Home | Category: Jews in the Greco-Roman Era / Rabbis, Synagogues and Prayers
ANCIENT SYNAGOGUES
ancient synagogue in Hamat Gader
The word synagogue is Greek for "place of assembly" or “congregation." It describes a center for social life as well as a place of worship, study and prayer. A typical synagogue has rooms where services and classes take place as well as communal offices, social halls and accommodation for visitors. Many synagogues have schools associated with them. The local synagogue is the most important organizing force in Judaism. The congregation is led by a rabbi of their choice. The salaried employees usually include the rabbi, the cantor (leader services) and the caretaker. The congregation is typically made up of people who live nearby because Orthodox Jews are not allowed to drive on the Sabbath. Attendance is regarded more as meritorious than a duty.
The early Jews worshipped first in tabernacles, then in the Temple of Solomon and when that was destroyed they began worshiping in synagogues. The first synagogues are believed to have been built during the Babylonian Exile in the sixth century B.C. when Jews were unable to reach the Jerusalem Temple. The oldest known synagogue lies within the Hasmonean winter palace near Jericho. It was built between 75 and 50 B.C. and was destroyed by an earthquake in 32 B.C. According to the New Testament, the Talmud and ancient Jewish historians, synagogues were plentiful during the time of Jesus but they did not come into their own until after the Temple was destroyed by the Romans in A.D. 70. Ancient synagogues usually reflected the architectural style of the civilization they were built in.
Shaye I.D. Cohen: of Brown University wrote: “The word "synagogue" is a Greek word, it means a gathering or an assembly, or perhaps a congregation. The synagogue, then, was the point of communal organization of the Jews in the Diaspora. Wherever you have a sufficient number of Jews, you would have a Jewish community. Wherever you would have a Jewish community you would have a Jewish synagogue. The synagogue, then in part, is a community building or a community place, a place where Jews would gather to discuss matters of communal concern. Sort of like a New England town square, where the citizens would gather regularly to discuss issues of importance. Among the issues that they would discuss, of course, Jews would discuss Judaism. That is to say they would discuss their sacred texts. Many of our sources tell us that Jews would gather in synagogues regularly, perhaps every Saturday on the Sabbath, or perhaps more often than that, in order to read the laws, to read the Torah, the sacred book of Moses and to expound upon it. And any reader of the New Testament knows that this is what Jesus did in the homeland, in the Galilee, entering the synagogues on the Sabbath and expounding the scriptures. And of course, we also know this from Paul, that in his travels in Asia Minor, Paul routinely went to seek out the local synagogue and therein to teach the scriptures from his peculiar perspective, but teach the scriptures to the Jewish community. So something else that happens there in a synagogue then in these public gatherings will be the communal study of the sacred texts, specifically of the Torah. We imagine also that they probably will have prayed, together... [Source:Shaye I.D. Cohen, Samuel Ungerleider Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of Religious Studies Brown University, Frontline, PBS, April 1998]
Websites and Resources: Virtual Jewish Library jewishvirtuallibrary.org/index ; Judaism101 jewfaq.org ; torah.org torah.org ; Chabad,org chabad.org/library/bible ; Bible and Biblical History: ; Biblical Archaeology Society biblicalarchaeology.org ; Bible History Online bible-history.com Bible Gateway and the New International Version (NIV) of The Bible biblegateway.com ; King James Version of the Bible gutenberg.org/ebooks ; Jewish History: Complete Works of Josephus at Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ccel.org ; Jewish History Timeline jewishhistory.org.il/history Jewish History Resource Center dinur.org ; Center for Jewish History cjh.org ; Jewish History.org jewishhistory.org ; Internet Jewish History Sourcebook sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Christianity: BBC on Christianity bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity ; Christian Classics Ethereal Library www.ccel.org ; Sacred Texts website sacred-texts.com
Theodotos Inscription, A.D. 1st Century
Deir Aziz ancient synagogue
The Theodotus Inscription is one of the oldest original documents referring to an ancient synagogue. Written in Greek using Uncial characters on a limestone slab, measuring 75 centimeters long by 41 centimeters high, it is a dedication inscription consisting of 10 lines of writing. Dated to the A.D. 1st century, it was discovered on Mt. Ophel in Jerusalem in 1913 by Raimond Weill and is currently in the Rockefeller Museum in East Jerusalem. [Source: K.C. Hanson's Website]
