As several scholars have pointed out, most of the activities in the 1^st-century synagogue were performed in the city gate prior to the existence of separate public buildings. As to the public reading of Torah, the activity unique to the first-century synagogue, political, social, and religious factors all indicate that this form of worship began in the Persian period when some of the exiled Jews returned to their homeland from Babylonia. The earliest evidence is preserved in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, where Ezra is said to have read the Law in the city gate (see especially Neh 8-9). The Persians are known to have codified laws of other conquered lands, e.g., Egypt, as part of their colonial strategy, but it is only in Yehud (Judah) that we find evidence of public ritual recitation of law.

This public reading and (re-)interpretation of codified law was motivated by a wish of the Persian imperial government and the Jewish leadership in Jerusalem to perform thoroughgoing social changes in Judah in the middle of the fifth century bce during the reign of the Persian king Artaxerxes I (465-423 bce). The reading and interpretation of law were meant to legitimize the social changes in the province, such as, e.g., the prohibition of mixed marriages. In order that these reforms be reinforced in the province as a whole, public readings of the law were introduced in the already existing public assemblies of towns and cities.

These public assemblies with torah readings were held in the city gates of any given city where such gates existed (i.e., in walled cities; non-walled cities and towns would have other open spaces that would be used for the same purposes). The city gate was the public place where local administration, judicial activities etc. took place (see, e.g., Ruth 4:1-12; Amos 5:10-15; Isa 29:21; Job 29:7-25, cf. Prov 24:7). Since this was a place where people generally would meet, this was also the place where people tended to hang out, gossiping or doing other idle things (e.g., Ps 69:13). Public assemblies would take place at specific times, though. There is some evidence that, in the early periods, ritual readings of Torah would also be done in conjunction with public fasts and festivals.

Though archaeological remains are wanting, at some point in the Hellenistic period, i.e., around the third century bce, when city gates were constructed differently and no longer functioned as places for assemblies, separate public buildings for the activities that previously took place in the city gate were beginning to be built (Levine, 2000). These buildings would have been of the same kind as the buildings we find later in the 1^st century bce and ce (e.g., the public buildings at Gamla and Qiryat Sefer), buildings that were then called synagogues ("assembly houses").

The voluntary association synagogues, on the other hand, had different beginnings. The organizational form is Greek in origin and was introduced in the land of Israel during the Hellenistic period towards the end of the third century bce. One of the earliest sources indicating the existence of such associations is found in Ben Sira (51:23), where a "house of learning" (Greek: oikos paideia; Hebrew: Bet Midrash) is mentioned. This educational institution was run privately and would thus represent specific interests and a certain way of interpreting Torah.

In the early days, beginning in the Persian period, the reading and interpretation of the law were strictly controlled by the religio-political authorities in Jerusalem and directly linked to the political goals the rulers desired to achieve. However, after a period of stability and prosperity under the Ptolemaic rulers, the rulers’ grip was loosened, and people were freer to assemble and read the Torah for themselves. This development coincided with the introduction in Palestine of the Greek way of organizing voluntary associations, and so a new kind of institution was born, an institution that would also go under the name synagogue.

Such associations would gather in any kind of building, including private houses, but would strive towards gathering in separate buildings, adapted to the activities of the group and indicating its status. These buildings would be similar to the buildings in which the public town or village assemblies gathered, designed for reading, teaching, and discussion.

This means that it is not possible to distinguish buildings utilized by one type of institution from buildings used by the other type using only archaeological data pertaining to the building itself. The immediate archaeological context would have to be taken into account, as would literary sources and inscriptions, wherever such additional information is at hand.

If we return to the debate on this web site about the identification of the Jericho edifice, for example, this problem cannot be solved until it has been stated what type of synagogue—if any—we are talking about. Stacy’s argument against identifying the Jericho building as a synagogue, namely, that the synagogue would only have served a small part of the community, is only valid if "synagogue" is defined as a public village assembly. It is indeed possible, and even likely, that the Jericho building was used by a voluntary association, a particular group of people, and as such, according to ancient standards, it qualifies for the designation synagogue. The identification of a building as a synagogue is not only a matter of archaeological analysis but also a matter of definition.

