Traces of rabbinic influence: the Rehov inscription

Outside rabbinic texts, rabbis rarely appear; the magic bowls, for instance, sometimes mention Yehoshua bar Perahya, a rabbi that literature knows. But the archaeology and inscriptions of Palestine and elsewhere show almost no sign of the great names of the Mishnah and Talmud.2

Beside the town of Beth Shearim, in Galilee, lies a vast cemetery of about 30 catacombs, in use from the second to the fourth century. Graves of several rabbis turned up there, three of them successors of Judah the Patriarch. Tradition says that when Judah died, Jews from all over the Roman world wanted to be laid to rest near him.3

In northern Israel, an inscription probably of the fourth century identified a building as Rabbi Eliezer ha-Qappar's study house, another name familiar from rabbinic literature. Evidence of this kind confirms that there were rabbis in Palestine but says little about their activity and influence: they belonged to Jewish society without yet holding the central place they would have in the Middle Ages and modern times.4

This raises a puzzle that occupies scholars: in hindsight we know that the rabbis, or at least their literature, ended up redefining Jewish identity across much of the world. How did a handful of sages, with almost no visible effect outside their study circles, manage that?5

But this is little evidence, and late. When did the rabbis begin to influence the wider community, the courts, the synagogues, the prayers of non-rabbis? Despite much research, the answers remain elusive.6

When the Mishnah and Talmud debate such matters, the discussion seems mostly theoretical: it dealt with law, but not necessarily law as practiced, to the point that the Mishnah regulates the worship of a Temple that no longer existed. And judging by synagogue art and other evidence of religious practice, the rabbis had little effect on the community in their time; rabbinic literature itself concedes that many did not follow its prescriptions.7

In late antiquity this conception of the Torah was confined to a small group of intellectuals, with little evidence of effect on the wider community. That began to change at the end of the period and above all in the Islamic era, through the Geonim's influence.8