journal of jewish studies, vol. lvii, no.

1 , spring 2006

Review Article

Transformations of Judaism under

Graeco-Roman Rule: Responses to Seth Schwartzs
Imperialism and Jewish Society
Fergus Millar
Oriental Institute, Oxford

1. Introduction

y accident, Seth Schwartzs powerful and persuasive essay on Jewish history in Judaea/Syria Palaestina in the Graeco-Roman period was not
reviewed in JJS when it was first published in 2001. So the issue of a paperback edition in 2004 oers a welcome opportunity to make amends.1 Such an
opportunity needs to be taken, for this is an important and challenging book,
which everyone concerned with Jewish history should read.
Its first significant characteristic is the long sweep of time coveredeven
if, in reality, not quite as long as the title suggests. For the book concludes,
broadly speaking, in the Late Imperial period, with a discussion of the Judaism, or Judaisms, revealed by rabbinic writings on the one hand, and the
elaborate synagogues with mosaic floors constructed in these centuries on the
other. But, while it, for instance, makes good use (esp. pp. 26374) of sixthcentury piyyutim, it could not really be said to tackle the external position of
the Jewish communities of Palestine in the sixth and seventh centuries, the attitudes to them of the Christian empire or of Christian writers, or the impact,
in all senses, of the Islamic conquest. For these subjects we still need to turn
to a couple of brilliant and penetrating papers by Averil Cameron.2
To say that we need, for these centuries, to consult the work of a specialist
on the Christian culture of Late Antiquity, is implicitly to admit, with regret, the generally modest conceptual and scholarly level of historical writing
on this period from within Jewish Studies, still marked by a not suciently
critical approach to rabbinic sources, and to the essential question of what
historical evidence they can oer about what, and by an inadequate grasp of
the wider backgroundpagan and then Christianwithin which not just the
Jews of the Diaspora, but those of Judaea/Palaestina itself, lived. The absence
of the relevant perspective in many modern studies can be seen at once in the
titles of two famous works by one of the justly revered masters of rabbinic
studies, Saul Lieberman, Greek in Jewish Palestine (1942) and Hellenism in
Jewish Palestine (1950). The implications of both titles are wholly mislead1 Seth Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 BCE to 640 CE. Princeton University
Press, Princeton / Oxford, 2001 (pb., 2004), xi, 320 pp. ISBN 0-691-08850-0 (hardback); 0-69111781-0 (paperback).
2 A. M. Cameron, The Jews in Seventh-Century Palestine, Scripta Classica Israelica 13
(1994), 75; Blaming the Jews: the Seventh-Century Invasions of Palestine in Context, in V. Deroche et al. (eds.), Mlanges G. Dagron (Travaux et Mmoires 14, 2002), 57.

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ing: there was no moment after the Bar Kochba war when the area which, as
a province, the Romans now called first Syria Palaestina, then Palaestina
and finally Palaestina I, II and III (or Salutaris), was predominantly Jewish. On the contrary, it was, first, divided between an expanding network
of Greek cities with their dependent territories, and then, at least symbolically, colonised by a comparable network of Christian communities, bishoprics and churches. There was indeed, in the Late Empire, a genuinely Jewish Palestinebut it was confined to the relatively remote and un-urbanised
region of north-eastern Galilee and the western Golan. Elsewhere, there were
also significant Jewish communities, but ones living in a predominantly gentile environmentpagan and then Christianin a way which was not entirely
dissimilar to the situation in the Diaspora.
Seth Schwartzs sweeping and provocative historical essay, covering seven
or eight centuries in a little over 300 pages, marks a vast step forward in several dierent ways: in its capacity to see the successive phases, or contexts, of
Jewish life in Judaea/Palaestina in perspective, and to compare them; in its
awareness of the wider Imperial framework; and in its methodological selfconsciousness, in being for a start, as he says (p. 2), moderately positivistic,
meaning that the available evidence has to be taken seriously, but that it is not,
and cannot be, a simple mirror of reality, and always requires interpretation,
which itself is impossible without some hypothesis, or hermeneutical model.

2. Plan and Objective

The project which Schwartz (henceforward S.) sets himself (p. 1) is to trace
the impact of dierent forms of foreign domination on the inner structure of
Jewish society, primarily in Palestine. Its thesis is that a conscious, collective,
Jewish identity was a function of internal (and for nearly a century, from the
middle of the second century BCE to the middle of the first, also external)
self-government, which lasted until the fall of the Temple. Then, he argues,
Jewish identity collapsed, being devoid of either collective leadership or local forms of self-expression, such as might be traceable in the archaeological
record. As we will see, in my view he moves too quickly here, saying too little about the two successive independent Jewish states formed by rebellion in
6673/4 and 1325, or about the Jewish life of the period between the wars,
now illuminated in quite important ways by new documents.
His primary thesis, therefore, is that, in the period from the Bar Kochba
war to the fourth century CE, though in the genealogical sense a Jewish population still existed (that is, a population whose ancestors and descendants
identified themselves as Jewish), the evidence accessible to us, whether textual, documentary or archaeological, reveals no distinctive Jewish identity.
Since this section is the most challenging part of the book, we will come back
to it later. It will be sucient to stress now how radicalbut also how potentially salutaryit is to see in these paradoxical terms the Jewish society
which produced, in the Mishnah, written in Hebrew, the foundational text for
Rabbinic Judaism.

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141

Finally, he argues (see the helpful Summary on pp. 1416), the rise of
Christianity, and the Christianisation of the Late Roman state, stimulated the
re-emergence of a conscious Jewish identity, expressed both in the extensive
corpus of rabbinic writing and in the construction and adornment of synagogues.
Since various substantial reservations will be entered below, I should say at
once, firstly, that, both in method and to a large extent in its conclusions, this
book seems to me not only to be a salutary challenge, but to be convincing,
and to represent a very significant step forward in the study of this period.

3. The Second Temple Period

As regards the whole period up to 70 CE, or perhaps better 66, and the outbreak of the First Revolt, S. provides a fine essay in historical interpretation,
stressing also the significance of the recognition by foreign rulers (Antiochus
III, or the Romans) of the Torah as representing the law which could properly
be enforced on Jews by their own leaders. Jewish identity rested on the recognition by all, Jews and gentiles, of the three pillars of God, Temple and Torah
(p. 49f.). I would only want to add, first, that we need to give more stress
than S. does to the High Priesthood and to the group of dignitaries whom
the Gospels (for instance) represent as associated with the High Priests in the
exercise of authority. The fact that both socially (should we talk of an aristocracy?) and constitutionally (was there something called the Sanhedrin,
namely a council with a defined membership, or are we dealing with ad hoc
meetings of councillors called by the High Priest?), this group or body is very
hard to define, does not detract from its evident centrality. S. does not discuss
the thesis of Jamie McLaren,3 that there was in fact no constitutionally defined council called the Sanhedrin. Secondly, more weight could have been
given to the role of the Herodian kings and their extensive family, in relation
to the Temple, in the exercise of internal authority, and in external representation before the Emperors.4 This last role will have extended to the death of
Agrippa II, at a disputed date at the end of the first century CE.
All of these elements, along with the influence of scribes and Pharisees,
coming down from Jerusalem to keep the relatively uninformed locals in line,
are vividly reflected, from a Galilean perspective, in the Gospels, and these
sources could have contributed to a much-enriched picture of what Jewish
identity amounted to for the man in the street. I still hold that we should be
open to the idea that it is Johns Gospel, not the Synoptics, which gives us the
fullest and most valid picture of the relations between Galilee and Jerusalem.5
That said, S. is absolutely correct to stress the importance of the fact that
in the period from BCE to 66 CE there always were collective Jewish institutions, of varying degrees of independence at successive stages, which exercised
3 James S. Maclaren, Power and Politics in Palestine: the Jews and the Governing of their Land,
100 BCAD 70 (1991).
4 See N. Kokkinos, The Herodian Dynasty: Origins, Role in Society and Eclipse (1993).
5 See F. Millar, Reflections on the Trials of Jesus, in P. R. Davies and R. T. White (eds.), A
Tribute to Geza Vermes: Essays on Jewish and Christian Literature and History (1990), 355.

