point to house synagogues. The early Dura synagogue was the result of architectural changes that were made in order to convert a house into an assembly hall. This is why it is identifiable in the archaeological record as a synagogue. 17 There are 34 passages in the Mishnah and Tosefta combined, and 47 passages in the Yerushalmi. See Zahavy, Studies in Jewish Prayer, 49–86. 18 See, e.g., Shaye J. D. Cohen, “Were Pharisees and Rabbis the Leaders of Communal Prayer and Torah Study in Antiquity? The Evidence of the New Testament, Josephus and the Early Church Fathers,” in Evolution of the Synagogue: Problems and Progress, ed. Howard C. Kee and Lynn H. Cohick (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1999), 89–105; Lee I. Levine, “The Sages and the Synagogues in Late Antiquity,” in The Galilee in Late Antiquity, ed. Lee I. Levine (New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1992), 201–24.

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historical claims about Jewish worship practices would rightly be met with cries of the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence! Instead, the goal of this article is to look at the archaeological evidence of houses in Roman and Byzantine period Palestine in order to consider the practical implications of the suggestion that private houses provided worship space for Jewish communities. Since house synagogues are typically offered as a solution to lack of synagogue space for Jewish worshippers who presumably would have needed communal worship space on a regular basis, the quantification of synagogue space provides the focus of the analysis in this article. Do houses offer a viable solution to the supposed lack of synagogue space in Roman and Byzantine Palestine? I will begin with examples of positively identified synagogue buildings to provide a starting point for our discussion of Jewish worship space in Roman and Byzantine Palestine. What did archaeologically attested synagogue buildings look like? How many people could they have accommodated during times of worship in absolute numbers? As a percentage of the local population? This step allows us to address the concerns of those who typically have arrived at the house-synagogue hypothesis: the need to provide synagogue space for Jewish communities where synagogue space has not been found. Next, I will turn to examples of domestic architecture in Roman and Byzantine Palestine. What did domestic architecture look like and where within houses is the most likely location for communal worship? How large were these rooms in terms of area and how does this compare to the assembly halls of archaeologically attested synagogue buildings? The article concludes with a discussion of what the evidence suggests about the role of house synagogues in Roman and Byzantine Palestine.

1. Archaeologically Attested Synagogue Buildings To provide a point of departure for our discussion of whether Jews regularly worshipped within private domestic architecture we must first consider the evidence of archaeologically attested ancient synagogue buildings in Palestine. Dozens of positively identified synagogues that were constructed in Palestine in the first few centuries have been excavated over the past hundred years,19 and regardless of the century of construction the buildings come in a variety of shapes and sizes. For example, in the first century the synagogue at Gamla had an internal area of 320 m2 and could have accommodated a community of 454–536 worshippers in a city of 3,000–4,000.20 The first century synagogue in Qiryat Sepher, on the other hand, was a small building of 67.24 m2 and could have accommodated a commu 19 As mentioned above, there are few agreed upon examples from the second century. The third century dating of several synagogue buildings are also disputed. 20 Spigel, Synagogue Seating, 75–90 and 207.

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nity of 82–101 worshippers in a village of 107–160 residents.21 In the third–fifth centuries synagogues continue to be constructed to accommodate communities of varying sizes. For example, the fifth century synagogue in Sepphoris was 104.65 m2 and could have accommodated 158–216 worshippers in a city of 12,000–18,000; the synagogue in Khirbet Shema‘ was 129.27 m2 and could have accommodated 189–224 worshippers in a village of 400–500 residents; the synagogue in Meiron was 374 m2 and could have accommodated 467–530 worshippers on the ground floor in a village of 1,050–1,575;22 the synagogue in Qasrin was 206.98 m2 and could have accommodated 318–394 worshippers in a village of 300–1,000;23 the synagogue in Ḥorvat ‘Ammudim was 317 m2 and could have accommodated 468–555 worshippers in a village of 410–825 residents; and the synagogue in Beth-Yeraḥ was 615.83 m2 and could have accommodated 1,000–1,247 worshippers in a city of 3,000–5,000 residents.24 This brief overview of synagogue seating capacities in relation to the local populations provides a number of important pieces of information for our discussion of house synagogues. First, synagogues with a wide range of seating capacities have been excavated throughout the Roman and Byzantine period and within settlements of varying populations. Second, what allows all of these buildings to be labeled as ancient synagogues is that they were identifiable in the archaeological record as communal structures used by Jewish communities. In all cases the interiors of the halls were designed to allow for communal gatherings and in many cases the identification is bolstered by inscriptions, decorations, or furnishings that help identify the structure as a synagogue. Third, and most importantly, these examples show that archaeologically identified synagogues could sometimes have accommodated the majority or entire community (e.g., Qiryat Sepher, Ḥorvat ‘Ammudim), but in other cases they could have accommodated only a fraction of the local community (e.g., Gamla, Khirbet Shema‘, Sepphoris, and Beth-Yeraḥ). The lack of synagogue space in the latter villages and cities is one of the reasons why scholars have offered the house-synagogue hypothesis. Before moving to a discussion of Roman and Byzantine houses, I want to discuss one additional ancient synagogue building that provides a nice transition to domestic architecture because it is the only archaeological evidence we have of a house synagogue in Roman or Byzantine Palestine. The Kyrios Leontis synagogue was a square room with an internal area of 49 m2, was located within a private 21 Spigel, Synagogue Seating, 293–97. It is possible that this synagogue was not constructed until the second century CE. 22 Eric M. Meyers, Carol L. Meyers, and James F. Strange, Excavations at Ancient Meiron, Upper Galilee, Israel, 1971–72, 1974–75, 1977 (Cambridge: ASOR, 1981), 9; Spigel, Synagogue Seating, 115–19. 23 Spigel, Synagogue Seating, 288–93. 24 For the complete catalogue of this type of data for ancient synagogue in Palestine, see Spigel, Synagogue Seating.

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Fig. 1: The Kyrios Leontis house synagogue (source: Bahat, “A Synagogue at Beth-Shean,” 83).

residence in Beit Shean and is identifiable as a prayer room or a house-synagogue because the mosaic floor has images of a menorah and ethrog, an Aramaic inscription that refers to the “holy community (‫ )בני חבורתה קדישתה‬who contributed to the repair of the place,” and a possible niche in the south, Jerusalem facing wall (Fig. 1).25 Immediately, this synagogue is noticeably smaller than most of the synagogue buildings excavated in Roman and Byzantine Palestine. The closest synagogue in size was the Qiryat Sepher synagogue, which had an internal area of 67.24 m2 and a seating capacity of 82–101 worshippers. The Kyrios Leontis synagogue is also small in terms of its seating capacity. Whereas it could have accommodated only 58‒74 worshippers, of the 73 synagogues that have been excavated in Roman and Byzantine Palestine with clearly identifiable floor plans, this is the only synagogue with a seating capacity where the upper end of the range is below 100, and only eight synagogues had seating capacity where the upper end of the range is below 150. Sixty-five synagogues, on the other hand, had seating capacities where the upper end of the range was over 150 worshippers.26 This synagogue is important for our analysis of house synagogues for several reasons. First, if this is in fact a place of communal worship—and as a room within a house with features similar to more monumental synagogues, this seems 25 See Dan Bahat, “A Synagogue at Beth-Shean,” in Ancient Synagogues Revealed, ed. Lee I. Levine (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1982); Marilyn Chiat, “Synagogues and Churches in Byzantine Beit She’an,” JJA 7 (1980); Nehemiah Zori, “The Ancient Synagogue at Beth She’an,” ErIsr 8 (1967); Nehemiah Zori, “The House of Kyrios Leontis at Beth Shean,” IEJ 16 (1966). 26 See Spigel, Synagogue Seating, 329–32, Table 6.2.

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likely—it provides archaeological evidence that in the fifth century rooms within houses were used by at least some Jews for worship activities. Second, this building also suggests that at least some rooms in houses were modified to reflect their use as places of worship. Therefore, the paucity of archaeological evidence of house synagogues is not entirely explained by the fact that house synagogues were indistinguishable from other domestic architecture. Third, this example suggests that house synagogues would have accommodated far fewer worshippers than the typical archaeologically identified synagogue building. With this brief analysis of archaeologically attested ancient synagogue buildings complete, we now turn to the archaeological evidence of domestic architecture in Roman and Byzantine Palestine in an effort to put the Kyrios Leontis house synagogue in context. Were similarly sized rooms commonly found in the houses of Roman and Byzantine Palestine?

2. Archaeological Evidence of Domestic Space in Roman and Byzantine Palestine Archaeological excavations of the cities and villages of Roman and Byzantine Palestine have provided significant data about domestic architecture. According to Yizhar Hirschfeld’s study The Palestinian Dwelling in the Roman-Byzantine Period, there were three types of houses in Roman and Byzantine Palestine: simple houses, complex houses and courtyard houses.27 Since Hirschfeld published his typology, other scholars have developed additional, and often more useful, typologies that highlight what is a greater diversity of domestic structures than Hirschfeld’s typology suggests.28 For our purposes, however, house typology is not as important as the amount of usable space within houses. If we want to consider the feasibility of the widespread use of houses for communal worship, then we must first consider how many people could have worshipped together in typical domestic settings in comparison with how many people could have worshipped together in monumental synagogue buildings. 27 Yizhar Hirschfeld, The Palestinian Dwelling in the Roman-Byzantine Period, SBFCMi 34 (Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing Press, 1995), 21–107. 28 See Peter Richardson, “Towards a Typology of Levantine / Palestinian Houses,” JSNT 27 (2004); Ze’ev Yeivin, “Survey of Settlements in the Galilee and the Golan from the Period of the Mishnah in Light of the Sources” (PhD diss., The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1971); Shim‘on Dar and Shimon Applebaum, Landscape and Pattern: An Archaeological Survey of Samaria 800 B. C.E.–636 C. E., 2 vols., BARIS 308 (Oxford: BAR, 1986); David A. Fiensy, “The Galilean House in the Late Second Temple and Mishnaic Periods,” in Galilee in the Late Second Temple and Mishnaic Periods. Vol. 1: Life Culture and Society, ed. David A. Fiensy and James Riley Strange (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2014). See also Katharina Galor, “Domestic Architecture in Roman and Byzantine Galilee and Golan,” NEA 66 (2003).

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The first thing that should be pointed out is that when scholars identify the sizes of houses in Roman and Byzantine Palestine they typically identify the entire area enclosed by the housing complex, which includes several rooms and open-air courtyards. For example, according to Hirschfeld’s study, the median area of simple houses was 130 m2, the median area of the complex houses was 850 m2, the median area of courtyard houses was 390 m2, and the median area of peristyle houses (a type of courtyard house) was 575 m2.29 David Fiensy’s recent study of Roman period houses in the Galilee similarly focuses on the total area of the houses.30 Based on the area of the housing complexes, one might conclude that all types of houses were just as large and in many cases larger than archaeologically attested monumental synagogue buildings and therefore house-synagogues could have accommodated large communities of worshippers. When considering the possibility of house synagogues, however, the overall area of what scholars have identified as individual houses is not as important as the sizes of the rooms within houses that could have been used for communal gatherings. And according to the floor plans of excavated houses in Roman and Byzantine Palestine, the overwhelming majority of rooms in all types of houses were relatively small.31 Therefore, in this section I look houses from the villages and cities of Roman and Byzantine Palestine in an effort to identify the largest rooms within different types of houses. If Jews were commonly worshipping as communities in houses, the following rooms are where the gatherings are most likely to have taken place. In places where ancient synagogues have also been excavated, a comparison will be made between the size of the synagogue’s assembly hall and the size of the largest rooms in the excavated houses. Our discussion begins with the village of Meiron, where in the 1970s archae­ ologists excavated several housing units as well as a monumental synagogue building. One house, identified as a Domestic-Industrial Complex, is dated to ­135–365 CE and has a total area of 180 m2 (Fig.  2). The largest area in this house was the courtyard, which was approximately 37.5 m2 (7.5 × 5 m), but the largest covered room in the house was only 17.5 m2 (3.5 × 5 m).32 The second house, identified as the Patrician House, is dated to 250–365 CE and has a total area of 80 m2. The largest area in this house also was the uncovered courtyard (22.5 m2; 4.5 × 5 m), but the largest covered room in the house, Room B, was only 15.6 m2 (3 × 5.2 m).33 To put these room sizes in context, the assembly hall 29 Hirschfeld, Palestinian Dwelling, 100–1. 30 Fiensy, “Galilean House,” 235–38. 31 See, e.g., Hirschfeld, Palestinian Dwelling, 21–102, Figs.  1–71; Richardson, “Typology,” 54–55, 62. 32 Meyers, Meyers, and Strange, Excavations at Ancient Meiron, 23–44; Hirschfeld, Palestinian Dwelling, 29–31. 33 Meyers, Meyers, and Strange, Excavations at Ancient Meiron, 55–71; Hirschfeld, Palestinian Dwelling, 31–34.

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Fig. 2 Meiron Domestic Industrial Complex. The courtyard is labeled “K” and the largest room is “D” (source: Meyers, Strange and Meyers, Excavations at Ancient Meiron, 25).

in the Roman-Byzantine synagogue excavated in Meiron was 374 m2 and could have accommodated 467–530 worshippers on the ground floor.34 The synagogue building in Meiron, therefore, was twenty-one times larger than the largest room in these houses. In Qaṣrin, another village with evidence of a monumental synagogue building, scholars excavated several houses in the area of the synagogue building (Fig. 3). The excavators suggested that there were a total of 75 houses in the village and the 34 Meyers, Meyers, and Strange, Excavations at Ancient Meiron, 9; Spigel, Synagogue Seating, 115–19.

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Fig. 3: The synagogue in Qasrin with nearby domestic structures. The House of Abun is labeled as “B” and the largest room is B2. (Drawing by Heather Evans. Source: Killebrew, Grantham and Fine, “A ‘Talmudic’ House,” 60.)

evidence suggests that the houses were tightly packed multi-level structures.35 One house, which was reconstructed to be part of a tourist site, has been identified as the house of Rabbi Abun based on a nearby tomb inscription.36 This house had a total area of approximately 97.5 m2 on the ground level and the largest room within the house was approximately 18.9 m2 (ca. 6.3 × 3 m).37 According to the plan of the Byzantine period village, the largest rooms in other houses that were excavated nearby were similar in size.38 As a point of comparison, the assembly hall in the excavated synagogue in Qaṣrin during the Byzantine period was 206.98 m2 and 35 Ann Killebrew and Z. Ma‘oz, “Qasrin,” NEAEHL 4: 1222–23. 36 Dan Urman, “Public Structures and Jewish Communities in the Golan Heights,” in ­Ancient Synagogues: Historical Analysis and Archaeological Discovery, ed. Dan Urman and Paul V. M. Flesher, StPB 47 (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 2:480–81. 37 Ann Killebrew, Billy J. Grantham, and Steven Fine, “A ‘Talmudic’ House at Qasrin: On the Use of Domestic Space and Daily Life During the Byzantine Period,” NEA 66 (2003): 68. The article lists the dimensions as 8 × 2.7 m, but the dimensions based on the scale drawing is closer to 6.3 × 3 m. 38 See Killebrew, Grantham, and Fine, “A ‘Talmudic’ House at Qasrin,” 60.

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could have accommodated 318–394 worshippers.39 The monumental synagogue building in Qaṣrin was therefore 11 times larger than the largest rooms in the nearby houses. Similar to the rooms in Meiron and Qaṣrin, most domestic rooms in the villages of Roman and Byzantine Palestine were modest. For example, a modest courtyard house was excavated in Capernaum that dates to the first–third century. This house had a total area of 180 m2 and the largest room was only 12 m2 (4 × 3 m).40 There were, however, houses in villages with larger rooms. For example, in Building 35 at Umm Rihan, a second–third century house, the largest room was 41.54 m2 (6.7 × 6.5 m),41 and in Kafr Nassej, a fifth–sixth century farmhouse, the largest enclosed room was 55 m2.42 And in Chorazin two large courtyard houses were excavated that were 900 m2 and the largest rooms were approximately 45 m2.43 As a point of comparison for the houses in Chorazin, the nearby monumental synagogue had an assembly hall that was 290 m2 and could have accommodated 325–492 worshippers.44 In other words, the synagogue was 6.4 times as large as the largest rooms in the two courtyard houses. Moving to more urban contexts, the overwhelming majority of rooms in all types of houses were modestly sized. This can be seen clearly by looking at the Duke University excavations of the western summit in Roman and Byzantine Sepphoris. According to the excavators, the majority of the houses in this area were “moderately sized courtyard houses, measuring 10 × 18 m on average and probably having no more than two stories.”45 And based on the site plan, the individual rooms within these houses were relatively small (Fig. 4). For example, the house identified by the excavators as Unit V had a total internal area of approximately 299 m2 (23 × 13 m), but it was subdivided into several rooms.46 The largest area in 39 Spigel, Synagogue Seating, 288–93. 40 Hirschfeld, Palestinian Dwelling, 68–69, Fig. 43. 41 Hirschfeld, Palestinian Dwelling, 34–35. 42 Hirschfeld, Palestinian Dwelling, 51, Fig. 27. 43 Hirschfeld, Palestinian Dwelling, 68–70, Fig. 44. 44 Spigel, Synagogue Seating, 177–81. 45 Eric M. Meyers, Carol L. Meyers, and Benjamin D. Gordon, “Residential Area of the Western Summit,” in Galilee in the Late Second Temple and Mishnaic Periods, Vol. 2: The Archaeological Record from Cities, Towns, and Villages, ed. David A. Fiensy and James Riley Strange (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015), 45. 46 Part of this house was identified as Insula IV in early publications but is called Unit V in the final publication. The area of the house is based on the maximalist interpretation favored by the excavators. See Eric M. Meyers, “Roman-Period Houses from the Galilee: Domestic Architecture and Gendered Spaces,” in Symbiosis, Symbolism, and the Power of the Past: Canaan, Ancient Israel, and Their Neighbors from the Late Bronze Age through Roman Palaestina, Proceedings of the Centennial Symposium, W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research and American Schools of Oriental Research, Jerusalem, May 29/31, 2000, ed. William G. Dever and Seymour Gitin (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2003), 491–95; Eric M. Meyers, Carol L. Meyers, and Benjamin J. Gordon, ed., Sepphoris III: The Architecture, Stratigraphy, and Artifacts of the Western Summit of Sepphoris, Duke Sepphoris Excavation Reports 3 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2018), 219–23.

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Fig. 4: The Western Summit Excavations in Sepphoris. Unit V is located in area 84.1 (source: Meyers and Meyers, The Pottery from Ancient Sepphoris, 3).

this house was the 27 m2 (6 × 4.5 m) courtyard, but the largest covered rooms were only approximately 15 m2. A room attached to the south of Unit V was somewhat larger at approximately 23 m2, but most rooms within domestic structures on the western summit of Sepphoris were 15 m2 or smaller.47 In other cities, houses were more in line with the room size to the south of Unit V in Sepphoris. For example, a courtyard house in Beth-Yeraḥ was 264 m2, the largest area in the house was the 37.5 m2 uncovered courtyard, and the largest excavated room was 24.5 m2.48 In Pella, a fourth–fifth century two story courtyard house had a total area of 230 m2, the largest area was the 40 m2 uncovered courtyard, and the largest covered room on the first level was approximately 27.5 m2 (5 × 5.5 m).49 In fifth–seventh century Gerasa, a courtyard house was excavated that had a total area of 130 m2 and the largest room was 33.3 m2 (4.5 × 7.4 m).50 A modest Roman–Byzantine courtyard house at Mampsis, Building VA, had a total 47 The measurements for the rooms are based on Meyers, Meyers, and Gordon, The Architecture, Stratigraphy, and Artifacts, 216–26, Fig. 6.7. 48 Hirschfeld, Palestinian Dwelling, 61, 66–68, Fig. 42. 49 Hirschfeld, Palestinian Dwelling, 69–71, Fig. 45. 50 Hirschfeld, Palestinian Dwelling, 40–41, Fig. 17.

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area of 120 m2 and its largest room was only approximately 27 m2 (6 × 4.5 m).51 Finally, in Jerusalem excavations uncovered a neighborhood of peristyle houses dated to the early fourth century. These houses had total areas of 300–400 m2, but the courtyards and the largest rooms in the houses were modest. For example, the largest room in one of these houses was approximately 21.375 m2 (4.5 × 4.75 m).52 While less common, there were also more elite houses in the cities of Roman and Byzantine Palestine. For example, in first century Jerusalem a house identified as the Great Mansion had a total area of 600 m2, and the largest room was a spacious 77 m2 (11 × 7 m) and was even larger than the house’s courtyard.53 Returning to the Nabataean city of Mampsis, a house identified as the “Governor’s House” had an area of 1,000 m2 and had several large rooms with the largest approximately 59 m2 (8.75 × 6.75 m).54 Finally in Sepphoris a third century peristyle house identified as the House of Dionysus was approximately 300 m2 in total size, had a very large peristyle courtyard that was 168.2 m2 (14.5 × 11.6 m), and its largest room, the triclinium, was 62.1 m2 (9 × 6.9 m) (Fig. 5).55 Although there are no archaeologically identifiable synagogues in Sepphoris that were contemporaneous with the House of Dionysus, archaeologists have excavated a fifth century synagogue building.56 That building was 104.65 m2 and could have accommodated 158–216 worshippers.57 This brief survey of room sizes within all types of houses in Roman and Byzantine Palestine shows that the largest covered rooms in all types of houses ranged from 12 m2 through 77 m2.58 In total, the largest room in five houses was between 10 and 20 m2, the largest room in five houses was between 21 and 30 m2, 51 Hirschfeld, Palestinian Dwelling, 77–78, Fig. 52. 52 Hirschfeld, Palestinian Dwelling, 97, Fig. 71. 53 Hirschfeld, Palestinian Dwelling, 58–62, Figs. 36 and 37. 54 Hirschfeld, Palestinian Dwelling, 73–75, Fig. 49. 55 Hirschfeld, Palestinian Dwelling, 92–93, Fig. 67; Zeev Weiss, “From Galilean Town to Roman City, 100 BCE–200 CE,” in Galilee in the Late Second Temple and Mishnaic Periods, Vol. 2: The Archaeological Record from Cities, Towns, and Villages, ed. David A. Fiensy and James Riley Strange (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015), 69–71, Fig. O. 56 Zeev Weiss, The Sepphoris Synagogue: Deciphering an Ancient Message through Its Archaeological and Socio-Historical Contexts (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2005), 4, 37–40. 57 Spigel, Synagogue Seating, 303–9. 58 For a more complete collection of floor plans of simple, complex and courtyards houses in Roman and Byzantine Palestine, see Hirschfeld, Palestinian Dwelling. This brief survey shouldn’t be treated as an exhaustive and all-encompassing analysis of all houses in Roman and Byzantine Palestine. Not only doesn’t it include all of the excavated houses, but it must also be acknowledged that the total number of houses that have been excavated represent only a fraction of the houses that existed in Roman and Byzantine Palestine. Therefore, it is likely that there were houses that may have had rooms that were larger than the houses considered in this brief survey. The range of room sizes discussed above, however, can be heuristically useful when considering the question of house synagogues. If Jews worshipped in house synagogues during the Roman and Byzantine Palestine, they were most likely located in rooms that fall within the range discussed above.

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Fig. 5: The plan of the House of Dionysus in Sepphoris (source: Netzer and Weiss, Zippori, 31).

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the largest room in three houses was between 31 and 50 m2, and the largest room in three houses was between 51 and 77 m2.

3. House Synagogues in Light of the Archaeological Evidence This brief analysis of room sizes within Roman and Byzantine houses allows us to consider the practical implications of Jewish communities worshiping together in domestic architecture. The first thing to point out is that the overwhelming majority of rooms would have been much too small to accommodate a significant number of worshippers. Using the Kyrios Leontis synagogue as our benchmark for house-synagogue size, 81 percent of the houses discussed above did not have a room of equal size. In fact, half of the largest rooms in these houses were less than half the size of the Kyrios Leontis synagogue. Applying a basic rule-of-thumb seating capacity coefficient to these rooms results in congregation sizes of 11–26 worshippers.59 Compared to monumental synagogues, which had a median seating capacity of 261 worshippers and an average seating capacity of 333 worshippers,60 most houses could have accommodated only a fraction of the number of worshippers. This was clearly seen with the examples from Meiron, Qaṣrin and Chorazin discussed above, where the monumental synagogues could respectively have accommodated 21, 11 and 6.4 times as many worshippers as the largest domestic rooms in the houses excavated near the synagogue buildings. While there are examples of rooms in villages that approached the size of the Kyrios Leontis synagogue—e.g., the 45 m2 rooms in Chorazin—in general, houses in villages had modestly sized rooms. Therefore, if Jews living in villages met in houses for communal worship they would have done so as small congregations. While this is certainly possible, in most cases it is unlikely that rooms within houses would have provided enough worship space for most of the community to participate regularly in synagogue worship. Although most rooms in Roman and Byzantine houses were rather small, there are examples of rooms that are the same size or larger than the Kyrios Leontis synagogue. These rooms tended to be located within the more elite houses, which were predominantly found in the cities.61 For example, the triclinium in the House of Dionysus in Sepphoris had an area of 62.1 m2, which is larger than the Kyrios Leontis synagogue (49 m2) and approximately the same size as the 59 This seating capacity range was determined by applying the rule-of-thumb synagogue seating capacity coefficient—0.929 m2 per person—to the areas of the eight smallest rooms discussed above. See Spigel, Synagogue Seating, 53–54. 60 See Spigel, Synagogue Seating, 329–32, Table 6.2. The median and average were determined using the upper ends of the seating capacity ranges. The median sized synagogue in Table 6.2 is Ma‘oz Hayyim (Phase I). 61 See Richardson, “Typology,” 61.

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synagogue excavated in Qiryat Sepher (63.24 m2). And while it is smaller than the fifth century synagogue excavated in Sepphoris, at approximately 60 percent of the size of the synagogue building, it was not that much smaller. If the number of worshippers who could have worshipped in this triclinium was proportional to the seating capacity of the fifth century synagogue in Sepphoris, it could have accommodated 102–129 worshippers.62 While this is still on the smaller end of synagogue seating capacities, it shows that large rooms in houses could have accommodated a community similar in size to some of the smaller excavated synagogue buildings. Although there were relatively few elite houses with large triclinia in the cities and villages of Roman and Byzantine Palestine,63 the possibility that they could have been used should be considered when imagining Jewish worship practices. While triclinia were primarily known as places for feasts, the moveable furnishings allowed them to be used as multipurpose rooms.64 There are also ancient sources that hint at the possibility that Jewish worship may have taken place in these types of rooms. For example, in Stobi an inscription honors the father of the synagogue for his donation of rooms in his house for banqueting and religious activities,65 and the traqlin in Rabbinic sources is described as being used for a variety of activities.66 Triclinia are also known to have been used for Christian worship gatherings in the Roman and Byzantine periods,67 making the parallel practice in Jewish communities a distinct possibility. While the largest covered rooms in houses provide the most likely location for communal worship, there are a number of other places that could have been used for communal worship that should be taken into consideration. Roofs on houses, for example, could have been used for group meetings,68 and rooms on upper levels of houses are known to have been used for worship activities even if the literary evidence does not describe the most common synagogue worship activities.69 Of course, the issue with using these two locations in our analysis is that little evidence of second stories and roofs are preserved in the archaeological record, preventing us from determining the typical sizes of rooms on upper

62 This is based on a seating capacity of 170–216 for the Sepphoris synagogue. See Spigel, Synagogue Seating, 303–09 63 See Richardson, “Typology,” 50. 64 See Hirschfeld, Palestinian Dwelling, 102. 65 See Philip A. Harland, Associations, Synagogues, and Congregations: Claiming a Place in Ancient Mediterranean Society (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 32. 66 See Galor, “Domestic Architecture,” 56. 67 See Valeriy A. Alikin, The Earliest History of the Christian Gathering: Origin, Development and Content of the Christian Gathering in the First to Third Centuries, SupVC 102 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 53; White, Social Origins, 19, 119–20; Richardson, “Typology,” 62. 68 For references to reading texts and praying on roofs, see m. ‘Erub. 10:3; Acts 10:9. 69 See Mark 14:15; m. ‘Erub. 6:6; m. Šabb. 1:4.

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levels.70 Similarly, roofs are absent from the archaeological record, preventing an analysis of usable worship space of roofs. A final location where communal worship could have taken place is within the courtyard of a house. In fact, in many of the houses discussed above, the courtyard was the largest area within the housing unit, with most falling into the range of 20 m2 to 40 m2. In a typical uncovered courtyard, however, weather could have prevented regular worship activities—especially those involving the reading of scrolls—from taking place. Peter Richardson, writing about communal gatherings of Christians, suggested that courtyards could have been roofed and adapted to growing communal needs.71 While Richardson is correct, this type of adaptation would have left evidence in the archaeological record like at Dura Europos.72 It is unlikely however, that uncovered courtyards were used for regular and scheduled communal worship. Peristyle courtyards with their covered porticos, on the other hand, not only provided a large area for worshippers, they provided covered worship space even in the rain.73 For example, the courtyard in the House of Dionysus had an area of 168.2 m2 (14.5 × 11.6), which was 270 percent larger than the triclinium and 50 percent larger than the Byzantine synagogue in Sepphoris. Depending on which parts of the courtyard were used—e.g., covered vs. uncovered—it could have accommodated a large community of worshippers.

4. Conclusion The archaeological evidence of house synagogues is minimal, but it is not non-existent. Specifically, the synagogue of Kyrios Leontis provides evidence of a room within a house that was converted into a place of worship. And although there is no explicit evidence that they were used for communal Jewish worship, large multipurpose rooms, triclinia and peristyle courtyards in large houses provide usable space that could have been adapted for communal worship. While most rooms in most houses were simply too small to accommodate more than a few handfuls of people, these larger spaces could feasibly have been reconfigured to accommodate several dozen people—and in the case of the courtyard in the House of Dionysus, well over 100 people—for worship activities. But does this mean that house synagogues offer a viable solution to the supposed lack of synagogue space in Roman and Byzantine Palestine? While this 70 See Richardson, “Typology,” 48. See also Galor, “Domestic Architecture,” 51–53. 71 Richardson, “Typology,” 62. 72 See White, Social Origins, 74–77. 73 Rabbinic literature does not explicitly discuss using courtyards within houses for communal worship, but t. ’Ohal. 4:2 can be interpreted to refer to an open-air synagogue. Zahavy, Studies in Jewish Prayer, 68–69.

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study suggests the most likely places where worship activities could have taken place if Jews worshipped in private homes, it does not prove that they did. In fact, this study would seem to suggest that it is unlikely that rooms within houses were extensively used for regular Jewish worship in Roman and Byzantine Palestine. First, if the synagogue of Kyrios Leontis is a house synagogue, then the mosaic, possible niche, and possible fragments of a chancel screen found in and around the synagogue suggest that house synagogues were not indistinguishable from other domestic architecture. In fact, houses that were used regularly for communal worship were likely altered in some manner to accommodate the worship activities that took place within the room.74 Therefore, the extensive excavation of domestic structures in places like Sepphoris should have provided at least some evidence for houses that were used as places of worship if there were a significant number of houses that were used for this purpose.75 This, however, is not the case. Second, to accommodate large percentages of the Jewish population in houses during worship, there would have had to have been large numbers of houses used for communal worship. It would have taken 15–20 rooms the size of the Kyrios Leontis synagogue (49  m2) to accommodate just 1,000 people at a given time. To provide a more concrete example, in Sepphoris the overall population was 12,000–18,000 and most scholars suggest that a majority of the city’s residents were Jewish.76 If 6,000 residents of Sepphoris were Jewish, it would have taken 90–120 Kyrios-Leontis-sized rooms to accommodate the Jewish population. If 9,000 of the residents of Sepphoris were Jewish, it would have taken 135–180 Kyrios-Leontis-sized rooms to accommodate the Jewish population. The triclinium in Sepphoris could have accommodated more worshippers than the Kyrios Leontis synagogues, but it still would have taken dozens of similarly sized rooms to accommodate the majority of the local Jewish population. Peter Richardson, however, reminds us that “only a tiny minority of the population lived in upperclass houses…. Most non-elite domestic rooms were extremely limited in size due to construction limitations, so there was difficulty accommodating groups in typical Levantine houses.”77 In other words, even though large rooms, triclinia and peristyle courtyards could have accommodated large numbers of worshipers, it is unlikely that there were enough houses with these large usable spaces to accommodate large populations of Jewish residents. It is also highly unlikely that the owners of most of the elite houses in the cities and villages of Roman and

74 For a discussion of the interplay between worship activities and room furnishings, see Spigel, Synagogue Seating, 38–49. 75 As Katharina Galor points out, the lack of evidence may also be the result of non-permanent furnishings made of wood and fabrics, which might not leave traces in the archaeological record. Galor, “Domestic Architecture,” 56. 76 Spigel, Synagogue Seating, 303–9. 77 Richardson, “Typology,” 54–55, 62.

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Byzantine Palestine would have both been Jewish and provided space for large groups of worshippers on a regular basis.78 Returning to a paraphrase of Miller and Tsafrir’s questions at the beginning of this article: in light of the limited archaeological evidence of monumental synagogue buildings, where did most Jews worship in Roman and Byzantine Palestine? Since the quantitative analysis suggests that it is unlikely that houses provided enough worship space to accommodate large Jewish communities on a regular basis, perhaps it is reasonable to consider the following answer: many Jews living in Roman and Byzantine Palestine—especially those living in cities—did not regularly participate in communal worship.79

Cited Sources Adams, Edward. The Earliest Christian Meeting Place: Almost Exclusively Houses? LNTS. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2013. Alikin, Valeriy A. The Earliest History of the Christian Gathering: Origin, Development and Content of the Christian Gathering in the First to Third Centuries. SupVC 102. Leiden: Brill, 2010. Bahat, Dan. “A Synagogue at Beth-Shean.” Pages 82–85 in Ancient Synagogues Revealed. Edited by Lee I. Levine. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1982. Bowes, Kim. “Early Christian Archaeology: A State of the Field.” RC 2 (2008): 575–619. Chiat, Marilyn. “Synagogues and Churches in Byzantine Beit She’an.” JJA 7 (1980): 6–24. Cohen, Shaye J. D. “Were Pharisees and Rabbis the Leaders of Communal Prayer and Torah Study in Antiquity? The Evidence of the New Testament, Josephus and the Early Church Fathers.” Pages 89–105 in Evolution of the Synagogue: Problems and Progress. Edited by Howard C. Kee and Lynn H. Cohick. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1999. Dar, Shim‘on, and Shimon Applebaum. Landscape and Pattern: An Archaeological Survey of ­Samaria 800 B. C.E.–636 C. E. 2 vols. BARIS 308. Oxford: BAR, 1986. Fiensy, David A. “The Galilean House in the Late Second Temple and Mishnaic Periods.” Pages 216–41 in Galilee in the Late Second Temple and Mishnaic Periods, Vol. 1: Life Culture and Society. Edited by David A. Fiensy and James Riley Strange. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2014. Galor, Katharina. “Domestic Architecture in Roman and Byzantine Galilee and Golan.” NEA 66 (2003): 44–57. Harland, Philip A. Associations, Synagogues, and Congregations: Claiming a Place in Ancient Mediterranean Society. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003. Hirschfeld, Yizhar. The Palestinian Dwelling in the Roman-Byzantine Period. SBFCMi 34. Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing Press, 1995. Killebrew, Ann, Billy J. Grantham, and Steven Fine. “A ‘Talmudic’ House at Qasrin: On the Use of Domestic Space and Daily Life During the Byzantine Period.” NEA 66 (2003): 59–72. Killebrew, Ann, and Z. Ma‘oz. “Qasrin.” NEAEHL 4: 1219–24. 78 A number of other factors make it unlikely that house synagogues were extensively used in ancient Palestine. For example, the logistical question of having enough Torah scrolls and people able to read and translate from the Torah must also be considered if we are to imagine several dozens of worship meetings taking place at the same time throughout cities like Sepphoris. See Spigel, Synagogue Seating, 355–57. 79 For a similar conclusion based on the seating capacities of monumental synagogue buildings, see Spigel, Synagogue Seating, 339–58.

