Transformations of Judaism Under Graeco Roman Rule121

journal of jewish studies, vol. lvii, no. 1, spring 2006

Review Article

Transformations of Judaism underGraeco-Roman Rule: Responses to Seth Schwartzs

Imperialism and Jewish Society

Fergus MillarOriental Institute, Oxford

1. Introduction

Byaccident, Seth Schwartzs powerful and persuasive essay on Jewish his-tory in Judaea/Syria Palaestina in the Graeco-Roman period was notreviewed in JJS when it was first published in 2001. So the issue of a paper-back edition in 2004 oers a welcome opportunity to make amends.1 Such anopportunity 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 Ju-daism, or Judaisms, revealed by rabbinic writings on the one hand, and theelaborate synagogues with mosaic floors constructed in these centuries on theother. But, while it, for instance, makes good use (esp. pp. 26374) of sixth-century piyyutim, it could not really be said to tackle the external position ofthe Jewish communities of Palestine in the sixth and seventh centuries, the at-titudes 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 turnto 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 specialiston the Christian culture of Late Antiquity, is implicitly to admit, with re-gret, the generally modest conceptual and scholarly level of historical writingon this period from within Jewish Studies, still marked by a not sucientlycritical approach to rabbinic sources, and to the essential question of whathistorical evidence they can oer about what, and by an inadequate grasp ofthe wider backgroundpagan and then Christianwithin which not just theJews of the Diaspora, but those of Judaea/Palaestina itself, lived. The absenceof the relevant perspective in many modern studies can be seen at once in thetitles of two famous works by one of the justly revered masters of rabbinicstudies, Saul Lieberman, Greek in Jewish Palestine (1942) and Hellenism inJewish Palestine (1950). The implications of both titles are wholly mislead-

1 Seth Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 BCE to 640 CE. Princeton UniversityPress, Princeton / Oxford, 2001 (pb., 2004), xi, 320 pp. ISBN 0-691-08850-0 (hardback); 0-691-11781-0 (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. De-roche et al. (eds.),Mlanges G. Dagron (Travaux et Mmoires 14, 2002), 57.

140 journal of jewish studies

ing: there was no moment after the Bar Kochba war when the area which, asa province, the Romans now called first Syria Palaestina, then Palaestinaand finally Palaestina I, II and III (or Salutaris), was predominantly Jew-ish. On the contrary, it was, first, divided between an expanding networkof Greek cities with their dependent territories, and then, at least symbol-ically, colonised by a comparable network of Christian communities, bish-oprics and churches. There was indeed, in the Late Empire, a genuinely Jew-ish Palestinebut it was confined to the relatively remote and un-urbanisedregion of north-eastern Galilee and the western Golan. Elsewhere, there werealso significant Jewish communities, but ones living in a predominantly gen-tile environmentpagan and then Christianin a way which was not entirelydissimilar 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 sev-eral dierent ways: in its capacity to see the successive phases, or contexts, ofJewish life in Judaea/Palaestina in perspective, and to compare them; in itsawareness of the wider Imperial framework; and in its methodological self-consciousness, 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 tracethe impact of dierent forms of foreign domination on the inner structure ofJewish society, primarily in Palestine. Its thesis is that a conscious, collective,Jewish identity was a function of internal (and for nearly a century, from themiddle 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 lo-cal forms of self-expression, such as might be traceable in the archaeologicalrecord. As we will see, in my view he moves too quickly here, saying too lit-tle about the two successive independent Jewish states formed by rebellion in6673/4 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 pop-ulation still existed (that is, a population whose ancestors and descendantsidentified themselves as Jewish), the evidence accessible to us, whether tex-tual, documentary or archaeological, reveals no distinctive Jewish identity.Since this section is the most challenging part of the book, we will come backto it later. It will be sucient to stress now how radicalbut also how po-tentially salutaryit is to see in these paradoxical terms the Jewish societywhich produced, in theMishnah, written in Hebrew, the foundational text forRabbinic Judaism.