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authority internally, and represented the Jewish community externally, before

Seleucid kings, Roman governors, the Senate, or Emperors.

4. From the First Revolt to the Second

But, given that significance, it was an odd omission not to give any space to
considering the structure, identity and religious character of the two independent Jewish states of 6673/4 and 1325 CE. For Rome, both wars were major
events; the siege of Jerusalem in CE 70 required five months, and considerably
more soldiers than had been assembled in CE 43 for the conquest of Britain.6
More important from the Jewish perspective would be the question of the
areas from which rebel Jewish forces could be drawn, the forms of self-image
and collective ideology presented by the coinage of the two brief Jewish states,
and the quite extensive side-lights on Jewish life under these two independent
regimes now presented by perishable documents on parchment or papyrus.
As a moderate positivist, S. could have made much more use than he does
of the primary documents now available. The relevant part of the survey of
Near Eastern papyrology which was published in 1995 7 would now require
extensive revision, in the light both of the publication of new texts,8 and of
Ada Yardenis magnificent two-volume Textbook.9 Even more immediately
relevant is the fact that a number of documents previously dated to the earlier second century are nowtoo recently for S. to have taken account of the
issues raisedargued to belong to the First Revolt.10 This possibility is perhaps particularly significant in the case of DJD II, no. 19, a deed of divorce
between a Jewish man and woman, drawn up in Masada in Year 6probably
not, as originally proposed, of the province of Arabia (so CE 111), but of the
independent state created by the First Revolt of CE 66 onwards. The document is written in Aramaic, and if it makes no reference to any authorities
or institutions of the short-lived Jewish state, it still belongs incontestably in
the context of a Jewish community: the divorced wife is declared to be free to
become the wife of any Jewish man whom you wish.
Given that S.s theme is the impact on Jewish society of external imperial
powers, it would surely have been relevant to ask whether the documents
6 See now F. Millar, Last Year in Jerusalem: the Commemoration of the Jewish War in
Rome, in J. Edmondson, S. Mason and J. Rives (eds.), Josephus in Flavian Rome (2005), 101.
7 H. M. Cotton, W. E. H. Cockle, F. G. B. Millar, The Papyrology of the Roman Near East:
A Survey, Journal of Roman Studies 85 (1995), 214.
8 See esp. H. M. Cotton and A. Yardeni, Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek Documentary Texts
from Nah.al H
. ever and Other Sites (DJD XXVII, 1997); Y. Yadin, J. C. Greenfield, A. Yardeni
and B. A. Levine, The Documents from the Bar Kochba Period in the Cave of Letters: Hebrew,
Aramaic and Nabataean-Aramaic Papyri (2002).
9 A. Yardeni, Textbook of Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek Documentary Texts from the Judaean
Desert III (2000).
10 See H. M. Cotton, The Languages of the Legal and Administrative Documents from the
Judaean Desert, Zeitschrift fr Papyrologie und Epigraphik 125 (1999), 220; D. Goodblatt, Dating Documents in Provincial Judaea: a Note on Papyri Muraba
at 19 and 20, IEJ 49 (1999), 249,
and H. Eshel, Documents of the First Jewish Revolt from the Judaean Desert, in A. M. Berlin
and J. A. Overman (eds.), The First Jewish Revolt: Archaeology, History and Ideology (2002), 157.

transformations of judaism under graeco-roman rule

143

which we now possess throw any light on what Jewish society was like, in
its governing institutions, legal procedures, customs or religious observance,
when the yoke of foreign domination was twice briefly thrown o. Without it
being appropriate here to go into the much more extensive documents from
the Bar Kochba war, with their characteristic references to years of the Redemption of Israel or of the Freedom of Israel and to Simeon ben Kosiba,
Prince of Israel (NY YRL), not to speak of the coins of both Revolts,11
the same question should be relevant also for 1325. In a dierent way, we
can also now take advantage of a fair number of documents dating from between the wars, and potentially illuminating Jewish values and social institutions in the six decades concerned. Once again, the priceless find of documents from the Wadi Murabba at comes into play. For instance, we might
want to discern some forerunners of S.s de-judaised, or assimilated, Jews of
post-135 in the Greek re-marriage contract of CE 124 from Bethbassi in the
toparchy of Herodium (DJD II, no. 115). The parties all have Jewish names,
but nothing in the text refers explicitly to Jewish law, or any Jewish institutions (unless, as Hannah Cotton suggests to me, the dierentiation between
sons and daughters here is a Jewish rule). But then what of DJD II, no. 20,
a marriage-contract written in Aramaic which seems to date to CE 117, and
also seems (almost certainly) to refer to the law of Moses? It would not be
in the least surprising if there were, as at all times, diering degrees of attachment to the Jewish Law. What is certain at least is that those elements which
rejected both assimilation and foreign domination were strong enough to fuel
a revolt which, seen from the Roman side, was once again not a minor local
disturbance but a major military challenge.12
What is certain also is that, as Hannah Cotton has pointed out several
times,13 out of some 60 known documents stretching from the First Revolt
to near the end of the Second, and reflecting Jewish life in Judaea and also
over the permeable border with the province of Arabia, there is not a single reference to a rabbi, and a fortiori not to a rabbi as a source of religious
or legal authority, nor to any actual court applying Jewish law. Still less is
there any hint, during either Revolt or in the period between them, of the
existence of a rabbinic Nasi, as opposed of course to the title as used by
and of Bar Kochba himself.14 S. is properly sceptical here, sharing this scepticism of course with Martin Goodmans fundamental State and Society.15
11 See now M. Goodman, Coinage and Identity: The Jewish Evidence, in C. Howgego, V.
Heuchert and A. Burnett (eds.), Coinage and Identity in the Roman Provinces (2005), 163.
12 See F. Millar, The Roman Near East 31 BCAD 337 (1993), ch. 10, and W. Eck, The Bar
Kochba Revolt: the Roman Point of View, Journal of Roman Studies 89 (1999), 76.
13 See H. M. Cotton in DJD XXVII (n. 8 above), 153 f.; The Rabbis and the Documents, in
M. Goodman (ed.), The Jews in a Graeco-Roman World (1998), 167; Jewish Jurisdiction under
Roman Rule: Prologomena, in M. Labahn and J. Zargenberg (eds.), Zwischen den Reichen: Neues
Testament und Rmische Herrschaft (TANZ 36, 2002), 5.
14 See esp. M. Jacobs, Die Institutionen des jdischen Patriarchen (1995), and now Peter Schaefer, Bar Kokhba and the Rabbis, in P. Schaefer (ed.), The Bar Kochba War Reconsidered (2003),
1, and S. Stern, Rabbi and the Origins of the Patriarchate, JJS 54 (2003), 193.
15 M. Goodman, State and Society in Roman Galilee (1983); second edition, with a valuable
review of developments in the intervening period (2000).