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Kraeling, Carl H. The Synagogue: The Excavations at Dura Europos: Final Report 8/1. 2nd ed. New York: Ktav, 1979. Levine, Lee I. The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. Levine, Lee I. “The Sages and the Synagogues in Late Antiquity.” Pages 201–24 in The Galilee in Late Antiquity. Edited by Lee I. Levine. New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1992. Meyers, Eric M. “Roman-Period Houses from the Galilee: Domestic Architecture and Gendered Spaces.” Pages 487–99 in Symbiosis, Symbolism, and the Power of the Past: Canaan, Ancient Israel, and Their Neighbors from the Late Bronze Age through Roman Palaestina, Proceedings of the Centennial Symposium, W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research and American Schools of Oriental Research, Jerusalem, May 29/31, 2000. Edited by William G. Dever and Seymour Gitin. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2003. Meyers, Eric M. and Carol L. Meyers. The Pottery from Ancient Sepphoris. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2013. Meyers, Eric M., Carol L. Meyers, and Benjamin D. Gordon. “Residential Area of the Western Summit.” Pages 39–52 in Galilee in the Late Second Temple and Mishnaic Periods, Vol. 2: The Archaeological Record from Cities, Towns, and Villages. Edited by David A. Fiensy and James Riley Strange. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015. Meyers, Eric M., Carol L. Meyers, and Benjamin D. Gordon. Sepphoris III: The Architecture, Stratigraphy, and Artifacts of the Western Summit of Sepphoris. Duke Sepphoris Excavation Reports 3. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2018. Meyers, Eric M., Carol L. Meyers, and James F. Strange. Excavations at Ancient Meiron, Upper Galilee, Israel, 1971–72, 1974–75, 1977. Cambridge: ASOR, 1981. Miller, Stuart S. “On the Number of Synagogues in the Cities of ‘Erez Israel.” JJS 49 (1998): 51–66. Miller, Stuart S. “The Rabbis and the Non-Existent Monolithic Synagogue.” Pages 57–70 in Jews, Christians and Polytheists in the Ancient Synagogue. Edited by Steven Fine. London: Routledge, 1999. Netzer, Ehud and Zeev Weiss. Zippori. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1994. Richardson, Peter. “Towards a Typology of Levantine / Palestinian Houses.” JSNT 27 (2004): 47–68. Runesson, Anders, Donald D. Binder, and Birger Olsson. The Ancient Synagogue from Its Origins to 200 C. E.: A Source Book. AJEC 72. Leiden: Brill, 2008. Spigel, Chad. Ancient Synagogue Seating Capacities: Methodology, Analysis and Limits. TSAJ 149. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012. Tsafrir, Yoram. “On the Source of the Architectural Design of the Ancient Synagogues in the Galilee: A New Appraisal.” Pages 70–86 in vol. 1 of Ancient Synagogues: Historical Analysis and Archaeological Discovery. Edited by Dan Urman and Paul V. M. Flesher. StPB 47. Leiden: Brill, 1995. Urman, Dan. “Public Structures and Jewish Communities in the Golan Heights.” Pages 373–618 in vol. 2 of Ancient Synagogues: Historical Analysis and Archaeological Discovery. Edited by Dan Urman and Paul V. M. Flesher. StPB 47. Leiden: Brill, 1995. Weiss, Zeev. The Sepphoris Synagogue: Deciphering an Ancient Message through Its Archaeological and Socio-Historical Contexts. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2005. Weiss, Zeev. “From Galilean Town to Roman City, 100 BCE–200 CE.” Pages 53–75 in Galilee in the Late Second Temple and Mishnaic Periods, Vol. 2: The Archaeological Record from Cities, Towns, and Villages. Edited by David A. Fiensy and James Riley Strange. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015. White, L. Michael. The Social Origins of Christian Architecture, Vol. 1: Building God’s House in the Roman World: Architectural Adaptation among Pagans, Jews, and Christians. Harvard Theological Studies 42. Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1996.

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Yeivin, Ze’ev. “Survey of Settlements in the Galilee and the Golan from the Period of the Mishnah in Light of the Sources.” PhD diss., The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1971. Zahavy, Tzvee. Studies in Jewish Prayer. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1990. Zori, Nehemiah. “The Ancient Synagogue at Beth She’an.” ErIsr 8 (1967): 149–67 (Hebrew). Zori, Nehemiah. “The House of Kyrios Leontis at Beth Shean.” IEJ 16 (1966): 123–34.

Ulla Tervahauta

Sacred Space and Torah Shrines in Late Antique Synagogues In this article I discuss synagogue architecture, the emerging centrality of Torah shrines, and growth in their perceived holiness in light of and as parallel with how Christianity and Christian sacred architecture evolved.1 I build on the work of scholars who have studied synagogues as well as those who have studied churches and sacred space in Late Antiquity. In both Jewish and Christian contexts sacred spaces and buildings become more visible than previously from the fourth century onward, and space is arranged in new ways. Different answers to how and why Torah shrines first emerge in synagogues, what is expressed through their prominence, and what their role in worship was have been suggested. Proposed explanations point to both internal and external causes: changes in Jewish liturgy and worship, the emergence of imperial Christianity, and the Jewish response to Christianity. In this article, I approach the development of Torah shrines in late antique synagogues as a phenomenon simultaneous with the development of Christian churches and ecclesiastical architecture, altars in particular. I suggest that these developments are in many ways parallel and indicate increased complexity and hierarchical arrangements in worship and that arrangement of space is not merely an expression of how the sacred is conceptualized, but also ties in with communal hierarchies. Remains of Torah shrines and arks are virtually lost, but there are traces of niches, platforms, and apses in ancient synagogues that are interpreted as marking the place of the Torah shrine of the synagogue in question.2 Here a note on terminology is apropos. By Torah ark (aron) I mean wooden chests that contained the Scripture scrolls; these have not survived. By Torah shrine I refer to the particular architectural structure that was intended for storing the Scripture scrolls and the chest where they were held: a Torah shrine could be a niche in a wall or an aedicula shrine, sometimes located in an apse.3 Archaeological remains of Torah shrines 1 I thank Rick Bonnie, Raimo Hakola, Kirsi Valkama, and Jürgen Zangenberg who have all read and commented on some version of this work. Their comments have greatly improved the text, while any remaining weaknesses or mistakes are my own. 2 Rachel Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues—Archaeology and Art: New Discoveries and Current Research, HdO 105 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 197–98; Lee I. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 220, 327–28. 3 Chad Spigel, Ancient Synagogue Seating Capacities: Methodology, Analysis and Limits, TSAJ 149 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2012), 44–45; Eric Meyers, “The Torah Shrine in the ­Ancient

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are found in post-Constantinian synagogues, and the existing evidence (remains of platforms) indicates that Torah shrines become larger and more prominent over the course of the Byzantine era (fourth to seventh centuries in Palestine). The first part of this article discusses Torah shrines, so-called façade motifs in mosaics, and archaeological remains of the Torah shrines. The focus is on the significance of the increased size of Torah shrines over the period of the fourth to the seventh century. Previous scholarly discussions and interpretations regarding Torah shrines and the holiness of synagogues will be presented. The historical context will then be briefly mapped. Finally, Christian holy spaces are brought into the discussion: the aim is to enrich readings of Jewish sacred spaces by considering how Christian concepts of sacred space evolved in Late Antiquity.

1. Torah Shrines: Images and Remains We begin with a seemingly simple question: what did a Torah shrine look like? Different kinds of platforms, apses and niches indicate places in ancient synagogues where the Torah shrine stood, but no Torah shrine has been preserved intact. Torah arks and scrolls have not survived over the centuries. Before we proceed to the platform remains found in many synagogues, it is worth visiting the so-called façade motifs in ancient synagogue mosaic floors. Several synagogues from late antique Palestine have colorful and richly decorated mosaic floors with rich visual and architectural programs that often contain a depiction of a building façade. These synagogues include Sepphoris, Beth Alpha, Hammath Tiberias, Susiya, and Na’aran. One of the finest examples is in the synagogue of Hammath Tiberias (Fig. 1): the panel above its zodiac mosaic portrays a façade flanked by two very large menorahs. The façade stands on a low platform that has two wide steps. On either side of the steps stands a plinth used as a column base that is about the same height as the steps leading onto the platform, and on each column base stands a column with an Ionic capital. The two columns support a roof and a triangular pediment that has a decoration on its upper edge and a conch in the middle. A pair of wooden doors fill the structure: in front of the doors hangs a curtain tied in a knot. Two different types of stone are used in this structure; the column bases and the platform appear to be made of black stone, perhaps basalt, while the columns and the roof are light in color, Synagogue: Another Look at the Evidence,” JSQ 4 (1997): 303–38; David Milson, Art and Architecture of the Synagogue in Late Antique Palestine: In the Shadow of the Church, AJEC 65 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 119. As Meyers and Spigel note, the Torah shrine and ark housed scrolls that contained Hebrew Scriptures. What texts exactly were in question would have varied between different communities. I refrain from using the term bema for a raised platform on which the Torah shrine stood: some synagogues had a speaker’s platform, a bema, for reading the Scriptures and delivering sermons. See Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 319–23.

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Fig. 1: A façade with a menorah on both sides and with ritual objects; detail from the mosaic carpet in the Hammath Tiberias IIa synagogue (photo: Gilead Peli / The Bornblum Eretz Israel Website).

perhaps indicating limestone. The stone blocks under the two menorahs seem to be made of black stone. The excavator who dated the mosaic to the third to the fourth century CE interpreted it as depicting a Torah shrine with the ark within.4 There is a resemblance to platform remains found in ancient synagogues, suggesting that this and other such mosaic images may depict a Torah shrine. A mosaic carpet such as the one at Hammath Tiberias decorates the floor and educates those viewing it with themes taken from worship and the Scriptures. It also directs the viewer’s attention towards the Torah ark.5 In that sense, there exists a connection between the ark and shrine and the image on the floor. Yet interpretation of a mosaic such as Hammath Tiberias is not, as the reader will know, straightforward, but rather raises questions. Other connotations are detectable in the Hammath Tiberias mosaic (and other mosaics with façade motifs): the objects depicted around the façade and the two menorahs flanking it can be read as referring to the Jerusalem temple and worship. This is why different readings have been suggested: while

4 Moshe Dothan, Hammath Tiberias, Vol. 1: Early Synagogues and the Hellenistic and Roman Remains (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1983), 33–37. 5 See Zeev Weiss’s article in this volume.

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Dothan and many others argue that the façade depicts the Torah shrine / ark,6 others read façade motifs as representations of the Jerusalem temple, or the future temple, signifying the “the messianic longing for the rebuilding of the land and the Temple.”7 Indeed, mosaics are open to different readings, as has also been argued previously.8 I find Joan Branham’s position helpful. She has suggested that synagogues of the era can be understood to negotiate “between two opposing forces: the assertion of its own legitimacy and integrity … and acknowledgment of its perpetual bond and deference to the Jerusalem temple tradition.” The temple was lost yet evoked within synagogue space.9 Branham’s reading indicates a community that found its identity condensed in the Torah and the Scriptures, preserved memories of the past, built its identity in the present, and looked to the future. These aspects are contained in façade mosaics, and consequentially they can refer to the temple, portray or point to the Torah shrine, and refer to what is most sacred and hoped

6 Steven Fine, This Holy Place: On the Sanctity of the Synagogue during the Greco-Roman ­Period, Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity 11 (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), 112–14, 117–22; Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues, 286–91; Orit Peleg-Barkat, “Interpreting the Uninterpreted: Art as a Means of Expressing Identity in Early Roman Judea,” in Jewish Art in Its Late Ancient Context, ed. Uzi Leibner and Catherine Hezser, TSAJ 163 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 40 n. 52; Michael Avi-Yonah, “Synagogue Architecture in the Classical Period,” in Jewish Art: An Illustrated History, ed. Cecil Roth (London: W. H. Allen, 1961), 185–86; Rachel Wishnitzer-Bernstein, “Jewish Pictorial Art in the Classical Period,” in Jewish Art: An Illustrated History, ed. Cecil Roth (London: W. H. Allen, 1961), 213, 215–18, 221–22. 7 Peleg-Barkat, “Interpreting the Uninterpreted,” 40–41 and 40 n. 52. Cecil Roth suggested reading mosaics as depicting the temple, or a synagogue Torah shrine, depending on whether the doors are open or closed. When open and scrolls seen within, or with two candelabra flanking the façade, the context in his view would be that of a synagogue rather than the temple. Cecil Roth, “Jewish Antecedents of Christian Art,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 16 (1953): 27–28. See also Lidia Chakovskaya’s discussion on the Beth Alpha mosaic in this volume. 8 Zeev Weiss, “Decorating the Sacred Realm: Biblical Depictions in Synagogues and Churches of Ancient Palestine,” in Jewish Art in Its Late Antique Context, ed. Uzi Leibner and Catherine Hezser, TSAJ 163 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 124; Zeev Weiss, “The Sepphoris synagogue mosaic and the role of Talmudic literature in its iconographical study,” in From Dura to Sepphoris: Studies in Jewish Art in Late Antiquity, ed. Lee I. Levine and Zeev Weiss, JRASup 40 (Portsmouth, RI: JRA, 2000); Milson, Art and Architecture, 106–40; Roth, “Jewish Antecedents,” 24–44; Peleg-Barkat, “Interpreting the Uninterpreted,” 40. In text studies, the shift from authorial intention to the reception and readings given by different audiences sheds light on multiple interpretative situations and contexts: images, like texts, can be received in divergent ways. Roland Deines, “God’s Revelation Through Torah, Creation, and History,” in Jewish Art in Its Late Antique Context, ed. Uzi Leibner and Catherine Hezser, TSAJ 163 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 155–57. 9 Joan Branham, “Vicarious Sacrality: Temple Space in Ancient Synagogues,” in Ancient Synagogues: Historical Analysis and Archaeological Discovery, ed. Dan Urman and Paul V. M. Flesher, StPB 47 (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 2:319–45; quotation on p. 320.

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for. Similarly, Bianca Kühnel argues that it is the continuity and connection between the tabernacle, the temple, Torah ark, and the future temple that are emphasized by these mosaics that obliterate any temporal boundaries.10 Ultimately, we may not know that the façade in this mosaic, or other mosaics, portrays the Torah shrine, but neither do we know that it does not. I suggest that while an outward resemblance to a Torah shrine is recognizable, any interpretation of such an image must remain multivalent and ambiguous. Yet mosaic evidence is important for our discussion, as mosaics indicate meanings attached to the Torah shrine and suggest connections that were to be drawn. A mosaic may not, in an unambiguous way, portray a Torah shrine, but it may, even so, still indicate how a Torah shrine looked like despite mingling the Torah shrine with the temple. An aedicula-type shrine would accentuate the connection of the Torah shrine and the memory of the temple, and recall this connection in the synagogue space. A similar phenomenon can be found in the Christian context: the Anastasis shrine in the Holy Sepulchre was not only visited by Byzantine Christian pilgrims, but models and images of it were reproduced in Christian churches.11 One of many is visible in a mosaic, today in the collection of the National Museum of Denmark. The unprovenanced mosaic possibly comes from Syria or elsewhere in the Levant, appears Byzantine in its style, and portrays a rounded shrine that resembles the Anastasis in Jerusalem (Fig. 2).12 Archaeological remains interpreted as actual Torah shrines have been divided into three categories. The first is a raised platform on which stood an aedicula shrine: such remains have been found, for example, at Gush Halav, Meiron,

10 Bianca Kühnel, “The Synagogue Floor Mosaic in Sepphoris: Between Paganism and Christianity,” in From Dura to Sepphoris: Studies in Jewish Art in Late Antiquity, ed. Lee I. Levine and Zeev Weiss, JRASup 40 (Portsmouth, RI: JRA, 2000), 34. 11 Jonathan Z. Smith, To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987), 86–87. Robert Ousterhout has pointed to the resemblance between façades and aediculae in Jewish art and representations of the Holy Sepulchre in Christian art. He suggests that not only Christian imagery but the tomb aedicula itself may have been borrowed from Jewish art. Robert Ousterhout, “The Temple, the Sepulchre, and the Martyrion of the Savior,” Gesta 29 (1990): 44–53. On copies of the Holy Sepulchre, see, e.g., Richard Krautheimer, “Iconography of Medieval Architecture,” JWCI 5 (1942): 1–33, Laura D. Gelfand, “Sense and Simulacra: Manipulation of the sense in medieval ‘copies’ of Jerusalem,” Postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies 3 (2012): 407–22, and Robin Griffth-Jones, “Public, Private and Political Devotion: Re-presenting the Sepulchre,” in Tomb and Temple: Re-imagining the Sacred Buildings of Jerusalem, ed. Robin Griffth-Jones and Eric Fernie (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2018), 17–47, and other articles in the volume. 12 The provenance of the mosaic is unknown. The National Museum of Denmark informed me that it was obtained from the international art market between 1972 and 1975 (e-mail correspondence). According to Trolle and Pentz, the mosaic was donated to the National Museum of Denmark by the New Carlsberg Foundation in 1975. Stephen Trolle and Peter Pentz, “Den hellige grav i Jerusalem,” Nationalmuseets Arbejdsmark (1983): 97–112.

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Fig. 2: An unprovenanced mosaic section, possibly from Syria, now in the Antiquities collection of the National Museum of Denmark, inv. no. 15137. The mosaic depicts a rounded structure with a roof supported by columns. The hanging lamp in the middle and the incense-burners suggest a liturgical content. The structure appears to be a shrine and recalls the Anastasis in Jerusalem. (Photo: Lennart Larsen. Published with permission of the National Museum of Denmark.)

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Hammath Tiberias, Qasrin and Umm el-Qanatir. Synagogues in Capernaum, Meroth, Nabratein, and Chorazin had two aediculae. Second, a niche built into an interior wall, for instance at Arbel, is also taken to indicate the place of the Torah ark, and finally, in some ancient synagogues an apse was built onto the interior wall. These synagogues include Beth Alpha, Beit Shean, Hammath Tiberias IIa and Ḥammath-Gader. Apses are found in synagogues dated to the late fifth to the early sixth century CE.13 It is safe to assume that this architectural form was inspired by church architecture.14 Platforms, apses, and other indications of Torah shrines began to emerge in the Constantinian era and they became more prominent over the centuries. A difference exists in comparison with the earliest synagogues. They seem to have been predominantly meeting places and places for the study of the Torah and the Scriptures.15 Synagogues in Gamla or Magdala, for example, had benches along all of their interior walls, emphasizing their communal function. These benches are the most distinctive element of their interiors and seem to reflect their role as meeting places.16 Remains of platforms, apses, and niches of different designs emerge first during Late Antiquity and are found against the Jerusalem-facing wall. This enhances the connection between the Torah shrine and the temple.17 These remains are focal and prominent features of the interior and are interpreted as marking the place of the synagogue’s Torah shrine.18 These material expressions of worship and Jewish liturgy in Late Antiquity indicate that synagogues had become places of prayer and worship in a more pronounced way than before. A few examples are appropriate here. In Galilee and Golan, raised platforms on which the Torah shrines probably stood have been found, for example, at 13 Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues, 164. Avi-Yonah sought clarity by organizing the evidence chronologically; Michael Avi-Yonah, “Synagogue Architecture.” I follow Levine and other scholars who refrain from attempting to seek chronologically different types of synagogues. Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 296–99. See also Jodi Magness’s article in this collection. 14 Meyers, “The Torah Shrine,” 321. 15 Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 219–20. 16 Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 327–28; Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues, 26–43. 17 On orientation, see Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 302–6; Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues, 161, 163. Aligning synagogues towards Jerusalem is expressed in Rabbinic literature: t. Meg. 3:21–23. Fine reads this as conceptualizing the synagogue in terms of the temple. Fine, This Holy Place, 49, 51–53. Rachel Hachlili is of the opinion that nearly every synagogue from the late second century CE onward contains architectural features that can be interpreted as a Torah shrine. Other scholars have been more cautious. Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues, 163 and nn. 3–4. 18 Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues, 47. Other considerable changes took place between the Second Temple period and Late Antiquity; probably the most notable is the emergence of figurative art including depiction of humans and animals. These fall outside the scope of the present article. Peleg-Barkat, “Interpreting the Uninterpreted,” 27–48 and Lee I. Levine, “Why Did Jewish Art Flourish in Late Antiquity,” in Jewish Art in Its Late Ancient Context, ed. Uzi Leibner and Catherine Hezser, TSAJ 163 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 49–74 discuss the characteristics of Jewish art in the respective eras.

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Capernaum, Chorazin, Meroth and Umm el-Qanatir.19 Some of the more recent evidence comes from Horvat Kur.20 The large and relatively well-preserved platform remains at Horvat Kur yield new material for the study of synagogues in the Byzantine era. The building itself is of a broadhouse type, orientated towards the south, with one entrance in the west wall and another, narrower entrance in the south wall. The platform and the south entrance take the central place of the south wall, and the platform dominates the interior. The synagogue underwent several changes over the centuries. The platform, an extensive, square-shaped structure built of limestone ashlars, can be dated to the first phase of the broadhouse synagogue, from the first half of the fifth century until ca. 600.21 Compared with the size of the building’s interior, its proportions are large: its length (north–south) is approximately one third of the building’s length and it was a relatively high structure, more than two courses of large ashlars, or perhaps 60–70 centimeters.22 The platform was carefully built and at that point the most prominent feature in the building’s interior. Only scant remains exist for what stood on the platform, 19 For synagogues in Galilee and Golan, see Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues, 59–116. Images can be viewed on Kinneret College, “The Bornblum Eretz Israel Synagogues Website” (2016): http://synagogues.kinneret.ac.il. 20 The platform was excavated in 2010–2013 and 2016–2017. My familiarity with the synagogue of Horvat Kur stems from my participation in Horvat Kur excavations in 2011–2016 and 2019 and my study of the Horvat Kur material. I am indebted to my Horvat Kur colleagues, ­especially Jürgen Zangenberg and Annalize Rheeder, for discussions on the platform and the entire building. For publications of Horvat Kur material, see Jürgen K. Zangenberg et al., “The Kinneret Regional Project excavations of a Byzantine synagogue at Horvat Kur, Galilee, 2010–2013: a preliminary report,” HBAI 2 (2013): 557–76; Jürgen K. Zangenberg et al., “Horbat Kur, Kinneret Regional Project—2012, 2013,” Hadashot Arkheologiyot-Excavations and Surveys in Israel 128 (2016), http://www.hadashot-esi.org.il/Report_Detail_Eng.aspx?id=24903; Jürgen K. Zangenberg, “A Basalt Stone Table from the Byzantine Synagogue at Horvat Kur, Galilee: Publication and Preliminary Interpretation,” in Arise, Walk Through the Land: Studies in the Archaeology and History of the Land of Israel in Memory of Yizhar Hirschfeld on the Tenth ­Anniversary of his Demise, ed. Joseph Patrich, Orit Peleg-Barkat, and Erez Ben-Yosef (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2016), 61–78; Jürgen K. Zangenberg, “Performing the Sacred in a Community Building: Observations from the 2010–2015 Kinneret Regional Project Excavations in the Byzantine Synagogue of Horvat Kur (Galilee),” in Spaces in Late Antiquity: Cultural, Theological and Archaeological Perspectives, ed. Juliette Day et al. (London: Routledge, 2016), 166–89; Jürgen K. Zangenberg, “Will the Real Women Please Sit Down: Interior Space, Seating Arrangements, and Female Presence in the Byzantine Synagogue of Horvat Kur in Galilee” in Gender and Social Norms in Ancient Israel, Early Judaism and Christianity: Texts and Material Culture in Eastern Mediterranean Cultures, ed. Michael Bauks, Katharina Galor, and Judith Hartenstein, JAJSup 28 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2019), 91–118. 21 An earlier synagogue existed before the broadhouse synagogue. At this point the synagogue was smaller, square shaped, and had a mosaic floor. It was enlarged into a broadhouse synagogue around 420, or the first half of the fifth century. After ca. 600, new changes were made, and the platform was also changed. It appears to have been filled and lowered. I am indebted to Jürgen Zangenberg for discussion here. 22 Zangenberg, “Performing the Sacred,” 166–89.

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Fig. 3: The synagogue of Horvat Kur after the 2017 excavation season. The platform remains abutting the south wall, here seen from the northwest corner, indicate the prominence of the Torah shrine in the building’s interior (photo: Jaakko Haapanen / Kinneret Regional Project).

but architectural fragments found on the site indicate that there were probably columns, possibly with an arch or some type of roof.23 It was ascended by a staircase on its north side, the side facing the congregation. Under the platform was an interior space that was accessed through a large entrance on the east side of the platform. Work on the Horvat Kur synagogue is on-going at the time of writing, but it is clear that the platform demonstrates its importance within the building and to the community that gathered in it.24 The Horvat Kur synagogue is a highly interesting representative of late antique synagogues and their diversity. The building and also the platform differ from synagogues that were closest to it, that is, synagogues in Capernaum, Chorazin and Huqoq. In the Capernaum synagogue, an aedicula platform stood on either side of its south entrance.25 The size and architecture of the limestone building in Capernaum is an obvious indication of wealth that may have derived—to some extent at least—from Christian pilgrims who visited Capernaum. In that sense

23 Zangenberg, “Performing the Sacred,” 185. 24 Zangenberg, “Performing the Sacred,” 183–89. 25 Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues, 57, 61–63.

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the synagogue may reflect the role and wealth of Capernaum as a major Christian pilgrimage center.26 Evidence from Chorazin also indicates that there were two platforms, one on each side of the southern entrance.27 Some resemblance to the Horvat Kur platform can be seen in the synagogue of Meroth. It had two platforms, and it is the western platform that provides some points of comparison: it was the larger of the two (yet smaller than the Horvat Kur platform), and relatively high, three or four courses of stones and over one meter in height. Like the Horvat Kur platform, the Meroth platform was built of limestone and decorated with pilasters on two sides. Both platforms, flanking the south entrance, were original to the synagogue, built in the first half of the fifth century, but the western platform with pilasters was rebuilt over an older one and enlarged in the early sixth century when the southern entrances were also blocked off.28 This is interesting and it can be hypothesized that behind such changes could be a wish to accentuate the western platform. An even closer resemblance to the Horvat Kur platform has been detected at Umm el-Qanatir on the Golan.29 The synagogue at Umm el-Qanatir, built entirely of basalt that is readily available on the Golan, had a high platform with a decorated cornice. An aedicula with four colonnettes and a Syrian gable has been reconstructed on the platform. It has a narrow staircase on its north side, facing the main hall, to allow ascent,30 and an interior space with a small side entrance on the western side. Although the Umm el-Qanatir platform provides an obvious

26 Joan E. Taylor, Christians and the Holy Places: The Myth of Jewish-Christian Origins (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), 228–29 (discussing Nazareth), 291–93 (Capernaum), has suggested that Christian pilgrims brought in economic resources that could have contributed to synagogue building; she also notes that the economic situation of Byzantine Palestine was, generally speaking, good. Revenues from pilgrimage would have added to the general wealth. Doron Bar is reluctant to explain economic affluence in late antique / Byzantine Palestine through Christian influence. Doron Bar, “Population, Settlement and Economy in Late Roman and Byzantine Palestine (70–641 AD),” BSOAS 67 (2004): 307–20. On pilgrimage, see Mordechai Aviam and Jacob Ashkenazi, “Late Antique Pilgrim Monasteries in Galilean Loca Sancta,” LASBF 64 (2014): 566–68. See also Raimo Hakola’s article in this volume, and Raimo Hakola, “Galilean Jews and Christians in Context: Spaces Shared and Contested in the Eastern Galilee in Late Antiquity,” in Spaces in Late Antiquity: Cultural, Theological and Archaeological Perspectives, ed. Juliette Day et al. (London: Routledge, 2016), 160–61. 27 Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues, 69. 28 Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues, 170, 173–76. Milson considers the chronological evidence secure: Milson, Art and Architecture, 80–82, 181, and 434–39. 29 Zangenberg, “Performing the Sacred,” 185. 30 Yehoshua Dray, Ilana Gonen, and Chaim Ben David, “The Synagogue of Umm el-Qanatir: Preliminary Report,” IEJ 67 (2017): 209–31. For photos, see also http://www.yeshuat.com/. Methodological difficulties in the context of Golan archaeology are discussed by Claudine M. Dauphin and Jeremy J. Schonfield, “Settlements of the Roman and Byzantine Periods on the Golan Heights: Preliminary Report on Three Seasons of Survey (1979–1981),” IEJ 33 (1983): 189–206.

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point for comparison, its dating remains uncertain.31 The platform at Horvat Kur, in light of current knowledge, can be dated to the early fifth century. It is possible that it is the earlier of the two, if the synagogue in Umm el-Qanatir was built later in the fifth century. These few examples from some of the synagogues in Galilee and Golan are only a small selection of the variety that the evidence indicates regarding remains of structures that in all likelihood housed Torah arks.32 Different explanations have been proposed to explain changes in synagogue worship that also become evident in the way Torah shrines developed in Late Antiquity. Some scholars see the destruction of the Jerusalem temple as foundational for the changes. After the temple cult ceased to exist, worship and communal prayer were taken into synagogues and local communities, and these new functions then found their tangible expressions in synagogue architecture.33 While it is true that the destruction of the Second Temple was a major, dramatic event with irrevocable consequences, scholars assess its significance differently. Many do not see the loss of the temple in 70 CE as the (sole) factor explaining the development of various Jewish institutions and practices in the following centuries.34 Even if the events of the first and the second Jewish war were dramatic and disruptive, changes in worship and liturgy were gradual, which indicates that no one explanation is behind them. Steven Fine has suggested that elements of prayer and worship are evident in sources from the first century onwards, indicating that the sanctity of the synagogue increased over the next centuries. The main source of sanctity derived, in his view, from the sacred Scriptures that were

31 The Umm el-Qanatir synagogue was tentatively dated by Kohl and Watzinger to the fifth century on stylistic grounds: “Auch die Formen einzelner Bauglieder wie die Kapitelle der Vor­ halle und des oberen Umganges lassen eine spätere Entstehungszeit, etwa das V. Jahrh. nach Chr. vermuten. Wie weit der ganze Bau aber einheitlicher Entstehung und die vorgeschlagene Wiederherstellung zutreffend ist, kann erst eine völlige Freilegung lehren.” Heinrich Kohl and Carl Watzinger, Antike Synagogen in Galilaea (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1916), 127–34; quotation on p. 134. Ilan follows Kohl and Watzinger, Sukenik considered the building Byzantine, and Hüttenmeister and Reeg dated it to the third century, which must be too early. Milson, Art and Architecture, 471. The excavators do not suggest a conclusive dating in the preliminary report, but summarize previous discussions. Dray, Gonen, and Ben David, “The Synagogue of Umm el-Qanatir,” 210. 32 Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues, 125–220. 33 Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues, 163; Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 160–62. 34 Scholarly opinions on the significance of the destruction of the Second Temple and the sack of Jerusalem in 70 CE for the development of Judaism in the following centuries vary. See Daniel R. Schwartz, “Introduction: Was 70 CE a Watershed in Jewish History? Three Stages of Modern Scholarship, and a Renewed Effort,” in Was 70 CE a Watershed in Jewish History? On Jews and Judaism Before and After the Destruction of the Second Temple, ed. Daniel R. Schwartz and Zeev Weiss, AJEC 78 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), and other articles in the book.

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in the synagogue.35 The same view is held by Eric Meyers.36 Fine finds evidence, e.g., in the works of Philo and Josephus, that already in the Second Temple period synagogues were associated with holiness. He sees the increased holiness of the synagogue building as a result of two factors—the holiness and the cult object status of the Scripture scrolls and the application of temple forms for synagogue worship.37 This is how m. Meg. 3:1 and its expression of increasing amounts of holiness can be understood, with the town square as the (low in holiness) starting point, the synagogue building being more sacred, and sacredness finding its culmination in the Torah scrolls inside the synagogue. The chest in which the Torah scrolls are kept is higher in the hierarchy of holiness than the synagogue building, but the cloth wrappers and the rolls exceed the Torah ark in holiness.38 Fine’s reading of the evidence adds much to our understanding of the changes in synagogue worship. Further, some scholars emphasize the wider context and the impact of Christianity in particular. Lee Levine points to the dominance of Christianity from the fourth century onward, and the challenges as well as the stimulating effect it had on Jewish faith and art.39 The flourishing and diversity of Jewish creativity in the literary and material realms are, in his view, to be approached in the wider context of Byzantine Christian society.40 Some scholars take a more critical view of the impact of imperial Christianity on Jewish culture. David Milson reads the Torah shrine architecture in relation to church architecture. He reads several architectural features in synagogues as inspired by and adapted from church architecture, particularly altars and low bema areas in churches. His emphasis is on religious rivalry as the force that explains changes such as the introduction of a platform and an apse to safeguard the Torah scrolls.41 The reason behind the similarities are, in his view, to be found in the rivalry and antagonism between Jewish and Christian communities in Palestine.42 Questions of Christian influence on Jewish sacred architecture are complex. Church architecture in the Constantinian era was adopted from secular architec-

35 Fine, This Holy Place, chs. 1–2. Paula Fredriksen has argued that, for the majority of Jews in antiquity, the most important locations for their religious practice were in fact the synagogue and home. The destruction of the far-away temple, therefore, was not as decisive as often assumed. Paula Fredriksen, Augustine and the Jews: A Christian Defense of Jews and Judaism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 86–88. 36 Meyers connects the architectural development with the canonization of Scripture and other developments after 70 CE. Meyers, “The Torah Shrine,” 304. 37 Fine, This Holy Place, 2–3, 25–33. 38 Fine, This Holy Place, 37–40. 39 Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 194–98 and 225–31; Levine, “Why Did Jewish Art Flourish,” 49–74. 40 Levine, “Why Did Jewish Art Flourish,” 71. 41 Milson, Art and Architecture, 234–35. 42 Milson, Art and Architecture, 241–42.

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ture.43 Did those planning and building synagogues consciously adapt something they saw in churches? Can the emergence of Torah shrines be interpreted as influence or (counter-)reaction, neither, or both? While it is true that external, intercommunal relations in late antique Palestine were often strained or complicated, do they explain internal changes? We next consider late antique Palestine and questions regarding the relations between Jews and Christians that provide context to changes in synagogue architecture and may be a factor behind the emergence of Torah shrines.

2. Mapping the Context: Jews and Christians in Late Antique Palestine Jewish and Christian communities of late antique Palestine lived in close proximity to one another, along with the Samaritan and pagan populations. The centuries that followed the Constantinian turn saw Christianity spread from Jerusalem and the surrounding region to new areas so that eventually Christians were found in all regions of Palestine. Galilee had a Christian population that around the Sea of Galilee first concentrated in pilgrim monasteries (Heptapegon-Tabgha, Capernaum, Kursi), but was eventually found in cities, such as Tiberias, Beit Shean / Scythopolis, Sepphoris, and Hippos, and the western Galilee.44 Jews and Christians lived in relative proximity to each other even in remote areas, which means contacts taking place and ties of different kinds binding Jews and Christians together, at least loosely. Although the synagogue on the hilltop of Horvat Kur suggests that this rural community was (primarily) Jewish, it was situated close 43 Richard Krautheimer, Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture, 4th ed., rev. by Richard Krautheimer and Slobodan Ćurčić (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 39–43. 44 For maps that illustrate suggested concentrations of different cultural groups and changes over the centuries, see Claudine Dauphin, La Palestine byzantine: Peuplement et Populations, vol. 2: Texte et Illustrations, BARIS 726 (Oxford: Archeopress, 1998); Mordechai Aviam, Jews, Pagans and Christians in the Galilee: 25 Years of Archaeological Excavations and Surveys: Hellenistic to Byzantine Periods, Land of Galilee 1 (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2004), 181–204. Aviam draws a borderline between Christian communities of the western Galilee and the predominantly Jewish eastern Galilee. A thorough discussion of the oldest literary and material evidence for Christian communities in Galilee is Jürgen Zangenberg, “From the Galilean Jesus to Galilean Silence: Earliest Christianity in the Galilee until the Fourth Century CE,” in The Rise and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries of the Common Era, ed. Clare K. Rotschild and Jens Schröter (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 75–108. Aviam and Ashkenazi argue that the area was important for pilgrimage, despite the lack of literary sources. Aviam and Ashkenazi, “Late Antique Pilgrim Monasteries,” 559–73; Mordechai Aviam and Jacob Ashkenazi, “Monasteries, Monks, and Villages in Western Galilee in Late Antiquity,” Journal of Late Antiquity 5 (2013): 269–97. On Palestine in general, see Taylor, Christians and Holy Places, 48–85 (on the years 135–324 CE) and Hagith Sivan, Palestine in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 16–50.

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to two major pilgrim destinations, Tabgha and Capernaum. Even the seemingly remote Umm el-Qanatir was not isolated from either other synagogues or Christian communities.45 Interaction can safely be assumed between Jewish and Christian and other inhabitants of the land; what exactly its nature was and what the relations between Jews and Christians were, is not known to us. Archaeological evidence and distribution of remains of churches and synagogues in Galilee appears to indicate certain differences, with more churches found around the Mediterranean coast and western parts of the region, and larger numbers of synagogue remains in the eastern parts.46 This is usually interpreted as indicating that in the Upper (eastern) Galilee, Jews and Christians lived in relatively separate areas, whereas the populations of western Lower Galilee and cities were more mixed.47 Real life in all likelihood was more complex than what the archaeological evidence indicates. Literary evidence likewise is fragmentary and biased, and it derives from the elites. Christian, but also Jewish, authors of Late Antiquity were, to varying degrees, determined to define the boundaries between the ingroup and outgroups, that is, between what they saw as true worship, doctrine, or way of life (their own perceived orthodoxy) and those who did not belong to that category (either those outside or, often in particular, heretics inside).48 Practices and beliefs of ordinary people are largely undocumented, but probably differed from those of the elites. Occasionally literary evidence suggests interaction that was not on the agenda of religious leaders49 What community leaders instruct and elites 45 Chaim Ben-David, “Roman-Byzantine Period Settlements Near Gamla,” in Gamla III. The Shmarya Gutmann Excavations 1976–1989: Finds and Studies I, ed. Danny Syon. IAA Reports 56 (Jerusalem: IAA, 2014), 239–47; Robin Froumin, “The Christian Settlements on the Golan During the Late Roman-Byzantine Period,” ARAM 23 (2011): 645–68; Robert Gregg, “Marking Religious and Ethnic Boundaries: Cases from the Ancient Golan Heights,” CH 69 (2000): 519–57. 46 See n. 45 above. 47 Aviam, Jews, Pagans and Christians, 202–4; Aviam and Ashkenazi, “Monasteries, Monks, and Villages,” 284–90; Aviam and Ashkenazi, “Late Antique Pilgrim Monasteries,” 569–70; Bar, “Population, Settlement and Economy,” 307–20; Taylor, Christians and Holy Places, 84, 295. 48 Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 1–13; Andrew S. Jacobs, Epiphanius of Cyprus: A Cultural Biography of Late Antiquity (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2016), 5–8, 107–8; Andrew S. Jacobs, Remains of the Jews: The Holy Land and Christian Empire in Late Antiquity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 23–25. Christian authors did take a more zealous approach, and they did hold the position of power, but a notion of heresy or heretics was not unknown to rabbis. Naomi Koltun-Fromm, “Defining Sacred Boundaries: Jewish-Christian Relations,” in A Companion to Late Antiquity, ed. Philip Rousseau (London: Blackwell, 2009), 556–71; Martin Goodman, “The Function of Minim in Early Rabbinic Judaism,” in Judaism in the Roman World: Collected Essays (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 163–71. 49 Fredriksen, Augustine and the Jews, 93–96. John and Barsanuphius of Gaza, Letters 775–776 include a question from a Christian who asks about invitations from Jewish or pagan neighbors to attend their religious festivals. The person is advised to decline, but we do not know if he or others followed the advice. Some of the tales of John Moschus (Meadow 176, Meadow,

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want is one thing, what common people do and think, another. The fragmentary and biased nature of our sources does not allow a reliable reconstruction of circumstances beyond. Written sources generally seek to influence readers and keep boundaries clear, but this warns us against giving literary sources any universal value. Insights gained from theoretical approaches, the social identity approach in particular, can be used to bring nuance to the meager source materials.50 Material culture does not provide clear answers either. It is generally problematic to know much about perceived identities of people through the material culture they left behind. Occasionally evidence is perplexing, as is the case, for example, with lintels found at Farj on the Golan that are decorated with crosses, fish symbols, palm branches, and menorahs.51 The symbols have been dated to the latter part of the fourth century and it is difficult to think of any other reading of the symbols than pointing to Jewish and Christian beliefs. By whom and for what purpose remains obscure, although Joan Taylor’s suggestion that the inhabitants had originally been Jewish but had become Christians does not emerge as implausible.52 Ultimately we do not know if these crosses and menorahs indicate that the people behind the carvings saw no contradiction in being Jewish and Christian, or whether the question is of cultural recognition or appropriation of some kind.53 It may well be that several options are correct, as interpretation of symbols can vary from individual to individual, or over time. Yet Christianity was undeniably closely connected with political power and agendas from the fourth century onwards. This is visible, for example, in church building and how Christian architecture developed.54 Church building and pilgrimage were part of an imperial endeavor that begun in the fourth century and continued until the seventh. It was led by imperial ladies such as Helena, mother of the Emperor Constantine, and Eudocia, wife of Theodosius II.55 The rise of Christianity as a state cult and Christian rulers’ aim at shaping late antique Palestine into a Christian Holy Land had an impact on the landscape and people of Palestine. It has been proposed that imperial Christianity and the visible Christian presence in the land created a need for the Jewish population to express their identities in Nissen 8) may be taken to provide glimpses of Jewish-Christian coexistence that sometimes seem to be based on friendly terms but are prone to violence, certainly on a fictional level. 50 Hakola, “Galilean Jews and Christians,” 161–64. 51 Claudine Dauphin et al., “Païens, juifs, judéo-Chrétiens, chrétiens et musulmans en Gaulanitide: Les inscriptions de Na‘aran, Kafr Naffakh, Farj et Er-Ramthaniyye,” Proche-Orient Chrétien 46 (1996): 305–40. 52 Taylor, Christians and the Holy Places, 37–41. 53 Sivan, Palestine in Late Antiquity, 21–22. 54 Krautheimer, Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture, 39–43. 55 Krautheimer, Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture, 59–65, 156–60, 266; R. A. Markus, “How on Earth Could Places Become Holy? Origins of the Christian Idea of Holy Places,” JECS 2 (1994): 257–71; Smith, To Take Place, 75–83; Jás Elsner, Imperial Rome and Christian Triumph (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 232.