The Theodotus Inscription reads:
Theodotus, 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;
furthermore, the hostel, and the rooms, and the water
installation for lodging
needy strangers. Its foundation stone was laid
by his ancestors, the
elders, and Simonides
~ a leader of the synagogue
[Translation by K. C. Hanson & Douglas E. Oakman]
Synagogues in the A.D. 1st Century
Dr. Donald D. Binder writes: This archive contains a collection of ancient literary references to Second Temple synagogues. In keeping with current scholarly practices, only sources contemporaneous with the Second Temple period are cited. That is to say, the documents in the archive were either (a) written prior to 70 CE or (b) written within a generation of the Temple's destruction (c. 100 CE), but with reference back to the period when the Temple still existed. [Source: Donald D. Binder, Ancient Synagogue Literary Library pohick.org , Binder is Rector of Historic Pohick Church, colonial parish of George Washington and George Mason, near Mt. Vernon, Virginia. He holds a Ph.D. in New Testament studies from SMU (1997) and has written extensively on the topic of Second Temple period synagogues ^^^]
The following “land survey gives us an idea of the size of an Egyptian synagogue, as it records the area of the synagogue as 3 13/16 arourai and the attached "consecrated garden" as 1 1/2 arourai. In modern equivalents, the synagogue complex comprised about 10,427 square meters or just over two-and-a-half acres of land. The adjoining garden measured about 4,102 square meters or just over an acre of land. These measurements compare closely with those of sacred precincts of pagan temples or large cultic halls elsewhere in the country. Note also that the synagogue was located near a canal, probably because of the practice of ritual bathing before entry into a synagogue.”
According to the Egyptian papyri CPJ 1.134: “Arsinoë-Crocodilopolis from 1 B.C.: “Col. II Situated to the north, a consecrated garden the property of Hermione daughter of Apollonides (5 13/32 arourai). Of these a quarter (of an aroura) occupied by a storehouse, 1/32 by an empty dovecote, and 5 1/8 are waste land. Neighbours: to the south, waste land belonging to Demetrios the Thracian; to the north, a synagogue; to the west the city boundary; to the east the canal of Argaitis. Situated to the north, a Jewish synagogue represented by Pertollos, and a consecrated garden cultivated by a tenant, Petesouchos son of Marres, of 3 13/16 arourai and 1 1/2 arourai planted with flowers and vegetables. Neighbors: to the south Hermione daughter of Apollonides; to the north and west the city boundary; to the east the canal of Argaitis. Situated to the north, and narrowing the west outside the city for 4 1/2 schoinia, Sarapion, who holds from the Queen 1 aroura of sacred land, of which half is occupied by empty houses, and half is unoccupied. Col. III . . . Neighbors: to the south the Jewish synagogue; to the north and west the city boundary; to the east the canal of Argaitis. Northwards as far as the city boundary . . .” ^^^
On relations between synagogues and The Temple in Jerusalem, Philo wrote in Legat. 191: “Shall we be allowed to come near [Caligula] and open our mouths in defense of the synagogues to the destroyer of the all-holy place? For clearly to houses less conspicuous and held in lower esteem no regard would be paid by one who insults that most notable and illustrious shrine whose beams like the sun’s reach every whither, beheld with awe both by east and west .” ^^^
Binder writes: “Here Philo despairs to make his complaint to Caligula about attacks against the Egyptian synagogues because he has learned of the emperor's plans to place a statue of Zeus inside the Jerusalem Temple. The Jewish philosopher goes on to compare the synagogues with the Jerusalem Temple, characterizing the former as "less conspicuous and held in lower esteem" than the central shrine. The passage reveals Philo's belief that the fate of the synagogues was closely intertwined with that of the Temple.^^^
“Note: Translations of Josephus and Philo are from the Loeb Classical Library (LCL); those of the Pseudepigrapha are from Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. Dead Sea Scroll translations are from James H. Charlesworth, ed., The Dead Sea Scrolls. Egyptian papyri translations are from Corpus Papyrorum Judaicarum, vol. 1. Unless otherwise indicated, scripture translations are from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV).” ^^^
Synagogue in Mary Magdalene’s Hometown
synagogue in Magdala, hometown of Mary Magdalene