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But, by bringing out more clearly the importance of contemporary documents, S. could have grounded his picture of the period much more firmly.
It follows that if we are to be asked to believe that either the Jerusalem or
the Babylonian Talmud, both of which were put together centuries later, preserve veridical evidence of a chain of evolution of rabbinic authority starting
very soon after the destruction of the Temple, then the case needs to be made
on the basis of a rigorous analysis of the material (and not just the repetition of anecdotes from later sources), and above all by relating it to the now
extensive documentary evidence.
In short, there is so to speak a missing chapter, or perhaps three separate
missing chapters (the First Revolt, the Inter-War Period, and the Second Revolt), in S.s book, covering CE 66135, and with that a certain, rather surprising, old-fashionedness of approach, in not using all the quite extensive
documentary evidence now available.

5. Syria Palaestina after the Second Revolt

Where S. is, from one perspective, incontestably right, is his view that, for
a period of two centuries or soand perhaps indeed moreafter 135, Jews
in what was now Syria Palaestina have a strikingly low profile in literary,
legal, documentary and archaeological evidence. The uncomfortable proposition which S. puts forward to account for this is that a Jewish population,
or a population of Jewish descent, was still there (since otherwisefailing a
mass conversion of gentiles to the religion which they could find prescribed
in the Biblethe consciously and assertively Jewish community of the Late
Imperial period could never have emerged), but that its members were, in this
period, content to live, by and large, by gentile norms. As S. in fully aware, we
are, and can only be, in the realm of an interpretative hypothesis, or model,
here, since direct evidence for Jews who did not live in a way which was consistently Jewish is by definition dicult to isolate; and furthermore in this
period there is relatively little documentary evidence for private or communal
life in Syria Palaestina as lived by any ethnic group.16 Also, if there were Jews
who abandoned Judaism altogether, they will have ceased, at least within one
or two generations, to show up, as Jews, in our evidence at all.
None the less, in my view S.s account suers from taking an approach
which is too narrowly internal, and does not give sucient importance, firstly,
to the drastic after-eects of the Bar Kochba war, and secondly to the massive scale of the paganisation, or what one might call Graeco-Romanisation,
which now took place in Palestine. Almost everywhere, what we actually see
is not in fact a Jewish world whose Jewishness has become attenuated, but a
pagan (and later Christian) world, in which there were also Jewish communities.
16 The epigraphic evidence remains to be collected in the great current project for a Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaeae/Palaestinae. As for documents on perishable materials, the Survey of 1995
(n. 7 above), produced very little for the period 135 onwards in Syria Palaestina (nos. 33242,
with possibly some of the fragments in nos. 34374, belonging to this period).

transformations of judaism under graeco-roman rule

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First, there were vast losses of life and destruction of villages in the war itself (50 notable fortified positions and 985 villages destroyed, and 580,000 military casualties alone, according to Cassius Dios Roman History LXIX.14.1;
we need not take these figures literally, but they can be taken as suggesting the
exceptional scale and ferocity of the conflict). Second, there was the foundation of Aelia Capitolina as a Roman colonia with pagan temples, from whose
territory Jews are reported to have been banned. Third, there was the reshaping of the ocial landscape of Palestine by the refounding of existing
places as Greek cities, thus adding them to those which already existed all
along the coast, and in Samaria at Sebaste, or, in the case of Scythopolis,
in the Jezreel Valley: from south to north, Beth Guvrin/Eleutheropolis; Emmaus/Nicopolis; Lydda/Diospolis; Mabartha, re-founded as Flavia Neapolis;
Caporcotani/Legio, later Maximinianopolis; and Sepphoris-Diocaesarea in
Galilee, joining with Tiberias on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee, and
Hippos on its east. The full significance of this process is brought out for the
first time only by the very important book of Nicole Belayche, published in
the same year, 2001, as Imperialism and Jewish Society, and which obviously
S. could not have used.17
The prime relevance of Belayches book is its emphasis on local structures
and circumstances, and its reflection of these in maps: contrast for instance
the map on p. 52, The Religious Geography of Judaea and the Decapolis in
66 CE, with that on p. 280, The Religious Geography of Palestine in the third
century. Judaea/Palaestina had always had a mixed Jewish and gentile population; but by the third century, while there were (perhaps) once again some
Jews in Aelia Capitolina, those living in Caesarea, Diospolis and Scythopolis,
as in Hippos and Gadara, will have represented no more than a substantial
proportion of the population of cities whose nature and structure were Greek
and (it seems) pagan. One thing which Belayches invaluable book does lack
is a map showing the geography of known pagan temples, as attested by literary, documentary or archaeological evidence, to match the map of theatres
on p. 75.
But the distribution of temples is in fact a crucial question. We know that
there were pagan temples in (for instance) Aelia, Sebaste, Neapolis, Caesarea,
Scythopolis, Gadara and Hippos (for the marginal zone of Sepphoris and
Tiberias see below). Even in such places, where public pagan sacrifices necessarily took place, at least until the fourth or early fifth century CE, a sort of
compromise was in principle available, at any rate for Jews whose commitment
to the Law was not too rigid. Ulpian reports that Septimius Severus and his
son Antoninus (Caracalla) had laid down that Jews could hold city oces
(honores) and that functions could be imposed on thembut only such as did
not oend their superstitio.18 Short of the eective operation of any such compromise, we have to imagine the Jewish communities, in those Graeco-Roman
cities in Palestine where they represented a minority, as conducting their col17 N. Belayche, Iudaea-Palaestina: the Pagan Cults in Roman Palestine (Second to Fourth Century) (2001).
18 Digest L.2.3.3, see A. Linder, The Jews in Roman Imperial Legislation (1987), no. 2.

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lective lives, following the Law and, in some cases building synagogues, in
contexts which were not wholly dissimilar to those which obtained in the Diaspora (and not forgetting that marginal zone as between native Jewish territory and the gentile world represented by neighbouring cities like Tyre, Gerasa
or Damascus). Here, there is again great value in Nicole Belayches map (p.
83) of the distribution of synagogues in Palestine, secondfourth centuries,
to be compared with that in the relevant volume of the Tabula Imperii Romani
series, itself a priceless source of historical information.19 Synagogues are attested archaeologically in a scatter of places in southern Palestine, including
ones which were or became Greek cities, such as Ascalon, Gaza and Beth Guvrin/Eleutheropolis; also at Caesarea and in Scythopolis and its territory (the
famous cases of Beth Alpha and Rehov), and at Hammat Gader in the territory of Gadara, and in the cities of Tiberias and Sepphoris/Diocaesarea. But
the bulk of archaeologically attested synagogues belong very clearly in the
non-urbanised zone west of the Sea of Galilee and the upper Jordan valley,
and to the east on the Golan. However, the dating of the known synagogues
notoriously keeps changing, and Belayches label, secondfourth centuries,
should probably be seen as misleading. It seems more likely now that the characteristic period for synagogue construction was the fifthsixth centuries (the
sixth century, in the reign of one or other of the two Emperors called Justin,
is at any rate certain for the mosaic floor at Beth Alpha).20 If that general
pattern is correct, it has profound implications for Schwartzs argument, as
we will see, and indeed could well be seen as reinforcing it.
If we return to the secondthird centuries, it might seem unsurprising that
the Jews of the province, now deliberately re-labelled Syria Palaestina, are
almost invisible in our epigraphic and archaeological evidence. Given the
massive scale of losses, the creation of a pagan colonia as a substitute for
Jerusalem, from whose territory Jews were excluded, and the step-by-step
creation of a network of Greek cities, whose territories between them came
to occupy almost the whole provincial area, we might be struck rather by the
fact that Jewish communal life, Jewish observance and the use of Hebrew survived at all. On the other hand, it could be thought that the low profile of
Jewish communities in this period might be due rather to the low level of the
epigraphic habit in most of these cities, compared (for instance) to those of
Asia Minoran equally pagan environment, where Jews have left a significant number of communal inscriptions.21
S.s particular contribution to the interpretation of what Palestinian Judaism in this phase did or did not amount to is a very valuable one (esp., ch.
4: Jews or Pagans? The Jews and the Greco-Roman Cities of Palestine, p.
129f.). The evidence is slight, but enough to show, for instance, people with
Jewish names (or the daughter of someone with a Jewish name) making pagan
19 Y. Tsafrir, L. di Segni and J. Green (eds.), Iudaea. Palaestina: Eretz Israel in the Hellenistic,
Roman and Byzantine Periods (1994), Map 4.
20 E. L. Sukenik, The Synagogue of Beth Alpha (1932); J.-B. Frey, Corpus Inscriptionum Judaicarum II (1952), no. 1165, for the Aramaic inscription mentioning King Ioustinos (either
Justin I, 51827, or II, 56578).
21 See W. Ameling (ed.), Inscriptiones Iudaicae Orientis II: Kleinasien (2004).