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more pronounced ways than previously.56 The Christianization of Palestine can be analyzed from the viewpoints of imperialism and colonialism.57 Concerns for identity and resistance or opposition are, in light of this perspective, one of the forces behind synagogue art and architecture. Some (or many) synagogues of the fourth to the seventh centuries may have been built as a counter-reaction to Christian dominance.58 These are persuasive arguments: art can be and is used to express both domination and resistance. Yet any binary model of Jewish resistance and Christian domination can be and should be modified: it is in my view fruitful to be guided by post-colonial theories and to approach cultural coexistence in late antique Palestine as based on negotiation and hybridity.59 Art can be a powerful means of expression, and ancient artistic expressions can be analyzed as negotiation.60 This is a possible way to analyze how Torah shrines evolve in the late antique and Byzantine era, and a way to understand their resemblance to church altars and areas surrounding altars. Sometimes visual and other resemblances to church architecture are very close, as in synagogues that have apses and / or chancel screens, partitions that in synagogues separated the Torah shrine area from the rest of the synagogue interior. Symbols of religious identity were carved on these screens: synagogue chancel screens were decorated with menorahs while chancel screens in churches had crosses in corresponding places.61 We next discuss Christian architecture and organization of sacred spaces in order to understand changes in both traditions and to find new aspects in synagogue architecture and the meaning of the Torah shrine in the synagogue.

3. Hierarchies of Sacred Spaces and Cultic Practices Changes in late antique Christian attitudes to holiness of buildings and places were as remarkable as in Judaism. Christian perceptions of place / space changed remarkably in the course of the first centuries CE. Our earliest literary sources, New Testament writings, indicate that people and the community were considered holy, whereas buildings where the community gathered were not thought 56 Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 225–30. 57 Seth Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 B. C.E. to 640 C. E. (Princeton: ­Princeton University Press, 2001), 179–214. Jacobs, Remains of the Jews, 1–2, 6–16. 58 Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 225–30; Milson, Art and Architecture, 234–35, 242. 59 Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2004), 37–38. 60 Jane Webster, “Art as Resistance and Negotiation,” in Roman Imperialism and Provincial Art, ed. Sarah Scott and Jane Webster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 24–51. 61 Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues, 186–88, 221–17; Levine, Ancient synagogue, 317–18; Milson, Art and Architecture, chs. 6–7; Lihi Habas, “The bema and chancel screen in synagogues and their origin,” in From Dura to Sepphoris: Studies in Jewish Art in Late Antiquity, ed. Lee I. Levine and Zeev Weiss, JRASup 40 (Portsmouth, RI: JRA, 2000), 111–30.

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to be so.62 Robert Markus has argued that any concept of a sanctity of space was not immediately or easily accepted among Christians. He emphasizes the profound nature of the change that made Palestine a key location due to imperial patronage and pilgrimage.63 This is also the time when building of monumental churches begins.64 A connection between sanctity of meeting places and sanctity of geographical space existed; these changed views, Markus argues, intertwine with concepts of history and notions of sacred time that linked with memories of persecution and martyrs. These memories were to be kept alive. Concepts of time and history thus emerge as relevant for understanding spatial changes.65 Similar notions concerning time and memory were made regarding synagogues: orientation towards Jerusalem and the prominence of Torah shrines not only emphasize the sacredness of the Scriptures, but evoke the temple, lost over two hundred years ago, and its memory. As argued by Joan Branham, the way the memory of the past and the temple were reconstructed in the synagogue lent the synagogue its sacredness.66 Torah shrines in synagogues and altars in churches reflect memory, time, and sacredness. They preserve memories of the past and hopes for the future, assemble the present community, accentuate the Scriptures as holy, and indicate developed liturgical practices. One way to consider the role of the Torah shrines and altars is to investigate their role in how collective memories were kept and created. Recent scholarly work on collective memory emphasizes the dynamics of the memory, the processual and fluctuating nature of collective or social memory. One of the aspects that is discussed by scholars working with collective memories is the relationship between the official memory as a deliberate construct of the past, and the popular (or individual) memories and their relationship to these dominant narratives. The dynamics of the memory approach stresses the importance of the past for the present, but also the constant processes of shaping memories through multiple discourses.67 This perspective reminds us that behind the fragments of 62 1 Cor 3:10–17 likens the holiness of the community to that of the temple (ναός) without directly commenting on the temple in Jerusalem. Markus, “How on Earth,” 264; Ann Marie Yasin, Saints and Church Spaces in the Late Antique Mediterranean: Architecture, Cult, and Community (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 16–21. 63 Markus, “How on Earth” 257–71. 64 Ann Marie Yasin, “Sacred Space and Visual Art,” in The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity, ed. Scott Fitzgerald Johnson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 935–69; Krautheimer, Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture, 41–43, 59–67. 65 Markus, “How on Earth,” 265–71. 66 Branham, “Vicarious Sacrality,” 342. 67 Barbara A. Misztal, Theories of Social Remembering (Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2003), 67–74. Social memory or communal memory perspectives are used in scholarship of early Judaism and Christianity to study ancient sources and communities and how they used their past to shape their present. Since social memory is linked to how communities see and present themselves, the approach comes close to questions of identity. Raimo Hakola, Samuel Byrskog,

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the past available to us, we can assume that multiple ways existed to relate with the sacred and the past and structures symbolizing them. Altars and Torah shrines, further, create and increase hierarchies within the communal space. This suggestion has also been contested: synagogue worship and Jewish faith appear less hierarchical than Byzantine Christianity and its elaborate liturgies. Lihi Habas has suggested that while Christian influence is recognizable in the symbolism of bemata and chancel screens in Byzantine synagogues that have apses, it is doubtful whether we should assume hierarchical functions for synagogue bemata and chancel screens. Habas agrees that such hierarchies are evident in Christian buildings, evidenced by Christian literature, but she reads Jewish literature as not indicating a highly developed sense of hierarchies.68 I agree that Christian liturgy was complex and Christian authors put more time and effort into dividing their opponents and guiding their flocks, and I do not doubt Habas’s notion that there is less direct evidence for any tendency to create hierarchies in Rabbinic literature. Yet the Torah shrine does organize the synagogue space, screens do divide architectural space, and, in the literary world, concerns for boundaries have been found in Rabbinic as well as in Christian literature, even if they fall into different genres and were aimed at different audiences.69 This is why I argue that a concern for differentiation and hierarchies can be found within the Jewish tradition and the synagogue. Concerns with hierarchy are reflected and materialize in the architecture of sacred spaces. Sacred space can be analyzed as providing a point of connection between sacred and human, but encounters in the sacred space also happen between members of the community that gathers in that space, including members not present. Ann Marie Yasin builds on the work of Jonathan Z. Smith, and that of other scholars, in her discussion of late antique Christian sacred spaces. She analyzes the ways Christian communities and their different members sought contact with the past and the means by which late antique church spaces negotiate between various functions and needs of different members of the community.70 Yasin points out that spaces can be discussed “in terms of social structure, ritual, and performance.”71 In a church, the altar is where the sacred hierarchy appears to culminate. It is the focal point of the interior, a place with restricted access where only the and Jutta Jokiranta, “Introduction,” in Social Memory and Social Identity in the Study of Early Judaism and Early Christianity, ed. Samuel Byrskog, Raimo Hakola, and Jutta Jokiranta, NTOA 116 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016), 7–11. 68 Lihi Habas, “The bema and chancel screen.” See also Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 600–1. 69 Koltun-Fromm, “Defining Sacred Boundaries,” 565; Daniel Boyarin, Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 23–29; Hakola “Galilean Jews and Christians,” 144–45. 70 Yasin, Saints and Church Spaces, 15–34, esp. 26–34, and 44. 71 Yasin, Saints and Church Spaces, 34.

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highest authorities may enter (priest, bishop, deacons). Prayers and other actions taking place in the altar area, e.g., the eucharist, are ritualized to a high degree. Architectural frameworks of the interior emphasize hierarchy and ritual. They increase the visibility of the altar and direct viewers’ attention towards it.72 But although altars were the focal points in late antique churches, often they were not the only focal points, as ordinary Christians frequently performed their worship and rituals elsewhere. Already prior to the Constantinian era, commemoration of the dead in cemeteries and activities at martyrs’ graves or shrines seem to have been popular lay practices. Written sources show how elites sought to bring these activities under control.73 When building of monumental churches in the basilica style began in the fourth century, there emerged, according to Yasin, two trends: one was that altars and saints’ memorials were kept separate; the other, that the visual and physical connection between them was strengthened. In the latter case, saints’ relics began to be incorporated into altars. Relics were brought into the church space, and Yasin proposes that, when incorporated into the altar, they served to increase its sacrality and that of the church space.74 We also see a tendency towards unifying the space, and that is not a spiritual or architectural phenomenon only. Combination of an altar and a relic could have a political element in it, as it ensured increased control of lay activity. Christian sources give ample indications that many lay practices were not favorably received by ecclesiastical elites. There is a clear contradiction between evidence for diverse customs, ideas, and popular practices and bishops’ and other elites’ claims for authority.75 Yasin perceives a reciprocal relationship developing between saints’ relics and the altars above them. Relics legitimated the altar, and the altar provided the relics with centrality within the church space.76 Although this was a major trend in ancient churches, there was, as already noted, a parallel phenomenon of organizing altars and memorials into separate architectural loci within the same complex. Instead of incorporating relics or a saint’s tomb into the altar area, they could also be situated in a separate locus or focal point. Such arrangements of space indicate that multiple spatial patterns or “centers” brought variation to the 72 Yasin, Saints and Church Spaces, 151–52. 73 Ramsay MacMullen, The Second Church: Popular Christianity A. D. 200–400 (Atlanta: SBL, 2009), 22–32. 74 Yasin, Saints and Church Spaces, 151–52. There is evidence from the first century of altars containing remains of martyrs; in fact, the New Testament already indicates something like that (Rev 6:9). 75 Church spaces indicate that elites sought to bring order to Christian communities and control the movement of the laity; MacMullen, The Second Church, 20. See also Maijastina Kahlos, “Meddling in the Middle? Urban Celebrations, Ecclesiastical Leaders and the Roman Emperor in Late Antiquity,” in Spaces in Late Antiquity: Cultural, Theological and Archaeological Perspectives, ed. Juliette Day et al. (London: Routledge, 2016), 11–31. 76 Yasin, Saints and Church Spaces, 151–55.

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space and affected the ways people moved into and within the church interior.77 Complex processes of negotiation took place regarding uses of the church space by different members of the community. Along with hierarchical tendencies, late antique Christian sacred spaces emerge as diverse and containing spatial distinction. What do these notions add to our reading of Torah shrines in the synagogues of late antique Palestine? I suggest that, despite notable differences, we gain new insights. We are invited to reflect on the possibility of different practices by different people in or around the same building, to ask how distinctions were perceived between different members of community, to consider whether it is possible to detect any signs or tendencies to control or direct synagogue visitors’ attention—or, to ask if Byzantine synagogues and their Torah shrines indicate a more unified concept of space in comparison with churches. Synagogue worship differed from Christian worship, and there was no such clergy as in Christian communities. Yet that does not mean that no one attempted to seek authority or bring hierarchy / order into the space and community. Large and prominent platforms invite us to reflect on communal hierarchies and leadership positions. They indicate that those building and / or ascending them probably claimed authority and power, either for themselves or for the sacred Scriptures. If human authority is to be emphasized, it is unnecessary to suggest whether it was, for example, the rabbi(s) who claimed authority in synagogues or the local wealthy men: who claimed power could and would vary over time and place. Other elements that indicate hierarchies include donor inscriptions and monumental seats, found, for instance, in the synagogue of Horvat Kur.78 Alongside the evidence for the hierarchical arrangement of synagogue space, culminating on the Torah shrine, we should add that most likely only a (small) part of a given community—who held some sort of elite position—gathered in a synagogue.79 Not everyone attended. Places and positions accessible to women are difficult to estimate due to lack of evidence. Bernadette Brooten has shown—in response to the assumption of gender-based division of space in ancient synagogues—that there is no evidence for separation of the sexes in synagogues and no indication of women’s galleries either.80 Evidence from outside Palestine 77 Yasin, Saints and Church Spaces, 156–209. Ann Marie Yasin, “Sight Lines of Sanctity at Late Antique Martyria,” in Architecture of the Sacred: Space, Ritual, and Experience from Classical Greece to Byzantium, ed. Bonna D. Wescoat and Robert G. Ousterhout (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 248–80. 78 On seats, see Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 323–27; Zangenberg, “Performing the Sacred,” 179–83. Hakola in this volume takes a critical stance against reading synagogue donor inscriptions as stemming from different values and sentiments than non-Jewish deeds of euergeteia. 79 Spigel, Synagogue Seating, 350–55. 80 Bernadette J. Brooten, Women Leaders in the Ancient Synagogue: Inscriptional Evidence and Background Issues (Chico, CA: Scholars, 1982), 104–23, 139–41.

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actually indicates that women were honored as donors and could hold positions of authority as elders or heads of synagogues.81 In his discussion on the question, Chad Spigel argues that the meager evidence, literary and archaeological, should be read as indicating diversity of practices in different communities.82 Spigel has elsewhere estimated that while women and minors were not excluded from synagogue worship, it may have been less common for them to participate.83 I want to return to the Christian context and veneration of saints that included incorporating relics into altars, and cultic practices around martyrs’ tombs. Yasin reads the custom of enclosing relics in altars as a means of relating to the past and concentrating power into a particular architectural location. This invites further thought. There is a connection in the way material objects placed inside a specific structure of the sacred space bring holiness to the surrounding space. The Christian custom of keeping relics in altar areas or connecting structures may be used to reflect on those ancient synagogues that come with particular spaces under their platforms, as is the case, for example, at Umm el-Qanatir and Horvat Kur. We do not know exactly what these spaces were, and why they were built, but they were part of the most focal and important architectural structure of the synagogue interior and could be accessed through a side entrance. They seem to have been intended for valuable objects and were perhaps used as genizot.84 The architectural location indicates their significance: carefully preserved artifacts kept within would have established links with the past and may have contained sacredness of their own. Incorporating these spaces and the objects they held into the platform below the Torah shrine indicated their special value, while enhancing the prominence and holiness of the entire structure. The objects hidden within can be thought of as relics of sorts: like a saint’s bones inside the altar, material objects kept inside and under the Torah shrine brought and increased its sanctity. I suggest that these notions made in the context of late antique church spaces can be used to reflect on the uses of space within late antique synagogues. The prominence of Torah shrines has been interpreted as reflecting their increased sanctity, new ways of worship, and perceptions of the Torah / Scriptures as sacred. They carried the memory of the temple and the past and they can be read as 81 Brooten, Women Leaders, 5–55; Bernadette J. Brooten, “Female Leadership in the Ancient Synagogue,” in From Dura to Sepphoris: Studies in Jewish Art in Late Antiquity, ed. Lee I. Levine and Zeev Weiss, JRASup 40 (Portsmouth, RI: JRA, 2000), 215–23. Spigel suggests that in some synagogues women may have sat separate from men, possibly in galleries. Spigel, Synagogue Seating, 47–48. 82 Chad Spigel, “Reconsidering the Question of Separate Seating in Ancient Synagogues,” JJS 63 (2012): 62–83. 83 Spigel, Synagogue Seating, 354–55. 84 See Karen Stern’s article in this volume. The excavators of the Umm el-Qanatir synagogue interpret the chamber under the platform, and the other, larger space under the western aisle of the synagogue as genizot. Dray, Gonen, and Ben David, “The Synagogue of Umm el-Qanatir,” 217–18, 228.

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accentuating the Jewish identity of communities that gathered in synagogues, negotiating with or against Christian imperialism. None of these aspects necessarily excludes another. Further, they may be complemented with notions of hierarchy within space and between the members of the community and their roles.

4. Conclusions This article has approached the emergence of Torah shrines between the fourth and seventh century CE as a phenomenon that can be analyzed as parallel with how Christian church spaces evolved after the Constantinian era. Archaeological evidence from Palestinian synagogues indicates that new and different types of Torah shrines emerged during the era, resulting in a changed architectural layout of the synagogue interior. Remains of platforms in selected Galilean synagogues and in one synagogue on the Golan were discussed. These platforms in all probability housed the Torah shrine of the synagogue. In each case it was the focal point of the synagogue interior. Other, less certain, types of evidence are the so-called façade motifs on synagogue mosaic floors. Whether they depict actual architectural structures that stood either in the synagogue in question or elsewhere cannot be settled with certainty, but it is clear that they associate the Torah shrine with the temple by combining imagery and symbols of both. This mingling shows that the Torah shrine, the place of storage for the Scripture scrolls, and the synagogue itself, were conceptualized as sacred space and time. The sacred and the Scriptures are emphasized, but late antique Torah shrines also organized what was present, that is, space and the people. They divided the space and directed the gaze and thoughts of those in the synagogue. A new hierarchy had been brought into the meeting place of the community: it affected the previous seating arrangement, entrances were transferred or re-positioned, and there were changes in how people moved inside the synagogue. We may assume that restrictions were made regarding access to different areas within the synagogue interior. It is not known who may or may not have ascended the steps leading to the Torah shrine, entered the interior spaces beneath, and so forth. In some cases, the interior space can be assumed to have complemented the hierarchy of the sacred, perhaps interrelating with the Christian custom of placing relics under altars. The relatedness of Christian and Jewish art and architecture has been acknowledged by many scholars previously. Remains of Torah shrines and surrounding structures, such as chancel screens and apses, indicate a relatively close resemblance to church architecture. The Christianity of the era was a political force closely tied to imperial power. It can be perceived as a negative force that brought

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about threat as well as domination to the Jewish inhabitants of Palestine, and called for their resistance and response. Christian leaders sought to control not only others, but likewise many of their own were controlled and marginalized: the laity was criticized for its erroneous ways, heretics condemned, women brought to submission. Despite the dark tones associated with Christianity, any model that builds on the dichotomy of domination vs. resistance is in my view inadequate. Drawing from post-colonial studies, we can suggest that Jewish responses to Christianity should be seen as negotiations. This approach is in place when we inquire into the architecture of Torah shrines and the organization of the synagogue space in Late Antiquity. The Torah shrine does not stand in opposition to what stood in churches, but as expression of identity. We see a resemblance to altars and to the concept of the church as sacred space, equally novel developments in their context. Both Jewish and Christian communities begin, around the start of the Constantinian era, to seek new ways to organize the community and the sacred, outside and inside, in time and space.

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Dauphin, Claudine. La Palestine byzantine: Peuplement et Populations, Vol. 2: Texte et Illustrations. BARIS 726. Oxford: Archeopress, 1998. Dauphin, Claudine, Sebastian Brock, Robert C. Cregg, and A. F.L. Beeston. “Païens, juifs, judéo-​ Chrétiens, chrétiens et musulmans en Gaulanitide: Les inskriptions de Na‘aran, Kafr Naffakh, Farj et Er-Ramthaniyye.” Proche-Orient Chrétien 46 (1996): 305–40. Dauphin, Claudine M., and Jeremy J. Schonfield. “Settlements of the Roman and Byzantine Periods on the Golan Heights: Preliminary Report on Three Seasons of Survey (1979–1981).” IEJ 33 (1983): 189–206. Deines, Roland. “God’s Revelation Through Torah, Creation, and History: Interpreting the Zodiac Mosaics in Synagogues.” Pages 155–186 in Jewish Art in Its Late Ancient Context. Edited by Uzi Leibner and Catherine Hezser. TSAJ 163. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016. Dothan, Moshe. Hammath Tiberias, Vol. 1: Early Synagogues and the Hellenistic and Roman Remains. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1983. Dray, Yehoshua, Ilana Gonen and Chaim Ben David. “The Synagogue of Umm el-Qanatir: Preliminary Report.” IEJ 67 (2017): 209–31. Elsner, Jás. Imperial Rome and Christian Triumph. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Fine, Steven. This Holy Place: On the Sanctity of the Synagogue during the Greco-Roman Period. Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity 11. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997. Fredriksen, Paula. Augustine and the Jews: Christian Defence of Jews and Judaism. Paperback ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010. Froumin, Robin. “The Christian Settlements on the Golan During the Late Roman-Byzantine Period.” ARAM 23 (2011): 645–68. Gelfand, Laura D. “Sense and Simulacra: Manipulation of the sense in medieval ‘copies’ of Jerusalem.” Postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies 3 (2012): 407–22. Goodman, Martin. “The Function of Minim in Early Rabbinic Judaism.” Pages 163–173 in Judaism in the Roman World: Collected Essays. Leiden: Brill, 2014. Gregg, Robert. “Marking Religious and Ethnic Boundaries: Cases from the Ancient Golan Heights.” CH 69 (2000): 519–57. Griffth-Jones, Robin. “Public, Private and Political Devotion: Re-presenting the Sepulchre.” Pages 17–47 in Tomb and Temple: Re-imagining the Sacred Buildings of Jerusalem. Edited by Robin Griffth-Jones and Eric Fernie. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2018. Habas, Lihi. “The bema and chancel screen in synagogues and their origin.” Pages 111–30 in From Dura to Sepphoris: Studies in Jewish Art and Society in Late Antiquity. Edited by Lee I. Levine and Zeev Weiss. JRASup 40. Portsmouth, RI: JRA, 2000. Hachlili, Rachel. Ancient Synagogues—Archaeology and Art: New Discoveries and Current Research. HdO 105. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Hakola, Raimo. “Galilean Jews and Christians in Context: Spaces Shared and Contested in the Eastern Galilee in Late Antiquity.” Pages 141–65 in Spaces in Late Antiquity: Cultural, Theological and Archaeological Perspectives. Edited by Juliette Day, Raimo Hakola, Maijastina Kahlos, and Ulla Tervahauta. London: Routledge, 2016. Hakola, Raimo, Samuel Byrskog, and Jutta Jokiranta. “Introduction.” Pages 7–19 in Social Memory and Sociel Identity in the Study of Early Judaism and Early Christianity. Edited by Samuel Byrskog, Raimo Hakola, and Jutta Jokiranta. NTOA 116. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016, 7–11. Jacobs, Andrew S. Epiphanius of Cyprus: A Cultural Biography of Late Antiquity. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2016. Jacobs, Andrew S. Remains of the Jews: The Holy Land and Christian Empire in Late Antiquity. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003. Kahlos, Maijastina. “Meddling in the Middle? Urban Celebrations, Ecclesiastical Leaders and the Roman Emperor in Late Antiquity.” Pages 11–31 in Spaces in Late Antiquity: Cultural,

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Theological and Archaeological Perspectives. Edited by Juliette Day, Raimo Hakola, Maijastina Kahlos, and Ulla Tervahauta. London: Routledge, 2016. Kinneret College. “The Bornblum Eretz Israel Synagogues Website.” 2016. http://synagogues. kinneret.ac.il/. Kohl, Heinrich, and Carl Watzinger. Antike Synagogen in Galilaea. Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1916. Koltun-Fromm, Naomi. “Defining Sacred Boundaries: Jewish-Christian Relations.” Pages ­556–71 in A Companion to Late Antiquity. Edited by Philip Rousseau. London: Blackwell, 2009. Krautheimer, Richard. Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture. 4th ed. Revised by Richard Krautheimer and Slobodan Ćurčić. Pelican History of Art. New: Yale University Press, 1986. Krautheimer, Richard. “Iconography of Medieval Architecture.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 5 (1942): 1–33. Kühnel, Bianca. “The Synagogue Floor Mosaic in Sepphoris: between Paganism and Christianity.” Pages 31–43 in From Dura to Sepphoris: Studies in Jewish Art in Late Antiquity. Edited by Lee I. Levine and Zeev Weiss. JRASup 40. Portsmouth, RI: JRA, 2000. Levine, Lee I. The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. Levine, Lee I. “Why Did Jewish Art Flourish in Late Antiquity?” Pages 49–74 in Jewish Art in Its Late Ancient Context. Edited by Uzi Leibner and Catherine Hezser. TSAJ 163. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016. MacMullen, Ramsay. The Second Church: Popular Christianity A. D. 200–400. Atlanta: SBL, 2009. Markus, R. A. “How on Earth Could Places Become Holy? Origins of the Christian Idea of the Holy Places.” JECS 2 (1994): 257–71. Meyers, Eric M. “The Torah Shrine in the Ancient Synagogue: Another Look at the Evidence.” JSQ 4 (1997): 303–38. Milson, David. Art and Architecture of the Synagogue in Late Antique Palestine: In the Shadow of the Church. AJEC 65. Leiden: Brill, 2007. Misztal, Barbara A. Theories of Social Remembering. Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2003. Ousterhout, Robert. “The Temple, the Sepulchre, and the Martyrion of the Savior.” Gesta 29 (1990): 44–53. Peleg-Barkat, Orit. “Interpreting the Uninterpreted: Art as a Means of Expressing Identity in Early Roman Judea.” Pages 27–48 in Jewish Art in Its Late Ancient Context. Edited by Uzi Leibner and Catherine Hezser. TSAJ 163. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016. Roth, Cecil. “Jewish Antecedents of Christian Art.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 16 (1953): 24–44. Schwartz, Daniel R. “Introduction: Was 70 CE a Watershed in Jewish History? Three Stages of Modern Scholarship, and a Renewed Effort.” Pages 1–19 in Was 70 CE a Watershed in Jewish History? On Jews and Judaism Before and After the Destruction of the Second Temple. Edited by Daniel R. Schwartz and Zeev Weiss. AJEC 78. Leiden: Brill, 2011. Schwartz, Seth. Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 B. C.E. to 640 C. E. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. Sivan, Hagith. Palestine in Late Antiquity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Smith, Jonathan Z. To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. Spigel, Chad. Ancient Synagogue Seating Capacities: Methodology, Analysis and Limits. TSAJ 149. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012. Spigel, Chad. “Reconsidering the Question of Separate Seating in Ancient Synagogues.” JJS 63 (2012): 62–83. Taylor, Joan E. Christians and the Holy Places: The Myth of Jewish-Christian Origins. Oxford: Clarendon, 1993. Trolle, Stephen, and Peter Pentz. “Den hellige Grav i Jerusalem.” Nationalmuseets Arbejdsmark (1983): 97–112.

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Webster, Jane. “Art as Resistance and Negotiation.” Pages 24–51 in Roman Imperialism and Provincial Art. Edited by Sarah Scott and Jane Webster. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Weiss, Zeev. “Decorating the Sacred Realm: Biblical Depictions in Synagogues and Churches of Ancient Palestine.” Pages 121–37 in Jewish Art in Its Late Ancient Context. Edited by Uzi Leibner and Catherine Hezser. TSAJ 163. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016. Weiss, Zeev. “The Sepphoris synagogue mosaic and the rôle of Talmudic literature in its iconographical study.” Pages 15–30 in From Dura to Sepphoris: Studies in Jewish Art in Late Antiquity. Edited by Lee I. Levine and Zeev Weiss. JRASup 40. Portsmouth, RI: JRA, 2000. Wishnitzer-Bernstein, Rachel. “Jewish Pictorial Art in the Classical Period.” Pages 191–224 in Jewish Art: An Illustrated History. Edited by Cecil Roth. London: W. H. Allen, 1961. Yasin, Ann Marie. “Sacred Space and Visual Art.” Pages 935–69 in The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity. Edited by Scott Fitzgerald Johnson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Yasin, Ann Marie. Saints and Church Spaces in the Late Antique Mediterranean: Architecture, Cult, and Community. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Yasin, Ann Marie. “Sight Lines of Sanctity at Late Antique Martyria.” Pages 248–80 in Architecture of the Sacred: Space, Ritual, and Experience from Classical Greece to Byzantium. Edited by Bonna D. Wescoat and Robert G. Ousterhout. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Zangenberg, Jürgen K. “A Basalt Stone Table from the Byzantine Synagogue at Horvat Kur, Galilee: Publication and Preliminary Interpretation.” Pages 61–78 in Arise, Walk Through the Land: Studies in the Archaeology and History of the Land of Israel in Memory of Yizhar Hirschfeld on the Tenth Anniversary of his Demise. Edited by Joseph Patrich, Orit Peleg-Barkat, and Erez Ben-Yosef. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2016. Zangenberg, Jürgen K. “From the Galilean Jesus to Galilean Silence: Earliest Christianity in the Galilee until the Fourth Century CE.” Pages 75–108 in The Rise and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries of the Common Era. Edited by Clare K. Rotschild and Jens Schröter. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013. Zangenberg, Jürgen K. “Performing the Sacred in a Community Building: Observations from the 2010–2015 Kinneret Regional Project Excavations in the Byzantine Synagogue of Horvat Kur (Galilee).” Pages 166–89 in Spaces in Late Antiquity: Cultural, Theological and Archaeological Perspectives. Edited by Juliette Day, Raimo Hakola, Maijastina Kahlos, and Ulla Tervahauta. London: Routledge, 2016. Zangenberg, Jürgen K. “Will the Real Women Please Sit Down: Interior Space, Seating Arrangements, and Female Presence in the Byzantine Synagogue of Horvat Kur in Galilee.” Pages 91–118 in Gender and Social Norms in Ancient Israel, Early Judaism and Christianity: Texts and Material Culture in Eastern Mediterranean Cultures. Edited by Michael Bauks, Katharina Galor, and Judith Hartenstein. JAJSup 28. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2019. Zangenberg, Jürgen K., Stefan Münger, Raimo Hakola and Byron R. McCane. “The Kinneret Regional Project Excavations of a Byzantine Synagogue at Horvat Kur, Galilee, 2010–2013: A Preliminary Report,” HBAI 2 (2013): 557–76. Zangenberg, Jürgen K. et al. “Horbat Kur, Kinneret Regional Project—2012, 2013,” Hadashot Arkheologiyot-Excavations and Surveys in Israel 128 (2016): http://www.hadashot-esi.org.il/ Report_Detail_Eng.aspx?id=24903.

IV. Contextualizing Synagogue Art

Zeev Weiss

Visual vs. Virtual Reality: Interpreting Synagogue Mosaic Art Ancient synagogue art varies in both subject matter and artistic quality. While the exterior of some synagogues in the Galilee and Golan were adorned with decorative elements, most synagogue buildings in ancient Palestine focused on enhancing the inner space of the prayer hall, which included architectural decoration, liturgical furniture, wall paintings, and mainly colorful mosaics that today merit a great deal of attention. Many motifs appearing in synagogue art in the late third century CE, and more intensely in the course of the Byzantine period, were inspired by Greco-Roman and early Christian iconographic traditions. Synagogues adorned with rich and colorful mosaics have been uncovered throughout ancient Palestine—in the Lower Galilee, the Jordan Valley, the southern Judaean hills, and in cities and villages along the coast. Most were constructed in Late Antiquity, though simple mosaics containing geometric designs already appeared in Magdala in the late Second Temple period.1 While largely found in synagogues having a basilical plan (such as Beth Alpha, Stratum 1 of Hammath Tiberias, Na‘aran, Jericho, Gaza-Maiumas, and Maon-Nirim), only a few were in decorated monumental synagogues in the Galilee (Horvat ‘Ammudim, Khirbet Wadi Ḥamam, Huqoq, and Meroth) or were constructed according to a different architectural plan (Sepphoris, Susiya, Eshtemoa, and ‘En Gedi).2 The many studies on synagogue mosaic art in Late Antiquity focus on iconography, style, sources, and meaning. The scope of the present study is to examine visual art in the synagogues of late antique Palestine; it will not discuss in detail the nature, meaning, and significance of each and every mosaic but will focus on the diachronic and synchronic aspects of the mosaic compositions of several synagogue floors in our region.

1 Dina Avshalom-Gorni and Arfan Najar, “Migdal,” Hadashot Arkheologiyot-Excavations and Surveys in Israel 125 (2013), http://www.hadashot-esi.org.il/Report_Detail_Eng.aspx?id= 2304. 2 Lee I. Levine, Visual Judaism in Late Antiquity: Historical Contexts of Jewish Art (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 228–34; Rachel Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues—Archaeology and Art: New Discoveries and Current Research, HdO 105 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 251–84.

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1. Synagogue Mosaic Carpets: A Survey of the Finds Mosaic floors with rich figurative depictions appeared in the synagogue’s nave while those containing geometric and floral patterns usually adorned the floors in the aisles. A slightly different layout emerges in the synagogues at Khirbet Wadi Ḥ amam and Huqoq, and probably also Meroth, in which figurative panels, mainly of biblical narratives, were also set in the aisles.3 In most cases, however, the iconography and orientation of the panels in the nave—in contrast to what was found in the aisles—were meant to emphasize the focal interior of the building that drew the attention of the worshippers to the bema (platform), Torah ark, and direction of prayer. Mosaic carpets featuring figurative images took various forms. At Hammath Tiberias, Na‘aran, and Beth Alpha, for instance, the central carpet was divided into three unequal bands, and in Sepphoris into seven. In all four synagogue buildings, the zodiac appears in the center of the mosaic carpet, the architectural façade and Jewish symbols are set in the panel closest to the bema, and the biblical themes are dispersed throughout in the other panels of the mosaic floor.4 The arrangement of the panels in one direction and the flow of the scenes along the building’s axis, from the entrance to the bema, were similarly executed in these late fourth- to sixth-century CE synagogues. Similar compositions, with variations, were found elsewhere in the region. The mosaics at Ḥammath-Gader and Beit Shean are also divided into three horizontal 3 For Khirbet Wadi Ḥamam and Huqoq, see references below. For Meroth, see Zvi Ilan and Emmanuel Damati, Meroth: The Ancient Jewish Village (Tel Aviv: Society for the Protection of Nature, 1987), 53–58 (Hebrew); Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues, 417–18. The remains of a medallion containing a dedicatory inscription, which was set within the partially preserved geometric carpet covering the western aisle at Horvat ‘Ammudim, suggest that the mosaic carpet in this synagogue, too, was similarly arranged. See Lee I. Levine, “Excavations at the Synagogue of Horvat ‘Ammudim,” IEJ 32 (1982): 7–12. 4 Moshe Dothan, Hammath Tiberias, Vol. 1: Early Synagogues and the Hellenistic and Roman Remains (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1983), 33–52; Pierre Benoit, “Un sanctuaire dans la région de Jéricho: la synagogue de Na‘arah,” RB 68 (1961): 167–70; Eleazar L. Sukenik, The Ancient Synagogue of Beth Alpha (Jerusalem: Hebrew University Press, 1932), 21–43; Zeev Weiss, The Sepphoris Synagogue: Deciphering an Ancient Message in Its Archaeological and Socio-Historical Contexts (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society and Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2005), 55–60. The mosaic layout in the first stage of the Susiya synagogue was similar, however the zodiac in its center was later replaced; see Shmaryahu Gutman, Zvi Yeivin and Ehud Netzer, “Excavations in the Synagogue at Horvat Susiya,” in Ancient Synagogues Revealed, ed. Lee I. Levine (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1981), 126. A similar layout may be found in the early sixth-century synagogue at Gaza, where the nave appears to have been divided into several horizontal bands arranged one above the other, conforming to the long axis of the building; see Asher Ovadiah, “The Synagogue at Gaza,” in Ancient Synagogues Revealed, ed. Lee I. Levine (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1981), 129–30.