A synagogue dating to the time of Jesus and thought to be modeled after the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem was unearthed in the mid 2010s in Magdala, the hometown of Mary Magdalene located on the Sea of Galilee. The synagogue was big enough for just 200 people. According to Smithsonian magazine: For its time and place is was opulent. It had a mosaic floor; frescoes in pleasing geometries of red, yellow and blue; separate chambers for public Torah readings, private study and storage of the scrolls; a bowl outside for the ritual washing of hands. [Source: Ariel Sabar, Smithsonian magazine, January-February 2016]
“The find was especially significant because it put to rest an argument made by skeptics that no synagogues existed in Galilee until decades after Jesus’ death. If those skeptics were right, their claim would shred the Gospels’ portrait of Jesus as a faithful synagogue-goer who often proclaimed his message and performed miracles in these Jewish meeting places. As archaeologists excavated the ruins, they uncovered walls lined with benches—indicating that this was a synagogue—and a mosaic floor. At the centre of the room they were astounded to find a stone about the size of a footlocker that showed the most sacred elements of the Temple in Jerusalem carved in relief. The discovery of the Magdala Stone, as the artefact has come to be called, struck a death blow to the once fashionable notion that Galileans were impious hillbillies detached from Israel’s religious centre. Father Solana told National Geographic: “We see the number of times that the Gospels mention Jesus in a Galilee synagogue.” Considering the fact that the synagogue was active during his ministry and just a brief sail from Capernaum, Solana concludes, “we have no reason to deny or doubt that Jesus was here.” ^|^
On an ancient street beside the synagogue ruins, Marcela Zapata-Meza, the archaeologist now leading the dig, pointed to a barricade that appeared to have been hastily assembled from fragments of the synagogue’s interior columns. As the Romans descended on the city 2,000 years ago, the Magdalans seem to have scuttled parts of their own synagogue, piling the rubble into a chest-high roadblock. The purpose, Zapata-Meza says, was likely twofold: to impede the Roman troops and to protect the synagogue from defilement. (Magdala’s Jewish ritual baths, or mikvaot, also appear to have been deliberately hidden, beneath a layer of shattered pottery.) “In Mexico, it’s very common: The Aztecs and Mayans did it at their holy sites when they expected to be attacked,” says Zapata-Meza, who has excavated such areas in Mexico. “It’s called ‘killing’ the space.”
Magdala Stone
The Magdala Stone is about the size of a toy chest and has been described as a one-of-a-kind find. Ariel Sabar wrote in Smithsonian magazine: In none of the world’s other synagogues from this era — six of them in Israel, the other one in Greece — have archaeologists found a single Jewish symbol; yet the faces of this stone are a gallery of them.
Carved onto its faces were a seven-branched menorah, a chariot of fire and a hoard of symbols associated with the most hallowed precincts of the Jerusalem temple. The stone is already seen as one of the most important discoveries in biblical archaeology in decades. Though its imagery and function remain in the earliest stages of analysis, scholars say it could lead to new understandings of the forces that made Galilee such fertile ground for a Jewish carpenter with a world-changing message. It could help explain, in other words, how a backwater of northern Israel became the launching pad for Christianity. [Source: Ariel Sabar, Smithsonian magazine, January-February 2016]
The art historian Rina Talgam is an expert on ancient Hebrew symbols “The stone, she says, is a schematic, 3-D model of Herod’s Temple in Jerusalem. Whoever carved it had likely seen the temple’s highly restricted innermost sanctums, or at least had heard about them directly from someone who had been there. On one side of the stone is a menorah, or Jewish candelabrum, whose design matches other likenesses — on coins and graffiti — from before A.D. 70, when the Romans destroyed the temple. The menorah had stood behind golden doors in the temple’s Holy Place, a sanctuary off-limits to all but the priests. On the other faces of the stone — appearing in the order a person walking front to back would have encountered them — are other furnishings from the temple’s most sacrosanct areas: the Table of Showbread, where priests stacked 12 bread loaves representing the 12 tribes of Israel; and a rosette slung between two palm-shaped columns, which Talgam believes is the veil separating the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies, a small chamber only the high priest could enter and only once a year, on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.