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dedications in Scythopolis, or someone with a Jewish name acting as agoranomos in Ioppe. S.s important discussion highlights, for instance, coins (p.
136f.), inscriptions and pagan artin particular the well-known pagan mosaics of Sepphoris (p. 142f.) and Tiberias (p. 145f.), places which appear in
the rabbinic sources as centres of rabbinic learning.22 It thus becomes possible to imagine various contrasting patterns: eective extinction of Jewish life
as an eect of the Bar Kochba war; wholesale assimilation to the pagan environment, with abandonment of Jewish names; retention of Jewish names
(and identity), but acceptance of some forms of pagan cult; participation in
a (predominantly) gentile public life, but with avoidance of pagan rituals (as
in the ruling by Severus and Caracalla, above); the observance of Judaism
in communities living invisibly in a pagan/gentile environment; Jewish communities constructing monumental synagogues in spite of living in a wider
gentile environmentas unquestionably happened later, when the context in
question had become predominantly Christian; or a substantial Jewish minority, or even majority, in what was nominally a Greek city like any other,
successfully preventing the construction of pagan temples or the communal
observance of pagan public rituals, such as animal sacrifice. A comparable
pattern, from the early period of Christian expansion, in the fourth century,
is presented in the famous account by Epiphanius (Panarion 30, 412) of the
Comes Josephus of Tiberias, a prominent Jewish convert to Christianity of
the time of Constantine. Once converted, so the story in this notoriously unreliable source runs, he attempted to construct churches in Galilee in Tiberias
itself and in Diocaesarea (Sepphoris) and in Capernaum and others (cities,
that is, though Capernaum strictly was not a city). Allegedly, there was one
previous temple, to the Emperor Hadrian, in Tiberias, but it had subsequently
been used as a bath-house (30.12). Since the architecture of a temple is wholly
distinct from that of a bath-house, this idea seems entirely unconvincing.
Probably there had always been a bath-house named after Hadrian. Against
opposition from a Jewish crowd, Josephus is said to have succeeded in constructing a small Christian church on the site, before retreating to Scythopolis,
and later in getting churches built in Diocaesarea and other places.
The impression of a border-zone, where a gentile world, first pagan and
then progressively Christianised in the fourth century, confronted a predominantly Jewish zone, is surely correct. S. is surely justified also in emphasising
the fact that both in the world of gentile cities and even in the relatively remote, un-urbanised Jewish hinterland in the extreme north of Palaestina, Judaism and Jewish observance left very few physical, documentary or literary
traces of its existence in the couple of centuries after the Bar Kochba war.
It did not leave none at all, however. Firstly there is the major necropolis of Beth Shearim, interestingly discussed by S. on pp. 1538, but perhaps
not given quite enough weight as a counter-example to the generally low archaeological and documentary profile of the Jews of Palaestina in (roughly)
22 For the pagan mosaic of, it seems, the early third century, with scenes representing episodes
from the myths of Dionysus and Heracles, found at Sepphoris, see now R. Talgam and Z. Weiss,
The Mosaics of the House of Dionysos at Sepphoris (2003).

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the third century. It is no disrespect to the heroic excavations of the 1930s

1950s to say that the entire corpus of material from Beth Shearim needs to be
reviewed now.23 It is surely extremely significant for the evolution of Jewish
society and Jewish identity in the period that in Shaye Cohens classic article
on epigraphical rabbis we meet no less than 28 persons with the appellation
rabbi, who are either buried at Beth Shearim or are recorded as relatives
of other persons buried there; along with the other examples from places in
Syria Palaestina which Cohen collected, these inscriptions show beyond question that the term was now an established title attached to personal names in
the third person (and not just used as a form of address), and that it could be
found, in various dierent forms, in both Hebrew and Greek (and elsewhere
in Aramaic).24 That is to say, we have perfectly concrete evidence that living
within a wider gentile environment, and being dependent on forms of artistic expression drawn from that environment, as well as the fact of being in
itself systematically bi- (or tri-) lingual (with regular use of Greek), had not
prevented Jewish society from evolving a quite new social status or function,
of a specifically religious kind, which was unique to Judaism. But, to repeat,
the significance of this evidence would be enormously increased if the material could be systematically reviewed to see if more precise datings could be
established.25
In contrast, therefore, to the documentary, or contemporary literary, material from up to CE 135, which provides not a single item of evidence for
the use of rabbi, in the third person, as a descriptive title or appellation,
the inscriptions from Beth Shearim and elsewhere provide strong support for
the traditionally accepted story of the rabbinic movement. Precisely what
role rabbis played in (say) the third century is of course another question. We
happen to have no documents (contracts, marriage-deeds, deeds of divorce)
illustrating Jewish social life in Syria Palaestina in this period, and so cannot
know whether, if any were published, rabbis would make an appearance in
them.
What we do have of course is the Mishnah. On reflection, it is one of the
most baing features of S.s book that he does not discuss the Mishnah as
such at all (it is not even listed in the index). But the very fact of the generation
or compilation of a massive work in Hebrew, hundreds of pages long when
23 For the published evidence from Beth Shearim see B. Mazar, Beth Shearim, I: Report in the
Excavations during 193640: the catacombs 14 (1973); M. Schwabe, B. Lifshitz, II: The Greek
Inscriptions (1974); N. Avigad, III: Report on the Excavations during 19531958: Catacombs 12
23 (1976). The summary account in New Encyclopaedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy
Land I (1993), 23648, does not explain where, if anywhere, catacombs 511 were published, or
how clear a correspondence there is between the dating of the buildings on the surface (alleged
to have been destroyed in the revolt under Gallus in the 350s) on the one hand, and that of
the catacombs on the other. None of the inscriptions includes an explicit date. Note also the
important study by Tessa Rajak, The rabbinic dead and the Diaspora dead at Beth Shearim,
in P. Schfer (ed.), The Talmud Yerushalmi and Graeco-Roman Culture I (1998), 349, repr. in The
Jewish Dialogue with Greece and Rome: Studies in cultural and social interaction (2000), 479.
24 S. Cohen, Epigraphical Rabbis, JQR 72 (1981), 1.
25 I am very grateful to Jodi Magness for a reference to F. Vitto, Byzantine Mosaics at Bet
She arim: New Evidence for the History of the Site,
Atiqot 28 (1996), 115, showing that surface
occupation at least continued into the early Byzantine period.