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bands, however their pictorial repertoires, which also include geometric patterns, differ from those mentioned earlier.5 As in Sepphoris, the mosaic carpet in the nave at Huqoq is divided into seven unequal bands with the zodiac in its center; they all face northward, opposite the direction of prayer toward Jerusalem, however the iconography here is completely different from the former.6 Yet, unlike the above, several other late antique synagogues have compositions bearing one overall pattern covering the entire mosaic carpet. The synagogue floors at ‘En Gedi (see below), Jericho, and Stratum 1a of Hammath Tiberias, for example, have geometric designs.7 Some sites have a single pattern stretching across the entire carpet and others comprise two or more carpets featuring different designs. Carpets with more intricate overall designs are known at Maon-Nirim, GazaMaiumas, and in the small synagogue in Beit Shean.8 The figurative images at these sites are arranged in a series of vine medallions with vine branches issuing from an amphora located at the bottom of the mosaic carpet. The number of vertical and horizontal rows changes from site to site, depending on the size of the hall. The row on the vertical axis features animals or objects associated with agriculture and the medallions in each parallel row portray birds and animals positioned antithetically along its axis. The selection of themes appearing in the late antique synagogue mosaics befitted the tastes of each community and its patrons with an eye toward conveying ideas deemed important. A comparative analysis of synagogue mosaics in the region indicates the use of a number of compositional approaches and artistic traditions. As far as is known today, there was no central authority guiding the local Jewish communities’ decision to select themes or instructing them how to compose the layout of their synagogue mosaic. Yet, over the years the artists developed themes and compositional models that accommodated the needs of the Jewish community and conformed to the religious beliefs of those who com-

5 Eleazar L. Sukenik, The Ancient Synagogue of El-Hammeh (Hammath-by-Gadara) (Jerusalem: R. Mass, 1935), 35–38; Nehemiah Zori, “The Ancient Synagogue at Beth Shean,” ErIsr 8 (1967): 152–54 (Hebrew). 6 Jodi Magness, “New Mosaics from the Huqoq Synagogue,” BAR 39, no. 5 (2013): 66–68; Jodi Magness et al., “Huqoq 2014,” Hadashot Arkheologiyot-Excavations and Surveys in Israel 128 (2016), http://www.hadashot-esi.org.il/Report_Detail_Eng.aspx?id=25057; Jodi Magness et al., “Huqoq 2015,” Hadashot Arkheologiyot-Excavations and Surveys in Israel 128 (2016), http:// www.hadashot-esi.org.il/Report_Detail_Eng.aspx?id=25060; Jodi Magness et al.,“Huqoq (Lower Galilee) and Its Synagogue Mosaics: Preliminary Report on the Excavations of 2011–13,” JRA 27 (2014): 327–55; Jodi Magness et al., “The Huqoq Excavation Project: 2014–2017 Interim Report,” BASOR 380 (2018): 61–131. 7 Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues, 269–72; Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 258–68. 8 Michael Avi-Yonah, “The Mosaic Floor from the Synagogue at Ma‘on (Nirim),” ErIsr 6 (1961): 86–93 (Hebrew); Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues, 265–69.

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missioned their work. To do so, they relied either on early Jewish visual sources or rendered their own visual interpretations based on the written sources before them; it is also possible that they were dependent upon patterns known outside the Jewish realm.9 It was an ongoing process that created a communal tradition of recurring shared themes and compositions, some of which were transmitted from one generation to the next. By and large, Jewish art is characterized by uniformity, repetition, and continuity. However, in comparing the various synagogue mosaics in late antique Palestine, it seems that the selection of a certain motif, theme, and layout did not dictate regional uniformity (for example, the Galilee vs. Judaea and the Jordan Rift Valley), the uniqueness of a particular type of building (such as the basilical vs. Galilean types), or a disparity in the acculturation of urban vs. rural art. Nevertheless, the variety of themes, motifs, and layouts was fairly consistent throughout the region and in most cases throughout Late Antiquity. How, then, should the relationship between the mosaics in the synagogues of Late Antiquity be understood, and would it be possible today, in retrospect, to follow the reasoning that led to the construction of a specific layout at one site and a different composition at another, sometimes even at sites in close proximity to each other? Na‘aran and ‘En Gedi or Beth Alpha and Ma‘oz Ḥayyim are good cases in point.10 This article will not discuss the composition of synagogal mosaic art generally, but instead will focus on the art of three synagogues—Khirbet Wadi Ḥamam (late third–early fourth centuries CE; see below), Sepphoris (early fifth century CE), and ‘En Gedi (late fifth–early sixth centuries CE). Although the mosaics at each site are arranged in their own unique layout, all of them reflect some of the major trends characterizing Jewish mosaic art at this time.

2. Between Communities: Mosaic Compositions at Three Sites The “Galilean”-type Khirbet Wadi Ḥamam synagogue, located in the center of the village, is an elongated building whose decorative façade faces Jerusalem, yet deviates slightly to the southeast. The excavator identified two architectural phases 9 On the various iconographic and literary sources that may have been available to the artist, see, e.g., the discussion of the Sepphoris synagogue mosaic in Weiss, Sepphoris Synagogue, 165–69, 226–28. 10 For comparisons of the mosaics from Na‘aran and ‘En Gedi, see Benoit, “Un sanctuaire,” 167–70; Zeev Weiss, “The Mosaics of the En-Gedi Synagogue,” in The Synagogue of Roman-Byzantine En-Gedi, ed. Yosef Porat, Qedem Reports (Jerusalem: Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University, forthcoming). For comparisons of the mosaics from Beth Alpha and Ma‘oz Ḥayyim, see Sukenik, Beth Alpha, 21–43; Vassilios Tzaferis, “The Ancient Synagogue at Ma‘oz Hayyim,” IEJ 32 (1982): 223–27.

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Fig. 1: Khirbet Wadi Ḥ amam synagogue, suggested reconstruction of the mosaic carpet covering the entire prayer hall (courtesy of Uzi Leibner, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Drawing: B. Arubas and M. Edelcopp).

and dates the later one, with its colorful mosaic in the synagogue’s hall, to the late third or early fourth century CE. The fragmentary remains of the nave suggest that the carpet had a circular motif in its center, probably a zodiac, with one or two panels on either side. The mosaics in the aisles are divided into panels, each occupying the space between two columns. The ten or twelve panels, only four of which have been partially preserved, bear biblical scenes with figures invariably

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oriented toward the nave.11 One panel depicts the story of the Israelites crossing the Red Sea (Exod 14); another, in the western aisle, portrays Samson smiting the Philistines (Judg 15:15–17); and a third, close to the northeastern corner of building, depicts the Tower of Babel.12 Some doubt has been cast on the date of the Khirbet Wadi Ḥamam synagogue in light of the finds uncovered in the Huqoq synagogue.13 Although an in-depth discussion of this quandary is unwieldy here, and pending the completion of the excavation of the Huqoq synagogue and the publication of its finds, several comments are in order in this regard. Iconographically speaking, some themes appear at both sites, suggesting that the two buildings were contemporaneous. Stylistically speaking, the execution of the mosaics at Khirbet Wadi Ḥamam was different from that at Huqoq, and in some respects resemble mosaics from the second half of the third and early fourth centuries CE in the Galilee and elsewhere. In contrast, the Huqoq mosaic follows stylistic patterns known in the early fifth century CE, but this, too, is an issue that should be discussed on a separate occasion. It could be argued theoretically that the artists at both sites were influenced by one iconographic source when producing their mosaics; at Khirbet Wadi Ḥamam it occurred at an early stage and at Huqoq a century later, however there is no way to prove this at this juncture. In light of the above, I would therefore argue that the second phase of the Khirbet Wadi Ḥamam synagogue may have been constructed sometime in the early fourth century CE and, in contrast to the excavator’s claim, was not abandoned in the mid-fourth century but continued to coexist alongside the synagogue in Huqoq for a while—which might explain the iconographic affinities of the mosaics in both places. The synagogue in Sepphoris, dated to the early fifth century CE, is a long building (ca. 20.8 × 7.7 m) with a single aisle on the northern side of the nave that distinguishes it from most ancient synagogues.14 The mosaic floor in the aisle is adorned with geometric designs and several Aramaic dedicatory inscriptions whereas the mosaic carpet in the nave is divided into seven horizontal bands of unequal height, some of which have internal subdivisions featuring figurative scenes. Its fourteen panels contain thematic scenes accompanied primarily by Greek dedicatory inscriptions. The zodiac dominates the center of the mosaic; the depictions below it illustrate the biblical narratives of Abraham at Mamre and the 11 Shulamit Miller and Uzi Leibner, “The Synagogue Mosaic,” in Khirbet Wadi Ḥamam: A Roman-Period Village and Synagogue in the Lower Galilee, ed. Uzi Leibner, Qedem Reports 13 (Jerusalem: Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University, 2018), 144–94. 12 Miller and Leibner, “The Synagogue Mosaic,” 148–69. 13 Jodi Magness, “The Pottery from the Village of Capernaum and the Chronology of Galilean Synagogues,” Tel Aviv 39 (2012): 112–14; Karen Britt, “The Mosaic Panels,” in Jodi Magness et al., “Huqoq (Lower Galilee) and Its Synagogue Mosaics: Preliminary Report on the Excavations of 2011–13,” JRA 27 (2014): 350. 14 Weiss, Sepphoris Synagogue, 7–53.

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Fig. 2: Plan of the Sepphoris synagogue.

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Fig. 3: ‘En Gedi synagogue and its mosaic carpet, view from above (courtesy of the Center for Jewish Art, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Photo: Zev Radovan).

Binding of Isaac while the panels above it portray motifs related to the Tabernacle and the Jerusalem temple. In addition to the well-known Jewish symbols—an architectural façade with an incense shovel beneath it and flanked on either side by a menorah, shofar, lulav, and tongs—the other panels contain themes such as Aaron’s Consecration to the Service of the Tabernacle, the Daily Sacrifice, the Showbread Table, and the Basket of First Fruits.15 Unlike the synagogues at Khirbet Wadi Ḥamam and Sepphoris, the mosaic carpet in the second phase of the synagogue at ‘En Gedi, dated to the late fifth or early sixth century CE, features a completely different layout.16 The trapezoidal building, divided into a nave and three aisles to its south, east, and west, has one running mosaic floor with variously designed carpets in each area. The nave boasts a colorful mosaic containing geometric patterns with stylized floral designs, menorot, as well as a few birds and peacocks but no human figures; the western aisle displays one long inscription divided into several paragraphs.17 15 Weiss, Sepphoris Synagogue, 55–161. 16 Dan Barag, Yosef Porat, and Ehud Netzer, “The Synagogue at ‘En-Gedi,” in Ancient Synagogues Revealed, ed. Lee I. Levine (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1981), 116–19; Yosef Porat, ed., The Synagogue of Roman-Byzantine En-Gedi, Qedem Reports (Jerusalem: Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University, forthcoming). 17 Weiss, “Mosaics of the En-Gedi Synagogue.”

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The mosaic carpet in the nave of the ‘En Gedi synagogue focuses on the central panel containing the birds and peacocks, which can be seen from all four sides of the mosaic; the inner medallion decorated with four birds in its center can be seen from only one side and directs the viewer’s attention to the bema, the focal point in the building. Such a layout has not been found in any other synagogue in ancient Palestine, but conceptually follows a well-known pattern in other fifth- and sixth-century mosaics in the region and beyond.18

3. Fusion of Themes into a Programmatic Layout: Approaches in Current Research Why, then, would these three communities compose their synagogues’ mosaics so differently? Was it simply a matter of artistic taste that distinguished one place from the other, or do each of the three mosaics reflect a different approach, meaning, and attitude adopted by each community? Did the three compositions appear concurrently in ancient synagogue art throughout Late Antiquity, or is it possible that their different dates are indicative of a chronological development of artistic traditions and a change of attitudes toward visual art in the region from the late third or early fourth century until the late fifth or early sixth century CE? Were the various forms of art utilized for individual communal purposes, or did programmatic layouts of these mosaics, or at least some of them, contain a message that responded to an external challenge that the synagogues’ artists, or those who commissioned the mosaics, wished to emphasize? Moreover, were these depictions applied equally by both urban and rural communities throughout Late Antiquity, or should we expect to find some differences in artistic expression between city and village over the years? Current research offers various explanations for the unique composition or the nature of the themes in each of these mosaics. Leibner and Miller maintain that the biblical themes at Khirbet Wadi Ḥamam represent the historical covenant between God and His people, a concept that was familiar to the congregants.19 Talgam argues for a Christian influence on this mosaic, whereas Amit, who compared the mosaic to that from Huqoq, stressed that the image of Samson appearing in both synagogues actually alludes to some local Galilean tradition connected with the prophet.20 The themes appearing in the Sepphoris synagogue mosaic and 18 Irving Lavin, “The Hunting Mosaics of Antioch and Their Sources: A Study of Compositional Principles in the Development of Early Mediaeval Style,” DOP 17 (1963), 189–95; Katherine M. D. Dunbabin, Mosaics of the Greek and Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 176–85. See also Weiss, “Mosaics of the En-Gedi Synagogue.” 19 Miller and Leibner, “The Synagogue Mosaic,” 176. 20 Rina Talgam, Mosaics of Faith: Floors of Pagans, Jews, Samaritans, Christians, and Muslims in the Holy Land (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi; University Park, PA: Penn State University Press,

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the overall composition of the entire floor are interpreted as being related to the Judaeo-Christian controversy, an approach accepted by most scholars, with but few exceptions.21 Two explanations have been offered for the unique composition at ‘En Gedi, whose synagogue art is characterized by and large by its aniconic approach. Hachlili, Ovadiah, and Levine attribute these differences to the local community’s strict adherence to the Second Commandment, which led to a shift from figural representations to aniconic patterns even before the advent of Islam and iconoclasm.22 In contrast, Talgam claims that this shift came in response to developments in the Christian world, where the Christians’ tendency to display figurative images became stronger in the late sixth century and the Jews, or at least some circles of Jews, chose to adopt a strict observance of the biblical law, using it for polemical purposes.23 Two comments are pertinent in this regard. The first relates to one panel in the Khirbet Wadi Ḥ amam synagogue that, until recently, some scholars maintained that it depicts the “construction of Solomon’s Temple.” In an attempt to explain the meaning behind this panel, Talgam claims, unconvincingly, that the Christians’ appropriation of the Tabernacle-Temple symbolism at approximately the same time “triggered the appearance of this scene in a Jewish synagogue.”24 Her interpretation, which ties it into the Judaeo-Christian polemic, is not at all relevant at Khirbet Wadi Ḥamam since the range of biblical themes at this site does not feature only Temple themes. Furthermore, the panel is located on the aisle among other biblical depictions, therefore showing that no special effort was made to give it prominence, as was done in other synagogues where Temple themes were placed on the mosaic’s axis, close to the Torah ark. With the discovery of the mosaic at Huqoq, it becomes apparent, in hindsight, that Talgam’s interpretation is indeed 2014), 260; David Amit, Carved in Stone: Collected Essays, ed. Guy D. Stiebel and Elhanan Reiner (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi; Kfar Etzion: Kfar Etzion Field School, 2013), 125–30 (Hebrew). 21 See, e.g., Bianca Kühnel, “The Synagogue Floor Mosaic in Sepphoris: Between Paganism and Christianity,” in From Dura to Sepphoris: Studies in Jewish Art and Society in Late Antiquity, ed. Lee. I. Levine and Zeev Weiss, JRASup 40 (Portsmouth, RI: JRA, 2000), 31–43; Herbert L. Kessler, “The Sepphoris Mosaic and Christian Art,” in From Dura to Sepphoris: Studies in Jewish Art and Society in Late Antiquity, ed. Lee. I. Levine and Zeev Weiss, JRASup 40 (Portsmouth, RI: JRA, 2000) 65–72; Talgam, Mosaics of Faith, 283–95. For those scholars who questioned or even rejected the possibility that the mosaic had a programmatic layout, see Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 575–78; Steven Fine, “Art and the Liturgical Context of the Sepphoris Synagogue Mosaic,” in Galilee through the Centuries: Confluence of Cultures, ed. Eric M. Meyers (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1999), 227–37; Seth Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 B. C.E to 640 C. E. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 248–59. 22 Rachel Hachlili, Ancient Mosaic Pavements: Themes, Issues, and Trends (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 216; Asher Ovadiah, “Conservative Approaches in the Ancient Synagogue Mosaic Pavements in Israel: The Cases of ‘Ein Gedi and Sepphoris / Zippori,” LASBF 60 (2010): 307–10; Levine, Visual Judaism, 240–42. 23 Talgam, Mosaics of Faith, 405–9. 24 Talgam, Mosaics of Faith, 260.

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erroneous and that the entire panel at Khirbet Wadi Ḥamam actually depicts the Tower of Babel. My second comment relates to the ‘En Gedi synagogue. Whether the change in the Jews’ attitude toward figurative art resulted from internal communal pressure, as Ovadiah, Hachlili and Levine maintain, or from an external response to the Christian worship of figurative images, as Talgam suggests, all agree that it transpired in the late sixth or early seventh century CE. Such a late date is by no means relevant to the ‘En Gedi synagogue since, according to our recent study, it was constructed a century earlier, by the late fifth or early sixth century CE at the latest.25 Moreover, geometric patterns and inscriptions cover a large area inside the synagogue, yet birds and peacocks portrayed prominently in the mosaic, even close to the Torah ark, are visible from all vantage points. If it had been the community’s intention to eliminate figurative art for the reasons mentioned above, then we would expect all such depictions to have been avoided, as was done in the synagogues in Stratum 1a at Hammath Tiberias and at Jericho later on, with the rise of Islam.26

4. A Diachronic Interpretation What, then, is the relationship between these three compositions and is there an explanation why each community chose to use a different scheme? The evidence at hand clearly indicates that diversity is what ultimately characterizes the mosaic art of all the synagogues in late antique Palestine. With this in mind, a more sophisticated approach would be needed to explain the assorted synagogal compositions known today throughout the region. No doubt, the selection of a specific composition or the preference for a particular set of themes was dictated by the circumstances at each and every site. Yet, one could still argue that some of these models may reflect a diachronic development deriving from the socio-historical events in the region, with the advent of the Byzantine empire. On the one hand, the Khirbet Wadi Ḥamam synagogue, the earliest of the three synagogue buildings, reflects earlier Roman tradition and a selection of biblical events to portray the historical covenant between God and His people. This practice is akin to the finds from Dura Europos and stems from the centrality

25 Weiss, “The Mosaics of the En-Gedi Synagogue.” 26 Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues, 269–72; Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 258–68. According to Fine (“Iconoclasm and the Art of the Late Antique Palestinian Synagogues,” in From Dura to Sepphoris: Studies in Jewish Art and Society in Late Antiquity, ed. Lee. I. Levine and Zeev Weiss, JRASup 40 [Portsmouth, RI: JRA, 2000], 192–94), the rise of Islam was more significant for Jewish aniconism than for Christianity, as synagogues were willing to incorporate the aesthetics of the new hegemony into their buildings.

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of the Bible for both communities.27 On the other, the early fifth-century CE Sepphoris synagogue mosaic, when interpreted in light of the Judaeo-Christian controversy, best illustrates the trends emerging in ancient Palestine in the face of Christian attempts to undermine God’s promise to the biblical forefathers.28 The depictions in Sepphoris represent the beliefs of the Jewish community and their efforts to stake their claim to Jerusalem and the Temple, reappropriating their rightful inheritance at a time when “others,” the Christians, exploited it for their own purposes. The dispute spurred the incorporation of similar themes in other synagogues of ancient Palestine (such as Beth Alpha and Na‘aran), and at times only a few isolated details (such as the architectural façade or menorot at Hammath Tiberias and Susiya) were needed to serve as a Jewish response to the polemic against Christian claims.29 Analyses of the early fifth-century CE mosaic remains at Meroth, and more recently at Huqoq, suggest that the mosaic carpets in the aisles of these synagogues contained an array of biblical scenes resembling the format at Khirbet Wadi Ḥamam.30 At first glance, this conclusion seems to contradict my proposed theory, however it appears that the contexts under discussion were not as homogeneous as one may suspect. Life in the big city and daily contact with the Christian community that was gaining power there presented different challenges than those for Jews living in the rural areas. It is probable that the Jews’ means of expression and relationship to their surroundings were shaped, from the outset, in the important urban centers of Sepphoris, Tiberias, and even Caesarea, and not in the peripheral areas. The tripartite division and programmatic layout displaying the tenets of the Jewish faith is therefore a product of an urban setting. Huqoq and Meroth were rural settlements in the Galilee, and it apparently took a while for developments in the urban centers to reach these remote areas. It is also probable that the rise of Christianity in the early fifth century did not impel the rural Jewish communities or their patrons to adopt the new urban trends that had surfaced in light of the Judaeo-Christian controversy. Familiar with the long-established composition of their art, the rural communities in the eastern Galilee adhered to the old traditions rather than adopted new trends that focused on specific themes and a programmatic layout. Changes transpired in the course of the fifth and 27 Carl H. Kraeling, The Synagogue: The Excavations at Dura Europos: Final Report 8/1 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1956), 66–70. 28 Weiss, Sepphoris Synagogue, 249–56. 29 Zeev Weiss, “Between Rome and Byzantium: Pagan Motifs in Synagogue Art and Their Place in the Judaeo-Christian Controversy,” in Jewish Identities in Antiquity: Studies in Memory of Menahem Stern, ed. Lee I. Levine and Daniel R. Schwartz, TSAJ 130 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 367–90. 30 With references to the relevant studies, see Zeev Weiss, “Decorating the Sacred Realm: Biblical Depictions in Synagogues and Churches of Ancient Palestine,” in Jewish Art in its Roman-​ Byzantine Context, ed. Catherine Hezser and Uzi Leibner, TSAJ 163 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 128–33.

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early sixth centuries CE with the establishment of Christian rule over the entire region, including the Galilee; only then did the rural communities embrace new conceptual patterns, as evident in Beth Alpha and Na‘aran.31 If this interpretation is valid, why, then, in the late fifth or early sixth century CE did the community at ‘En Gedi choose a different format that included only a few figurative images rather than employ a conceptual carpet like that in the neighboring village of Na‘aran? The composition and unique selection of motifs at ‘En Gedi may have been influenced by more than one factor that could have affected its decision-making process. The aniconic features in the ‘En Gedi mosaic reflect a compromise made by the community or its patrons when deciding how to decorate their prayer hall. It is indeed possible that communal members who wished to observe the Second Commandment requested to avoid figurative images, while others, more liberal in their attitude toward Greco-Roman culture, wished to employ figurative depictions in the mosaic.32 In practice, the patrons or community as a whole at ‘En Gedi seem to have reached a compromise and chose to minimize the number of figurative images, avoid human representations, and use only birds and peacocks.33 It is also possible that the relatively simple nature of the mosaic at ‘En Gedi is indicative of the local community’s financial means to fund such a project. The execution of a fine figurative mosaic carpet with an assortment of scenes and a large palette of colors presumably would have been more expensive to produce than a simpler mosaic.34 The ‘En Gedi community was seemingly limited in funds and therefore chose to decorate their mosaic with simple patterns. It is 31 Peter W. L. Walker, Holy City, Holy Places? Christian Attitudes to Jerusalem and the Holy Land in the Fourth Century, OECS (Oxford: Clarendon; New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 133–70. On the Christianization of the Galilee, see Mordechai Aviam, “Distribution Maps of Archaeological Data from the Galilee: An Attempt to Establish Zones Indicative of Ethnicity and Religious Affiliation,” in Religion, Ethnicity, and Identity in Ancient Galilee: A Region in Transition, ed. Jürgen K. Zangenberg, Harold W. Attridge and Dale B. Martin, WUNT 210 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007), 115–32. 32 Hints of such disagreement among communal members find expression in rabbinic literature and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan. See Steven Fine, Art and Judaism in the Greco-Roman World: Toward a New Jewish Archaeology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 118–21. 33 It is equally possible that some other communities in the region acted similarly and included in the geometric carpets embellishing in their prayer halls only a few isolated figurative images, avoiding any human representations. For example, at Ḥ ammath-Gader only one panel featuring two lions was inserted at the far end of the central mosaic carpet whereas at Ma‘oz Ḥayyim a bird was incorporated in the mosaic’s border, see Sukenik, El-Hammeh, 35–38; Tzaferis, “Ancient Synagogue,” 224–25. 34 The edict of Diocletian from 301 CE (Edictum de pretiis rerum venalium) that fixed the maximum price to be paid to craftsmen distinguishes between two types of mosaicists—musaearius, who received 60 denarii per day, and tessellarius, who received 50. Although it had been suggested that the difference between the two terms was meant to distinguish between wall and floor mosaicists, Dunbabin (Mosaics, 275–76) argues convincingly that it differentiates between the maker of fine decorative mosaics and the maker of simple pavements.

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also possible that the community’s financial constraints forced them to hire a less qualified artist who would have been paid less for his services. It is equally possible that the community may have had difficulty finding a skilled mosaicist who would be willing to come to ‘En Gedi and therefore had to settle for a less qualified one.

5. Conclusion The mosaics decorating the synagogues of late antique Palestine exhibit several artistic trends. Some share common features while others employed unique motifs. They were presumably designed under the influence of factors that varied according to the circumstances in each community, some of which may even be unknown to us. Artists, patrons, as well as members of the local community were involved in their production, but it seems that the composition of synagogue mosaics was shaped not only by current artistic fashions, but was also contingent upon the availability of skilled artisans, financial means, or even the intercommunal relations between Jews and other social sectors residing in the region. The proposed interpretation is by no means comprehensive or exhaustive, but aims to explain the reasons for programmatic differences in the layouts of the mosaics in several late third- to early sixth-century CE synagogue mosaics in the region.

Cited Sources Amit, David. Carved in Stone: Collected Essays. Edited by Guy D. Stiebel and Elhanan Reiner. Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi; Kfar Etzion: Kfar Etzion Field School, 2013. (Hebrew). Avi-Yonah, Michael. “The Mosaic Floor from the Synagogue at Ma‘on (Nirim).” ErIsr 6 (1961): 86–93 (Hebrew). Aviam, Mordechai. “Distribution Maps of Archaeological Data from the Galilee: An Attempt to Establish Zones Indicative of Ethnicity and Religious Affiliation.” Pages 115–32 in Religion, Ethnicity, and Identity in Ancient Galilee: A Region in Transition. Edited by Jürgen K. Zangenberg, Harold W. Attridge, and Dale B. Martin. WUNT 210. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007. Avshalom-Gorni, Dina, and Arfan Najar. “Migdal.” Hadashot Arkheologiyot-Excavations and Surveys in Israel 125 (2013). http://www.hadashot-esi.org.il/Report_Detail_Eng.aspx?id=2304. Barag, Dan, Yosef Porat, and Ehud Netzer. “The Synagogue at ‘En-Gedi,” Pages 116–19 in Ancient Synagogues Revealed. Edited by Lee I. Levine. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1981. Benoit, Pierre. “Un sanctuaire dans la région de Jéricho: la synagogue de Na‘arah.” RB 68 (1961): 161–77. Britt, Karen. “The Mosaic Panels.” Pages 348–55 in Jodi Magness et al. “Huqoq (Lower Galilee) and Its Synagogue Mosaics: Preliminary Report on the Excavations of 2011–2013.” JRA 27 (2014): 327–55. Dothan, Moshe. Hammath Tiberias, Vol. 1: Early Synagogues and the Hellenistic and Roman Remains. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1983. Dunbabin, Katherine M. D. Mosaics of the Greek and Roman World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

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Fine, Steven. Art and Judaism in the Greco-Roman World: Toward a New Jewish Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Fine, Steven. “Art and the Liturgical Context of the Sepphoris Synagogue Mosaic.” Pages 227–37 in Galilee through the Centuries: Confluence of Cultures. Edited by Eric M. Meyers. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1999. Fine, Steven. “Iconoclasm and the Art of the Late Antique Palestinian Synagogues.” Pages 183–94 in From Dura to Sepphoris: Studies in Jewish Art and Society in Late Antiquity. Edited by Lee I. Levine and Zeev Weiss. JRASup 40. Portsmouth, RI: JRA, 2000. Gutman, Shemaryah, Zeev Yeivin, and Ehud Netzer. “Excavations in the Synagogue at Ḥ orvat Susiya.” Pages 123–28 in Ancient Synagogues Revealed. Edited by Lee I. Levine. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1981. Hachlili, Rachel. Ancient Mosaic Pavements: Themes, Issues, and Trends. Leiden: Brill, 2009. Hachlili, Rachel. Ancient Synagogues—Archaeology and Art: New Discoveries and Current Research. HdO 105. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Ilan, Zvi and Emmanuel Damati. Meroth: The Ancient Jewish Village. Tel Aviv: Society for the Protection of Nature, 1987. (Hebrew). Kessler, Herbert L. “The Sepphoris Mosaic and Christian Art.” Pages 65–72 in From Dura to Sepphoris: Studies in Jewish Art and Society in Late Antiquity. Edited by Lee I. Levine and Zeev Weiss. JRASup 40. Portsmouth, RI: JRA, 2000. Kraeling, Carl H. The Synagogue: The Excavations at Dura Europos: Final Report 8/1. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1956. Kühnel, Bianca. “The Synagogue Floor Mosaic in Sepphoris: Between Paganism and Christianity.” Pages 31–43 in From Dura to Sepphoris: Studies in Jewish Art and Society in Late Antiquity. Edited by Lee I. Levine and Zeev Weiss. JRASup 40. Portsmouth, RI: JRA, 2000. Lavin, Irving. “The Hunting Mosaics of Antioch and Their Sources: A Study of Compositional Principles in the Development of Early Mediaeval Style.” DOP 17 (1963): 181–286. Levine, Lee I. “Excavations at the Synagogue of Ḥorvat ‘Ammudim.” IEJ 32 (1982): 1–12. Levine, Lee I. The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years. 2nd ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005. Levine, Lee I. Visual Judaism in Late Antiquity: Historical Contexts of Jewish Art. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012. Magness, Jodi. “New Mosaics from the Huqoq Synagogue.” BAR 39, no. 5 (2013): 66–68. Magness, Jodi. “The Pottery from the Village of Capernaum and the Chronology of Galilean Synagogues.” Tel Aviv 39 (2012): 110–22. Magness, Jodi, Shua Kisilevitz, Karen Britt, Matthew Grey, and Chad Spigel. “Huqoq (Lower Galilee) and Its Synagogue Mosaics: Preliminary Report on the Excavations of 2011–2013.” JRA 27 (2014): 327–55. Magness Jodi, Shua Kisilevitz, Matthew Grey, Chad Spigel, Benjamin Gordon, Brian Coussens, and Karen Britt. “Huqoq 2014.” Hadashot Arkheologiyot-Excavations and Surveys in Israel 128 (2016). http://www.hadashot-esi.org.il/Report_Detail_Eng.aspx?id=25057. Magness Jodi, Shua Kisilevitz, Matthew Grey, Dennis Mizzi, and Karen Britt. “Huqoq 2015.” Hadashot Arkheologiyot-Excavations and Surveys in Israel 128 (2016). http://www.hadashotesi.org.il/Report_Detail_Eng.aspx?id=25060. Magness, Jodi, Shua Kisilevitz, Matthew Grey, Dennis Mizzi, Daniel Schindler, Martin Wells, Karen Britt, Ra‘anan Boustan, Shana O’Connell, Emily Hubbard, Jessie George, Jennifer Ramsay, Elisabetta Boaretto, and Michael Chazan. “The Huqoq Excavation Project: 2014–2017 Interim Report.” BASOR 380 (2018): 61–131. Miller, Shulamit, and Uzi Leibner, “The Synagogue Mosaic.” Pages 144–94 in Khirbet Wadi Ḥamam: A Roman-Period Village and Synagogue in the Lower Galilee. Edited by Uzi Leibner. Qedem Reports 13. Jerusalem: Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University, 2018.

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Ovadiah, Asher. “The Synagogue at Gaza.” Pages 129–32 in Ancient Synagogues Revealed. Edited by Lee I. Levine. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1981. Ovadiah, Asher. “Conservative Approaches in the Ancient Synagogue Mosaic Pavements in Israel: The Cases of ‘Ein Gedi and Sepphoris / Zippori.” LASBF 60 (2010): 307–17. Porat, Yosef, ed. The Synagogue of Roman-Byzantine En-Gedi. Qedem Reports. Jerusalem: Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University, forthcoming. Schwartz, Seth. Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 B. C.E to 640 C. E. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. Sukenik, Eleazar L. The Ancient Synagogue of Beth Alpha. Jerusalem: Hebrew University Press, 1932. Sukenik, Eleazar L. The Ancient Synagogue of El-Hammeh (Hammath-by-Gadara). Jerusalem: R. Mass, 1935. Talgam, Rina. Mosaics of Faith: Floors of Pagans, Jews, Samaritans, Christians, and Muslims in the Holy Land. Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi; University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2014. Tzaferis, Vassilios. “The Ancient Synagogue at Ma‘oz Hayyim.” IEJ 32 (1982): 215–44. Walker, Peter W. L. Holy City, Holy Places? Christian Attitudes to Jerusalem and the Holy Land in the Fourth Century. OECS. Oxford: Clarendon; New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Weiss, Zeev. “Between Rome and Byzantium: Pagan Motifs in Synagogue Art and Their Place in the Judaeo-Christian Controversy.” Pages 367–90 in Jewish Identities in Antiquity: Studies in Memory of Menahem Stern. Edited by Lee I. Levine and Daniel R. Schwartz. TSAJ 130. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009. Weiss, Zeev. “Decorating the Sacred Realm: Biblical Depictions in Synagogues and Churches of Ancient Palestine.” Pages 121–37 in Jewish Art in its Roman-Byzantine Context. Edited by Catherine Hezser and Uzi Leibner. TSAJ 163. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016. Weiss, Zeev. “The Mosaics of the En-Gedi Synagogue.” Forthcoming in The Synagogue of Roman-Byzantine En-Gedi. Edited by Yosef Porat. Qedem Reports. Jerusalem: Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University. Weiss, Zeev. The Sepphoris Synagogue: Deciphering an Ancient Message in Its Archaeological and Socio-Historical Contexts. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society and Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2005. Zori, Nehemiah. “The Ancient Synagogue at Beth Shean.” ErIsr 8 (1967): 149–67 (Hebrew).

Géza G. Xeravits

A Note on the Japhi‘a Synagogue

The existence of an ancient synagogue at Japhi‘a near Nazareth was hypothesised already at the beginning of the twentieth century by Louis-H. Vincent, scholar of the École Biblique, who examined two lintels found in secondary localisation, incorporated into later buildings of the town.1 Some decades later—following the accidental discovery of the basement of a column—Eleazar Sukenik excavated an area in the vicinity of the local Orthodox church, and revealed the ruins of a building, which he safely identified as the remains of a late antique synagogue.2 The building had the form of a basilica consisting of a nave flanked by two aisles, and with an east–west longitudinal axis. The entire floor of the synagogue was paved with an artistic mosaic carpet—however, unfortunately, this mosaic has been only extremely fragmentarily preserved. At the western end of the nave scanty remains of a complex mosaic panel are preserved (Fig. 1). Based on the fragments at our disposal, the original layout of this panel can be reconstructed. In a rectangular frame two concentric circles appear, with 3.8 m and 1.9 m diameters respectively. The area between the circles was populated by a series of smaller medallions. One and a half of them are preserved, but it is clear that originally there were twelve. In the best preserved westernmost medallion the figure of a robust male bovine appears: an ox or a buffalo. In the next medallion, immediately to the south, remains of another horned animal are seen: its head, longish horns and part of the forelegs with hoofs are visible (Fig. 2). Next to the head of this animal a fragmentary Hebrew inscription is preserved, which might be read as ]rys or ]rym: the final letter might equally be read as a final mem or as a samekh.

1 Louis-H. Vincent, “Vestige d’une synagogue antique à Yafa de Galilée,” RB 30 (1921): 433–38. This paper was written during my Humboldt Research Fellowship at Halle. I am grateful for the remarks of Jodi Magness and Zeev Weiss during the discussion in Helsinki, and to Dr. Beáta Tóth for the grammatical revision. 2 Eleazar L. Sukenik, “The Ancient Synagogue at Yafa Near Nazareth: Preliminary Report,” Rabinowitz Bulletin 2 (1951): 5–24; Dan Barag, “Japhia,” NEAEHL 2: 659–60.

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Fig. 1: Drawing of synagogue mosaic. Based on Rachel Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues—Archaeology and Art: New Discoveries and Current Research, HdO 105 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 423 Fig. VIII-18.

Fig. 2: Medallion with a horned animal and fragmentary Hebrew inscription. Photo by courtesy of the Center for Jewish Art, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

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1. Solutions Scholars interpret this panel in two different ways. On the one hand, Sukenik holds that it is the representation of the twelve Israelite tribes, whereas Erwin Goodenough understands it as the circle of the zodiac. Both interpretations have their serious pros and cons. Sukenik has interpreted the fragmentary inscription in the badly preserved half medallion as ’p]rym, the name of the Israelite tribe, Ephraim. He cited a rabbinic passage from Numeri Rabbah, which enumerates the various symbols of the tribes (2:7). The related part of the text reads as w‘l mph šl ’prym hyh mṣwyyr šwr ‘l šm bkwr šwrw … w‘l mph šbt ̣ mnšh hyh mṣwyyr r’m ‘l šm wqrny r’m qrnyw (“and on the flag of Ephraim was embroidered a bull, alluding to ‘his firstborn bull’ … and on the flag of Manasseh was embroidered a wild ox, alluding to ‘and his horns are horns of a wild ox’”).3 The midrashic material is based on Deut 33:17. No matter how creative this interpretation might be, even Sukenik had to admit that there is a discrepancy between the quoted midrashic source and the Japhi‘a image: in the mosaic the figure of the bull does not symbolise Ephraim but the next tribe, supposedly Manasseh. And, what is more, the remains of the putative Ephraim medallion do not represent a wild ox!4 The longish shape of the animal’s head and its horns resemble rather either a ram or a male goat,5 but definitely not a wild ox—despite Sukenik’s reluctance to accept this identification. Moreover, the cited midrash is a considerably late composition, which cannot be dated earlier than the tenth century; consequently, its relevance for a fourth or fifth century artefact is rather irrelevant.6 Furthermore—although this is just an argumentum ex silentio—one must note that no other late antique symbolical representations of the twelve tribes have actually been found; and this fact makes a comparative support for Sukenik’s solution impossible. In a late antique Jewish context the tribes appear only on the wall paintings of the synagogue of Dura. Representations of the tribes in their entirety are displayed on the central panel of the reredos and on panel WB 1 (the well of Be‘er);7 nevertheless, in each case they are integrated into a larger composition, 3 Sukenik, “Ancient Synagogue,” 18–23. 4 The r’m is identified even by Sukenik as the Bos primigenus, which has another form of horn and shape of head than the one represented in the medallion. See Sukenik, “Ancient Synagogue,” 23. 5 This particularity was observed already by Erwin R. Goodenough, Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period, Volume One: The Archeological Evidence from Palestine, Bollingen Series 37/1 (New York: Pantheon, 1953), 217. 6 Cf. Moshe D. Herr, “Numbers Rabbah,” EncJud, 2nd ed., 15: 337–38. 7 See, e.g., Carl. H. Kraeling, The Synagogue: The Excavations at Dura-Europos, Final Report 8/1 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1956), 118–25, 221–27; Kurt Weitzmann and Herbert L.

