Jewish tradition in Greco-Roman and Christian forms
Date
50CE
first century CE to sixth century CEapproximate date
Spread across the Mediterranean, synagogues connected Jews to the Bible and evoked the Temple, yet imitated Roman public buildings and even churches.
Sourced narrative
Each block is a verifiable statement. The number opens the cited page; amber or coral blocks flag tradition or contested interpretation.
11 statements
01Community center
The synagogue existed by the third century BCE and developed further once the Second Temple was destroyed. By the first century there were synagogues, or equivalent institutions under other names, all over the eastern Mediterranean: in Palestine, Egypt, Asia Minor, Greece and perhaps Italy. Rome alone shows signs of at least 11. Their number, spread and the money spent on them show how central they were to community life. Justice, business and the freeing of slaves took place there, as in a community center; but the synagogue's essential function was to put Jews in touch with the Bible, since it held the Torah scrolls and was where the Torah was read in public. Some may have had a 'seat of Moses', a seat of honor where the leader or a respected elder may have sat, though what it was for is debated.
02A virtual Temple
Since it predated 70, the synagogue was not created to take the Temple's place. Over time, however, it came to be understood as a sort of stand-in Temple that reproduced some of its features: the niche for the scrolls was named the holy ark (aron hakodesh), after the chest in Solomon's Temple.
03Zodiacs and screens
The architecture and decoration of synagogues imitated non-Jewish public buildings. Some had mosaic floors with the Greco-Roman zodiac, the personified seasons and the sun god Helios: those who frequented them evidently did not see this as a violation of the biblical ban on divine images.
At Beth Alpha, near Beth Shean, the mosaic floor of a sixth-century synagogue carries a Greco-Roman zodiac: Helios, the sun god, sits at the center, ringed by the 12 classical signs, each with a Hebrew name. Such zodiacs may have served, as among non-Jews, to follow the cycle of the year; in time the zodiac became a Jewish decorative motif in its own right.
Other elements came from churches, such as the screen that hid the Torah scroll: it evoked the Temple's Holy of Holies but also imitated the screens that separated clergy from laity in churches. Some synagogue and church screens came from the same workshops.
04Among the Romans
Jews took part in the Roman culture around them: their economy, clothing (tunics and mantles) and leisure often cannot be told apart from their neighbors'. The public baths, places for washing, socializing, medical treatment and pleasure, became an important part of Jewish social life despite statues and public nudity.
At the same time they marked their identity: they might avoid mixing linen and wool, following biblical law, and some men added fringes (tzitzit) to their mantles. The fringed mantle, the tallit, is today part of the dress of observant Jews.
The risings of the first and second centuries wrecked certain communities in the Roman world, but others flourished, and new communities appeared even in remote regions such as Germania and Gaul.
Context
Almost everything known about the rabbis comes from texts that are hard to contextualize. Christian sources and the archaeological remains of synagogues, tombs and inscriptions help, but they are not enough for a complete picture of Jewish life beyond what rabbinic literature represents. Jews did not leave the region and may even have prospered: they built or refurbished impressive synagogues in over a hundred places, and the arrival of Christian pilgrims and immigrants may have helped their economy even as it outnumbered them. Christianity nonetheless came to dominate: there were churches everywhere, monasteries even in the Judean desert, and Jews became a minority. Christians would remain dominant there until the seventh century, when first the Sasanians and then the Muslims conquered the land.
§ 01Geography
Where it happened
§ 02Museum
Objects and images
§ 04Network
Connections
§ 05Bibliography
Further reading
Lee Levine, The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000).
Religious life and the ancient synagogue · recommended in Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 153
§ 06Apparatus
Sources on this page
- 01Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 122; Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 122inspect
- 02Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 122inspect
- 03Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 122inspect
- 04Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 122; Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 122inspect
- 05Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 123; Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 123inspect
- 06Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 122inspect
- 07Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 121; Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 122inspect
- 08Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 122inspect
- 09Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 122inspect
- 10Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 121inspect
- 11Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 126; Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 126inspect
- Documented evidenceAttested by contemporary evidence: texts, inscriptions, coins, papyri or archaeology.
- Scholarly reconstructionHistorians' inference from indirect evidence.
- Tradition or narrativeA literary, traditional or religious account; significant in itself, but not independently verified.
- Contested interpretationScholars explicitly disagree; see the positions in the debate.
- Illustrative reconstructionA hypothesis or visual scheme to guide reading; not a historical claim.