If the above summary of my theory explains the rise of the synagogue in the land of Israel, what about the origins of the Diaspora synagogue?

The first thing to emphasize is that, for the Jewish communities in the Diaspora, the situation was politically and socially different compared to Palestine. Returning to the first century, synagogues outside Palestine were regarded by non-Jews, and also by some Jews, as associations and were subject to roughly the same laws, with some notable exceptions, as other (non-Jewish) associations. Were these association synagogues "exported" from the land of Israel, or was the stream of influence going in the opposite direction?

The solution, I believe, rests in analyzing the socio-political situation of the Jewish Diaspora communities over time. If we do so, we soon find that, in our search for the origins of the synagogue, we cannot ignore the existence of multiple Jewish temples outside the land of Israel.

We know from several sources that the cult centralization, which was a political move, was not immediately successful in Palestine (cf. Ackerman, 1992), and was even more disregarded in the Diaspora. In earlier periods, then, Jews in many places in the Diaspora gathered around Jewish sacrificial cult in temples, not around torah-reading rituals in synagogues (e.g., Elephantine and Leontopolis in Egypt,⁴ Casiphia in Babylonia,⁵ Lachish and Beersheva in Idumea⁶). Further, it is very likely that the institutions referred to as proseuchai in inscriptions dating from 3^rd and 2^nd century bce Egypt were, in fact, Jewish temples, and not synagogues as is commonly assumed.⁷

Jewish communities outside Palestine thus most likely gathered around sacrificial cult much like the associations of other religious and ethnic groups included sacrificial worship among their activities. Eventually, in the case of Egypt and probably elsewhere too, with the arrival of immigrants from Palestine, cult centralization ideology made its way into the Diaspora and torah-reading rituals were incorporated into the liturgy. Thus, in the Diaspora, there would have been a gradual development away from temple rituals to synagogue liturgy, thus giving birth to the institution of the synagogue in these countries. Socially, or non-liturgically, and institutionally there was, then, continuity between temples and synagogues, the liturgical aspect alone representing the shift from temple to synagogue.

Spatially, the Jewish temple buildings would still have been used, although in some cases architecturally modified to fit new liturgical practices.⁸ This explains the use in the first century of the term proseuche to refer to synagogue institutions. The earliest archaeological remains of synagogue buildings unearthed so far are found in Delos, Greece (Binder, 1999), and Ostia, Italy (Runesson, 1999, 2001a, 2002) and date to the first century bce and first century ce respectively.

The above reconstruction of the rise of the synagogue in the land of Israel and in the Diaspora challenges many old assumptions and will, hopefully, stimulate further discussion on our way towards a new consensus. Regardless of which way the majority will eventually choose to go, it seems to me that future scholarly exchange on the subject cannot avoid dealing with issues coming to the fore as a result of a focus on all four research areas outlined here. Likewise, it is difficult to see how any investigation into the ancient synagogue could neglect addressing questions relating to the basic distinction between village assemblies and voluntary associations, institutions that were both designated by synagogue terms.

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Footnotes

(back) ⁴We have evidence of such temples from Papyri (Cowley, nos. 30, 32, 33 = Porten, nos. B19, B21, B22) and Josephus: AJ 13.62-73; BJ 7.426-436. Cf. Isa 19:19.

(back) ⁵Ezra 8:17. For a discussion of this interpretation of Ezra 8:17, see Browne, 1916; Blenkinsopp, 1992, 238.

(back) ⁶The archaeological remains date to the Hellenistic period before Idumea was incorporated into the Hasmonean state (i.e., before the area was under the political control of Judea), at which time these temples were destroyed.

(back) ⁷For proseuche as originally having been a temple term, see Runesson, 2001b, 429-436.

(back) ⁸An interesting inscription in this regard, mentioning the addition of a new hall to the proseuche, is JIGRE no. 28.

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Ackerman, S. 1992. Under Every Green Tree: Popular Religion in Sixth-Century Judah. Harvard Semitic Monographs, 46. Atlanta: Scholars Press.

Binder, D. D. 1999. Into the Temple Courts: The Place of the Synagogues in the Second Temple Period. Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series, 169. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature.

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