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Fig. 3: The illuminated manuscript Kosmas Indicopleustes, eleventh century. Photo in public domain; Library of congress Collection of Manuscripts in St Catherine’s Monastery, Mt Sinai; https://www.loc.gov/item/00271076642-ms/?sp=92.

and they appear as human figures and not as abstract symbols. To my knowledge, the only artistic example where the tribes appear sui iuris is of a much later date: it comes from an early eleventh century illuminated manuscript from the Monastery of Saint Catherine at Mt Sinai (Cod. 1186). Folio 86v of this manuscript displays a composite, rectangular image (Fig. 3).8 In the middle, the tabernacle is encircled Kessler, The Frescoes of the Dura Synagogue and Christian Art, DOS 28 (Washington: Dumbarton Oaks, 1990), 24–26, 63–67, 91–94. 8 See Kurt Weitzmann and George Galavaris, The Monastery of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai: The Illuminated Greek Manuscripts, Volume One: From the Ninth to the Twelfth Centuries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 57 and fig. 152, col.pl. XIa.

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by the figures of Moses, Aaron and seven Levites. Around this central panel, the image is divided into eight additional square panels, the upper and lower central ones are further divided into three. According to the enclosed explanatory inscriptions, within these surrounding panels figures representing the Israelite tribes are depicted. Nonetheless, the tribes are depicted as warriors armed with shields and spears, and not as abstract symbols. In the first volume of his monumental synthesis of Jewish symbols, Erwin Goodenough also devoted some space to the Japhi‘a synagogue. Here—based on formal characteristics—he rightly excluded the possibility that the animal figure in the fragmentary medallion could represent a wild ox, and instead, he held that it is a kind of sheep. Goodenough restored the fragmentary inscription as ’]rys, and interpreted it as the transcription of the Latin term aries, the name of a zodiac symbol. Given the fact that it is followed by a bull in the mosaic, Goodenough hypothesised that a complete circle of the zodiac was originally represented here, moving clockwise, from which the signs of Aries and Taurus are preserved.9 Goodenough’s interpretation is contextualised well within the art of late antique synagogues, because a good number of zodiacs have been unearthed in various sites of Palestine.10 Nevertheless, Goodenough’s interpretation is not without problems either. First, the Ram in the zodiacs of ancient Palestine is always depicted with curved horns, instead of the straight form represented on the Japhi‘a mosaic. Second, the name of the sign is always inscribed in its appropriate Hebrew term (tḷ h or tḷ ’); nowhere does a transcribed Latin equivalent occur. Third, in the triangular spaces at the corners of the rectangular frame of the panel the Palestinian zodiacs always display the personifications of the seasons. In Japhi‘a, the remaining material of one of these triangular spaces is visible; here the figure of a roaring female tiger appears, springing forth from among scroll-like acanthus leaves. Although more than two thirds of the material of this area is actually lost, the image of the wild predator does not support the hypothesis of the original presence of a personified season here.

9 Goodenough, Jewish Symbols, 216–17. 10 Cf. Rachel Hachlili, “The Zodiac in Ancient Jewish Art: Representation and Significance,” BASOR 228 (1977): 61–77; Rachel Hachlili, Ancient Mosaic Pavements: Themes, Issues, and Trends (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 35–56; Rachel Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues, 345–88; Jodi Magness, “Heaven on Earth: Helios and the Zodiac Cycle in Ancient Palestinian Synagogues,” DOP 59 (2005): 1–52; Lee I. Levine, Visual Judaism in Late Antiquity: Historical Contexts of Jewish Art (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 317–36.

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2. Suggestions It would seem thus that the panel of the Japhi‘a mosaic represents an irregular pattern, and neither of the interpretations above can be verified with certainty. Some considerations, however, are appropriate before too easily rejecting an interpretation as signs of the zodiac. A good number of zodiac mosaics were discovered in late antique synagogues of Palestine. The most notable are those of Hammath Tiberias (stratum IIa, the synagogue of Severos), Sepphoris, Beth Alpha, Na‘aran and ‘Isfiya’. These synagogues are dated between the turn of the fourth / fifth and the sixth centuries.11 It seems that these zodiac depictions follow a similar pattern, which consists of the representation of the quadriga of Helios in the middle, then the signs of the zodiac in the radially divided outer circle, and finally the personification of the seasons in the outer corners. The only notable differences are the direction of the movement of the signs (in Hammath Tiberias, Sepphoris and Beth Alpha counter-clockwise, whereas in Na‘aran and ‘Isfiya’ clockwise), and in Sepphoris the de-anthropomorphised depiction of Helios.12 The mosaic at Japhi‘a seems to differ considerably from these finds. Nevertheless, a comparison with other, non-Jewish examples of late antique zodiac depictions could provide complementary evidence. a) Seasons. The Japhi‘a image differs from the general pattern of Palestinian synagogue zodiacs in that it lacks the images of personified seasons. Nevertheless, the zodiac of the Roman villa found at Münster-Sarmsheim (Germania Superior, ca. 270), does not display the figures of the seasons, and the triangular spaces at the corners of the panel show vases flanked by dolphins and fishes.13 The mosaic floor of another Roman villa excavated at Bir-Chana (Africa Proconsularis, third century) has an unusual, hexagonal layout into which

11 The dating of the synagogue of Severos is debated. Magness, has proposed, with reason, a later date than what was held by the excavator, Moshe Dothan, and modified the date of its construction from the beginning of the fourth century to the turn of the fourth / fifth centuries. See Magness, “Heaven on Earth,” 10–13. For the earlier view, see Moshe Dothan, Hammath Tiberias, Vol. 1: Early Synagogues and the Hellenistic and Roman Remains (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1983), 66–67. To these, one can add the extremely fragmentary remains found at Susiya (fifth century) and recently at Khirbet Wadi Ḥ amam (fourth century), which preserved so tiny material that cannot support research about its layout and content. 12 See, esp., Hachlili, “The Zodiac in Ancient Jewish Art.” 13 Klaus Parlasca, Die römischen Mosaiken in Deutschland, Römisch-Germanische Forschun­ gen 23 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1959), 86–89; Ingeborg Krueger, “Zum Tierkreis im Sonnengott-­ Mosaik aus Münster-Sarmsheim,” Das Rheinische Landesmuseum Bonn: Berichte aus der Arbeit des Museums (1973): 33–36; Hans-G. Gundel, Zodiakos. Tierkreisbilder im Altertum: Kosmische Bezüge und Jenseitsvorstellungen im antiken Alltagsleben, Kulturgeschichte der antiken Welt 54 (Mainz: Zabern, 1992), no. 84.

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the seasons were not integrated.14 Also, a Roman villa (ca. 325) unearthed in Sparta displays a zodiac panel with the four winds instead of the seasons on the triangular spaces at the corners.15 One could find a similar example in Palestine, too: the mosaic floor of the sixth century Monastery of Lady Mary at Beit Shean / Scythopolis.16 Here the customary layout of two concentric circles was executed. In the middle of the design the figures of Helios and Selene appear, and in the radially divided outer circle personifications of the twelve months of the Julian calendar are shown. In this case, the circle motif in its entirety is integrated into a greater composition, without any representations of the seasons. b) The radially divided outer circle. The Japhi‘a image differs from the general pattern of Palestinian synagogue zodiacs in that its outer circle consists of a series of round medallions, instead of being divided radially. Nevertheless, not all known zodiac images display this pattern. The hexagonal layout of the Bir-Chana mosaic has been mentioned above, and a good number of exemplars do not divide the outer circle containing the zodiac signs at all.17 The most important parallel is displayed by an actually unpublished detail of the late antique synagogue of Huqoq, the Galilee. Here a fragmentary design was unearthed in 2016, which can undoubtedly be interpreted as a zodiac, and its signs are placed in round medallions, just like in the case of the Japhi‘a image.18 c) The horn of the Ram. Another problematic aspect of the Japhi‘a image is the form of the horn of the animal that Goodenough has interpreted as the Ram. In the Palestinian zodiacs—in conformity with the common custom—the horn of the Ram has always a curved shape. There are, however, some examples

14 Paul Gauckler, Inventaire des mosaiques de la Gaule et de l’Afrique II: Afrique Proconsulaire (Tunisie) (Paris: Leroux, 1910), 151–52; Gundel, Zodiakos, no. 210. 15 Gundel, Zodiakos, no. 85. 16 Gerald M. Fitzgerald, A Sixth Century Monastery at Beth-Shan, Publications of the Palestine Section of the University Museum 4 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1939); Frances W. James, “Lady Mary Monastery, an Early Christian Church at Beth Shan,” Expedition 5 (1962): 20–24; Ruth Ovadiah and Asher Ovadiah, Hellenistic, Roman and Early Byzantine Mosaic Pavements in Palestine, Bibliotheca Archaeologica 6 (Roma: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 1987), 26–30; Stephanie Hagan, “Time, Memory, and Mosaics at the Monastery of Lady Mary,” Expedition 55 (2013) 37–42. 17 Cf. e.g., Gundel, Zodiakos, nos. 51, 52, 81, 95. 18 Oral communication of Jodi Magness; I am grateful to the excavators (Jodi Magness, Karen Britt, Ra‘anan Boustan) for their permissions to mention this detail before its official publication. See “Excavations by UNC-Chapel Hill Archaeologist Continue to Yield Stunning Mosaics in Ancient Galilean Synagogue,” The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill News, July 6, 2017, https:// web.archive.org/web/20181006054144/https://uncnews.unc.edu/2017/07/06/excavationsunc-chapel-hill-archaeologist-continue-yield-stunning-mosaics-ancient-galilean-synagogue/. For an extensive preliminary report on the Huqoq synagogue, see Magness et al. 2014; 2018.

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originating from Egypt, where the Ram’s horn does not display this kind of form, and rather, it springs forth straight from the forehead of the animal.19 In sum, both traditional interpretations of the Japhi‘a mosaic fragment are problematic. On the one hand, the total lack of comparative evidence in support of an interpretation as the representation of the tribes, the very late date of the only related rabbinic passage, and the inconsistency between the image and this rabbinic textual evidence recommend precaution, at best, in its acceptance. On the other hand, some of the arguments against interpreting it as a representation of the signs of the zodiac may not to be taken as compelling. Nevertheless, one factor still makes the identification somewhat uncertain: the Hebrew inscription. This peculiarity cannot be easily explained in the context of a zodiac image.

3. Comments on Palestinian Zodiac Depictions Finally, the irregularity of the Japhi‘a mosaic deserves some comments. Scholars often interpret the zodiac depictions found in Palestinian synagogues as part of a consistent, overall, and generally tripartite design of which the concentric scheme of the zodiac and Helios is the central element.20 It seems that the well-known examples of the design found in Hammath Tiberias, Sepphoris, Beth Alpha, and Na‘aran support this conviction. Nevertheless, local variants of the design do exist: e.g., in Hammath Tiberias and in Na‘aran, the first panel (closest to the entrance) does not reflect biblical material, whereas in Sepphoris and in Khirbet Wadi Ḥ amam the design consists of more than three successive panels. Moreover, in Sepphoris the figure of Helios is idiosyncratically replaced by a de-anthro­ pomorphised depiction. A striking example is provided by the ‘Isfiya’ floor, where the mosaic carpet of the nave has a bipartite arrangement. The zodiac, therefore, loses its central position and has a position similar to the one of the Japhi‘a circle.21 All this leads to the interesting question whether these local variants of the representations of the zodiac and its broader context might reflect a kind of evolution of the design or not. Recently, Lee Levine has argued that the source of the design must be the one that adorned the synagogue of Severos in Hammath Tiberias, which he considered the earliest manifestation of the scheme. Levine held that the emergence of the entire design with its undeniable pagan connections is due to the spiritual influence of the highly Romanised Jewish patriarchate, residing in Tiberias during the period of the construction of this synagogue.22 Nevertheless, 19 See, Gundel, Zodiakos, nos. 38 and 43. 20 See firstly Hachlili, “The Zodiac in Ancient Jewish Art.” 21 Cf. Michael Avi-Yonah, “A Sixth-Century Synagogue at Isfiyah,” QDAP 3 (1934): 118–31. 22 Levine, Visual Judaism, 243–60.

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after the publication of the Khirbet Wadi Ḥamam mosaic floor, this view proved to be unfounded, for Khirbet Wadi Ḥamam predates the synagogue of Severos with a couple of decades.23 The case of ‘Isfiya’ shows furthermore that long after the emergence of the first examples of the more-or-less unified pattern of the design, local communities used some of its elements with considerable freedom. Here, there is just one other panel in the nave, which consists of the inhabited scroll scheme: this secures a firm sixth century date for the mosaic floor.24

4. Conclusion The above remarks give additional support to the claim that the remains of the Japhi‘a circle can be interpreted as a design originally representing the circle of zodiac. There is only one detail that might alter this interpretation: the correct reading of the fragmentary inscription in one of the medallions at our disposal. Such a reading, however, is not possible in the current preservation condition, even less so on the basis of available photographs of the mosaic floor. Therefore, this particularity needs further research.

In Memoriam: Géza Xeravits In the life of my husband Géza there was always an honoured place for scientific work. He was enthusiastic about his labour. He made every volume with the same ardour and conscientiousness. He thought highly of the published works. In his library at home the books stood in perfect order, and, according to family rules, the children and the dog could enter only in case of emergency with his express permission. When his malady seized upon him so that he could no longer move, he continued on working on his computer with his eyes. During his lecture in Helsinki he was already ill. This was his last professional lecture abroad. That is why I am so grateful to Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht to have the possibility to read Géza’s paper in the just published volume. I would like his work to live on, so please read it with as much affection and enthusiasm as he wrote and lectured it. Krisztina Xeravits-Bódis

23 Uzi Leibner, “Excavations at Khirbet Wadi Hamam (Lower Galilee): The Synagogue and the Settlement,” JRA 23 (2010): 220–37; Uzi Leibner and Shulamit Miller, “A Figural Mosaic in the Synagogue at Khirbet Wadi Hamam,” JRA 23 (2010): 238–64. Concerning the synagogue of Severos, I follow the dating of Magness, “Heaven on Earth,” 10–13. 24 Hachlili, Ancient Mosaic Pavements, 111–47. See further Claudine Dauphin, “The Development of the ‘Inhabited Scroll’ in Architectural Sculpture and Mosaic Art from Late Imperial Times to the Seventh Century A. D.,” Levant 19 (1987): 183–212.

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Cited Sources Avi-Yonah, Michael. “A Sixth-Century Synagogue at Isfiyah.” QDAP 3 (1934): 118–31. Barag, Dan. “Japhia.” NEAEHL 2: 659–60. Dauphin, Claudine. “The Development of the ‘Inhabited Scroll’ in Architectural Sculpture and Mosaic Art from Late Imperial Times to the Seventh Century A. D.” Levant 19 (1987): 183–212. Dothan, Moshe. Hammath Tiberias, Vol. 1: Early Synagogues and the Hellenistic and Roman Remains. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1983. Fitzgerald, Gerald M. A Sixth Century Monastery at Beth-Shan. Publications of the Palestine Section of the University Museum 4. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1939. Gauckler, Paul. Inventaire des mosaiques de la Gaule et de l’Afrique. II: Afrique Proconsulaire (Tunisie). Paris: Leroux, 1910. Goodenough, Erwin R. Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period. Volume One: The Archeological Evidence from Palestine. Bollingen Series 37/1. New York: Pantheon, 1953. Gundel, Hans-G. Zodiakos. Tierkreisbilder im Altertum: Kosmische Bezüge und Jenseitsvorstellungen im antiken Alltagsleben. Kulturgeschichte der antiken Welt 54. Mainz: Zabern, 1992. Hachlili, Rachel. Ancient Mosaic Pavements. Themes, Issues, and Trends. Leiden: Brill 2009. Hachlili, Rachel. Ancient Synagogues—Archaeology and Art: New Discoveries and Current Research. HdO 105. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Hachlili, Rachel. “The Zodiac in Ancient Jewish Art: Representation and Significance.” BASOR 228 (1977): 61–77. Hagan, Stephanie. “Time, Memory, and Mosaics at the Monastery of Lady Mary.” Expedition 55 (2013): 37–42. Herr, Moshe D. “Numbers Rabbah.” EncJud (2nd ed.), 15: 337–38. James, Frances W. “Lady Mary Monastery, an Early Christian Church at Beth Shan.” Expedition 5 (1962): 20–24. Kraeling, Carl H. The Synagogue: The Excavations at Dura-Europos, Final Report 8/1. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1956. Krueger, Ingeborg. “Zum Tierkreis im Sonnengott-Mosaik aus Münster-Sarmsheim.” Das Rheinische Landesmuseum Bonn: Berichte aus der Arbeit des Museums (1973): 33–36. Leibner, Uzi. “Excavations at Khirbet Wadi Hamam (Lower Galilee): The Synagogue and the Settlement.” JRA 23 (2010): 220–237. Leibner, Uzi, and Shulamit Miller. “A Figural Mosaic in the Synagogue at Khirbet Wadi Hamam.” JRA 23 (2010): 238–264. Levine, Lee I. Visual Judaism in Late Antiquity. Historical Contexts of Jewish Art. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012. Magness, Jodi. “Heaven on Earth: Helios and the Zodiac Cycle in Ancient Palestinian Synagogues.” DOP 59 (2005): 1–52. Magness, Jodi, Shua Kisilevitz, Karen Britt, Matthew Grey, and Chad Spigel. “Huqoq (Lower Galilee) and Its Synagogue Mosaics: Preliminary Report on the Excavations of 2011–2013.” JRA 27 (2014): 327–55. Magness, Jodi, Shua Kisilevitz, Matthew Grey, Dennis Mizzi, Daniel Schindler, Martin Wells, Karen Britt, Ra‘anan Boustan, Shana O’Connell, Emily Hubbard, Jessie George, Jennifer Ramsay, Elisabetta Boaretto, and Michael Chazan. “The Huqoq Excavation Project: 2014–2017 Interim Report.” BASOR 380 (2018): 61–131. Ovadiah, Ruth, and Asher Ovadiah. Hellenistic, Roman and Early Byzantine Mosaic Pavements in Palestine. Bibliotheca Archaeologica 6. Roma: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 1987. Parlasca, Klaus. Die römischen Mosaiken in Deutschland. Römisch-Germanische Forschungen 23. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1959.

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Sukenik, Eleazar L. “The Ancient Synagogue at Yafa Near Nazareth: Preliminary Report.” Rabinowitz Bulletin 2 (1951): 5–24. Vincent, Louis-H. “Vestige d’une synagogue antique à Yafa de Galilée.” RB 30 (1921): 433–38. Weitzmann, Kurt, and George Galavaris. The Monastery of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai: The Illuminated Greek Manuscripts. Volume One: From the Ninth to the Twelfth Centuries. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. Weitzmann, Kurt, and Herbert L. Kessler. The Frescoes of the Dura Synagogue and Christian Art. DOS 28. Washington: Dumbarton Oaks, 1990.

Lidia Chakovskaya

The Artistic Milieu of the Mosaic of the Beth Alpha Synagogue Discovered in 1928 and published in 1932 by Eleazar Sukenik, the famous sixth-century CE mosaic that was found in the Beth Alpha synagogue can be considered one of the most characteristic images of late antique Jewish art, being still a favorite for book covers and frontispieces.1 The style of the mosaic remains unique among examples from the Holy Land and continues to attract the attention of both scholars and visitors to the site. The first description of the mosaic panel was given by Sukenik in April 1929, shortly after its discovery, as reported in the New York Times, in which its discovery is compared to that of the then-recently discovered tomb of Tutankhamun in Egypt.2 The style of the drawings on the mosaic was characterized immediately as “a primitive and obviously original style” and it was noted that “it is out of the question to believe that they have any connection with the higher and late Greek art.”3 As we shall see below, this definition owed much to its day. This characteristic went very well with both the rhetoric of an artless nation (a nation quite ignorant of the Greek ideas of art) and with the desire to find archaeological proof of an emerging distinctive Jewish style. In the same article, Sukenik mentioned that “This … is an expression of symbolization,” thus pointing to the very important characteristic that might be inseparable from the elaborate decorative program of the Beth Alpha mosaic. However, this characteristic was never developed in the 1932 final publication of the Beth Alpha synagogue.

1. The Style of the Beth Alpha Mosaic Let us start with a brief summary of the history of the study of Beth Alpha and the style of its mosaics.4 In the final publication of the Beth Alpha synagogue, Sukenik only briefly touched upon the style of the mosaics, concluding that 1 I thank the Genesis Philanthropy Group and the SEFER Center for University Teaching of Jewish Civilization for their generous support of this research. 2 Wythe Williams, “Old Mosaics Trace Origins of the Jews,” New York Times, 29 April 1929, 3. 3 Williams, “Old Mosaics,” 3; emphasis added. 4 See, e.g., overviews in John Wilkinson, “The Beit Alpha Synagogue Mosaic: Towards an Interpretation,” JJA 5 (1978): 16–28; Lidia Chakovskaya, The Memory of the Temple Incarnate: The Artistic Realm of the Holy Land Synagogues III–VI c. CE (Moscow: Indrik, 2011) (Russian).

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“altogether the style of the picture is primitive. The figures are all in a single plane and there is no attempt at light and shade. For example, the features in the face of the Sun are shown by single lines with no effect of high relief and low relief. Nor is there any relative perspective between the several parts of the composition. But in spite of these artistic defects this decorative composition makes a good impression by its coloring and method of display.”5 For Michael Avi-Yonah, who wrote in 1949, the Beth Alpha mosaics represented “some of the latest monuments of the popular undercurrent of Palestinian art.”6 In it, he saw “the Orientalizing tendencies of the dissident minorities.”7 These tendencies came into being because, as Avi-Yonah saw it, the Byzantine period itself was a gradual retreat of Hellenism and the time of the “triumph of religion and barbarism.”8 The newly emerging style of Byzantine art was seen as “the artistic manifestation of popular spirit.”9 Numerous important parallels between the Beth Alpha details and the art of the ancient Near East were indeed illuminating and helped place the Beth Alpha mosaics on firm ground as a result of local art production. In 1965 the bulk of newly discovered mosaics in the Holy Land attracted the attention of Ernst Kitzinger, a renowned scholar of style in Byzantium. He favored the Beth Alpha mosaics for being “touchingly naïve pictures” and the mosaicists as being an “untutored team.”10 As Sukenik previously did, Kitzinger acknowledged the talent of Marianos and Hanina for “in their naïve handiwork the system and programme of Jewish floor decoration appears in its richest and most harmonious and balanced form.”11 He concluded that “the choice and arrangement of … subjects … prove particularly revealing in this respect.”12 In 1999 Katherine Dunbabin, a specialist in the mosaics of the Mediterranean, wrote that “It seems clear that the [Beth Alpha] mosaicists were in possession of a model which was beyond their power to copy; this implies that there was strong pressure to have a design of this sort on the floor, and that considerable prestige

5 Eleazar L. Sukenik, The Ancient Synagogue of Beth Alpha (Jerusalem: Hebrew University Press, 1932), 34. 6 Michael Avi-Yonah, “Oriental elements in the art of Palestine in the Roman and Byzantine periods,” in Art in Ancient Palestine. Selected Studies, ed. Hannah Katzenstein and Yoram Tsafrir (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1981), 3. The notion “triumph of religion and barbarism” was obviously influenced by Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (London: Strahan & Cadell, 1776–89; repr., New York: Penguin, 1994). 7 Avi-Yonah, “Oriental Elements,” 3. 8 Avi-Yonah, “Oriental Elements,” 3. 9 Avi-Yonah, “Oriental Elements,” 3. 10 Ernst Kitzinger, Israeli Mosaics of the Byzantine Period (New York: The New American Library, by arrangement with UNESCO, 1965), 13. 11 Kitzinger, Israeli Mosaics, 15. 12 Kitzinger, Israeli Mosaics, 15.

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resulted from it.”13 Before that, Dunbabin noted that “the drawing here has a naïve primitivism which betrays an absence of familiarity with any tradition of figure drawing. Human and animal forms disintegrate into an assembly of unconnected parts.”14 The last decade witnessed three major reassessments of the synagogue pictorial art. Rachel Hachlili credited the Beth Alpha mosaicists with being “innovative and inspired,” yet claimed that “the two Beth Alpha craftsmen executed a naïve design in which the human figures and animals are austere drawings. The style is standardized, disproportionate, and lacking in concern for anatomical detail.”15 In his 2012 study of Jewish art, Lee Levine wrote: “The artistic quality of this scene is far from impressive (primitive may be too severe a term), it is a simple and naïve (‘childish’ according to one opinion) two-dimensional rendering with no attention paid to naturalism or realism. Each figure is depicted frontally and statically, and no attempt is made to represent realistic body proportions. This disregard for perspective and naturalism is reflected in the Abraham-Isaac depiction: … it appears as if Isaac is being flung through the air.”16 Finally, Rina Talgam, who has been particularly concerned with the problems of style, referred to the Beth Alpha synagogue in order to treat its iconography,17 particularly the meaning of the zodiac panel. She avoids the exact characteristics of the mosaic, while rightly pointing out that the common stylistic traits of most of the mosaics of the first half of the sixth century were “two-dimensional depiction of figures, decorative treatment of anatomical details, schematic use of colour, and the generally rigid impression,”18 and that these tendencies could be found already in the fifth century when some mosaics were made with “flat, rigid and schematic treatment of figures.”19 It appears that for Talgam the mosaics of Beth Alpha are part of the common trend, although it is not explicitly stated. At the same time, she suggests a novel reading of the Beth Alpha zodiac, so that the artists should be acknowledged for its innovative and meaningful composition. In 2016 Peter Stewart addressed the broad question of style and provincialism using Beth Alpha as an example. He independently came to similar conclusions 13 Katherine M. D. Dunbabin, Mosaics of the Greek and Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 192. 14 Dunbabin, Mosaics, 192. 15 Rachel Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues—Archaeology and Art: New Discoveries and Current Research, HdO 105 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 498. 16 Lee I. Levine, Visual Judaism in Late Antiquity: Historical Contexts of Jewish Art (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 282–83. 17 Rina Talgam, Mosaics of Faith. Floors of Pagans, Jews, Samaritans, Christians, and Muslims in the Holy Land (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi; University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2014), 296–304. 18 Talgam, Mosaics of Faith, 134. 19 Talgam, Mosaics of Faith, 159.

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regarding the style of the Beth Alpha mosaic as argued for in this article.20 For Stewart the mosaics are both “contradictory” and “typical.”21 Its “extraordinary ‘un-classical’ imagery” allows us to see the picture of the relationship between late antique and provincial art. Describing the mosaic, he enumerated the “repertoire of simplified and abstract forms,” but pointed out the “broad late-antique and provincial contexts,” which makes Beth Alpha not “a special case  – a kind of aberration attributable to the limited abilities of the artists,” but “more broadly symptomatic of the artistic culture to which it belongs,” that is, the culture of the Roman province.22 Indeed, there exist parallels to the Beth Alpha mosaics from Roman England and Merida in Spain that feature the same disintegration of the classical forms. Stewart had then concluded that the external influences might also be considered, such as “the appropriation into a monumental mosaic tradition of a popular imagery,” possibly from late antique Byzantine Egypt.23 I will develop this suggestion, which was already made by Sukenik, further in the present article. I will also study in further detail the artistic methods used by the artists of the Beth Alpha mosaic and suggest how this reveals the mind of both the late antique viewer and creator. To conclude the history of research, the broad scholarly consensus is that the artisans of the Beth Alpha mosaic were “untrained,” “unskilled,” “unable to copy the model,” “naïve,” and “childish.” Yet, surprisingly, the composition of the floor is treated as if done by quite different artists, for it is viewed as innovative, inspired and well balanced. For example, Kitzinger, in his page-long illuminating description of the style of the Beth Alpha mosaic artists, had put his main emphasis on the fact that “the renderings are largely their own and bear every indication of being a direct and personal response to the subjects at hand.”24 Talgam, while comparing the zodiac to other synagogue zodiacs, could only add that there is a “planner’s didactic intention and profound comprehension of the task before them in creating the floor.”25 The composition of the mosaic floor is indeed striking. There are numerous elements, stressing the theme of temple sacrifice and sacrificially pure animals.26

20 See Peter Stewart, “The Bet Alpha Synagogue Mosaic and Late-Antique Provincialism,” in Jewish Art in Its Late Antique Context, ed. Uzi Leibner and Catherine Hezser, TSAJ 163 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 75–95. 21 Stewart, “Bet Alpha Synagogue Mosaic,” 75. 22 Stewart, “Bet Alpha Synagogue Mosaic,” 80, 83. 23 Stewart, “Bet Alpha Synagogue Mosaic,” 90. 24 Kitzinger, Israeli Mosaics, 21–22. 25 Talgam, Mosaics of Faith, 298. 26 See Wilkinson, “Beit Alpha Synagogue Mosaic,” suggesting the temple symbolism in the tripartite composition, and especially Lucille A. Roussin, “The Zodiac in Synagogue Decoration,” in Archaeology and the Galilee: Texts and Contexts in the Graeco-Roman and Byzantine Periods, ed. Douglas R. Edwards and C. Thomas McCollough (Atlanta: Scholars, 1997), 89–90, 93.

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The mosaic occupies the entire floor of the basilica’s central nave. Three panels form a rectangular composition, which is surrounded by the decorative band. The top panel of the mosaic faces the apse, which served as a Torah shrine. The main subject of the mosaic floor is revealed in its first panel. The Binding of Isaac scene (Akedah) combines the theme of God’s direct intervention in history with the theme of the origins of the Jewish people. The figure of the ram is needed to accentuate the central axis of the composition—from the ram of the Akedah through the Helios of the second panel to the depicted Torah shrine, and then to the actual Torah shrine in the apse. The triple composition appears here in its most elaborate form, particularly when compared to the composition of the mosaic floor in the fifth-century synagogue at Sepphoris.27 At Beth Alpha the link between the Binding of Isaac scene and the temple implements enforces the theme of the foundation of daily sacrifice in the future Jerusalem temple. All the animals are shown with special attention to their qualities as sacrificial animals with parted hooves and hump, and even the figure of Helios points to the ram with his right hand. The unity of the overall composition is further enhanced by the similar design of the horns of the animals and the shofar in the temple implements scene.28 The theme of sacrifice turns into a hymn to the synagogue as the new sacred space, where the animal sacrifice transformed into the sacrifice of the heart and of prayer. The central axis penetrates the whole of the composition. It goes all the way down from the temple façade as Torah shrine, to the sun chariot, to the Capricorn sign, and through the palms of paradise and the hand of God, to the ram hanging from the tree. A messianic theme might also be present here, as is suggested for Sepphoris,29 with the figures of the bull and the lion depicted upside down when one enters the synagogue, in order to be the final image as one leaves the synagogue.30 How does this complexity of concept go together with the scholarly assumption of the seeming inability to draw or copy? The above-mentioned definitions have 27 At Sepphoris, although the composition is formed by seven bands, it can be reduced to three conceptual units. See Zeev Weiss and Ehud Netzer, Promise and Redemption: A Synagogue Mosaic from Sepphoris (Jerusalem: The Israel Museum, 1996), 38–39; Zeev Weiss, The Sepphoris Synagogue: Deciphering an Ancient Message through Its Archaeological and Socio-Historical Contexts (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2005), 239–49. 28 Meyer Shapiro, Late Antique, Early Christian and Medieval Art: Selected Papers (London: Chatto & Windus, 1980), 27. Avi-Yonah, “Oriental Elements,” II, 144 (64), has noted that “the horns, curving in a semicircle are a prominent feature of the buffaloes at Beth-She‘arim (Tomb I, Hall 7), at Hajar Id and Beth Alpha, and can be traced as far as the Luristan bronzes.” 29 Weiss and Netzer, Promise and Redemption, 38–39. 30 On the triple composition, see Rachel Hachlili, Ancient Mosaic Pavements: Themes, Issues, and Trends—Selected Studies (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 221; Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues, 254–56; Weiss and Netzer, Promise and Redemption. On the messianic meaning of the lion together with the bull see Chakovskaya, Memory of the Temple Incarnate, 294.

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led to the fact that the intriguing appeal of the Beth Alpha synagogue mosaic was never studied as an artistic whole. The artistic method used by the Beth Alpha artists has not been studied in much detail. In this article, I aim to explore the artistic logic of Marianos and Hanina by looking at certain artistic devices used in the mosaic in order to catch the attention of the viewer. This allows me to suggest the nature of their artistic method and the mind of the artist, while also looking at artistic parallels in the surrounding provinces.

2. Mastery of Composition The first important feature to note in the Beth Alpha mosaic is the mastery of composition, the “profound comprehension of the task.”31 Due to this, the composition is so well thought through in every minute detail that the viewer finds themselves taken by it, and the overall style of the mosaics feels as if having a special significance for the proper sound of the theological message. Let us first focus on the Binding of Isaac panel (Fig. 1). The first panel is larger in scale than the other two panels. Usually late antique artists tried to keep the same scale within the same floor, but we should not forget that upon entering and exiting the synagogue the first panel appeared even larger because of optical distortion, while for the person near the Torah shrine all three panels looked roughly the same in size. Hence, there existed a clear thought behind it, accentuating the Binding of Isaac panel. The center of the panel is occupied by the figure of a tree with a ram to its left. Contemporary Binding of Isaac scenes in Jewish and Christian art usually depict the ram to the left of Abraham (as it is in Beth Alpha), but not at the center of the scene.32 At Beth Alpha, however, the artists wanted to make the focal point on the central axis, uniting the real Torah shrine of the synagogue with the Torah shrine of the first panel and with the hand of God above the ram of the Binding of Isaac scene. This was quite a compositional challenge. It demanded that the left part of the Binding of Isaac composition have a quite considerable amount of space between the figures, while its right side is packed with the figures of Abraham and Isaac as well as the altar. The unique position of the ram, tied to a tree by a rope was variously described in literature. Sukenik suggested that due to the lack of space “the ram is not standing full length,” but is depicted “in the act of climbing the tree,” while Hachlili

31 Talgam, Mosaics of Faith, 298. 32 For comparanda, see Isabel Speyart van Woerden, “The Iconography of the Sacrifice of Abraham,” VC 15 (1961): 214–55; Joseph Gutmann, “Revisiting the ‘Binding of Isaac’ Mosaic in the Beth-Alpha Synagogue,” Bulletin of the Asia Institute 6 (1992): 79–85.

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Fig. 1: Beth Alpha synagogue mosaic (modified after Sukenik, Beth Alpha, pl. XXVII).

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described it as the ram being suspended in the air from the tree.33 In reality, the ram is not hanging from the tree, for the tree is much smaller than the ram. Nor is the ram climbing it. The ram is depicted as if standing on its own tail, while both its tail and its front and hind legs are shown horizontally. In this way the ram was seen by the viewers as if it was moving with them to the Torah shrine and the image of the Temple on the upper panel, a reminder of the daily sacrifice.34 The vertically oriented figure of the ram distorts the integrity of the pictorial space, dividing the composition into three independent units. Unlike the mosaics of Sepphoris, they are not divided by decorative bands, so the differently oriented space fragments are united within one border. As a result, the figures are no longer seen as forming an integral unity with the space, they appear in an abstract background, without any illusion of depth. The naïve straightforwardness of the artists could not be the sole reason for the appearance of the iconography, particularly considering how well-versed the artists were in different patterns.35 Here one can see a new quality of late antique art and its viewer when, as noted by John Onians, “the ability to form a mental image of something when it is not before our eyes is essential.”36 Because the space is now conceived by the mind of the viewer, it is no longer mimetic or illusionistic, but it could now be devoid of any realistic properties. The illusion of the third dimension, which was still present, for example, in the mosaics of the fourth-century synagogue in Hammath Tiberias, is totally absent in the Beth Alpha synagogue. Several Beth Alpha images are particularly revealing in this respect. The zodiac sign of Libra is depicted as a man holding the scales. He stands on his left leg, while the other leg is missing, for it is behind the scales.37 The deterioration of the Greco-Roman principles of the visible wholeness of the body literally gives way to “abstraction and imagination,” using the words of Onians. The artists Marianos and Hanina are deliberate in their attempt to avoid depth, as the overlapping is a “standard compositional device employed to suggest depth” that was widely used

33 Sukenik, Beth Alpha, 40; Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues, 390. The position of the ram has been variously explained as the influence of Christian iconography, but obviously this does not explain the way the legs of the ram were depicted. The ram together with a tree as a separate image can be found in two sixth-century Christian buildings in Jordan: a church in Massuh and the baptistery of the church in Madaba, although in the latter the ram simply stands next to the tree, while in Massuh it is depicted standing on the tree but not being suspended from it. Michele Piccirillo, The Mosaics of Jordan, ed. Patricia M. Bikai and Thomas A. Dailey, American Center of Oriental Research Reports 1 (Amman: American Center of Oriental Research, 1993), 128, fig. 140. 34 The same subject of daily sacrifice is depicted in the fifth-century Sepphoris mosaics. 35 Gutmann, “Revisiting the ‘Binding of Isaac’ Mosaic,” 82. 36 John Onians, Classical Art and the Culture of Greece and Rome (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999). 37 Sukenik, Beth Alpha, 37.