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written down, whenever that was, and devoted in part to the memory of the
Temple and for the rest to the disputed rules as to how to conduct a Jewish
life in an environment in which pagans were ever-present, must be seen as
an extraordinary, even unique, aspect of the cultural history of the Roman
provinces. Perhaps the co-existence of Greek and Egyptian culture in Egypt
might oer some parallel. But neither Palmyra, where an extensive bi-lingual
corpus of inscriptions oers a real insight into local religious practice,26 nor in
Phoenicia nor in Nabataea/Arabia do we find anything remotely comparable.
Early Syriac literature might oer the closest comparisonbut Christianity
very rapidly becomes dominant in it.
The historical study of the Mishnah demands an approach to a whole series
of factual questions, which can be no more than hinted at here. Does it, within
the existing text, proclaim its own authorship, origin, place of composition,
or purpose? No. If not, is there any later account which does? The astonishing answer is that the nearest to systematic evidence is presented by the Letter
() of Rab Sherira, written in Babylonia in CE 987.27 The recent study
by Margarete Schlter oers what seems to be the first translation into any
European language, and is thus invaluable. But a truly historical treatment
remains to be undertaken. The basis, and the status, of the historical knowledge of the world of the Roman provinces as it had been in the second and
third centuries which prevailed in Babylonia in the late 10th century would
be a taxing and evocative subject. It is significant that while the author, Rab
Sherira Gaon, used the Seleucid era for dating he did so only for the rabbis of Babylonia, beginning (para. 155) with the move of Rav to Babylonia
in the year 530 (CE 219), and in the days of R(abbi Yehuda), and continuing through the second half of the work to the 10th century. No dates are
oered for the Judaean/Palestinian material in the first half of the work. Talmudic references to Rabbi Yehuda, however, universally regard him as having
been the progenitor of the Mishnah, and some make him the contemporary
of a Roman Emperor called Antoninuspossibly Caracalla (CE 21117) or
Elagabal (CE 21822)but do not to my knowledge oer precise dates. Even
if they do, the same question arises.
In other words no context, place or date is supplied for us, either explicitly
within the text of the Mishnah, or (on any normal critical principle) in any
external report (unless detailed study were to show a firm basis for Sheriras
dating). The world from which the Mishnah emerged, and to which it relates, can only be reconstructed step-by-step from within the text itself: from
place-names, technical terms for local institutions or Roman ocial posts,
personal names, allusions to the ruling power. However, as an approximate
date of compilation, let us accept provisionally the normal assumption that it
26

See T. Kaizer, The Religious Life of Palmyra (2002).

Edited by A. Neubauer, Medieval Jewish Chronicles 91887), 346, and by B. M. Lewin
(ed.), Iggeret Rab Sherira Gaon (1920, repr. 1972); see H. L. Strack and G. Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash (1991), 7. See now M. Schlter, Auf welche Weise wurde die
Misha geschrieben? Das Antwortschreiben des Rav Sherira Gaon (1993), providing a textual and
literary analysis, and facsimile of the edition painted in Constantinople in 1566 and of the Berlin
manuscript (Or. 160), and parallel translations of two recensions (pp. 43282).
27

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belongs  CE 200. The task of examining what sort of world we can discern
between its lines was best performed in Martin Goodmans State and Society
(n. 15 above). By contrast, any treatment claiming to provide a valid historical account which proceeds, without further methodological discussion, to
combine with the evidence of the Mishnah other material (sayings or stories)
drawn from later Talmudic or midrashic works, must be open to question.
Any such historical reconstruction, entered on without preliminary study of
the date, social setting and geographical origins of each text used, must by its
nature fly in the face of all basic principles of historical criticism.
Paradoxically, while the history of the Jewish communities of Syria
Palaestina remains, to put it politely, in its infancy, the fact that a work in
Hebrew of the scale and nature of the Mishnah could be compiled, and (as
is evident) could come into use in written form, in an area largely covered
by Greek cities and their territories, is in itself of enormous historical significance. For the clear and undeniable implication is that a complex and detailed
view of the way of life which Jewishness ought to entail could be compiled in
a world in which Jewish communities shared village and city life, in varying
proportions, with their gentile neighbours. The Mishnah presents a world in
which a network of Jewish communities did actually exist, even if they were
largelybut not entirelyinvisible in the archaeological and documentary
record.

6. Rabbinic Judaism
Since the vast majority of the potentially relevant evidence consists of a huge
mass of internally directed and mutually referential rabbinic texts, one possible stratagem, perfectly legitimate in itself, is just to abandon the search for
any anchor in a datable and geographically locatable historical context, and
simply to explore the nature of the world, whether imaginary or real, which
the texts construct. A perfect model of how to do this is in fact provided by the
late Moses Finleys classic The World of Odysseus, analysing the society represented in the text of Homers Iliad and Odyssey, without (for the most part)
asking when, if ever, it had really existed.28 In those terms Catherine Hezsers
impressive book on the rabbinic movement can be fully justified in method.29
But if the claim is to be writing history, namely reconstructing events, social
structures and relationships as they had actually been in the Syria Palaestina
of the second and third centuries (or even in the Judaea of the earlier period) by using the Jerusalem or Babylonian Talmuds, then I submit that we
must suspend belief, not permanently of course, but while the claims of these
works to report veridically on earlier periods are critically examined. This is
of course no more than standard procedure. But, to my knowledge, it has not
been systematically carried out in this area. S.s treatment, on pp. 112f., does
challenge conventional reconstructions, but in my view not radically enough.
Much of the latter part of S.s book is in fact devoted to an analysis of
28
29

M. Finley, The World of Odysseus (1956; 2 1977).

C. Hezser, The Social Structure of the Rabbinic Movement in Roman Palestine (1997).

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151

rabbinic Judaism which is interesting, fruitful and valid in the terms stated,
namely as an analysis of the world represented by the relevant texts. But some
of it is also devoted (pp. 215f.), again extremely fruitfully, to that (apparently)
other, and (supposedly) dierent, Judaism represented by the known synagogues, their mosaic floors and their inscriptions, in Hebrew, Aramaic and
Greek. But if such a contrast is to be drawn, and real history is to be written,
then time, place and social context all become crucial.
So also does any evidence that we can derive from contemporary outside
observers. It is thus disappointing that S. alludes only very briefly (and only
on the ethnarch, or patriarch) to the evidence of Origen, writing in Caesarea
towards the middle of the third century, and does not cite Nicholas de Langes
book of 1976.30 For, while he devotes a valuable section (ch. 5) to The Rabbis
and Urban Culture, he perhaps does not stress suciently the fact that this
will necessarily have meant that the rabbis in question fulfilled their functions
in a bi-lingual and bi-cultural environment, whether in Sepphoris, Tiberias,
Scythopolis, Akko/Ptolemais or Caesarea itself. Origen, coming from Alexandria, certainly did not speak fluent Aramaic or Hebrew, and the discussions
which he reports with learned Jews will have been conducted in Greek.
The same will apply to the sharpest and closest observer of the Palestinian
world of Late Antiquity, Jerome, who rates only one mention in S.s book (p.
118), referring to Letter 57.3.2, on the Patriarch Gamaliel and his influence
with Theodosius I. But, as we can follow step by step in J. N. D. Kellys masterly biography,31 Jerome was resident in Palestine from the mid-380s to his
death in 420. He was not in fact perfectly placed geographically for observation of contemporary Jewish life, in that his monastery was situated in Bethlehem, in the territory of Aelia Capitolina, which had been ethnically cleansed
after the Bar Kochba revolt. But he still provides invaluable evidence, including quite clear references to what we would describe as rabbinic Judaism.
True, he seems to use the word rabbi himself only once, and that when commenting on a passage of the NT where the word is alluded to as an honorific
form of address; he does however at least explain that it means magister.32
But he also refers to having acquired the help of a legis doctor (teacher of the
Law) from Tiberias, much admired among the Hebraei, with whom he studied the book of Chronicles.33 Moreover, in Letter 121, written in about CE
410, he refers to Jewish teaching by using the Greek term deuterosis, literally
repetition, and also deploys sophoi, the wise, as a term for Jewish teachers.
The texts of these two passages will be worth setting out and translating:
Letter 121.10.1920: Quantae traditiones pharisaeorum sint, quas hodie  vocant, et quam aniles fabulae, revolvere nequeo . . . Praeterea, quia
iussum est, ut diebus sabbatorum sedeat unusquisque in domo sua et non
egrediatur nec ambulet de loco, in quo habitat... solent respondere et dicere:
Barachibas et Symeon et Helles, magistri nostri, tradiderunt nobis, ut duo mil30 N. R. M. de Lange, Origen and the Jews: Studies in JewishChristian Relations in ThirdCentury Palestine (1976).
31 J. N. D. Kelly, Jerome: His Life, Works and Controversies (1975).
32 Jerome, Com. In Ev. Matt. IV (PL XXVI, col. 169), on Mtt 23:7.
33 Jerome, Com. In Chron., Praef., in Migne, PL XXIX, cols. 4234.