Magdala Stone
“On the side opposite the menorah — past reliefs of columned arches, altars and oil lamps — was an engraving that left Talgam dumbstruck: a pair of fire-spitting wheels. Talgam believes they represent the bottom half of the chariot of God, an object seen as one of the Old Testament’s holiest — and most concrete — images of the divine. “This is really shocking,” Talgam told me. “One is not supposed to depict the chariot of God, even its lower portion.” She believes the stone’s designer etched it on the rear of the stone to symbolize the temple’s backmost room, the Holy of Holies.
“Most experts think the stone, which rests on four stubby legs, served in some fashion as a rest for Torah scrolls, but its precise function is still a matter of debate. Talgam’s study will dispute earlier reports that it is made of limestone, in widespread use at the time for decorative objects. Though scientific tests are pending, Talgam suspects the Magdala stone is quartzite, an extremely hard rock shunned by most artisans because of how difficult it is to carve. The choice of material, she believes, is another sign of its importance to the community.
Meaning of Magdala Stone
Ariel Sabar wrote in Smithsonian magazine: “For Talgam, the stone suggests another fault line in Jewish life at the time of Jesus. After the Assyrians conquered Israel seven centuries earlier, Jews lived under a succession of foreign rulers: Babylonians, Persians, Greeks. They tasted self-rule again only in the second century B.C., when the Maccabees vanquished the Greeks in one of history’s biggest military upsets. But autonomy was brief; in 63 B.C., Pompey the Great sacked Jerusalem, yoking the Land of Israel to Rome. [Source: Ariel Sabar, Smithsonian magazine, January-February 2016]
In Talgam’s view, the Magdala stone expresses yet another response to a Judaism in crisis: an emerging belief that God doesn’t reside in Jerusalem, that he is accessible to any Jew, anywhere, who commits to him. And that may explain why some of Magdala’s Jews felt free to do the once-unthinkable. They appropriated the great temple, including its Holy of Holies, and they miniaturized it, setting it within the walls of their own provincial synagogue.
“This shift, Talgam says, is in many ways a forerunner to New Testament themes of God’s kingdom being not just in Heaven, but also on earth and inside the human heart. “We know that at that time people like Paul and the Jewish philosopher Philo started to say, God is not particularly in Jerusalem. He’s everywhere. He’s in Heaven, but he’s also within the community and he’s within each of us,” Talgam told me. “That’s also the basis for an approach that we see in the New Testament: That we should start to work God in a more spiritual way,” tied more closely to individual devotion and less to where the temple is, who the high priests are, and who the emperor happens to be. It’s not a rejection of Judaism or the temple, she says, but “a kind of democratization.” In the Old Testament, as in the temple in Jerusalem, the divine is visible only to the elect. In Magdala, the stone offers “a concrete depiction,” she says, “visible to the entire community.”
Ancient Synagogues and the Jewish Diaspora
ancient synagogue in Ostia Antica, Italy
J.M Oesterreicher wrote in the New Catholic Encyclopedia: Though the postexilic period was marked by an inner withdrawal from other nations, the ever-widening emigration of Jews to many lands created a vast Jewish diaspora whose synagogues became, paradoxically enough, proselytizing centers among the Gentiles. Moreover, foreign invasion and domination, as well as encounter with the two great cultures of Persia and Greece, helped the flowering of certain Biblical seeds, particularly that of hope. [Source:J.M Oesterreicher, New Catholic Encyclopedia, 1960s, Encyclopedia.com]
Shaye I.D. Cohen of Brown University wrote: “The word "synagogue" is a Greek word, it means a gathering or an assembly, or perhaps a congregation. The synagogue, then, was the point of communal organization of the Jews in the Diaspora. Wherever you have a sufficient number of Jews, you would have a Jewish community. Wherever you would have a Jewish community you would have a Jewish synagogue. The synagogue, then in part, is a community building or a community place, a place where Jews would gather to discuss matters of communal concern. Sort of like a New England town square, where the citizens would gather regularly to discuss issues of importance. Among the issues that they would discuss, of course, Jews would discuss Judaism. That is to say they would discuss their sacred texts. [Source: Shaye I.D. Cohen, Samuel Ungerleider Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of Religious Studies Brown University, Frontline, PBS, April 1998]
Many of our sources tell us that Jews would gather in synagogues regularly, perhaps every Saturday on the Sabbath, or perhaps more often than that, in order to read the laws, to read the Torah, the sacred book of Moses and to expound upon it. And any reader of the New Testament knows that this is what Jesus did in the homeland, in the Galilee, entering the synagogues on the Sabbath and expounding the scriptures. And of course, we also know this from Paul, that in his travels in Asia Minor, Paul routinely went to seek out the local synagogue and therein to teach the scriptures from his peculiar perspective, but teach the scriptures to the Jewish community. So something else that happens there in a synagogue then in these public gatherings will be the communal study of the sacred texts, specifically of the Torah. We imagine also that they probably will have prayed, together..