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in contemporary mosaics.38 Although various suggestions have been made about the inability of the artists to copy a model,39 it is important to know that the artists seem to use our ability to form a mental image of things throughout the mosaic floor. The question of the origins of several images remains open, and it is quite possible that the artists themselves were the inventors.40 Two more examples of the same principle in operation can be given—the servant of Abraham in the Binding of Isaac scene and the figure of the chariot of the Sun. Of the first young man only the upper part of the body is visible. His legs, which are behind the donkey, are invisible. The explanation of the inability to copy was first put forward by Sukenik: “the craftsmen solved the difficulty of portraying two objects of which one is behind the other.”41 The figure of the Sun in the center of the zodiac panel is particularly amazing. For the viewer of the twenty-first century it is reminiscent of the experiments by Futurism artists who wanted to capture motion: “the chariot of the Sun … consists of the frontal head of Helios emerging from the box of the chariot, with two wheels in side view beneath, and the four heads of the horses, likewise frontal, surmounting an array of legs.” Dunbabin claimed that “the mosaicists were in possession of a model which was beyond their power to copy.”42 I do not think that the Beth Alpha artists ever wanted to copy a model, for they made such amazing adjustments to it. This is the sign of the moving Sun—huge head and an array of legs. The Sun is not a figure but an enormous head (as it should be if one looks at the sun) with a seven-rayed halo, surrounded by a myriad of stars. Radiance and movement are the functions of the Sun, therefore the artists kept only four horses, crowned by the Sun-head. Here, the whole body is omitted in order to keep only the meaningful parts.43 So, the method of “omission” and of creating the abstract flat background for the figures is used by the artists throughout the panel. If we define Greco-Roman classicism as “an awareness of the physical world, with the technical skill to capture

38 Talgam, Mosaics of Faith, 162. 39 For the sign of Libra, see Stewart, “Bet Alpha Synagogue Mosaic,” 82; for the figure of the Sun, see Levine, Visual Judaism, 192. The explanation of the Libra by the lack of space is offered by Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues, 497 and the same explanation for the Sun in Sukenik, Ancient Synagogue, 35. 40 Sukenik, Beth Alpha. Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues, 570: “The Beth Alpha artists tended to portray some of the zodiac signs graphically, as illustrative translations of the names of the signs.” 41 Sukenik, Beth Alpha, 40. 42 Dunbabin, Mosaics, 192. 43 The same method of dealing with the problem of overlapping can be seen in the zodiac panel of the Beth Alpha synagogue where the figure of Aquarius (the lower right side of the zodiac wheel, between the Pisces and the Capricorn) appears as the upper part of the body literally growing from the well.

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the world in realistic or idealized form as the subject and context may demand,”44 then the awareness is quite present, while the technical skill is dependent on the needs of the artists, who wished to rely on the ability of the viewer to construct the image him- or herself. A unique feature of the Beth Alpha mosaics is the inclusion of Hebrew words in the scene. The biblical quotations animate the Binding of Isaac (in Hebrew, “And behold a ram” and “Lay not [thine hand]”), thus becoming an equally important part of the composition. In the center the direct speech of God became part of the design. It seems that the inclusion is unique to the Beth Alpha mosaic, for nothing like it was used at Hammath Tiberias, Sepphoris or Huqoq. However, a parallel can be found in a Christian mosaic floor in Arabia. There in the church of the Holy Martyrs Lot and Procopius in Khirbet Mukhayyat (Nebo), decorated in 557/8, the words of Psalm 51 were incorporated into the floor45 along with figural images, constructing “a remarkably complex program with multiple types of associations.”46 The difference nevertheless is that the words in Beth Alpha are not confined inside the frames, but are included within the pictorial space. At Beth Alpha, the absence of any identifiable background allows the images to represent both real objects and symbols. The absence of lifelikeness leads the viewer to concentrate on the semantic side of the images, and reading the text on the floor would help in this process. The images seem to play a role equal to the text. Jews in Late Antiquity were very sensitive to the confrontation between text and image. For instance, in the synagogues of ‘En Gedi47 and Rehov48 the text was used as a design for the floor, as a substitute for the image. While any depicted figure evokes in the mind of a viewer the idea of the third dimension, the presence of the text hints at the flat surface of the sheet or tablet. I have already discussed the way the artists have avoided depth. By inserting the text inside the panel, Marianos and Hanina created a homogeneous abstract space in which the meaning is created by both images and words. Let us now look at the way certain representations work both as real objects and as symbols. For example, between the tree with a ram and the figure of Abraham there appears a branch. Another small branch is depicted below the tail of the ram. These could be understood as a representation of the 44 James Trilling, The Roman Heritage: Textiles from Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean, 300—600 A. D. (Washington, DC: Textile Museum, 1982), 14. 45 Piccirillo, The Mosaics of Jordan, 164–65; Sean V. Leatherbury, “Competitive Sacrifice: Christian Visual Engagement with Jewish Sacrificial History and the Temple in Late Antique Arabia,” in Jewish Art in Its Late Antique Context, ed. Uzi Leibner and Catherine Hezser, TSAJ 163 (Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 280–84. In his article, Leatherbury discusses three sixth– eighth-century churches with mosaics that incorporate the words of psalms: Mukhayyat, the Theotokos Chapel of the Monastery of Moses on Mt Nebo, and the Acropolis Church at Ma’in. 46 Leatherbury, “Competitive Sacrifice,” 292. 47 Barag, “En-Gedi, the Synagogue,” NEAEHL 2: 405–9. 48 Hachlili, Ancient Mosaic Pavements, 234–35.

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bushes that grew on Mount Moriah, but the way they appear, devoid of any resemblance to a bush (and unlike the two united branches forming a bush on the left of the panel), allows us to see it as a symbol of a lulav and to find parallels to it in the panel with ritual implements. The Binding of Isaac is about the future temple and the lulav points to the temple feast. This, I believe, is what Sukenik meant when he spoke of the “expression of symbolization.”49 Kitzinger noted that the Beth Alpha mosaicists saw “their figures as a priori part of the surface” and that the surface had become a basis for the design. As he wrote, the surface became “a key factor in the layout and composition of the floor as a whole.”50 If we suppose that there was a need to unite the text and the image and also to make the image devoid of any naturalistic aura in order to suggest a symbolic meaning, then the only way to achieve this is through the linear character of the figures, which will stress the similarity between the two-dimensional letters of the Hebrew language and the figures. The mastery of the composition and the linearity are at the heart of the artistic method of the Beth Alpha synagogue. Linearity, uniting the text and the image, presupposes the active role of the background. This explains the distinct production method that Marianos and Hanina used, which has recently been studied by Diklah Zohar. She concludes that throughout the floor “the face was the first element to be produced, followed by the hair. The following section was that of the neck, which was made as a square that leans directly on the already existing line of the chin. The arms are made as a closed section, and the hands lean against the lower line of each arm. The body was then formed by a single vertical line, closing a square between the already existing lower line of the neck and inner lines of the arms.”51 If we study the figures of the boy with a donkey and the zodiac sign of Aquarius, as well as the figure of Abraham, we notice that the lines of the body are omitted, for there already exist the lines of the hands. Surprisingly enough, this does not distract our attention though. Again, the artists rely not so much on the visual depiction, but on the mind of the viewer, who does the job of bringing reason into the mosaics—a new quality of late antique art.52 The artists Marianos and Hanina had depicted the figures flat and devoid of any volume, but the use of color reveals that they are not ignorant of the idea of 49 Williams, “Old Mosaics,” 3. 50 Kitzinger, Israeli Mosaics, 22.  51 Diklah Zohar, “Application Procedures of Mosaics and the Division of Production Work: Examples from Madaba, Beth Alpha and Antioch,” in 11th International Colloquium on Ancient Mosaics, October 16th–20th, 2009, Bursa Turkey: Mosaics of Turkey and Parallel Developments in the Rest of the Ancient and Medieval World, ed. Mustafa Şahin (Istanbul: Ege Yayinlari, 2011), 973. 52 John Onians, “Abstraction and Imagination in Late Antiquity,” Art History 3 (1980): 1–24; Onians, Classical Art, 261 ff.

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depicting volume, but they seek something different from the naturalistic third dimension. Although the mosaicists seem to have been fully aware of it, they choose to ignore it. For example, in rendering both menorahs in the Torah shrine panel, the middle foot is colored differently. Sukenik originally suggested that “perhaps by this the craftsmen wished to show that the three feet were not on the same plane.”53 If we compare the menorahs in the Hammath Tiberias synagogue with those in Sepphoris and Beth Alpha, we see the change more vividly. In Hammath Tiberias the menorahs are depicted on the round stand with three legs seen from above, so the middle leg appears to be at the front and closer to the viewer that the side legs. The round base together with the front leg curve create the voluminous space of the menorah base. In Sepphoris the look is strictly frontal, the horizontal bar stands for the base. Therefore, all three legs are on the same level. We can only guess that the middle leg is the front one, because of the lion paw ending of it, which is depicted as seen from the front. Finally, in Beth Alpha only the color and the length (in the case of the left menorah) indicates the front leg. In the Binding of Isaac panel there is an interchange between the flat parts and the ones that indicate the volume. The figure of Abraham is absolutely flat—the color of the background and that of the figure is the same. Only the contours help us see the body. The artists’ mastery of the contour is such that we can feel Abraham’s movement. The color enhances our understanding of what is important in the figure. Red and yellow are the two main colors in the figure of Abraham. Red color highlights the head, the neck and hands of both Abraham and Isaac. Contrasting the red is bright yellow, used for the huge knife, thus stressing not the most vivid parts (which should have been the body) but the most important ones—those that allow the comments. The yellow of the knife finds its continua­ tion in the yellow outline of Abraham’s hand, holding it. Finally, yellow is the color of Abraham’s halo and of the ram’s horn and the fire of the altar. The focus of different shades of yellow and red is the hand of God, whose rays send the red dots to the leaves of the tree. The artistic language is therefore not descriptive, but expressive. Abraham’s clothes are only faintly reminiscent of a Greco-Roman toga or tunic, but the posture is Greco-Roman, one to be found on vases. The pose is one that gives Abraham’s figure a natural aura, as the viewer can feel the movement of the figure, the turn of Abraham’s legs and his elderly bulky look and the scale of his personality. The artistic method is neither stylization nor geometrization; it is not a method of an artist ignorant of the Greco-Roman tradition.54 53 Sukenik, Beth Alpha, 27. 54 A revealing comparison can be made with the depiction of the human form in another tradition, alien to the Mediterranean understanding of man. In the Book of Durrow, one of the earliest Celtic Christian illuminated manuscripts (650–700 CE), the symbol of the Evangelist Mathew occupies the whole page (fol.21v). The principle of creating the figure is based on geometry and ornament, neither movement nor proportions have a value. See G. Frank Mitchell,

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In the figure of Abraham, the movement of his hands is very exact. The left hand lifting Isaac suggests how light the young son is, while the right hand carries the knife and feels heavy. The rich yellow outline emphasizes the hand with the knife, while the bright color unites the knife, the outline, the altar, and the bush. This use of yellow outline may seem purely arbitrary, but on closer inspection there appears to be an artistic reason behind it. Above Abraham’s figure are the words “Lay not thy hand,”55 directing Abraham not to use the knife. Yellow is meant to show the reaction of the Patriarch to God’s intervention. This way of treating the possibilities of color is very far from Greco-Roman naturalistic conventions, for the color here has symbolic qualities. This type of representation helped to unite the figures with the text. The viewer needed not only to read the letters, but to “read” the posture and the color arrangement of the figures. Both the figures in Beth Alpha and the letters have only two dimensions and this also helps unite them. One can conclude that the presence of the text inside the scene played a role in changing the character of the depiction, stressing the primary meaning of the text, even if the text itself was not easily read.56 Peter Stewart has noted that it is only a truism to remind us that the “naturalistic conventions of Greco-Roman art diminished progressively in Late Antiquity” and that the art of Late Antiquity witnessed the “disintegration of classical artistic tradition.”57 But knowing the complexity of the artistic method it seems more and more difficult to speak of Marianos and Hanina’s lack of professionalism or abilities, although the list of their inaccuracies, as counted by Stewart, is long.58 As we have seen, some of these inaccuracies can be considered as such only if we consider the realistic naturalism of antiquity to be the only example to follow. But Marianos and Hanina, ignoring the Greco-Roman conventions or pattern-books, wanted to find their own way of presenting reality. Taken by themselves they are innovative, expressive and are able to convey the meaning needed by the community. I suggest that the artistic style they used for this particular mosaic, with its linearity, bondage with the text and expressive qualities, is the one which works very well with any midrash describing the Binding of Isaac, exactly because it demands that the reader visualize what the mosaic is hinting at. “Foreign Influences and the Beginnings of Christian Art,” in Treasures of Early Irish Art, 1500 B. C. to 1500 A. D.: From the collections of the National Museum of Ireland, Royal Irish Academy, Trinity College, Dublin, ed. G. Frank Mitchell et al. (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1977), 59. 55 Sukenik, Beth Alpha, 40. 56 Although we will never know how literate the community was and “most Jews would get acquainted with the Torah through public lectures rather than through direct access to the written text” (Catherine Hezser, Jewish Literacy in Roman Palestine, TSAJ 81 [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001], 502), the notion of the sacredness of the text was widespread among the Jews. 57 Stewart, “Bet Alpha Synagogue Mosaic,” 75. 58 Stewart, “Bet Alpha Synagogue Mosaic,” 80, has counted eleven inaccuracies, suggesting to him the lack of skill or the inability of the artists of Beth Alpha.

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3. Beyond Greco-Roman Artistic Conventions The origins of testing the Greco-Roman conventions to its limits can hardly be explained by a lack of professionalism. Compared to some synagogues in Galilee, the Beth Alpha mosaics are surprisingly well made. The bedding is solid and holds the tesserae with an average density of 100/dm2, with 186/dm2 for figural elements. Mark Merrony’s study of late Roman mosaics has shown that the quality of mosaic pavements could be measured by five parameters: tesserae size, tesserae density, width of interstices, the range of color employed, and the thickness of the bedding.59 In Beth Alpha the artist used twenty-one different shades of color, using white (limestone), black (flint), green (emerald), and violet (amethyst).60 It is hard to believe, but in the Monastery of Lady Mary in neighboring Beit Shean, only seven-and-a-half kilometers away, an impressive mosaic was executed using only eight colors, while at Ḥammath-Gader the synagogue panel, dated 500–600 CE, was executed using four colors, and the Beit Shean Samaritan synagogue, where the mosaic was also done by Marianos and Hanina, used an average of twelve colors.61 The use of twenty-one colors at Beth Alpha suggests that the sponsors together with the artists took the task of making a mosaic very seriously and provided a great variety of stones. Mosaic art was particularly flourishing in sixth-century Galilee. Research done on the inscriptions where the name of the emperor is mentioned revealed that the sixth century was a time of extensive building projects, particularly in the region of Beit Shean,62 as thirteen dated inscriptions mention this city.63 During the fourth–sixth centuries, several distinct centers of mosaic art emerged in Galilee, while the period itself witnessed, compared to the Roman period, the largest number of produced mosaic floors.64 In Sepphoris there probably existed a mosaic 59 Mark Merrony, Socio-Economic Aspects of Late Roman Mosaic Pavements in Phoenicia and Northern Palestine, BARIS 2530 (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2013), 74. 60 Merrony, Socio-Economic Aspects, 265. Avi-Yonah had noticed that some glass cubes were used besides the stone “in order to add lustre to the precious stones represented in the ornaments of the Seasons.” Michael Avi-Yonah, “Mosaic Pavements in Palestine,” in Art in Ancient Palestine. Selected Studies, ed. Hannah Katzenstein and Yoram Tsafrir (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1981), 292. 61 Merrony, Socio-Economic Aspects, 265 (Monastery of Lady Mary, Beit Shean), 246 ­(Ḥ ammath-Gader), 274 (Samaritan synagogue, Beit Shean). 62 Merrony, Socio-Economic Aspects, 39–44 table 7, has counted forty-nine sites with mosaic evidence in the Beit Shean region. See also Levine, Visual Judaism, 225; Stewart, “Bet Alpha Synagogue Mosaic,” 85. 63 Merrony, Socio-Economic Aspects; Marylin J. Chiat, “Synagogues and Churches in Byzantine Beit She’an,” JJA 7 (1980): 6–25; Stephanie Hagan, “Time, Memory and Mosaics at the Monastery of Lady Mary,” Expedition 55 (2013): 37–42. 64 Asher Ovadiah, “Artisans and Workshops in Ancient Mosaic Pavements in Israel,” in On Interpretation in the Arts: Interdisciplinary Studies in Honor of Moshe Lazar, ed. Nurit Yaari,

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workshop in the fifth century CE.65 In Beit Shean numerous mosaics were produced. It seems that Huqoq was a place of considerable effort of mosaicists. One could argue, therefore, that the level of expectations of the donor and that of the community was indeed quite high. Moreover, the iconography of the Beth Alpha mosaic shows that its artists, Marianos and Hanina, were extremely well-versed not only in Jewish iconography, but in Christian iconography as well (ark of the covenant, Binding of Isaac, Virgo),66 and that they were also able to produce innovative iconographies by themselves.67 Indeed, they seem to have been very familiar with the contemporary artistic world of not only Palestine, but of the neighboring provinces as well. If that is the case, then what had happened to Greco-Roman conventions in their mosaics? Were they ignorant of volume, of the body forms, of the shades, of the lighting—all the vocabulary of classical art that forms the basis of the antique artistic language? Why was it reduced to mere outlines and a variety of bright colors? I suggest that one of the reasons is that the artists of the Beth Alpha mosaic were not trained as mosaicists. Their artistic minds focused on the outlines because they knew the weaknesses of their drawing and its direct impression on the viewer. Could this, instead, be the mind of a sculptor, a stone carver—not that of a painter?

­ ssaph Book Series (Tel Aviv: The Yolanda and David Katz Faculty of the Arts, Tel Aviv UniA versity, 2000), 85–98. 65 For general information on the question of workshops see Rachel Hachlili, “On the Mosaicists of the ‘School of Gaza,’” ErIsr 19 (1987): 46–58 (55); Zeev Weiss, “Mosaic Art in Early Fifth-Century CE Sepphoris: Iconography, Style, and the Possible Identification of a ­Local Workshop,” in O Mosaico Romano nos Centros e nas Periferias: Originalides, Influencias e Identidades. Actas do X Colóquio Internacional da Associação Internacional Para o Estudo do Mosaico Antigo (AIEMA), Museu Monográfico de Conimbriga (Portugal), 29 de Outubro a 3 de Novembro de 2005 (Conimbriga: Museu Monográfico de Conimbriga, 2011), 657–67 (662); Zeev Weiss, “Mosaic Art in Ancient Sepphoris: Between East and West,” in 11th International Colloquium on Ancient Mosaics, October 16th–20th, 2009, Bursa Turkey: Mosaics of Turkey and Parallel Developments in the Rest of the Ancient and Medieval World, ed. Mustafa Şahin (Istanbul: Ege Yayinlari, 2011), 941–52; Birte Poulsen, “Identifying mosaic workshops in Late Antiquity: epigraphic evidence and a case study,” in Ateliers and artisans in Roman art and archaeology, ed. Troels Myrup Kristensen and Birte Poulsen, JRASup 92 (Portsmouth, RI: JRA, 2012), 129–44. See also Ovadiah, “Artisans and Workshops,” 85–98; Diklah Zohar, “Mosaic Artists in the Byzantine East Towards a New Definition of Workshop Construction,” Eastern Christian Art in its Late Antique and Islamic Contexts 3 (2006): 143–52; Andrew M. Madden, “The identification of mosaic workshops in Palestine and Arabia, 4th–7th Centuries CE” (PhD diss., University of Melbourne, 2011). 66 The iconography of the Binding of Isaac, although quite innovative, bears a resemblance to the Christian artistic tradition, particularly, but not exclusively, Coptic. See Gutmann, “Revisiting the ‘Binding of Isaac’ Mosaic,” 82. 67 E.g., placing the figure of the ram in the center of the panel, the freeze with the trees, separating the two lower panels, the novel iconography of the zodiac signs and the Helios figure.

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4. Stone Carvers Turned Mosaicists? While preparing this article, I decided to do what Neil MacGregor had done to some of the objects from the British Museum68—I showed it to artists, sculptors and mosaicists. None of them noted that the mosaic is the work of an amateur. Anatoly Kamelin, whose work often reminds me of Beth Alpha, is a sculptor who elaborated his own distinct style based on medieval sculpture. When asked what he could make of the mosaic, he noted that it is quite obvious that drawing was not the strong side of the Beth Alpha artists. Nevertheless, their drawing style is different from that of children because, unlike children, they have never repeated themselves. Their style is their own, based on their vision of reality. On the other hand, it was clearly easier for the artists to arrange the masses in a given space. Kamelin suggested that this lack of drawing skills, but mastery of composition, characterizes the mind of a sculptor, a stone cutter. The influential modern French sculptor Antoine Bourdelle once described his training as follows: “From my father who was a wood carver I learned the principles of architecture. The relative proportions of different parts of furniture taught me to understand the inner structure of things. … Following the advice of the stone itself I began to create better foregrounds and transitions from one form to another—as when one cuts the stone, it talks to you.”69 In the case of the Beth Alpha mosaic, in the figure of Abraham, the artists are arranging parts of the body as if they were masses of stone. The hand with the knife goes on top of the body and, hence, it is stressed with a yellow outline and the red color of the palm. The yellow of the knife brings it into the foreground. Both the neck and the head are emphasized by the red color, but the artists found a way to bring Abraham’s head into the forefront by adding a beard done in white, in the same color as the background. We can almost feel how the artists are cutting the hand with the knife, the neck and the head out of the surface with a powerful contour line and we can almost feel the effort they put into it. Although this is only a hypothesis, there is one observation that might confirm it. We know that Marianos and Hanina signed their work. The curious fact is that up to now we have surprisingly few inscriptions with the names of mosaicists. Asher Ovadiah has suggested that the scarcity of such inscriptions might be explained on the basis “that the medium was regarded merely as a craft and its producers as craftsmen rather than artists”.70 Only seven inscriptions mention the artists of a mosaic, two of which were inscribed by Marianos and Hanina, the only 68 Neil MacGregor, The History of the World in 100 Objects from the British Museum (London: Penguin, 2012). 69 Veronika V. Starodubova, Emil’-Antuan Burdel (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1970), 5. 70 Ovadiah, “Artisans and Workshops,” 85.

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artists to have worked in late antique synagogues whose names are known to us.71 The Greek inscription in Beth Alpha reads “In honoured memory of the artisans who made this work well, Marianos and his son Aninas.”72 There are not many inscriptions where the artists praise themselves for doing their job well. How can we explain this rare occurrence of self-praise? It might be the case that the Beth Alpha inscription can provide some additional information. For instance, the inscription uses the Greek word technitai, while the common term for mosaicists in most inscriptions was psēphothetēs.73 It should be further noted that the other inscription and particularly the words that accompany the Binding of Isaac scene are in Hebrew. So there seems to be a clear understanding that the language of art is Greek, as well as an identification of the artists with their craft. When comparing the Greek wording used in the Beth Alpha mosaic with the wording used in mosaic inscriptions elsewhere in the Near East and North Africa, the uniqueness of the Beth Alpha mosaic inscription becomes apparent. Thus, there are forty-six inscriptions mentioning technitai in Greater Syria and the East (only one in Palestine) and thirty-four in Egypt, Nubia, and Cyrenaica, while the word for mosaicists (psēphothetēs) was particularly popular in Palestine—out of thirty-two matches in thirty-one texts coming from various places while eighteen come from Greater Syria and the East.74 Thus, it seems that in the local Palestinian tradition it was customary to put the title “mosaicist” on a mosaic panel. On the other hand, technitai are only mentioned once among all inscriptions and that is at Beth Alpha. Instead, the survey of surviving texts involving technitai reveals that the word was often used in association with carving of porticoes and friezes. If we allow Marianos and Hanina to be sculptors, then we find numerous parallels to their work, such as the head from the Beit Shean cemetery75 or other examples of late antique sculpture. The self-praise of the inscription might find its explanation in the fact that the artists were responsible both for the stone work and for the mosaic. How does this observation illuminate our knowledge of the cultural situation of late antique Palestine? First of all, the Beth Alpha mosaic becomes the brilliant manifestation of the dematerialization tendencies present in Roman art itself. Its style can be seen as ahead of its time, opening a new chapter in the art of the early Middle Ages. The process of visual transformation, as described by James Trilling, implied that “the essential feature of late antique art to be a decrease in the amount of specific information which an artist was expected to incorporate in an image, and a corresponding increase in the viewer’s responsibility to reconstruct 71 Ovadiah, “Artisans and Workshops,” 85. 72 Sukenik, Beth Alpha, 47. 73 Talgam, Mosaics of Faith, 170–71. 74 Packard Humanities Institute, “Searchable Greek Inscriptions,” Cornell University; Ohio State University, https://epigraphy.packhum.org. The search terms used are “ψηφοθ” and “τεχνίτ”. 75 Avi Yonah, “Oriental elements,” 15–17, pl. II.

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the complete image mentally. Abstraction is the outward sign of this transfer of responsibility.”76 Onians described this change in visible sensibility, which enabled the late antique spectator to make more out of less visual information: the “increase of the imaginative sensibility of the typical spectator … permitted him literally to take over functions from the artist.”77 From this perspective, the Beth Alpha mosaic is the most eloquent source for describing this late antique transformation and the taste of the era. People were willing to invite artists that did not try to imitate reality. They were ready to visualize what the artists offered them. If we know that there is depth, then there is no need in presenting something in stone which is already given to us in our senses. It is obvious that the same is done in the Aquarius figure in the zodiac of the Beth Alpha mosaic—often portrayed as a young man pouring water out of a vessel that is held in his hand. Here the scheme is innovative: a man standing beside a well or cistern from which he is drawing water with both hands in a jar or bucket fastened to a rope. Here the man and the well became one, because this was what was significant in the zodiac sign. The depiction became a logo of the sign. This emphasis on mental process, of showing only what is important is also evident in the rendering of the figure of Scorpio, which is, according to Sukenik, better drawn than the others and in which “the red spots, extending the entire length of the tail, are meant to show the poison stored in this part of the body.”78 Why did the artists deliberately ignore the space? Because they knew that from now on the main work would be done not in the eye of the viewer, but in his or her mind. It is there where we know that one object is behind the other. The antique principle of fullness of description and of closeness to reality is no longer important. The space is something which is given to us in our senses, therefore the artists intuitively sacrificed the space. What did they gain instead? The enormous possibilities of composition and of color. And instead of building the figure from muscles and skin, they leave the contour and work with it the way that we focus on the meaning and actions of the figure. To summarize, while the mosaicists deliberately ignored the Greco-Roman conventions, this did not mean that they did not consult the visible reality itself. What is fully absent is the reference to a specific model that should be imitated. Their own aesthetics is grounded in the visible reality, but the principle of telling the story is largely their own.

76 James Trilling, “Medieval Art Without Style? Plato’s Loophole and a Modern Detour,” Gesta 34 (1995): 60. 77 Onians, “Abstraction and Imagination,” 19. 78 Sukenik, Beth Alpha, 37.

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5. Proportions Several scholars have suggested that the mosaic figures seem “childlike,” which assumes that the artists were ignorant of proportions. However, a careful study shows that this was hardly the case. The inconsistency of the proportions throughout the panel is a usual feature in mosaics found in Palestine. In the synagogue of Hammath Tiberias, the most classical of Helios-and-zodiac mosaics, the ratio between the height of the figure and the height of its face varies from 1:8 (hypothetically, as the bottom part of the Helios figure is missing) to 1:6 in the figure of Libra and 1:9 in the figure of Virgo. Therefore, they are often taller than the Polikletes ratio of 1:7, but quite close to the Vitruvian one, which is 1:8. The ratio of the zodiac figures in the Beth Alpha mosaic is 1:5 (Gemini and Sagittarius) to 1:3 in Virgo (though the figure is depicted seated, so a 1:5 ratio is probable). The figures are altered due to one noticeable feature—their neck is unusually long. It seems that the artists had the idea that this particular feature gave character to their figures, as it accentuated the head. The figure of Abraham, however, surprisingly enough has the exact Polikletes proportions of 1:7, although the body does not resemble Greco-Roman conventions stylistically. The ratio of the upper part of the arm (from the shoulder to the elbow) and the lower part (from the elbow to the palm of the hand) is 1:1, as it should be according to classical proportions. In all zodiac figures, except for Sagittarius, this classical ratio is evident. The proportions of the main figures suggest that the artists were grounded in the common artistic tradition of antiquity.79 The movement of the body of Abraham is stressed by his rendering in profile and his feet standing firmly on the ground. We should note, however, that Abraham’s neck is longer than it should be. This unites his figure with the other figures of the panel, for the large neck is a prominent feature of all the figures. Isaac is depicted as a child and, therefore, his head proportions are approximately 1:4. When comparing this with other depictions of children in contemporary mosaics, we find 1:4 in the mosaics from the Golden Palace in Constantinople and 1:3.5 in the depiction of infants in the mosaic from Villa Armira in Ivailovgrad, Bulgaria.80 So Isaac here is a child indeed and the same can be said about the zodiac signs. There appears a rather poetic metaphor of the universe, represented by the zodiac signs, being in tune with the small Isaac, for they have the same proportions. 79 See also Warren G. Moon, “Nudity and Narrative: Observations on the Frescoes from the Dura Synagogue,” JAAR 60 (1992): 587–658, who has shown that the same holds true for the Dura Europos synagogue frescoes. For the general problems of the canon, see Warren G. Moon, ed. Polykleitos, the Doryphoros and Tradition (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1995). 80 Dunbabin, Mosaics, 321.

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In conclusion, on the basis of the proportions it cannot be said that the artists were unfamiliar with the models, nor that they did not have them in mind while conceiving the way of presenting the overall mosaic. It would be unfair to say that the artists of the Beth Alpha mosaic were untrained or unskilled. Their style may be characterized as personal, but it might have belonged to a particular school as well.

6. Belonging to A Coptic School In his final excavation report of the Beth Alpha synagogue, Sukenik noted that “the style of the Beth Alpha mosaic is often reminiscent of Coptic art, and it may be that the craftsmen were Alexandrian Jews from Egypt, some of whom, as we know from the monuments found in the ancient Jewish cemetery in Jaffa, were then in Palestine.”81 This suggestion has remained rather undeveloped,82 although indeed in the art of Byzantine Egypt the contrast between three-dimensional and two-dimensional vision is particularly obvious, forming the contrast, “which is basic to the stylistic development not only of our mosaics, but of all pictorial art in the late antique and early Byzantine period.”83 Comparing the Beth Alpha mosaic with Coptic art is striking and proves that the art of Beth Alpha was not an isolated phenomenon, but had roots in the surrounding artistic milieu. The distinctive Coptic style with its lack of naturalism and strong emphasis on linearity had emerged despite the fact that a strong Hellenistic current never ceased to exist in Egypt.84 The Coptic artistic style is best seen in numerous textiles, dated roughly to 400–600 CE, as weaving demanded the adaptation of the classical model, taken from pattern books, to the stitches of the cloth, which inevitably added the abstract character to the final depiction. Let me illustrate this with several textiles with female personifications from some major museums. Among the Coptic textiles kept in the Metropolitan Museum of Art is a tapestry tabula (square)  dated to the fourth–fifth century CE that is supposedly from Akhmim, Egypt (former Panopolis) with the head of Spring (Fig. 2).85 The Hellenistic iconography is well preserved, while the form has been transformed. Although there is still an indication of volume on the face, created by the line of darker color along its contour and the rose cheeks, her hands are abstract and not 81 Sukenik, Beth Alpha, 26. 82 Stewart, “Bet Alpha Synagogue Mosaic,” forms a recent exception. 83 Kitzinger, Israeli Mosaics, 18. 84 Among the most important recent publications see László Török, Transfigurations of Hellenism: Aspects of Late Antique Art in Egypt, AD 250–700, Probleme der Ägyptologie 23 (Leiden: Brill, 2005). 85 Annemarie Stauffer, Textiles of Late Antiquity (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1995), 32 no. 9, 44.

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Fig. 2: Tabula fragment (23.5 × 25 cm) with the head of Spring, fourth–fifth century CE, attributed to Akhmim, Egypt. (Photo by Metropolitan Museum of Art, acc. no. 90.5.848, CC0)

connected to the body. On a similar tapestry square from the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts with the head of a lady (possibly also an allegory of a season) the facial features are very expressive, particularly the eyes, turned to the left, but the volume is gone, it is not indicated by any variation of color.86 On a tapestry square fragment with figural, animal, and botanical decoration from the Brooklyn Museum, dated to the sixth century CE, the face is closest to those found on the Beth Alpha mosaic: the eyes are large but without eyelids, the nose is created by two parallel vertical lines, while the mouth is two horizontal strokes of red (Fig. 3).87 86 Olga Lechitskaya, Coptic Textiles (Moscow: The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Art, 2010), 207 no. 105 (Russian). 87 Deborah Thompson, Coptic Textiles in The Brooklyn Museum (New York: Brooklyn Museum, 1971), No. 31.

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Fig. 3: Tabula fragment (24 × 24 cm) with figural, animal, and botanical decoration, sixth century CE. (Photo by Brooklyn Museum, acc. no. 42.438.4, CC-BY).

There are other similarities between the Coptic tradition and the Beth Alpha mosaic. The idea of the Beth Alpha art as unskillful, primitive and quite devoid of the classical tradition, as first formulated by Sukenik, is deeply rooted in the study of the art of the Roman provinces of the late nineteenth century. In his recent book, László Török shows how the idea of Coptic art as a deliberate decline from the Hellenistic heritage was formulated first in Albert Gayet’s 1889/90 catalogue of the Egyptian Museum of Antiquities in Bulaq, Cairo.88 By the beginning of the twentieth century, the art of late antique Egypt was seen as anti-Hellenic and an

88 Török, Transfigurations of Hellenism, 12.

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example of decline. Together with that went the notion of Volkskunst,89 the idea of the “non-Egyptian ruling class versus native peasantry,” which persisted until at least 1970 and even later.90 John Boardman provided a similar description in his Diffusion of Classical Art in Antiquity: “The overall appearance is very much that of a ‘folk art,’ except that the quaintness does not seem arbitrary, and it is expressed as deliberately in stone relief as in textiles or painting.”91 Boardman described here Coptic art, but, as we have seen, the same ideas have prevailed in descriptions of the mosaics at Beth Alpha. The word “childish” was even used to treat the art of late antique Egypt in a formula almost identical to Beth Alpha: “they are of course provincial work and somewhat unsophisticated. … Many are still in the Hellenistic tradition, but the figures are rather childish.”92 Also in Coptic art, as Török mentions, there is a distinction between the style and quality, and they are often confused: “The intricate relationship between quality, style and dating was not sufficiently realised in earlier research and also remains unexplained in more recent works.”93

7. Conclusion Both Coptic art and the art of the Beth Alpha synagogue need further reconsideration. Together they demonstrate that “taken as a whole, religious art especially, does undergo a process of rigidification and dematerialization, having as its end result the style widely recognized as Byzantine and incapable of being confused with classical or even late Roman art.”94 The clash between classical and anti-classical concepts is evident in the majority of mosaic panels found in Byzantine Palestine, but at Beth Alpha we see a testing of classical art to its limits and exploration of other means of expression. The artistic mind of a sculptor allowed the tendency to dematerialization, present in all Byzantium, to take a new, extremely expressive form. It is tempting to see it as a conscious violation of rules, and as a reference to the intellectual art of the Justinian era.95 The Beth Alpha mosaic became a logo image for Jewish art because it combined the most characteristic features of the Jewish mind—the emphasis on text and the 89 Török, Transfigurations of Hellenism, 20–31. 90 Török, Transfigurations of Hellenism, 23. 91 John Boardman, The Diffusion of Classical Art in Antiquity (London: Thames and Hudson, 1994), 178. 92 Arnold H. M. Jones, The Decline of the Ancient World (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966), 360. 93 Török, Transfigurations of Hellenism, 41. 94 Trilling, The Roman Heritage, 13. 95 Constas Maximos, The Art of Seeing: Paradox and Perception in Orthodox Iconography (Alhambra, CA: Sebastian Press, 2014), has recently shown how the sixth-century Sinai-icon of Christ Pantocrator, with its novel artistic language, reflects the theological debates of the day.

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crucial importance of the mental process in perceiving a work of art. The linear, flat, volumeless character of the mosaics, as well as the paradoxical use of color and perspective, create a feeling of conscious denial of naturalistic principles in order to convey the spiritual meaning of the moment of encountering the sacred, of being a witness of the Binding of Isaac, which will lead to the birth of the Chosen people. It reveals the biblical idea that there is always a gap between the image and the depth of meaning that could be found in texts. For ages the notion of beauty was vital for producing a work of art. Now, at the time of the Beth Alpha mosaic, it was the idea of the presence of the sacred which became central for artists. The only means of conveying it was by changing Greco-Roman aesthetic conventions.