transformations of judaism under graeco-roman rule 141

Finally, he argues (see the helpful Summary on pp. 1416), the rise ofChristianity, and the Christianisation of the Late Roman state, stimulated there-emergence of a conscious Jewish identity, expressed both in the extensivecorpus of rabbinic writing and in the construction and adornment of syna-gogues.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, thisbook 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 out-break of the First Revolt, S. provides a fine essay in historical interpretation,stressing also the significance of the recognition by foreign rulers (AntiochusIII, or the Romans) of the Torah as representing the law which could properlybe enforced on Jews by their own leaders. Jewish identity rested on the recog-nition 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 stressthan S. does to the High Priesthood and to the group of dignitaries whomthe Gospels (for instance) represent as associated with the High Priests in theexercise of authority. The fact that both socially (should we talk of an aris-tocracy?) and constitutionally (was there something called the Sanhedrin,namely a council with a defined membership, or are we dealing with ad hocmeetings of councillors called by the High Priest?), this group or body is veryhard to define, does not detract from its evident centrality. S. does not discussthe thesis of Jamie McLaren,3 that there was in fact no constitutionally de-fined council called the Sanhedrin. Secondly, more weight could have beengiven to the role of the Herodian kings and their extensive family, in relationto the Temple, in the exercise of internal authority, and in external represen-tation before the Emperors.4 This last role will have extended to the death ofAgrippa 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 thesesources could have contributed to a much-enriched picture of what Jewishidentity amounted to for the man in the street. I still hold that we should beopen to the idea that it is Johns Gospel, not the Synoptics, which gives us thefullest 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 thatin the period from BCE to 66 CE there always were collective Jewish institu-tions, 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.


authority internally, and represented the Jewish community externally, beforeSeleucid 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 toconsidering the structure, identity and religious character of the two indepen-dent Jewish states of 6673/4 and 1325 CE. For Rome, both wars were majorevents; the siege of Jerusalem in CE 70 required five months, and considerablymore 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 theareas from which rebel Jewish forces could be drawn, the forms of self-imageand collective ideology presented by the coinage of the two brief Jewish states,and the quite extensive side-lights on Jewish life under these two independentregimes now presented by perishable documents on parchment or papyrus.As a moderate positivist, S. could have made much more use than he doesof the primary documents now available. The relevant part of the survey ofNear Eastern papyrology which was published in 1995 7 would now requireextensive revision, in the light both of the publication of new texts,8 and ofAda Yardenis magnificent two-volume Textbook.9 Even more immediatelyrelevant is the fact that a number of documents previously dated to the ear-lier second century are nowtoo recently for S. to have taken account of theissues raisedargued to belong to the First Revolt.10 This possibility is per-haps particularly significant in the case of DJD II, no. 19, a deed of divorcebetween a Jewish man and woman, drawn up in Masada in Year 6probablynot, as originally proposed, of the province of Arabia (so CE 111), but of theindependent state created by the First Revolt of CE 66 onwards. The docu-ment is written in Aramaic, and if it makes no reference to any authoritiesor institutions of the short-lived Jewish state, it still belongs incontestably inthe context of a Jewish community: the divorced wife is declared to be free tobecome 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 inRome, 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 Textsfrom Nah. al H. ever and Other Sites (DJD XXVII, 1997); Y. Yadin, J. C. Greenfield, A. Yardeniand 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 JudaeanDesert III (2000).

10 See H. M. Cotton, The Languages of the Legal and Administrative Documents from theJudaean Desert, Zeitschrift fr Papyrologie und Epigraphik 125 (1999), 220; D. Goodblatt, Dat-ing 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. Berlinand J. A. Overman (eds.), The First Jewish Revolt: Archaeology, History and Ideology (2002), 157.


which we now possess throw any light on what Jewish society was like, inits governing institutions, legal procedures, customs or religious observance,when the yoke of foreign domination was twice briefly thrown o. Without itbeing appropriate here to go into the much more extensive documents fromthe Bar Kochba war, with their characteristic references to years of the Re-demption 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, wecan also now take advantage of a fair number of documents dating from be-tween the wars, and potentially illuminating Jewish values and social insti-tutions in the six decades concerned. Once again, the priceless find of doc-uments from the Wadi Murabba at comes into play. For instance, we mightwant to discern some forerunners of S.s de-judaised, or assimilated, Jews ofpost-135 in the Greek re-marriage contract of CE 124 from Bethbassi in thetoparchy 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 institu-tions (unless, as Hannah Cotton suggests to me, the dierentiation betweensons 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, andalso seems (almost certainly) to refer to the law of Moses? It would not bein the least surprising if there were, as at all times, diering degrees of attach-ment to the Jewish Law. What is certain at least is that those elements whichrejected both assimilation and foreign domination were strong enough to fuela revolt which, seen from the Roman side, was once again not a minor localdisturbance but a major military challenge.12

What is certain also is that, as Hannah Cotton has pointed out severaltimes,13 out of some 60 known documents stretching from the First Revoltto near the end of the Second, and reflecting Jewish life in Judaea and alsoover the permeable border with the province of Arabia, there is not a sin-gle reference to a rabbi, and a fortiori not to a rabbi as a source of religiousor legal authority, nor to any actual court applying Jewish law. Still less isthere any hint, during either Revolt or in the period between them, of theexistence of a rabbinic Nasi, as opposed of course to the title as used byand of Bar Kochba himself.14 S. is properly sceptical here, sharing this scep-ticism 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 BarKochba 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, inM. Goodman (ed.), The Jews in a Graeco-Roman World (1998), 167; Jewish Jurisdiction underRomanRule: Prologomena, inM. Labahn and J. Zargenberg (eds.),Zwischen den Reichen: NeuesTestament und Rmische Herrschaft (TANZ 36, 2002), 5.