“According to the New Testament, another remarkable feature of the synagogues in the Diaspora is not only that they attracted large crowds of people, but among these crowds will have been gentiles. Gentiles apparently found these synagogues to be interesting or a place worth visiting, perhaps because they enjoyed hearing the philosophical type discussions about God, or perhaps they enjoyed hearing things being sung or chanted. We don't know exactly why gentiles found these places attractive; modern scholars too readily assume it's because these people were somehow believers of Judaism, or somehow were half converts... as if there's no other rational explanation why gentiles would want to go to a synagogue if they were not almost converting to Judaism. But the fact is there are many reasons why gentiles may have come.... Gentiles found the Jewish synagogues and the Jews themselves apparently open, interesting, attractive, friendly and why not go to the Jewish synagogue, especially because there are no non-Jewish analogs. There's nothing equivalent to this communal experience anywhere in pagan or Greek or Roman religions. And we shouldn't be surprised if it would have attracted curious, well intentioned by-standers, who may have come in to witness, or perhaps even participate to some degree in what was going on.
One the World’s Oldest Synagogues — a Richly Decorated One — Found in Russia
In August 2023, archaeologists announced that had uncovered the ruins of one one of the world’s oldest known synagogue in Kuban, a city in southeast Russian on the Black Sea. The Miami Herald reported: The Phanagoria Synagogue was discovered during ongoing excavations in Kuban, according to a news release from the Oleg Deripaska’s Volnoe Delo Foundation. The site was home to a flourishing ancient city with a robust Jewish community dating to about the A.D. first century. Researchers said they discovered the building’s walls and foundation, along with a trove of ancient treasures. [Source: Moira Ritter, Miami Herald, August 15, 2023]
The nearly 2,000-year-old synagogue was richly decorated, with a tiled roof, painted and marble-tiled walls and strong floors, the Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences said in an Aug. 15 news release. Inside the synagogue were lavish marble columns and a fenced off section for Torah scrolls and scripture reading.
Archaeologists also found fragments of at least three luxuriously decorated marble menorahs and several marble tables that were used for religious purposes, the institute said. Several fragments of marble with Greek inscriptions — one translating to “synagogue” — were also uncovered. Previous excavations in the area revealed tombstones depicting menorahs, confirming the existence of a Jewish community in the city, according to the institute.
The rectangular building, measuring about 70 feet by 20 feet, was composed of two rooms, each about 650 square feet, the Oleg Deripaska’s Volnoe Delo Foundation said. It was destroyed in the middle of the sixth century when tribes attacked and burned down the city. The synagogue also offers experts insight into Judaism practice during the religion’s “Second Temple Period,” experts with the foundation said. From 516 B.C. until 70 A.D., most Jewish rituals took place at the second Jerusalem Temple, so it was rare for synagogues to be built elsewhere.
Image Sources: Wikimedia, Commons
Text Sources: Internet Jewish History Sourcebook sourcebooks.fordham.edu “World Religions” edited by Geoffrey Parrinder (Facts on File Publications, New York); “ Encyclopedia of the World’s Religions” edited by R.C. Zaehner (Barnes & Noble Books, 1959); “Old Testament Life and Literature” by Gerald A. Larue, New International Version (NIV) of The Bible, biblegateway.com; Wikipedia, Live Science, Archaeology magazine, National Geographic, BBC, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Times of London, The New Yorker, Reuters, AP, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, and various books and other publications.
Last updated March 2024