Cited Sources Avi-Yonah, Michael. “Mosaic Pavements in Palestine.” Pages 283–381 in Art in Ancient Palestine. Selected Studies. Edited by Hannah Katzenstein and Yoram Tsafrir. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1981. Avi-Yonah, Michael, “Oriental elements in the art of Palestine in the Roman and Byzantine periods,” Pages 1–117 in Art in Ancient Palestine. Selected Studies. Edited by Hannah Katzenstein and Yoram Tsafrir. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1981. Barag, Dan. “En-Gedi, the Synagogue.” NEAEHL 2: 405–9. Boardman, John. The Diffusion of Classical Art in Antiquity. London: Thames and Hudson, 1994. Chakovskaya, Lidia. The Memory of the Temple Incarnate: The Artistic Realm of the Holy Land Synagogues III–VI c. CE. Moscow: Indrik, 2011. (Russian). Chiat, Marylin J. “Synagogues and Churches in Byzantine Beit She’an.” JJA 7 (1980): 6–25. Dunbabin, Katherine M. D. Mosaics of the Greek and Roman World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Gibbon, Edward. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. London: Strahan & Cadell, 1776–89. Repr., New York: Penguin, 1994. Gutmann, Joseph. “Revisiting the ‘Binding of Isaac’ Mosaic in the Beth-Alpha Synagogue.” Bulletin of the Asia Institute 6 (1992): 79–85. Hachlili, Rachel. Ancient Mosaic Pavements: Themes, Issues, and Trends—Selected Studies. Leiden: Brill, 2009. Hachlili, Rachel. Ancient Synagogues—Archaeology and Art: New Discoveries and Current Research. HdO 115. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Hachlili, Rachel. “On the Mosaicists of the ‘School of Gaza’.” ErIsr 19 (1987): 46–58. Hagan, Stephanie. “Time, Memory and Mosaics at the Monastery of Lady Mary.” Expedition 55 (2013): 37–42. Hezser, Catherine. Jewish Literacy in Roman Palestine. TSAJ 81. Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001. Jones, Arnold H. M. The Decline of the Ancient World. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1966. Kitzinger, Ernst. Israeli Mosaics of the Byzantine Period. New York: The New American Library, by arrangement with UNESCO, 1965. Leatherbury, Sean V. “Competitive Sacrifice. Christian Visual Engagement with Jewish Sacrificial History and the Temple in Late Antique Arabia.” Pages 279–302 in Jewish Art in Its Late Antique Context. Edited by Uzi Leibner and Catherine Hezser. TSAJ 163. Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016. Lechitskaya, Olga. Coptic Textiles. Moscow: The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Art, 2010. (Russian).

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Levine, Lee I. Visual Judaism in Late Antiquity: Historical Contexts of Jewish Art. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012. MacGregor, Neil. The History of the World in 100 Objects from the British Museum. London: Penguin, 2012. Madden, Andrew M. “The identification of mosaic workshops in Palestine and Arabia, 4th–7th Centuries CE.” PhD diss., University of Melbourne, 2011. Maximos, Constas. The Art of Seeing: Paradox and Perception in Orthodox Iconography. Alhambra, CA: Sebastian Press, 2014. Merrony, Mark. Socio-Economic Aspects of Late Roman Mosaic Pavements in Phoenicia and Northern Palestine. BARIS 2530. Oxford: Archaeopress, 2013. Mitchell, G. Frank. “Foreign Influences and the Beginnings of Christian Art.” Pages 54–60 in Treasures of Early Irish Art, 1500 B. C. to 1500 A. D.: From the collections of the National Museum of Ireland, Royal Irish Academy, Trinity College, Dublin. Edited by G. Frank Mitchell et al. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1977. Moon, Warren G. “Nudity and Narrative: Observations on the Frescoes from the Dura Synagogue.” JAAR 60 (1992): 587–658. Moon, Warren G., ed. Polykleitos, the Doryphoros and Tradition. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1995. Onians, John. “Abstraction and Imagination in Late Antiquity.” Art History 3 (1980): 1–24. Onians, John. Classical Art and the Culture of Greece and Rome. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999. Ovadiah, Asher. “Artisans and Workshops in Ancient Mosaic Pavements in Israel.” Pages 85–98 in On Interpretation in the Arts: Interdisciplinary Studies in Honor of Moshe Lazar. Edited by Nurit Yaari. Assaph Book Series. Tel Aviv: The Yolanda and David Katz Faculty of the Arts, Tel Aviv University, 2000. Packard Humanities Institute. “Searchable Greek Inscriptions.” Cornel University; Ohio State University. https://epigraphy.packhum.org. Piccirillo, Michele. The Mosaics of Jordan. Edited by Patricia M. Bikai and Thomas A. Dailey. American Center of Oriental Research Reports 1. Amman: American Center of Oriental Research, 1993. Poulsen, Birte. “Identifying mosaic workshops in Late Antiquity: epigraphic evidence and a case study.” Pages 129–44 in Ateliers and artisans in Roman art and archaeology. Edited by Troels Myrup Kristensen and Birte Poulsen. JRASup 92. Portsmouth, RI: JRA, 2012. Roussin, Lucille A. “The Zodiac in Synagogue Decoration.” Pages 83–96 in Archaeology and the Galilee: Texts and Contexts in the Graeco-Roman and Byzantine Periods. Edited by Douglas R. Edwards and C. Thomas McCollough. Atlanta: Scholars, 1997. Shapiro, Meyer. Late Antique, Early Christian and Medieval Art. Selected Papers. London: Chatto & Windus, 1980. Speyart van Woerden, Isabel. “The Iconography of the Sacrifice of Abraham.” VC 15 (1961): 214–55. Starodubova, Veronika V. Emil’-Antuan Burdel. Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1970. Stauffer, Annmarie, Textiles of Late Antiquity. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1995. Stewart, Peter. “The Bet Alpha Synagogue Mosaic and Late-Antique Provincialism.” Pages 75–95 in Jewish Art in Its Late Antique Context. Edited by Uzi Leibner and Catherine Hezser. TSAJ 163. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016. Sukenik, Eleazer L. The Ancient Synagogue of Beth Alpha. Jerusalem: Hebrew University Press, 1932. Talgam, Rina. Mosaics of Faith: Floors of Pagans, Jews, Samaritans, Christians, and Muslims in the Holy Land. Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi; University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2014.

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Thompson, Deborah. Coptic Textiles in The Brooklyn Museum. New York: Brooklyn Museum, 1971. Török, László. Transfigurations of Hellenism: Aspects of Late Antique Art in Egypt, AD 250–700. Probleme der Ägyptologie 23. Leiden: Brill, 2005. Trilling, James. “Medieval Art Without Style? Plato’s Loophole and a Modern Detour.” Gesta 34, no.1 (1995): 57–62. Trilling, James. The Roman Heritage: Textiles from Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean, 300–600 A. D. Washington, DC: Textile Museum, 1982. Weiss, Zeev, “Mosaic Art in Ancient Sepphoris. Between East and West.” Pages 941–52 in 11th International Colloquium on Ancient Mosaics, October 16th–20th, 2009, Bursa Turkey: Mosaics of Turkey and Parallel Developments in the Rest of the Ancient and Medieval. Edited by Mustafa Şahin. Istanbul: Ege Yaynlan, 2011. Weiss, Zeev. “Mosaic Art in Early Fifth-Century CE Sepphoris: Iconography, Style, and the Possible Identification of a Local Workshop.” Pages 657–67 in O Mosaico Romano nos Centros e nas Periferias: Originalides, Influencias e Identidades. Actas do X Colóquio Internacional da Associação Internacional Para o Estudo do Mosaico Antigo (AIEMA), Museu Monográfico de Conimbriga (Portugal), 29 de Outubro a 3 de Novembro de 2005. Conimbriga: Museu Monográfico de Conimbriga, 2011. Weiss, Zeev. The Sepphoris Synagogue: Deciphering an Ancient Message through Its Archaeological and Socio-Historical Contexts. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2005. Weiss, Zeev, and Ehud Netzer. Promise and Redemption: A Synagogue Mosaic from Sepphoris. Jerusalem: The Israel Museum, 1996. Williams, Wythe. “Old Mosaics Trace Origins of the Jews.” New York Times, 29 April 1929, 3. Wilkinson, John. “The Beit Alpha Synagogue Mosaic: Towards an Interpretation.” JJA 5 (1978): 16–28. Zohar, Diklah. “Application Procedures of Mosaics and the Division of Production Work: Examples from Madaba, Beth Alpha and Antioch.” Pages 969–79 in 11th International Colloquium on Ancient Mosaics, October 16th–20th, 2009, Bursa Turkey: Mosaics of Turkey and Parallel Developments in the Rest of the Ancient and Medieval World. Edited by Mustafa Şahin. Istanbul: Ege Yayinlari, 2011. Zohar, Diklah. “Mosaic Artists in the Byzantine East: Towards a New Definition of Workshop Construction.” Eastern Christian Art in its Late Antique and Islamic Contexts 3 (2006): 143–52.

Gary Gilbert

The Appearance of the Menorah in Ancient Jewish Art The scholarship on the ancient synagogue, and Jewish material culture in antiquity in general, has arrived at two, rather well-established claims. First, by the Byzantine period, the menorah, a seven-branched candelabra, became the most frequently represented object in synagogue art. It appears in a variety of media including painting, mosaic, and stone, decorated architectural features such as lintels, capitals, and chancel screens, and stood as a free-standing object in the interior of many synagogues. Working with the catalog produced by Rachel Hachlili and accounting for subsequent discoveries, we can identity at least thirty-seven different synagogues in Byzantine Palestine that displayed a menorah in a floor mosaic, as part of an architectural feature, or as the object itself, along with twenty-one other sites that, while not clearly identifiable as synagogues, contain architectural remains, such as lintels, that display the menorah.1 The synagogues of Byzantine Palestine were hardly unique in this regard. Diaspora synagogues as well regularly employed the menorah, in both two and three-dimensional renderings, often in prominent locations within the synagogues. The cases of Dura, Sardis and Ostia are perhaps the best-known examples. The usage of the menorah in synagogue art alone would have established it as the symbol most favored by Jews. Depictions of the menorah, however, were not confined to these communal spaces. The menorah was also frequently represented in funerary contexts, in the catacombs of Rome and Beth-She‘arim, and on tombstones from Caesarea, Sepphoris, Zo’ar, and over a dozen other sites. Approximately forty percent of the menorot catalogued by Hachlili appear in a funerary context. Menorot also appear on everyday objects as well, such as ceramic lamps, glass vessels,2 bread stamps, jewelry, weights, and seals. By the Byzantine period, therefore, the menorah had become, in the words of Steven Fine, “far the most important Jewish symbol.”3 Lee Levine offers a similar sentiment when noting 1 Rachel Hachlili, The Menorah: The Ancient Seven-Armed Candelabrum, JSJSup 68 (Leiden: Brill, 2002). An updated presentation appears in Rachel Hachlili, Ancient Synagogues— Archaeology and Art: New Discoveries and Current Research, HdO 105 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 292–324. 2 Dan Barag, “Glass Pilgrim Vessels from Jerusalem, Part I,” Journal of Glass Studies 12 (1970): 48–63. 3 Steven Fine, Art and Judaism in the Greco-Roman World: Toward a New Jewish Archaeology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 154.

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that the menorah was “the most ubiquitous and characteristic motif in ancient Jewish art.”4 The second, widely acknowledged claim is that prior to the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, the menorah appears very infrequently in Jewish visual culture. Perhaps the earliest depiction of a menorah can be seen on the coins minted by the last Hasmonean ruler, Mattathias Antigonus. The coins display a table, presumably the table of the showbread, along with a Hebrew inscription that reads “Mattityah the High Priest,” and the menorah on the reverse along with a Greek inscription “King Anti[ochus].” The coins are often held up as important symbols in Hasmonean propaganda,5 whether issued to announce Antigonus’s claims to authority or as rallying cries during the final days of the fighting between himself and Herod.6 Not only the interpretation, but also the significance of these coins, however, is open to serious question. This series is the smallest of Antigonus’s issues, just over one-and-a-half grams, and the rarest. Apparently Antigonus did not think these symbols to be of any particular importance, which should raise some doubt not only as to the significance of the menorah for Antigonus but for contemporary Jews more generally.7 Other instances of the menorah during this period can be catalogued in short order and follow a typical pattern. They include graffiti carved in the tomb of Jason in Jerusalem,8 a graffito incised into plaster in a domestic structure in the upper section of Jerusalem,9 an incised rendering on a sundial discovered the excavations around the Temple Mount,10 and as decorations on a handful of ossuaries, although the dating of 4 Lee I. Levine, “The History and Significance of the Menorah in Antiquity,” in From Dura to Sepphoris: Studies in Jewish Art and Society in Late Antiquity, ed. Lee I. Levine and Zeev Weiss, JRASup 40 (Portsmouth, RI: JRA, 2000), 131. 5 Yaakov Meshorer suggests that, “Antigonos may have depicted the menorah and the table on his coins both to encourage his supporters, and to remind the people of their duty to preserve the sanctity of the Temple and its priests from foreigners.” Yaakov Meshorer, Ancient Jewish Coinage (Dix Hills, NJ: Amphora, 1982), 1:94. 6 On the former, see Isadore Goldstein and Jean-Philippe Fontanille, “The Small Denominations of Mattathis Antigonus,” Israel Numismatic Research 8 (2013): 55–71; on the latter view, see Yaakov Meshorer, A Treasury of Jewish Coins from the Persian Period to Bar Kokhba (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi Press; Nyack, NJ: Amphora, 2001), 57. See also Victor A. Klagsbald, “The Menorah as Symbol: Its Meaning and Origin in Early Jewish Art,” JJA 12–13 (1986–87): 128. 7 The menorah coins are among the smallest and rarest of the coins minted by Antigonus. See Meshorer, A Treasury of Jewish Coins, 54–57. 8 L. Y. Rahmani, “Jason’s Tomb,” IEJ 2 (1967): 73–74. 9 Dan Barag, “The Temple Cult Vessels Graffito from the Jewish Quarter,” Ancient Jerusalem Revealed, ed. Hillel Geva (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1994), 277–78. Lihi Habas, “An Incised Depiction of the Temple Menorah and Other Cult Objects of the Second Temple Period,” in Jewish Quarter Excavations in the Old City of Jerusalem conducted by Nahman Avigad, 1969–1982, vol. II: The Finds from Areas A, W, and X-2, ed. Hillel Geva (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2003), 329–42. 10 Benjamin Mazar, “Excavations Near the Temple Mount,” Qadmoniot 5 (1972): 74–90 (Hebrew).

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these last objects remains uncertain.11 Until recently, two features characterized almost all these objects. First, they were produced only in Jerusalem, and second, with the exception of the coins, they were meant for private or limited viewing. The discovery of a stone table in the ancient site of Magdala. however, has upset this neat assessment and prompted a reassessment of the use of the menorah in the late Second Temple period. The rectangular object (ca. 60 × 50 × 40 cm) contains the image of the menorah in the center on one of the short sides, surmounting a square object and flanked by two large amphorae.12 The stone and the ancient synagogue in which it was discovered have been dated to the first century CE, making the Magdala stone one of only objects produced prior to 70 CE to display a menorah both in a public setting and outside Jerusalem. While the Magdala stone may provide the basis for a reassessment of the early usage of menorah imagery, its existence does not appreciably alter the claim that prior to 70 CE depictions of the menorah were remarkably infrequent and unspectacular. It is important to note that not only were depictions of the menorah few and far between, but that the object at this time very possibly was associated with and denoted the priesthood rather than the Jewish people as a whole.13 Over the course of the early centuries of the common era, the menorah in Jewish culture emerged from a position of being virtually nowhere to seemingly everywhere, used often now as a symbol of Jewish identity.14 This much seems certain. Less clear is when this change took place and why. Determining the beginning of the shift proves immensely difficult. The corpus of surviving materials produced between the late first and early fourth centuries is slim. Nonetheless, it seems likely that the menorah had become well established as a public and communal image by the middle of the third century, as witnessed by the painted image of a menorah from the Dura synagogue, notably one of the older paintings from the synagogue’s 11 L. Y. Rahmani, Catalogue of Jewish Ossuaries: In the Collections of the State of Israel (Jerusalem: IAA, 1994), nos. 815, 829; L. Y. Rahmani, “Representations of Menorah on Ossuaries,” in Ancient Jerusalem Revealed, ed. Hillel Geva (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1994), 239–43. The menorah appears on only a few ossuaries whose dating is uncertain. Steven Fine thinks it possible that they should be assigned to the pre-70 period. See Fine, Art and Judaism, 149. 12 Levine, “History and Significance,” 136. Mordechai Aviam, “The Decorated Stone from the Synagogue of Migdal: A Holistic Interpretation and a Glimpse into the Life of Galilean Jews at the Time of Jews,” NovT 55 (2013): 205–20. 13 Klagsbald, “The Menorah as Symbol,” 128; Rachel Hachlili, “Why Did the Menorah and Not the Showbread Table Evolve into the Most Important Symbo of Judaism?” in Jewish Art in Its Late Antique Context, ed. Uzi Leibner and Catherine Hezser, TSAJ 163 (Tübingen, Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 207. 14 The rise change in the depiction of the menorah was part of a larger artistic revolution. See Lee I. Levine, “The Emergence of a New Jewish Art in Late Antiquity,” in Was 70 CE a Watershed in Jewish History? On Jews and Judaism Before and After the Destruction of the Second Temple, ed. Daniel R. Schwartz and Zeev Weiss, AJEC 78 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 301–39.

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second stage, and a recently discovered basalt tomb door from Tiberias.15 It is equally difficult to determine why Jews in Late Antiquity decided to employ the menorah much more frequently than Jews had done in earlier periods.16 Related to this issue is another vexing question. Why did Jews chose the menorah at all as their symbol par excellence? After centuries of use in synagogue art and then later in Medieval illuminated manuscripts and more recently in Zionist and Israeli art,17 it is easy to presume that the menorah was the obvious and even inevitable choice to earn a place of prominence in Jewish art and to represent the Jewish people. But was it? One might imagine that other objects or symbols could have assumed the highly regarded position enjoyed by the menorah. Consider, as an example, the table upon which the temple showbread was placed. Like the menorah, this table occupied space within the precincts of the temple, Josephus mentions it along with the menorah as one of the most important of the temple’s sacred objects,18 it was one of the vessels confiscated by the Romans and carried through the streets of Rome in the triumphal procession (B. J. 7.149), and it regularly appeared along with the menorah, such as on the coin of Mattathias Antigonus, the plaster fragment discovered in the Old City, the depiction of the triumphal procession on the Arch of Titus, and possibly on the obverse of the tetradrachms minted by Bar Kokhba.19 The various depictions of the table prompted Dan Barag to suggest that before the second century CE, the showbread table was of greater importance 15 Karl H. Kraeling, The Synagogue: The Excavations at Dura Europos: Final Report 8/1 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1956), 54–62. Another early example may be a tomb door with a menorah decoration that was discovered in Tiberias in 2010. The object is “consistent with Jewish tomb doors dating from about 150 to 350 A. D.” Brigit Katz, “Tomb Door Engraved with Menorah Discovered in Israel,” Smithsonian Magazine, 28 December 2017, https://www.smithsonianmag. com/smart-news/tomb-door-engraved-menorah-discovered-israel-180967647/. 16 One should also consider the possibility that a strong attachment to the menorah already existed in the late Second Temple period, but one or more factors restrained any visual depiction of the object. See a summary of suggestions in Klagsbald, “The Menorah as Symbol,” 126–27. 17 Bazalel Narkiss, “The Menorah in Illuminated Hebrew Manuscripts of the Middle Ages,” in In the Light of the Menorah: Story of a Symbol, ed. Yael Israeli (Jerusalem: The Israel Museum, 1999), 81–86; Marc Michael Epstein, “Erez Yisrael / The Land of Israel: Homeland and Center,” in Skies of Parchment, Seas of Ink: Jewish Illuminated Manuscripts, ed. Marc Michael Epstein (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015) 53–54; Dalia Manor, Art in Zion: The Genesis of Modern National Art in Jewish Palestine, RoutledgeCurzon Jewish Studies Series (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005), 43–45; Steven Fine, “Who is Carrying the Temple Menorah? A Jewish Counter-Narrative of the Arch of Titus Spolia Panel,” Images 9 (2016): 13–29. 18 B. J. 5.216–218; 7.148; A. J. 8.90, 104; 12.250; 14.72; C. Ap. 2.106. 19 The last identification has been suggested by Dan Barag, although admittedly other interpretations are also possible. See Dan Barag, “The Showbread Table and the Facade of the Temple on Coins of the Bark-Kokhba Revolt,” in Ancient Jerusalem Revealed, ed. Hillel Geva (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1994), 272–76. For an interpretation of the object as the ark of covenant, see Elisheva Revel-Neher, “An ‘Encore’ on the Bar Kochba Tetradrachm: A re-vision of Interpretation,” in “Follow the Wise”: Studies in Jewish History and Culture in Honor of Lee I. Levine, ed. Zeev Weiss et al. (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2010), 189–205.

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than the menorah.20 It is also imaginable that other objects could also have been candidates to become the dominant symbol of Jewish identity. These would include other temple appurtenances, such as amphorae, kraters,21 and trumpets, vine and grape clusters,22 or the lulav and ethrog, prominently displayed on the reverse of the Bar Kokhba coins and also frequent decorations in synagogue art. Some of these objects entered into the common repertoire in Jewish art of later centuries, but none of them rose to the prominence achieved by the menorah. We return to the questions posed earlier, why the menorah, and why in the Roman / early Byzantine period? In other words, what caused the transformation in the depictions of the menorah from negligible to ubiquitous, and why did Jews adopt the menorah, rather than some other object, as the most prominent symbol not only for synagogue art but also to decorate a variety of everyday objects?23 Scholars investigating these questions have proposed several possible answers. First, the menorah had a long-standing association with Jewish sacred space, both the tabernacle and the two temples. The traditions found in Exodus provide an account of the tabernacle and the various ritual objects associated with it, among them a seven-branched candelabra (menorah), constructed out of pure gold and to be located on the south side of the tabernacle opposite the table (Exod 26:35; 37:17–23).24 With the construction of the temple by Solomon, a set of ten menorot illuminated the interior of the sanctuary (1 Kgs 7:49; 2 Chr 4:7). These objects were later looted by the Babylonians (Jer 52:19). The second temple also contained at least one menorah, which Antiochus IV plundered (1 Macc 1:21), which Judah later replaced in the process of rededicating the temple (1 Macc 4:49–50), and 20 Dan Barag, “The Menorah in the Roman and Byzantine Periods: A Messianic Symbol,” BAIAS 5 (1985–86): 46. 21 Josephus reports that Ptolemy Philadelphus provided funds for Eleazar, the high priest to make kraters and other vessels for the Temple (A. J. 12.40). Elsewhere Josephus says that two golden kraters were sent to Eleazer to be dedicated to God (A. J. 12.117). A krater appears on coinage of first revolt and may have referred to vessels used in the Temple. Rivka Gersht and Peter Gendelman, “The Amphora and the Krater in Ancient Jewish Art in the Land of Israel,” in Viewing Ancient Jewish Art and Archaeology: Vehinnei Rachel, Essays in Honor of Rachel Hachlili, ed. Ann E. Killebrew and Gabrielle Faßbeck, JSJSup 172 (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 174. Meshorer (Ancient Jewish Coinage, 262, cat. 30) suggests these objects functioned as symbols of redemption for the Jewish people. See also Fine, Art and Judaism, 151. 22 A golden vine that decorated the Herodian Temple (B. J. 5.210; A. J. 15.395; m.  Mid. 3:8). Vine / cluster of grapes (eshkol) long standing symbol of Jewish people (e.g., Micah 7:1; b. Hul. 92a). 23 See the various suggestions summarized in Hachili, The Menorah, 204–9; Levine, “History and Significance,” 148. Hachlili asks a similar question, “why was the menorah exalted over other possible symbols,” but then reviews the various interpretations of the meaning, rather than the origin, of the menorah as the dominant symbol in Jewish art. 24 It is possible that the actual lampstands in the tabernacle and Solomonic temple were single-stemmed, and that the descriptions found in Exodus and elsewhere in the biblical texts are based on a later, seven-branched form of the lampstand. See Hachlili, “Why Did the Menorah,” 203.

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which stood in the temple at the time of its destruction in 70 CE (B. J. 6.388). The use of the menorah in later Jewish art, and particularly within the context of the synagogue, therefore, may have been prompted by a desire to remember the temple and deepen a sense of the continuity between the temple and synagogue.25 In promoting this connection, the depictions of the menorah would have helped to facilitate the renewal of Jewish life following the devastation of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple.26 The menorah also possessed an extensive set of theological associations that could very well have been meaningful to Jews in the Byzantine period. Already in the early Second Temple period, Zechariah describes the image of the menorah as a representation of God (Zech 4:1–14). Centuries later, both Philo and Josephus connect the seven branches of the menorah with the seven planets, and thus present the menorah as a symbol of the heavenly realm (Philo, Mos. 2.102, 105; Josephus, B. J. 5.217). One final suggestion often put forward is that the menorah was a way to mark spaces and objects that were connected with Jews and Jewish communities. It this way, the menorah served as a “concrete visual marker of things Jewish.”27 Indeed, it can be understood as the “Jewish trademark par excellence.”28 Jews were not alone at this time in their attempt to create visual markers of identity. Carol and Eric Meyers note that “various groups in the Roman world drew upon iconic images from their traditions, and those images served to mark the identity of the group or its members in the heterogenous settings of Greco-Roman culture.”29 In this respect, the distinctive design of the menorah made it much better suited to provide such definitional service than some other objects, such as the more structurally mundane showbread table.30 The menorah may have been employed to differentiate Jews from one group in particular, namely Christians who by this time had adopted the cross as their preeminent symbol. One could take this argument a step further and understand 25 Steven Fine, This Holy Place: On the Sanctity of Synagogue During Greco-Roman Period, Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity 11 (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), 114–21; Hachlili, “Why Did the Menorah,” 205. 26 The argument of Elchanan Reiner, summarized by Rina Talgam, “The Representation of the Temple and Jerusalem in Jewish and Christian Houses of Prayer in the Holy Land in Late Antiquity,” in Jews, Christians, and the Roman Empire: The Poetics of Power in Late Antiquity, ed. Natalie B. Dohrmann and Annette Yoshiko Reed (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 223. 27 Carol L. Meyers and Eric M. Meyers, “Images and Identity: Menorah Representations at Sepphoris,” in Viewing Ancient Jewish Art and Archaeology: Vehinnei Rachel, Essays in Honor of Rachel Hachlili, ed. Ann E. Killebrew and Gabrielle Faßbeck, JSJSup 172 (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 396. 28 Fine, Art and Judaism, 162; Hachlili, The Menorah, 209. 29 Meyers and Meyers, “Images and Identity,” 395. 30 When describing the objects carried in the triumphal procession, Josephus appears comfortable passing over the table with the briefest of descriptions, but finds the need to devote several lines to describing the menorah. Fine, Art and Judaism, 154.

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the menorah not only as the Jewish counterpart to the cross, but also as a symbol of competition with Christianity.31 In this sense, the menorah, particularly with its connotations of sacral continuity, may have been presented and understood as a powerful rejoinder to the Christian claim that God had annulled the covenant with the Jewish people.32 While this last point may explain why the menorah becomes so pervasive in the Byzantine period, it is important to note, as Steven Fine does, that “before the rise of exclusivist Christian power in Palestine and throughout the empire, Jews used the menorah widely for their own purposes,”33 The rise of Christianity, its claims about the identity of the true Israel, and its use of the cross may have intensified the Jewish use of the menorah, but did not create it. Rather than one, definitive explanation that can account for the wide-spread use of the menorah as the major Jewish symbol in the Roman–Byzantine periods, we have several. We would do well, therefore, to heed the words of Lee Levine, who said that it “certainly is elusive as to why the menorah was chosen as the central Jewish symbol, as no ancient source addresses this issue.”34 As we enter into this speculative arena, I would note that most previous explanations have tended to focus on factors reflecting Jewish theological or ritual traditions. I wish to suggest another source and another way of thinking about the influences that may have produced the context in which the menorah becomes the preeminent symbol in Jewish art. Jews fastened onto the menorah not only because of its associations with the temple or its evocations of divine light or its unique design,35 but also as a response to the Roman government’s decision to feature the menorah prominently as a spoil of war and as a symbol of Jewish subjugation. As a way of dealing with this physical and ideological usurpation, Jews sought to assert an understanding of the sacred object not as one connected to humiliation, but to continuity and divine commitment and of hopes for a more glorious future. We should recall that for over one hundred years and possibly longer, indeed in that period when the menorah went from obscurity to prominence, the menorah was in the possession of the government that had brought destruction to the city of Jerusalem and devastation to the Judean people. In the final days of the siege of Jerusalem, Titus came into possession of numerous vessels, including menorot, used in the temple (B. J. 6.388).36 Following his victory, he carried them back 31 Levine, “History and Significance,” 151; Lee I. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 149–53. 32 Talgam, “The Representation of the Temple,” 227. 33 Fine, Art and Judaism, 155. 34 Levine, “History and Significance,” 152. 35 These items are provided by Hachlili as the major factors in the reproduction of the menorah in late antique Jewish art. See Hachlili, “Why Did the Menorah,” 204–8. 36 Josephus does not explicitly state what happened to the temple vessels after Titus entered the sanctuary (B. J. 6.260), and in the chaos of the destruction of the Temple. Rabbinic writings offer their own version of events. In the Talmud, Titus took the curtain, shaped it like a basket, and brought all the vessels of the sanctuary and put them in it (b. Giṭ. 56b). ’Abot R. Nat. B reports

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to Rome where they were paraded around the city of Rome along with Jewish captives in a triumphal procession in the year 71 CE. Josephus provides a vivid description of the event: The spoils in general were borne in promiscuous heaps; but conspicuous above all stood out those captured in the temple at Jerusalem. These consisted of a gold table, many talents in weight, and a lampstand, likewise made of gold, but constructed on a different pattern from those which we use in ordinary life. (B. J. 7.148)

In that same year, Vespasian announced his plans to construct the Temple of Peace, possibly in part to celebrate the peace brought about by Roman victory in the Jewish war.37 Four years later, when construction was completed and the temple dedicated, the menorah along with the golden table went on display in what Pliny describes as one of the most magnificent structures in the city.38 The building housed works of art from around the empire, and contributed to the understanding of Rome as the center and ruler of the world.39 The menorah, now an emblem of one of the many peoples vanquished by Rome, joined other great works of art in a space built not only as an expression of aesthetic excellence, but also as a, “political statement by promising pax through the unification of all provinces and peoples (represented by artifacts) under Roman imperial hegemony.”40 that Titus made a kind of receptacle and in it he packed the lampstands; he collected the vessels from the temple; he filled three ships with men, women, and children so he could go overseas and hold a triumph (ARNB 7). 37 James C. Anderson, The Topography of Rome in the Imperial Fora, Collection Latomus 182 (Brussels: Latomus, 1984), 101. Fergus Millar, “Last Year in Jerusalem: Monuments of the Jewish War in Rome,” in Flavius Josephus and Flavian Rome, ed. Jonathan Edmundson, Steve Mason, and James Rives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 112. Other references are also possible, including the restoration of order following the civil war of 69–70, or the Flavian celebration of victory in a civil war was disguised as a triumph over a “proper” (non-Roman) enemy; see Jodi Magness, “The Arch of Titus at Rome and the Fate of the God of Israel,” JJS 59 (2008): 214. 38 Pliny the Elder, Nat. 36.102; Josephus, B. J. 7.158–160. Other objects such as the Torah scroll and temple hangings, were kept in the imperial palace, most likely in the Domus Tiberiana. See David Noy, “Rabbi Aqiba Comes to Rome: A Jewish Pilgrimage in Reverse?” in Pilgrimage in Graeco-Roman and Early Christian Antiquity: Seeing the Gods, ed. Jas Elsner and Ian Rutherford (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 381, n. 46. 39 Paul Zanker, “In Search of the Roman Viewer,” in The Interpretation of Architectural ­Sculpture in Greece and Rome, ed. Diana Buitron-Oliver (Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1997), 187. 40 Honora Howell Chapman, “What Josephus Sees: The Temple of Peace and the Jerusalem Temple as Spectacle in Text and Art,” Phoenix 63 (2009): 112. For descriptions of the temple and its collection, see Pliny the Elder, Nat. 36.102; 35.74; 35.101–102, 108–109; 36.27; Pausanias, 2.9.3. For a compilation of works said to have been included in the Temple of Peace, see Anderson, The Topography of Rome, 106, n. 14. Rome promoted the idea of Judea as captive land through an extensive series of coins often depicting on the reverse a despondent female figure seated beneath a palm tree and the legend referring to Judea as captured (CAPTA / ΕΑΛΩΚΥΑΣ) or defeated (DEVICTA). See Howard B. Brin, Catalog of Judaea Capta Coinage (Minneapolis: Emmett, 1986); Meshorer, Ancient Jewish Coinage, 2:190–97.

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We can presume that the menorah remained available for public viewing at least until 192 CE, when the Temple of Peace was destroyed by fire.41 During that time, Jews living in the city of Rome would have had a constant reminder of their abject condition. In addition, Jewish visitors to Rome presumably knew about the presence of the looted sacred vessel and took the opportunity to view the menorah on display.42 Several recent studies, including those of David Noy, Steven Fine, and Ra‘anan Boustan argue that tales presented in rabbinic literature preserve a basic reminiscences of travels to Rome.43 Noy speculates that Jews, including rabbis, traveled to Rome in part “to see the objects of Jewish cult which were captured at Jerusalem in 70 CE.”44 Fine’s close reading of the rabbinic texts indicates that the rabbis “clearly knew that the menorah and other vessels continued to exist in Rome long after the destruction of the temple, and were on public view.”45 And Boustan, while somewhat more skeptical of the reliability of these traditions as “transparent travelogues that record the actual experiences of second-century rabbis in the capital,” has suggested, “it is hardly implausible that, over the course of the second century, Jews from the Roman east— perhaps Palestinian rabbis among them—had occasion to travel to Rome and view the actual Temple implements on display in the Temple of Peace.” He concludes that “the new and very tangible monuments of Flavian Rome surely had an impact on both residents of and visitors to the capital.”46 Even if Jewish residents or visitors to Rome did not have the Temple of Peace on their itinerary, they could have witnessed a depiction of the same object on the nearby Arch of Titus. These literary traditions, their reliability notwithstanding, suggest that Jews, both those living in Rome and those from abroad, were not only aware of the menorah’s 41 The Temple was destroyed by fire in 192 CE, Cassius Dio 73.42.1–2. 42 Several rabbinic tales speak about visiting Rome and viewing sacred objects on display in Rome. R. Eleazar saw veil in Rome, and there were drops of blood on it (t. Yoma 2:16; b. Yoma 57a). R. Eleazar saw priestly head-plate (y. Yoma 4:1, 41c). R. Shimon saw a menorah (Sifrei Zuta 8:2). Objects on display in Rome included a table, menorah, veil, head-plate (ARNA 41). It is worth noting that no writer other than Josephus mentions the temple vessels in the Temple of Peace. See Noy, “Rabbi Aqiba Comes to Rome,” 373–85. 43 Steven Fine, “‘When I Went to Rome… There I Saw the Menorah…’ The Jerusalem Temple Implements During the Second Century CE,” in Archaeology of Difference: Gender, Ethnicity, Class and the “Other” in Antiquity, Studies in Honor of Eric M. Meyers, ed. Douglas R. Edwards and C. Thomas McCollough, AASOR 60/61 (Boston: ASOR, 2007), 169–80; Steven Fine, “‘When I Went to Rome… There I Saw the Menorah…’: The Jerusalem Temple Implements in Rabbinic Memory, History, and Myth,” in Art, History, and the Historiography of Judaism in Roman ­Antiquity, ed. Steven Fine, BRLJ 34 (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 63–86; Noy, “Rabbi Aqiba Comes to Rome,” 373–86; Ra‘anan S. Boustan, “The Spoils of the Temple at Rome and Constantinople,” in Antiquity in Antiquity: Jewish and Christian Pasts in the Greco-Roman World, ed. Gregg Gardner and Kevin L. Osterloh, TSAJ 123 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 328–72. 44 Noy, “Rabbi Aqiba Comes to Rome,” 380. 45 Fine, “‘When I Went to Rome…” (2007), 176. 46 Boustan, “The Spoils,” 340–41.