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lia pedes ambulemus in sabbato.
How numerous the traditiones of the Pharisees are, which they now call
deuteroseis, and what old-wives tales they are, I cannot contemplate . . . Moreover, because it is commanded that on Sabbath days each shall sit in his own
house and not go out or take a walk from the place where he lives . . . they are
accustomed to reply saying, Barachibas and Symeon and Helles, our teachers,
have passed on to us the rule that we may walk 2000 feet on the Sabbath.
Letter 121.10.21: unde doctores eorum , hoc est sapientes, vocantur, et
si quando certis diebus traditiones suas exponunt, discipulis suis solent dicere 
 , id est sapientes docent traditiones.
Their teachers are called sophoi, that is wise men, and if on occasion on fixed
days they expound their traditions, they are accustomed to say to their students
hoi sophoi deuterousin, that is the wise men are teaching the traditions.

Brief as they are, these two passages reveal that there was a characteristic pattern of teaching by the wise; give an example of a possible subjectmatter, namely the rules limiting movement on Shabbat;34 and name three
well-known teachers (magistri), who were not necessarily contemporaries.
Perhaps more important still, the two passages make quite clear that there
was an established vocabulary in Greek which could be deployed in explaining to Jerome what Jewish religious teaching was like. The inscriptions from
the mosaic floors of Late Roman synagogues in Palestine confirm the bi(or tri-) lingual nature of Jewish religious life there, as a function or reflection of a local society exhibiting a mixture of languages, religious adherence
and ethnicity.35 It is worth noting that Jerome, though normally resident in
Bethlehem, did also visit Galilee, and that when he was there he experienced
a sort of Jewish religious tourism, in which sites with Biblical associations
were shown and identified to visitors, in a way which was now common in
the Christianised landscape of Palestine. In this case he records being shown
by local Jews a small ruined village called Elcesi, identified as the home of
the father of the prophet Nahum.36 His evidence on contemporary Palestine,
which would deserve much fuller exploration,37 certainly represents crucial
external testimony to the role and character of the Jewish elementbut as
one element among others.
Jerome also provides some of the most important evidence for the
new factor which S. rightly emphasises, especially in ch. 7, A Landscape
Transformednamely the (almost) all-embracing symbolic Christianisation
of the land, whereby not only sites mentioned in the New Testament but
also some from the Old were given a Christian meaning, and received organ34

The rule relating to 2000 cubits is attested in M. Eruvin 4:5 and elsewhere.
For a sketch of these patterns of diversity in the Late Roman Near East see F. Millar, Ethnic
Identity in the Roman Near East, 325450: Language, Religion and Culture, Mediterranean
Archaeology 11 (1998), 159, and also the very stimulating essays in A. Kofsky and G. Stroumsa
(eds.), Sharing the Sacred: Religious Contacts and Conflicts in the Holy Land, FirstFifteenth
Centuries (1998).
36 Jerome, Com. in Naum, Praef. (Corpus Christianorum, series Latina LXXVIA, 526).
37 See now, however, S. Weingarten, The Saints Saints: Hagiography and Geography in Jerome
(2005), esp. ch. 2: The vita Hilarionis: The Christianisation of the Roman World, and ch. 4:
Jeromes ep. 108 and the Christian Appropriation of the Holy Land.
35

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153

ised commemoration and architectural expression, with churches springing

up almostbut not quiteeverywhere. A perfect introduction to the Christianisation of the Palestinian landscape is provided by Jeromes famous Letter
108, written in 408, and describing Paulas journey through the country in the
mid-380s. The additional Christian elements which he was able to incorporate
when composing his up-dating of Eusebius Onomasticon also provide vivid
further evidence. The eect was that Jewish Palestine was now under more
sustained ideological pressure even than it had been in the phase of GraecoRomanisation mentioned above. S. is thus wholly justified in stressing this
factor; but he has missed two important and challenging works of the 1990s,
by R. L. Wilken and Joan Taylor.38
Time and place are vital to this whole story, and it seems clear that Lower
Galilee, around the cities of Sepphoris/Dioscaesarea and Tiberias, continued
in the period of Christianisation to be a frontier-zone between predominantly
Jewish and predominantly gentile territory. We cannot pin-point the precise
moment when each city first received a bishop. But with the aid of G. Fedaltos
priceless reference-work on the bishoprics of the East and their holders,39 we
can at least establish by what date an episcopal see is attested. It emerges that
most places in Palestine had bishops in the fourth century, while a significant
number of others, among them Tiberias, appear with a bishop only in the
fifth; but no bishops are attested for Tabor and Diocaesarea/Sepphoris until
518. It is crucial to our understanding of at least one aspect of Jewish Palestine that north of the Sepphoris/Tiberias line there was quite an extensive
zone with no actual cities until we reach Tyre on the coast in the north-west,
and Caesarea Panias under Mt Hermon to the north-east. A similar zone of
villages was to be found in Gaulanitis on the east side of the upper Jordan,
with no city until Damascus in the north and, as new Imperial foundations,
Philippopolis and Maximianopolis in the east. The inscriptions from this area
reveal a mixed population in a rural context.40 If this sketch of the distribution of the Jewish population of Palaestina is more or less correctnamely
many Jews living in predominantly gentile areas, but with a concentration in
the unurbanised north, where they may have been a majority (and probably
with a border-zone of alternating predominance in between), it may not be
at all easy, or safe, to generalise, either about the impact of Christianity, and
the spread of congregations, and of actual churches, in cities and villages, or
about Judaism. To what places and times do the works which make up the
corpus of Palestinian rabbinic writings relate? If, as S. suggests, and I believe
rightly, the construction of monumental synagogues, often with extensive mosaic floors containing both visual representations and inscriptions, is to be
seen as a response to the challenge of Christianity, in what precise areas are
38 R. L. Wilken, The Land Called Holy: Palestine in Christian History and Thought (1992);
Joan E. Taylor, Christians and the Holy Places: the Myth of Jewish-Christian Origins (1993).
39 G. Fedalto, Hierarchia Ecclesiastica Orientalis III (1988). For the sees of Palaestina (eventually Palaestina I and II, and in the south Palaestina III, or Salutaris), see vol. II, 999f.
(Jerusalem); 101431 (Palaestina I); 10329 (Palaestina II); 103946 (Palaestina III).
40 See R. C. Gregg and D. Urman, Jews, Pagans and Christians in the Golan Heights: Greek
and other Inscriptions of the Roman and Byzantine Eras (1996).