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presence in Rome, but as Steven Fine has said, “could visit the menorah in the Temple of Peace, and this continuity between the actual artifact, the Arch of Titus menorah, and the catacombs and, perhaps, the synagogues of Rome must have been obvious to all.”47 In short, Jews knew about the presence of the menorah in the Temple of Peace, many from first-hand viewing and others from the reports circulated by eye-witnesses. Some of them, as Steven Fine as suggested, were “vitally interested in the whereabouts of the … vessels.”48 Jews were also familiar with the basic details of how a Jewish object ended up in a Roman temple and with the political ideology that simultaneously honored Roman power and Jewish powerlessness. After the fire in 192 CE, reports of the menorah’s whereabouts grow thin. What happened to the contents of the Temple of Peace goes unmentioned in the surviving ancient sources. They may have been destroyed along with the building, although it is possible that they were preserved and later restored in a subsequent building constructed during the time of Septimius Severus. A piece of gold glass may indicate that as late as the third or fourth century, when the glass was most likely produced, Jews in Rome preserved the knowledge of the connection between the menorah and the Temple of Peace. Honora Chapman has suggested that the glass, which displays a building façade and a menorah in front along with an inscription that reads in part, “temple of peace,” may reflect the actual presence or the memory of the menorah’s position in the urban landscape of Rome.49 The Byzantine historian Procopius offers further, albeit unverifiable, traditions as to the later disposition of the menorah. He comments that the “the treasures of Solomon” (possibly including the menorah) were present in Rome as late as 410 CE when the city was sacked by the Visigoths,50 and were brought a century later from Carthage to Constantinople by the renowned Byzantine general Belisarius.51 These later traditions are intriguing, but ultimately prove to be of little 47 Fine, Art and Judaism, 154. 48 Fine, “When I Went to Rome…” (2014), 69. 49 Chapman, “What Josephus Sees,” 123–24. 50 Wars of Justinian 5.12.42. It may be that works of art were present in the temple as late as the sixth century (Wars of Justinian 4.21.11). Ra‘anan Boustan has argued against the reliability of these accounts. See Boustan, “The Spoils,” 356–62. 51 Wars of Justinian 4.9.1–5. Ra‘anan Boustan has shown that “the narrative of rediscovery presented by Procopius has no factual basis in reality whatsoever…. [Rather the] transfer of the Temple vessels to Constantinople seems to have been motivated by Procopius’s larger objective of modeling the Vandalic triumph on the triumph celebrated by Vespasian and Titus almost 500 years earlier. [And that] beyond this immediate rhetorical aim, the re-emergence of the Temple vessels reflects the much broader conjunction between the prestige of Solomon and the fascination with sacred relics that is so characteristic of mid-sixth-century Byzantine culture.” (Boustan, “The Spoils,” 358). Benjamin of Tudela in the twelfth century reports a tradition that the vessels remained in Rome, having been hid by Titus. See the citation in Fine, “‘When I Went to Rome…” (2014), 85. Based in part on Procopius’s reports that, on the advice

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importance to this study.52 Whatever the fate of the menorah after 192 CE, we can be confident that at least up until that time, Jews knew that their sacred object had been looted from the temple in Jerusalem and now stood in the center of Rome as a public sign of the subjugation of Judea and its people. The destruction of the temple and loss of the sacred objects was a devastating event for many Jews.53 John Barclay sees in Josephus’s writings indications that, “the fate of the Jerusalem Temple [was] the most sensitive spot in the assessment of Jewish dignity.”54 The loss of the temple presented Jews with social, political, economic, and theological questions that could not be easily resolved. There was particular anxiety about the loss of the vessels themselves. The author of 2 Baruch bemoans the possibility that “strangers” may come to possess these objects and pleads that they be hidden away until a more auspicious moment. The author laments: Earth, earth, earth, hear the word of the mighty God, and receive the things which I commit to you, and guard them until the last times, so that you may restore them when you are ordered, so that strangers may not get possession of them. For the time has arrived when Jerusalem will also be delivered up for a time, until the moment that it will be said that it will be restored forever.” And the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up. (2 Bar. 6:8)

The fact that the sacred objects had been taken from the proper domain in Jerusalem and were now in the possession of a foreign enemy was bad enough. This situation was made worse by having the objects on display and visible to the public, which, in all likelihood, had not occurred while they were kept in

of a Jew, Justinian elected to deprive his capital of these powerful objects, lest they cause him and his regime harm, and instead returned them to the Holy Land for safe keeping in a church, some have argued that the objects were likely returned to Jerusalem. See the speculative presentation of Fredric R. Brandfon, “Did the Temple Menorah Come Back to Jerusalem?” BAR 43 (2017): 41–49, 71. 52 On the legacy of Procopius’s accounts in later scholarly and popular writings, see Steven Fine, The Menorah (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016), 48–54. 53 Jacob Neusner, Ancient Israel After Catastrophe: The Religious World View of the M ­ ishnah (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1982); Alan Mintz, Hurban: Responses to Catastrophe in Hebrew Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), 49–83; Kenneth Jones, Jewish Reactions to the Destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A. D., JSJSup 151 (Leiden: Brill, 2011). On the limitations to our understanding of the responses, see Martin Goodman, “Religious Reactions to 70: The Limitations of the Evidence,” in Was 70 CE a Watershed in Jewish History? On Jews and Judaism Before and After the Destruction of the Second Temple, ed. Daniel R. Schwartz and Zeev Weiss, AJEC 78 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 509–16. 54 John M. G. Barclay, “The Empire Strikes Back: Josephan Rhetoric in Flavian Rome,” in Flavius Josephus and Flavian Rome, ed. Jonathan Edmondson, Steve Mason, and James Rives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 331. Josephus begins his account of the Jewish War lamenting the calamities that befall his country (B. J. 1.9).

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the temple.55 Situated in a magnificent, public arena, the large, golden menorah symbolized for the Roman government, and perhaps populace alike, the military and political strength of the empire. For Jews, by contrast, the menorah’s presence in the hands of the party responsible for the destruction of Jerusalem precipitated feelings of humiliation, and perhaps abjection and trauma. To appreciate the deep sense of loss and the antipathy toward Rome that the menorah’s capture and display could have created, we should situate the presence of the sacred objects within the political context of the Roman empire in the last quarter of the first century CE. In various ways, the Flavian emperors used public displays and monuments that commemorated their military victory and subjugation of Judea and its people for their own political gain. The war itself required a major military undertaking, and the Flavians drew upon their military success as a way to legitimize their rule, particularly in the wake of the collapse of the Julio-Claudian line and the political chaos that spanned the death of Nero to the ascent to power of Vespasian.56 Vespasian and his successors, Titus and Domitian, promoted their achievement in numerous contexts, beginning with the triumphal procession in Rome, in which the temple objects and prisoners were paraded in spectacular style through the city’s streets. Soon after this event, the first Arch of Titus, not the one that currently stands in the Roman forum, but another one near the Circus Maximus, included an inscription that verbally expressed the sentiments promoted during the procession. Senate and People of Rome to their princeps, Imperator Titus Caesar Vespasian Augustus, son of the divine Vespasian … subdued the Jewish people and destroyed 55 It seems that visual contact with the vessels was restricted to members of priesthood, and that exposure to others was sometimes greeted with considerable horror. Josephus and other ancient writers speak of the vessels as being “forbidden to men’s eyes” (Josephus, A. J. 14.482–483). See also 3 Macc 1:9–2:24 (Ptolemy IV); Josephus, B. J. 1.152–153; A. J. 14.71–72 (Pompey); Josephus, B. J. 1.354; A. J. 14.482–483 (Romans in Herod’s entourage); Josephus, A. J. 20.191–196 (building of the wall to obstruct the view of Agrippa), Philo, Spec. 1.72. Certain rabbinic traditions (e.g., m. Hag. 3:7–8; t. Hag. 3:35; y. Hag. 3:8, 79d; b. Hag. 26b) suggest that the priests displayed some of vessels, including the menorah and table, during pilgrimage festivals, but this practice is not certain. See Steven D. Fraade, “The Temple as a Marker of Jewish Identity Before and After 70 CE,” in Jewish Identities in Antiquity: Studies in Memory of Menahem Stern, ed. Lee I. Levine and Daniel R. Schwartz, TSAJ 130 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 237–65. For a different perspective, arguing that the vessels were put on limited public display, see Israel Knohl, “Post-Biblical Sectarianism and Priestly Schools of the Pentateuch: The Issue of Popular Participation in the Temple Cult on Festivals,” in The Madrid Qumran Congress, ed. J. T. Barrera and L. Vegas Montaner (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 2:601–9. 56 See Millar, “Last Year in Jerusalem”; Mary Beard, “The Triumph of Flavius Josephus,” in Flavian Rome: Culture, Image, Text, ed. A. J. Boyle and W. J. Dominik (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 556–57; Martin Goodman, “Titus, Benenice, and Agrippa: The Last Days of the Temple in Jerusalem,” in Juaea-Palestina, Babylonia and Rome: Jews in Antiquity, ed. Benjamin Isaac and Yuval Shahar, TSAJ 147 (Tubingen, Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 180–90.

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the city of Jerusalem, something which none of the leaders, kings and armies before him failed to do.57

The process of commemorating Jewish subjugation continued for decades. To the procession and monument already mentioned, we can add the use of funds from the spoils of the war to build the Flavian amphitheater,58 a series of coins commemorating the capture of Judea, the creation of the fiscus iudaicus, which not only imposed a new financial burden upon Jews, but required them to support the operation of a pagan temple,59 and most famously the memorial Arch to Titus that immortalized in stone the procession that took place a decade earlier.60 As T. D. Barnes has remarked, “The Jewish victory provided the equivalent of a foundation myth for the Flavian dynasty, which came to power in 69 through civil war: the routine suppression of a provincial insurrection was turned into a great and glorious triumph of Roman arms.”61 For the Romans, the menorah functioned as the major symbol of a defeated people, and perhaps also its god.62 We have no first-hand, contemporary reports, except for perhaps Josephus, of what Jews thought of the menorah being put on public display in Rome. No surviving accounts provide reflections on how Jews perceived or how they felt about their sacred object being used as a symbol of Roman military victory and Jewish subjugation.63 We can say, I think with some confidence, that by the end of the first century, the menorah had become a contested object between Jews and Romans. For Rome, the menorah stood as a glorious symbol of military triumph and the defeat over a rebellious region and its people. Jews, by contrast, rejected this understanding and retained its associations with the divine realm and sacred space. We might further envisage that in this heated atmosphere, and 57 CIL 6.944; emphasis added. 58 Geza Alföldy, “Eine Bauinschrfit aus dem Colosseum,” ZPE 109 (1995): 195–226. 59 Josephus, B. J. 7.218; Cassius Dio 66.7.2. 60 If not Josephus himself, then perhaps the masons relied on Josephus’s his narrative for guidance on what to depict in the relief. Although whether or not anyone in Rome during this period read Josephus’s work is uncertain; see Jonathan J. Price, “The Provincial Historian in Rome,” in Josephus and Jewish History in Flavian Rome and Beyond, ed. Joseph Sievers and Gaia Lembi, JSJSup 104 (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 101–18. 61 T. D. Barnes, “The Sack of the Temple in Josephus and Tacitus,” in Flavius Josephus and Flavian Rome, ed. Jonathan Edmundson, Steve Mason, and James Rives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 129. 62 It is possible that Rome’s understanding of the menorah as a symbol of the Jewish god was in part informed by Jewish understandings of the menorah as a heavenly symbol (e.g., Zech 4:10). Just as others in the period would depict their patron deity, Jews did the same, but with a representational rather than anthropomorphic form. See also Magness, “The Arch of Titus,” 206–9. 63 David Noy has suggested that “the lack of any later references to the relics of Jerusalem in rabbinic literature may therefore simply be due to the fact that they were no longer on public display” (Noy, “Rabbi Aqiba Comes to Rome,” 383).

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precisely because Rome presented the menorah as a symbol of subjugation, that Jews would have wanted to disrupt this understanding and wrest the menorah, if only ideologically, from Roman control and reassert its prideful place among the Jewish people and the continuity of God’s abiding relationship with them. Rather than acquiescing to the Roman government’s decision not only to take possession of the menorah, but also to dictate its meaning, Jews responded by reclaiming the sacred object as a symbol of Jewish identity, and also, but admittedly less certain, as a contestation of Roman power and its triumphalist message directed against Jews, Jerusalem, and its temple. In adopting the menorah as the preeminent symbol of Jewish identity, Jews were also reclaiming the object as a sign of holiness and covenantal continuity. Through this understanding, the Roman destruction of the temple and the desecration of the holy objects no longer appeared as the final word. Rather, the menorah stood, in the words of Steven Fine, “a memorial to the lost menorahs of the Tabernacle and Solomonic and Herodian temples, and a living symbol of the lives (and deaths) of many members of late antique Jewry.”64 Ra‘anan Boustan has shown how late antique Jewish writings employ the temple vessels in a highly charged discourse directed against the Christian Roman empire and “resoundingly reject the notion that the Roman capture and possession of objects from Israel’s glorious past constitute numinous physical proof of the legitimacy of Christian imperial power.”65 These writings employ, “the memorialization of the Temple vessels and other relics of the Jewish past functioned as a targeted strategy aimed at critiquing Roman (and later Roman-Christian) political power.”66 My suggestion here is that the deployment of temple vessels in an adversarial relation with Rome began much earlier and included not only verbal articulations but also visual.67 Jews chose the menorah to demarcate their spaces and presence precisely because it had been appropriated and abused by the Romans. This act of reclamation becomes an attempt to reassert Jewish control over its sacred heritage, if not dignity, and also perhaps to challenge Roman political claims. I am not suggesting that every iteration of the menorah in antiquity was understood this way. Nonetheless, I think there is value in seeing the Roman usage of and claims about the menorah as one factor that prompted Jews, wishing to counter the Roman presentation, to employ the depiction of the object as prominent symbol in Jewish material culture and emblem of identity. It may be argued that the large gap in time separating the menorah’s display in Rome to its frequent displays in late antique Jewish art vitiates any possibility that the Roman possession and presentation of the menorah had an influence on it becoming the preeminent motif in synagogue art and in other forms of material 64 Fine, Art and Judaism, 155. 65 Boustan, “The Spoils,” 332. 66 Boustan, “The Spoils,” 370. 67 Also noted by Boustan (“The Spoils,” 343–44), but without any conclusions.

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culture. For instance, the richest corpus of images produced after the destruction of the temple, the designs on the Bar Kokhba coins, contains no representation of the menorah, despite depictions of the temple and other related sacred objects, such as the ark or table, lulav, ethrog, and jars. We might imagine that if Jews were interested in countering the Roman usurpation of the menorah and reclaiming it as a Jewish sacred symbol, the revolt coinage would be a good opportunity to do this. While the absence of the menorah on the Bar Kokhba coinage is striking, the reasoning for it remains elusive.68 It is possible, however, that Bar Kokhba intentionally avoided depicting the menorah. As Elisheva Revel-Neher has suggested, Bar Kokhba may have rejected menorah because of its associations with Rome and military defeat. “When Bar Kokhba tries to find a unifying spirit for his battle, he deliberately renounces the use of the visual vocabulary soil by the Romans. For this reason, he does not choose the menorah, although he knows perfectly well that it is a symbol identifiable everywhere and by all, a symbol bearing the meaning of another struggle, this one crowned by success in the past. The heavy weight of the Roman use marks the menorah as a live spoil of defeat.”69 Moreover, while the chronological divide between the Temple of Peace and synagogue at Hammath Tiberias, where we see one of the first displays of the menorah in a late antique synagogue context, is real, the attachment to the menorah as a dominant symbol almost certainly did start at that time. Within the modest corpus of images from the second and third centuries, we possess a few examples of the menorah from this period, including the famous depiction in panel above the Torah niche the Dura synagogue. This usage and others provide some indication already by the early third century the menorah had achieved a place of prominence in Jewish visual culture and that the process of Jewish re-appropriation that I have described here may have been well under way.70 Ellen Aitken’s analysis of the epistle of Hebrews in the New Testament suggests that Jews were not the only ones fascinated and troubled by the display of the menorah and the accompanying political ideologies of the Flavian rulers. The mention of the menorah and other sacred objects (Heb 9:1–5) leads Aitken to conclude that Hebrews, “makes use of some of the elements of … the Flavian triumph in order to articulate resistance to imperial rule and ideology. It does so by depicting to whom the ‘real’ triumph belongs and where the ‘real’ temple is.”71 According to Aitken the “list of articles from the sanctuary are specifically 68 See the discussion Fine, The Menorah, 44–45. 69 Revel-Neher, “An ‘Encore’ on the Bar Kochba Tetradrachm,” 204. 70 The fourth-century (?) piece of glass mentioned above possibly reflects “the continuity of Judaean vision of the Temple of Peace at Rome from the first to the fourth century.” See Chapman, “What Josephus Sees,” 107–17. 71 Ellen Bradshaw Aitkin, “Portraying the Temple in Stone and Text: The Arch of Titus and the Epistle to the Hebrews,” STRev 45 (2002): 136.

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included in Hebrews 9 because of the prominence of the Temple spoils from Jerusalem in the display of Flavian ideology. Hebrews is thus rhetorically displaying the items within its own triumphal statement.”72 Like the author of Hebrews, I would argue, Jews fastened onto this important temple object in an effort to signal their rejection of Flavian claims of triumph and subjugation and to reassert the ongoing mutual commitment between God and the Jewish people. By the sixth century CE some Jews could imagine a future where the messiah would rescue the sacred objects from their captivity in Rome and return them to their rightful place in the temple in Jerusalem.73 Until that time, however, Jews would have to content themselves with visual representations in new holy spaces, namely synagogues. By Late Antiquity the menorah had emerged as one of the most frequently represented symbols not only in synagogue art, but in various other contexts as well. The choice of the menorah, rather than another sacred object or potential symbol and its dominance in Jewish visual culture in the post70 period stems, at least in part, from an attempt to reclaim the sacred patrimony lost as a result of the Roman conquest and to disrupt and reject the dominant imperial ideology that presented the Jews as a defeated and subjugated people. Adopting such a position of reclamation and resistance would provide Jewish communities in the Roman and Byzantine periods with important resources that would assist in transition into the late antique and Medieval societies that lay ahead.74

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Index Abraham  142, 160, 344, 369, 372, 375, 376–377, 377, 379, 382, 385 Acts, Book of  119, 251, 265 Alexander the Great  169, 169–170 Antigonus II Mattathias  394–395, 396 Antiochus VII Sidetes  168 Aramaic – graffito  235, 237 – inscription  122, 160, 164, 165, 178, 228, 229, 233, 234, 255, 295, 344 – name  275 Arbel  46, 163, 166, 178, 188, 317 archisynagogos  114, 119, 120, 137, 142–143, 143–144, 145–146, 148 Arch of Titus  396, 401, 404 Asia Minor – benefaction  278, 285 – bouleuteria  70 – “peopled scrolls” friezes  204, 214 – Roman temples  157–158 associations  40, 41, 54, 102, 113, 134, 135, 250

Cana see  Khirbet Qana Capernaum  9, 75, 82, 147, 160–162, 184, 188, 195–198, 256–258, 272–274, 300, 317, 318, 324 – date of synagogue  197, 273 – “peopled scrolls” friezes  199, 201–204, 206–215 – pilgrim monastery  323 – synagogue architecture  158–159, 319 children and childhood  140 – in synagogues  18, 19, 21, 377, 385 Chorazin  188, 199, 200, 214, 215, 256, 257, 258, 271–274, 300, 304, 317, 318, 319, 320 church  55, 155, 159, 162, 207, 208, 209, 213, 274, 317, 322, 325, 326, 328, 329, 330, 331, 332, 333, 355, 376 – house church  65, 291 Coptic – artistic style  386, 388, 389 – church  211, 213 – monastery  210, 213, 214 – textiles  206, 210, 386

Bar‘am  185, 188, 256, 257 – lamella  227–228 Beit Shean  171, 189, 199, 205, 207, 212, 213, 317, 340, 341, 381, 383–384 – Kyrios Leontis synagogue  189, 291, 294–296, 304, 306, 307 – Monastery of Lady Mary  380 – Samaritan synagogue  380 bema  92, 259, 322, 328, 340, 347 benefaction  271, 275, 276, 277, 278, 279, 285 Ben Sira  109, 140, 141, 148, 276 Beth Alpha  189 – mosaic floor  11, 160–161, 350, 351, 360, 362–379 – synagogue typology  157, 159, 317 Beth-She‘arim  13, 91, 189 Binding of Isaac  160, 346, 369, 371, 374, 375, 376, 377, 379, 381, 383, 385 bouleuteria  66, 70, 71, 74, 146

Daniel, Book of  138, 169 David and Goliath  166, 167, 170 Dead Sea Scrolls  114, 115, 124 Dura Europos  11, 170, 241, 292, 349, 357, 393, 395, 407 – vernacular writing on synagogue architecture  239

Caesarea  64, 65, 75, 184, 186, 189, 249, 350, 393

ed-Dikke  163, 178, 188, 199, 215 education – scriptural teaching  126 – synagogue as place for  18, 109, 121, 122, 141, 252 Egypt  206, 210, 214, 215, 237, 362, 370, 383, 386, 388, 389 el-Khirbe  208 ‘En Gedi  162, 189, 339 – mosaic floor  347–348, 349–350, 352– 353, 376 – painted plaster  165 – staircase  256, 259, 260 Eshtemoa  162, 189, 339

Index ethrog  156, 159, 160, 161, 295, 397, 407 euergetism see  benefaction Ezra  106 Gamla  44, 59, 68, 69, 71, 73, 75, 77, 82, 84, 86, 91, 182, 184, 188, 248, 293, 294, 317 – seating capacity  147 Gaza  189, 339, 341 – gate of  165, 167 – inscription  160 Gerasa  170, 200, 301 Greek – army and equipment  168 – artistic ideas  367 – cultural tradition  14, 279, 285–289 – graffiti  236, 237 – inscription  119, 159, 160, 168, 178, 233, 235, 236, 249, 344, 383, 394 – language  41, 51, 119, 121, 155 – mythology  11, 13, 14, 229, 271, 280 – sources  69 Gush Halav  9, 166, 185, 188, 190, 256, 257, 315 Ḥ ammath-Gader  189, 317, 340, 380 Hammath Tiberias  11, 13, 14, 24, 157, 160, 189, 256, 257, 312, 317, 339, 350 – mosaic floor  314, 349, 360, 362, 378, 385 – synagogue architecture  159 Hasmonean – coinage  91 – cultural tradition  59, 60, 68, 74 – end of influence  75 – mosaic depiction  168 – period  46, 82, 107, 140, 248 – political control  69 – ruling class  70, 394 hazzan  122, 123, 260 Hebrew – inscription  159, 161, 164, 178, 228, 233, 355, 359, 362, 376, 383, 394 – language  41, 155 Hebrews, Epistle of  408 Helios  11, 13, 14, 159, 160, 280, 360, 361, 362, 371, 385 Hellenistic – art  198, 204, 386 – building tradition  66, 74, 74–76, 76 – city structures  146 – cultural tradition  284, 386 – forms of government  107

413

– period  82, 101, 109, 110, 113, 135, 137 – temples  51 – voluntary associations  113 Herakleia-under-Latmos  70 Herodium  68, 74, 75, 182, 189 High Priest  105, 107, 109, 111, 168, 169, 233, 394 honour and shame  139, 141, 142, 143, 144, 149 Horvat ‘Ammudim  163, 166, 188, 273, 294, 339 Horvat ‘Ethri  67, 178 Horvat Kur  7, 11, 163, 188, 271, 274, 323 – inscription 275 – mosaic floor  8, 11, 272, 275, 280–281 – staircase  256, 260 – stone table  8, 15–16, 280 – synagogue seating  278, 330 – Torah shrine platform  318–323 Horvat Sumaqa  171, 178, 189 house synagogue  65, 76, 293, 308 Huqoq  7, 11, 156, 163, 271, 272, 319, 339, 350, 381 – mosaic floor  8, 11, 14, 166, 170–173, 273, 274, 280, 282, 285, 340, 341, 344, 350, 361 – synagogue architecture  165–166 incense shovel  158, 159, 160, 346 Japhi‘a  171, 189, 363–369 Jerash see  Gerasa Jericho  74, 160, 161, 177, 189, 248, 265, 339, 341, 349 Jerusalem  64, 65, 67, 68, 69, 75, 105, 106, 107, 111, 117, 118, 119, 120, 122, 168, 169, 178, 184, 191, 264, 302, 315, 394, 408 Jerusalem temple  10, 12, 37, 47, 93, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 105, 108, 109, 110, 112, 113, 117, 119, 125, 155, 160, 289, 290, 313, 314, 321, 346, 371, 403 John, Gospel of  112, 135, 137 John Hyrcanus  168 Josephus  69, 73, 75, 113–115, 117, 124, 136, 141, 144, 145, 146, 147, 169, 178, 184, 262, 275, 276, 277, 322, 396, 398, 400, 403, 405 Jotapata see  Yodefat Judith, Book of  140–141, 146, 147 Khirbet Qana  84, 86–88 – population estimate  82

414

Index

– synagogue  44–45, 62, 65, 81, 94–98, 178, 188 Khirbet Shema‘  9, 163, 188, 256 – seating capacity  294 – staircase  258 Khirbet Umm el-‘Umdan  46, 47, 67, 182, 184 – destruction during Bar Kokhba revolt  75 – identification as historical Modi‘in  69–70 Khirbet Wadi Ḥamam  7, 163, 182, 188, 339, 347 – mosaic floor  8, 11, 14, 166, 274, 340, 344–345, 349, 349–350, 362 – synagogue dating  14, 272, 363 Kursi  188, 323 lamella  233–240 liturgy  20, 39, 52–53, 97, 102, 104, 117, 121, 122, 125, 126, 127, 155, 156, 162, 171, 230, 240, 252, 311, 317, 321, 328 lived religion  21–22 Luke, Gospel of  51, 137, 141, 143, 144, 147, 148, 250 lulav  156, 159, 160, 161, 346, 377, 397, 407 Madaba  208, 210, 211 Magdala  7, 40, 75, 77, 182, 184, 188, 317 – Hasmonean administrative settlement  69 – Hellenistic building tradition  69, 71 – monumental character  69 – seating capacity  147 – stone table  8, 13–14, 48, 117, 155, 395 – synagogue  59, 67, 68, 117, 165, 339 Maon  162, 189, 227, 241, 339, 341 – lamellae  226–228 Mark, Gospel of  144, 147, 250 Masada  46, 59, 60, 68, 74, 75, 118, 181, 182, 189 material religion  20, 21 material turn  19 Matthew, Gospel of  137, 144 meals and dining – archaeological evidence  16, 249–251 – common  264 – communal  124, 247 – festive  250, 260 – in synagogue's upper room  250, 263 – tannaitic ban on eating and drinking  253 Meiron  9, 178, 188, 315 – possible communal worship in house  298–299 – seating capacity  294

menorah  12, 16, 156, 158, 159, 160, 161, 178, 180, 214, 272, 280, 284, 295, 312, 313, 325, 346, 350, 378, 408–419 Meroth  11, 163, 166, 167, 170, 188, 273, 317, 318, 320, 339, 340, 350 – lamella  228, 229 – staircase  256, 258 – upper gallery  259, 260 mikveh see  ritual bath Modi‘in see  Khirbet Umm el-‘Umdan Nabratein  9, 41, 42, 43, 46–48, 62–63, 188, 317 – inscription  160 – seating capacity  91 Nirim  189 see also Maon Noah’s Ark  170 Ostia  247, 248, 249, 254, 265, 393 Parting of the Red Sea  170, 233, 344 Pharisees  50, 99, 100, 109 Philo of Alexandria  121, 122, 124, 275, 277, 322, 398 politics  39, 40, 41, 53, 54, 60, 117, 133, 135, 136, 137, 141, 145, 146, 278 prayers  39, 52, 97, 103, 124, 126, 155, 226, 231, 232, 237, 238, 239, 240, 241, 242, 329 Priene  70 priests  50, 51, 127, 169 Qasrin  188, 298, 317 – inscription  249 – seating capacity  294, 299 Qiryat Sepher  46, 47, 67, 69, 75, 91, 147, 182, 184, 189, 293, 294, 295, 305 rabbis  39, 47, 50, 52, 54, 55, 99, 100, 166, 253, 276, 277, 292, 401 Rehov  164, 189, 376 ritual bath  84, 91 Sabbath  111, 121, 136, 137, 141, 142, 148, 250, 254, 263 Sagalassos  70, 71 Samaritan synagogue  177, 178, 380 Samson  165, 166, 167, 168, 170, 344, 347 Sardis  98, 393 Scythopolis see  Beit Shean Seleucids  68, 107, 168

Index semi-public  75, 77, 101, 103, 113, 116, 123, 226, 231 Sepphoris  11, 82, 157, 171, 186, 189, 207, 212, 278, 294, 300, 301, 302, 304, 305, 306, 307, 312, 323, 340, 342, 344, 347, 350, 360, 362, 371, 378, 380 shofar  158, 159, 161, 346, 371 Showbread Table  346, 394, 396, 398 spatial turn  19 Stobi  248, 250, 261, 262, 305 Susiya  11, 162, 189, 249, 254, 256, 258, 259, 260, 312, 339 symbolic exchange  279 synagogue – accessibility  21, 71, 75, 237 – aedicula  238, 256, 311, 315, 317, 319, 320 – apse  49, 159, 171, 225, 226, 231, 311, 312, 317, 326, 328, 332, 371 – façade  65, 158, 199, 274, 281, 312, 342 – furniture  16, 127, 171, 339 – geography and spatiality of sanctity within  240, 241, 327, 331 – house synagogue see  house synagogue – leadership  39, 51–52, 97, 100, 101, 102, 108, 110, 112, 116, 117, 122, 126, 330 – niche  43, 49, 156, 214, 236, 295, 307, 311, 312, 317, 407 – orientation  43, 45, 46, 47, 156, 171, 178, 184, 327 – origin of  7, 53, 99, 101, 126 – sanctity of  45, 47, 254, 266, 321, 327 – scarcity of remains  65 – seating capacity  22, 91, 92, 147, 293, 294, 295, 304, 305 – traditional typology  8, 9, 81, 156, 157, 161, 162 – upper rooms  214, 215, 255, 258, 260, 261, 330 synagogue art – acanthus  199, 200, 201, 203, 207, 209, 210, 359 – aniconism  11, 348, 351 – floor mosaics  8, 9, 13, 49, 97, 163, 165, 166, 167, 210, 211, 235, 272, 273, 274, 275, 280, 295, 312, 332, 340, 344, 346, 363, 370, 371, 375, 380

415

– iconoclasm  160, 348 – “peopled scrolls” motif  215–228 Syria  123, 157, 170, 206, 207, 213, 214, 215, 221, 233, 235, 237, 281, 315, 383 Tabernacle  106, 214, 315, 346, 348, 358, 397, 406 Tabgha  323, 324 Tarichaea see  Magdala Temple of Peace  400, 401, 402, 407 Theodotos inscription  67, 69, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 178, 181, 248, 249, 250, 261 Tiberias  11, 13, 14, 75, 76, 82, 117, 141, 144, 145, 147, 165, 184, 186, 188, 215, 274, 278, 350, 362, 396 Titus  399, 404 Torah  47, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 109, 110, 114, 117, 121, 122, 126, 135, 136, 137, 155, 276, 277, 317 Torah reading  16, 18, 37, 39, 52, 104, 106, 107, 115, 116, 120, 121, 127 Torah shrine  9, 16, 43, 44, 45, 47, 49, 156, 158, 159, 160, 161, 171, 214, 311–323, 323, 328–329, 333–336, 371, 372, 374, 378 Tower of Babel  344, 349 traqlin  305 triclinium  74, 248, 254, 262, 263, 264, 265, 304, 305, 306, 307 Umm el-Qanatir  188, 317, 318, 320, 324 Vespasian  400, 404 women  140, 141, 142 – alleged women's gallery  254, 255, 259, 260, 330 – in synagogues  18–19, 140, 147, 330 – positions of authority  331 Yodefat  74, 82, 84, 86, 93, 188 zodiac cycle  11, 13, 14, 159, 160, 280, 312, 340, 341, 343, 344, 357, 359, 360, 361, 362, 369, 370, 375, 384, 385

Authors Chaim Ben David is a professor in the Kinneret College on the Sea of Galilee. He has conducted archaeological surveys east of the Sea of Galilee and excavations in Byzantine period synagogues of Deir Aziz and Umm el-Qanatir. Together with other colleagues in the Kinneret College he recently launched the Bornblum Eretz Israel Synagogues website. Rick Bonnie is University Researcher in the Department of Cultures at the University of Helsinki, and associated as a vice-team leader to the Centre of Excellence in Ancient Near Eastern Empires. In addition, he is currently directing a research project on the impact of climatic changes on the rise and fall of mikva’ot in early Roman Palestine, as well as a Finnish Cultural Foundation project that digitizes ancient Middle Eastern objects in Finnish museum collections. Bonnie is the author of Being Jewish in Galilee, 100–200 CE: An Archaeological Study (Brepols, 2019). Lidia Chakovskaya is a senior researcher in the State Institute of Art Studies and a senior lecturer at the Moscow State Lomonosov University. Her research focuses on the art of Palestine in late antiquity and Byzantine period. She is the author of The Memory of the Temple Incarnate: The Artistic World of the Holy Land Synagogues III–VI cc (2011), as well as of articles devoted to early Jewish and Christian iconography and the symbolism of Jerusalem in pilgrimage texts. Wally V. Cirafesi is Visiting Researcher at the University of Oslo. He has published on a range of topics related to the study of ancient Judaism and early Christianity, including the Dead Sea Scrolls, ancient synagogues, churches, and Jewish—Christian relations. He has participated in recent archaeological excavations at Magdala (Galilee), and is currently working on a major research project on the history of Jews and Christians in Capernaum from the time of Jesus to the rise of Islam in Palestine.  Gary Gilbert is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and director of the Jewish Studies Sequence at Claremont McKenna College, California, USA. He has written on Jewish diaspora communities, particularly Aphrodisias, and the influence of Roman imperial propaganda on early Christian writings. He serves on the staff of the Tel Akko archaeological excavations in Israel.

Authors

417

Matthew J. Grey is an associate professor of ancient scripture at Brigham Young University. He received his Ph.D. in Ancient Mediterranean Religions with an emphasis on the archaeology and history of early Judaism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and since 2011 has been an area supervisor over the synagogue excavations at the ancient Jewish village of Huqoq in Israel’s Lower Galilee. Raimo Hakola (Th.D., Docent) is University Lecturer in New Testament studies in the Faculty of Theology at the University of Helsinki. He has specialized in the Gospel of John, the portraits of the Pharisees in the New Testament, and ancient Galilee. Hakola is one of the co-directors of the archaeological excavations conducted by the Kinneret Regional Project at Horvat Kur, Galilee. His latest publications include Reconsidering Johannine Christianity: A Social Identity Approach (Routledge, 2015), and Social Memory and Social Identity in the Study of Early Judaism and Early Christianity (ed. with Byrskog and Jokiranta; Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016). Jodi Magness is the Kenan Distinguished Professor for Teaching Excellence in Early Judaism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is an archaeologist specializing in Roman, Byzantine, and early Islamic Palestine. Since 2011, Magness has been directing excavations in the ancient village and synagogue at Huqoq in Galilee. Tom McCollough (Ph.D., University of Notre Dame) is the Nelson and Mary McDowell Rodes Professor of Religion Emeritus at Centre College, Danville, KY, USA. Prof. McCollough is Adjunct Professor of Religion in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Coastal Carolina University, Conway, SC, USA, the Director of the Archaeological Excavations at Khirbet Qana, Israel, and the Associate Director of the Archaeological Excavations at Kefar Shikhin, Israel. Prof. McCollough has published articles and edited volumes on the archaeology of Roman and Byzantine Galilee. Eric Ottenheijm is Assistant Professor in Jewish and Biblical Studies, at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies of Utrecht University. His main field of Research is early-Christian and Early Rabbinic literature, where he has published articles on the Gospel of Matthew, Mishnah, as well as Rabbinic Midrash. He has headed a group of researchers in the NWO funded research project on the comparative study of synoptic and rabbinic parables, “Parables and the Partings of the Ways” (2014–2020), and is currently writing a book on the history of the early Jewish parable.

418

Authors

Jonathan Pater studied Theology and Religious Studies at Utrecht University and Tilburg University. His research focuses on food and identity in the ancient and modern world. He is a PhD candidate in the NWO funded Research Project on the Comparative study of Synoptic and Rabbinic Parables, ‘Parables and the Partings of the Ways,’ writing a thesis on meals in parables. Anders Runesson is Professor of New Testament at the University of Oslo, Norway. He has published widely on ancient synagogues, including award-winning The Origins of the Synagogue, several studies on the synagogue at Ostia, and The Ancient Synagogue from its Origins to 200 CE: A Source Book (with Donald Binder and Birger Olsson). He has also published extensively in the area of ancient Jewish and Christian interaction and the New Testament (Matthew’s Gospel and Paul). He is currently working on several projects, including a study aiming at understanding the effect of institutional structures on the production of theology and socio-religious interaction. Jordan Ryan is Assistant Professor of New Testament at Wheaton College in Illinois, USA. He is the author of The Role of the Synagogue in the Aims of Jesus, which examines the passages in the canonical Gospels involving synagogues in light of current synagogue research. He is currently staff with the Tel Shimron excavations, and has been a member of the Magdala excavations. Chad Spigel is Professor of Religion at Trinity University in San Antonio. He earned his B. A. from Brandeis University (1997) and earned an M. A. and Ph.D. in Ancient Jewish History from Duke University (2008). Chad has worked on several archaeological excavations and from 2011–2014 he was an Area Supervisor for the excavations of the ancient village of Huqoq (Israel). He is the author of several publications, including Ancient Synagogue Seating Capacities: Methodology, Analysis and Limits (Mohr Siebeck, 2012), “Debating Ancient Synagogue Dating: The Implications of Deteriorating Data” (BASOR, 2016), and “The Jewish Minority of Dura-Europos” (Journal of Ancient Judaism, 2019). Karen B. Stern is Associate Professor of History at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. She is the author of Inscribing Devotion and Death: Archaeological Evidence for Jewish Populations of North Africa (Brill, 2008), and Writing on the Wall: Graffiti and the Forgotten Jews of Antiquity (Princeton University Press, 2018). Svetlana V. Tarkhanova is a senior researcher of the Scientific Research Institute of Theory of Architecture and Town-Planning—the branch of the Federal State Budget Institution “CNIIP of the Ministry of Construction of Russia.” In addition, she is Research Associate at the Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University of

Authors

419

Jerusalem. Tarkhanova graduated from the Faculty of Theory and History of Arts at the Surikov Art Institute and the State Institute of Arts, both in Moscow. She has participated in several archaeological expeditions in Russia, Asia, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean region. Tarkhanova is the author of fifty scientific articles and four books on architecture. Ulla Tervahauta obtained her Th.D. at the University of Helsinki in 2013. Her research interests include New Testament and early Christian literature and art and archaeology in late antique Palestine. She is staff member in the Kinneret Regional Project archaeological excavations at Horvat Kur, Galilee. Tervahauta is the author of A Story of the Soul’s Journey in the Nag Hammadi Library: A Study of Authentikos Logos (NHC VI,3) (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015) and she has edited a number of books, including Women and Knowledge in Early Christianity (ed. with Miroshnikov, Lehtipuu, and Dunderberg; Brill, 2017). Zeev Weiss is the Eleazar L. Sukenik Professor of Archaeology at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Trained in Classical Archaeology, he specializes in Roman and late antique art and architecture in the provinces of Syria-Palestine. His interests lie in various aspects of town-planning, architectural design, mosaic art, synagogues, and Jewish art, as well as the evaluation of archaeological finds in the light of the socio-cultural behavior of Jewish society and its dialogue with Greco-Roman culture and Christian cultures. Géza G. Xeravits (1971–2019) obtained his PhD in Theology in 2002 from the University of Groningen. Since 2015, he was Professor of Old Testament at the János Selye University, Komarno, Slovakia. Since March 2019, he was a Research Professor at the Károli Gáspár University, Budapest, Hungary. He is the author of several books, among which From Qumran to the Synagogues: Selected Essays on Ancient Judaism (De Gruyter, 2019).