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these architecturally ambitious communal structures to be found, and when

were they built?
Time and place might be vital also in considering whether what moderns
have called rabbinic and synagogal Judaism are simply aspects of the religious experience of the same communitiesor, if they are thought to have
been in conflict, whether they actually related to dierent places and times.

7. A Late Antique Rebirth?

S. devotes several very valuable chapters (ch. 810) to the Late Antique period, and ones which I believe to represent a major step forward. So I venture
in conclusion, firstly, to make one very tentative suggestion, and secondly to
take the opportunity of pointing to major advances, since the publication of
S.s book, in the archaeology of synagogues. Firstly, as regards the central
document, or expression, of Late Antique Judaism in Palestine, namely the
Palestinian or Jerusalem, Talmud, the reader of the standard text-books,
whether the revised Schrer or Stembergers masterly revision of Strack,41
will find loosely converging indications which would suggest completion in
the latter part of the fourth century CE, or at the latest the early fifth. So
we might take it as a working hypothesis that this Talmud reflects the situation of Jews in Palestine in the period of something like a century and a
half to two centuries since the redaction of the Mishnahbut not later. Questions of dating, and of the evolution of the wider context, are vital here. The
Christianisation, and the Christian monumentalisation, of the landscape of
Palestine did indeed begin immediately after Constantines conversion, as we
see vividly reflected in the report of the Bordeaux Pilgrim of CE 333. But the
achievement of a real Christian dominance took time, and it would be right to
see the period between Constantine and Theodosius I (CE 37995) as representing a situation of balance, or unresolved conflict, between paganism and
Christianity, a situation perfectly portrayed in Jeromes brilliantly journalistic
evocation of the Life of Hilarion, as a monk near Gaza in the first half of the
century (see Weingarten, n. 37 above).
What is more, the establishment in a city of a Christian community and a
bishop did not necessarily mean that Christians were dominant, or that the
public practice of paganism had been repressed. Notoriously, when Porphyry
took up the bishopric of Gaza in 395, the main pagan temples of the city
were still open, and the Christian congregation numbered only a few hundred out of a population of perhaps 1520,000. The decisive victory of the
Christian side came only in the first couple of years of the fifth century, when
Imperial aid was invoked, and the temples were destroyed. In other words, to
come round to the point, might it be the case that, even allowing for immense
diculties over textual transmission, both as regards overall structure and
the wording of individual passages, we ought to read this product of rabbinic
Judaism, namely the Palestinian Talmud, as reflecting a stage at which the
41 E. Schrer, History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ, ed. G. Vermes and F.
Millar, I (1973), 789; Strack and Stemberger, op. cit. (n. 27 above), 1879.

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typical gentile neighbour was still pagan?

What then of the synagogues of Late Antique Palestine, some with richly
decorated mosaic floors containing representational art, on occasion incorporating elaborate zodiacs, and with inscriptions which may be in Hebrew,
Aramaic, Greek, or all three, and may provide records of ocials, contributors or craftsmen. S. gives considerable importance, in the last three chapters
of his book, to the emergence of synagogues as visible communal religious
centres, in towns and particularly in villages, and to the fact that, in words or
images or both, their mosaics carried explicit religious messages. Moreover,
he sees this process as reflecting, and being stimulated by, the spread of Christianity, and by the diusion of actual churches. So I ought to make clear that,
whatever qualifications or additions one might wish to supply, in my view
this conception of a conscious re-assertion of Jewish identity is correct, and
of considerable importance.
The fact that synagogues in this period were not formally rabbinic institutions, each with a Rabbi to conduct religious observance, in the modern
style, but were communal ones, is a triviality. But I cannot myself see anything in the evidence to show that the learned individuals who earned the
honorific appellation Rabbi, which had long come to be attached to their
names, will not have been members of such communities, and may not have
taught, or oered opinions, or even given judgement, on the types of question reflected in the Talmud. One of the benefactors recorded in an Aramaic
inscription from the synagogue at Hammat Gader actually is a rabbi, Rab
Tanh.um the Levite.42 So I must admit to remaining puzzled as to why a
division, or contrast, between synagogal Judaism on the one hand and rabbinic Judaism on the other should be posited (see also Fine, n. 52 below).
What we have is two sharply contrasted bodies of material, which mostly do
not overlapbut sometimes (see below) in fact do. And it may also be the
case, if the Palestinian Talmud in fact reflects the fourth-century situation,
while the more elaborate synagogues which S. rightly sees as expressing a reassertion of Judaism typically belong later, in the late fourth, fifth, sixth and
seventh centuries CE, that the two bodies of material represent dierent stages
in the history of Palestinian Judaism. As was claimed earlier, place and time
are fundamental.
In any case, notoriously, there is one place where archaeology and epigraphy on the one hand and rabbinic texts on the other coalesce, namely in the
mosaic floor of the synagogue at Rehov, a few kilometres south of Scythopolis/Beth Shean, excavated in 197480, and not yet the subject of a detailed
final report.43 This synagogue is briefly mentioned by S. (on pp. 2601 and
42 E. L. Sukenik, The Ancient Synagogue of El-Hammeh (Hammath-by-Gadara) (1935), J.B. Frey, Corpus Inscriptionum Judaicarum II, no. 857. In the Late Antique period the baths of
Hammath-Gader (in the territory of Gadara) were a well-known pleasure-resort for gentiles,
see Y. Hirschfeld et al., The Roman Baths at Hammat Gader: Final Report (1997); note esp. the
plan of the locality, with the placing of the baths, the synagogue and the theatre (p. 3), and the
publication of the numerous Greek inscriptions of the Late Antique period by Leah di Segni
(pp. 185266). Once again, therefore, we encounter a site showing the co-existence of languages,
religions and social systems.
43 The available reports and discussions are summed up by the excavator, Fanny Vitto, in New

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280), but surely, even in our present state of very incomplete information, deserved more attention. What is claimed in the reports so far available is that
the archaeological record shows three successive phases: (1) an original structure of the fourth century CE, destroyed by fire; (2) rebuilding at the end of
the fifth century CE; (3) extensive modifications between the fifth and the seventh centuries CE, above all in the construction of a narthex, or entrance-hall,
at the north end.
The most remarkable feature of phase (3) is the 29-line Hebrew inscription from the mosaic floor of the narthex containing prescriptions on tithing
and the Sabbatical Year. More remarkably still, the successive sections of the
text closely resemble passages from Talmudic texts: yDemai and Shevi
it VI;
Tosefta Shevi
it IV; Sifre Deuteronomy 51. Photos, transcriptions and translations of this important text are readily available.44 We thus have documentary
versions (also providing evidence for spelling and letter-forms for these texts
as they were at the relevant period) which are centuries earlier than any of the
medieval mss on which printed texts depend, and are found in the context of
a synagogue lying in the territory of a Greek, and now Christian, city which
in the sixth century was in a spectacular phase of urban development.45 In
the light of this inscription, the notion of a division between rabbinic and
synagogal Judaism seems bizarre.
But that is not all, for the summary account, with references to earlier literature, published in 1993 in the New Encyclopaedia (to my knowledge, the
latest discussion) records that the columns which belonged to phase (2), attributed to the late fifth century, bore inscriptions in red paint (all, it seems,
unpublished), written in Hebrew or Aramaic, and containing benedictions,
dedications, a list of the priestly courses and a copy of a letter dealing with the
laws of tithes and the Sabbatical year (the same text as that later incorporated
in the mosaic of the narthex?).46 So, as it seems, the documentary expression
of rabbinic Judaism at Rehov goes back further still, and is here contained
in a painted text, and thus one whose lettering must have been much closer to
manuscript lettering than mosaic lettering could be. So, were the people who
selected these passages, first, for painting on a column and then (as it seems,
considerably later) for incorporation in the floor-mosaic, implicitly quoting
from established written texts which were already in circulation? It might well
be the case that this synagogue, like others of the fifthseventh centuries, postdates the main period of the redaction of rabbinic texts in Palestine. Or, are
we witnessing the deployment of stretches of text which had not yet been
incorporated in larger works? In either case we are brought, thanks to the
discovery of this synagogue, into direct contact with the written discourse of
rabbinic Judaism in a way which medieval manuscripts by their nature cannot make possibleor at least we would be so brought if the final report on
Encyclopaedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land IV (1993), 12724.
44 See e.g. R. and A. Ovadiah, Hellenistic, Roman and Early Byzantine Mosaic Floors in Israel
(1987), pp. 1204 (nos. 2068) and Pl. CXXXVVI.
45 See the brilliant survey by Y. Tsafrir and G. Foerster, Urbanism at Scythopolis-Bet Shean
in the Fourth to Seventh Centuries, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 51 (1997), 85.
46 Vitto, op. cit. (n. 43), p. 1273.

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the synagogue were actually to be published.

The same complaint could most decidedly not be made concerning the Sepphoris synagogue, whose remarkable mosaic floor was discovered in 1993,
and was the subject of excavations directed by Ehud Netzer and Zeev Weiss
in 19934 and 19968. S. is of course familiar with Netzer and Weisss preliminary, and extremely suggestive, publication of 1996,47 and treats the interpretation oered there with some scepticism (pp. 248f.). But now, only twelve
years after the initial discovery, we have Zeev Weisss magnificent final report,
which, in its detailed treatment of the archaeological and iconographic evidence, and its interpretation of the complex programme of the floor mosaic,
along with relevant rabbinic material, represents, in my view, a quite new level
of sophistication in the study of Late Antique Judaism.48 In a word, I accept
that the viewer, or reader, of this mosaic, as he or she entered the synagogue,
encountered first a mosaic panel representing the Angels visit to Abraham
and Sarah, and then two showing the Binding of Isaac. Moving on beyond
the central panel representing the zodiac, the viewer, or worshipper, came to
elements portraying the consecration of Aaron, and others recalling the Temple and its sacrifices. Given the long-established tradition that it had been on
the site of the Binding that the Temple had been established, a coherent theme
links the successive panels of the mosaic.
It has to be admitted that there are only a relatively small number of Late
Antique synagogues from within any of the (eventually) three separate Roman provinces of Palaestina which, in either elaboration of architecture, in
the deployment of visual messages on their mosaic floors, or in the scale and
complexity of the inscribed or painted texts which they contain, can contribute to supporting S.s thesis of a conscious reassertion of Jewish identity. Opinions will dier on which of the known synagogues meet these criteria (and we may, for the moment anyway, ignore the parallel evolution of
Samaritan synagogues). But any reasonable list would include Beth Alpha
(firmly dated to the sixth century); Beth Shean; Caesarea;
Ein-Geddi; Gaza,
Maioumas; Hammath Gader (above); Hammath Tiberias; Hosefa; Jericho;
Khirbet Susiya (where a late Hebrew inscription mentions two Rabbis, each
described as the priest (); Ma
on; Rehov; and now Sepphoris, dated to
the earlier fifth century. There remain of course many features which remain
highly debatable. As indicated above, the idea of a division between rabbinic
and synagogal Judaism seems to me to be rendered problematic by our documentary evidence. But was there, on the other hand a special role in the
synagogue for men of priestly or levitical descent? Note that the Aramaic inscriptions from the aisle-mosaic of the Sepphoris synagogue, now published
for the first time, record a man described as the priest () and another
described as the Levite (), both it seems in their capacity as contributors
47 Z. Weiss and E. Netzer, Promise and Redemption: the Synagogue Mosaic of Sepphoris
(1996).
48 Z. Weiss, The Sepphoris Synagogue: Deciphering an Ancient Message through Its Archaeological and Socio-Historical Contexts (2005), briefly and appreciatively reviewed by the present
author in Scripta Classica Israelica 45 (2005), 321.

journal of jewish studies

158

to the cost of the mosaic floor.49 Similarly, how important was the conceptualisation, or memory, of the Temple in Late Antique Judaism? 50 Once again,
Jeromes testimony is suggestive. In his Commentary on Jeremiah, written in
Palestine in about 41520, he records:51
But after the captivity which took place under Vespasian and Titus and afterwards under Hadrian, the ruins of Jerusalem are due to remain until the end of
time, although the Jews think that Jerusalem is to be restored to them, golden
and adorned with gems, and that once again (there are to be) victims and sacrifices and assemblies of the saints and the rule of on earth of the saviour Lord.

Or, finally, how do we interpret the zodiacs which play so central a part in
several synagogue floor-mosaics? 52

8. Conclusion
All of the above amounts, in essence, to saying that I believe the broad propositions put forward by S. to be correct, and certainly worth the attention of all
students of Judaism. My comments on the earlier phases of the story, up to
the third century C.E., amount to acceptance of his working principle, which
he describes (p. 2) as moderately positivistic, and are aimed only at suggesting that both within Judaism and (importantly) in the pagan world outside
and around it, there is rather more empirical evidence to be moderately positivistic about than he has actually used. As for the last phase, Late Antiquity,
between the material evidence of the synagogues on the one hand and the
vast, and dicult, corpus of rabbinic writing on the other (explicitly brought
together in the material from the Rehov synagogue), and between S.s sweeping and challenging survey on the other hand, and Zeev Weisss interpretation
of the Sepphoris synagogue on the other, we can indeed now claim to be able
to see very significant features of a re-born Jewish identity.53
49

Weiss, op. cit. (n. 46), 203 (ins. 3); 205 (ins. 6).
See now Y. Eliav, The Temple Mount, the Rabbis, and the Poetics of Memory, HUCA
74 (2003), 49, and note the dating from the destruction of the Temple found on the Jewish
Aramaic tomb inscriptions from Zoar of the fourthsixth centuries CE; see S. Stern, Calendar
and Community (2001), 87f.
51 Jerome, Com. in Ieremiam 4:15 (Corpus Christianorum, series Latina, LXXIV, pp. 1856).
52 I have no view on this question, but see now J. Magness, Helios and the Zodiac Cycle in
Ancient Palestinian Synagogues, in W.-G. Dever and S. Gitin (eds.), Symbiosis, Symbolism and
the Power of the Past: Canaan, Ancient Israel and Their Neighbours from the Late Bronze Age
through Roman Palaestina (2003), 363, also discussing the role of priests in the Late Antique
synagogue, and now also S. Fine, Between Liturgy and Social History: Priestly Power in Late
Antique Palestinian Synagogues, JJS 56 (2005), 1, and Weiss, op.cit. (n. 48 above).
53 I am very grateful for comments and criticisms on the rash and sweeping sets of propositions contained in this review article to Hannah Cotton, Martin Goodman, Jodi Magness and
Sacha Stern. I also thank Jodi Magness very warmly for letting me have a copy of her unpublished discussion paper on Imperialism and Jewish Society, given at the SBL in 2003, and Yaron
Eliav for a copy of his illuminating review of in Prooftexts 24 (2004), 116. The paper has been
greatly improved, but I could not claim to have been able to address adequately all the points
raised. Responsibility for remaining faults lies with the author.
Since the above was written I have had the pleasure of visiting Sepphoris with Zeev Weiss. It
is clear that the excavations, still continuing, have the potential to contribute significantly to our
conception of complex and evolving communal and religious relationships in this area.
50