14 See esp. M. Jacobs,Die Institutionen des jdischen Patriarchen (1995), and now Peter Schae-fer, 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 valuablereview of developments in the intervening period (2000).


But, by bringing out more clearly the importance of contemporary docu-ments, 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 orthe Babylonian Talmud, both of which were put together centuries later, pre-serve veridical evidence of a chain of evolution of rabbinic authority startingvery soon after the destruction of the Temple, then the case needs to be madeon the basis of a rigorous analysis of the material (and not just the repeti-tion of anecdotes from later sources), and above all by relating it to the nowextensive 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 Re-volt), in S.s book, covering CE 66135, and with that a certain, rather sur-prising, old-fashionedness of approach, in not using all the quite extensivedocumentary evidence now available.

5. Syria Palaestina after the Second Revolt

Where S. is, from one perspective, incontestably right, is his view that, fora period of two centuries or soand perhaps indeed moreafter 135, Jewsin what was now Syria Palaestina have a strikingly low profile in literary,legal, documentary and archaeological evidence. The uncomfortable propo-sition which S. puts forward to account for this is that a Jewish population,or a population of Jewish descent, was still there (since otherwisefailing amass conversion of gentiles to the religion which they could find prescribedin the Biblethe consciously and assertively Jewish community of the LateImperial period could never have emerged), but that its members were, in thisperiod, content to live, by and large, by gentile norms. As S. in fully aware, weare, 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 con-sistently Jewish is by definition dicult to isolate; and furthermore in thisperiod there is relatively little documentary evidence for private or communallife in Syria Palaestina as lived by any ethnic group.16 Also, if there were Jewswho abandoned Judaism altogether, they will have ceased, at least within oneor 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 mas-sive scale of the paganisation, or what one might call Graeco-Romanisation,which now took place in Palestine. Almost everywhere, what we actually seeis not in fact a Jewish world whose Jewishness has become attenuated, but apagan (and later Christian) world, in which there were also Jewish communi-ties.

16 The epigraphic evidence remains to be collected in the great current project for a Corpus In-scriptionum 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).


First, there were vast losses of life and destruction of villages in the war it-self (50 notable fortified positions and 985 villages destroyed, and 580,000mil-itary 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 theexceptional scale and ferocity of the conflict). Second, there was the founda-tion of Aelia Capitolina as a Roman colonia with pagan temples, from whoseterritory Jews are reported to have been banned. Third, there was the re-shaping of the ocial landscape of Palestine by the refounding of existingplaces as Greek cities, thus adding them to those which already existed allalong the coast, and in Samaria at Sebaste, or, in the case of Scythopolis,in the Jezreel Valley: from south to north, Beth Guvrin/Eleutheropolis; Em-maus/Nicopolis; Lydda/Diospolis; Mabartha, re-founded as Flavia Neapolis;Caporcotani/Legio, later Maximinianopolis; and Sepphoris-Diocaesarea inGalilee, joining with Tiberias on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee, andHippos on its east. The full significance of this process is brought out for thefirst time only by the very important book of Nicole Belayche, published inthe same year, 2001, as Imperialism and Jewish Society, and which obviouslyS. could not have used.17

The prime relevance of Belayches book is its emphasis on local structuresand circumstances, and its reflection of these in maps: contrast for instancethe map on p. 52, The Religious Geography of Judaea and the Decapolis in66 CE, with that on p. 280, The Religious Geography of Palestine in the thirdcentury. Judaea/Palaestina had always had a mixed Jewish and gentile pop-ulation; but by the third century, while there were (perhaps) once again someJews in Aelia Capitolina, those living in Caesarea, Diospolis and Scythopolis,as in Hippos and Gadara, will have represented no more than a substantialproportion of the population of cities whose nature and structure were Greekand (it seems) pagan. One thing which Belayches invaluable book does lackis a map showing the geography of known pagan temples, as attested by lit-erary, documentary or archaeological evidence, to match the map of theatreson 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 andTiberias see below). Even in such places, where public pagan sacrifices neces-sarily took place, at least until the fourth or early fifth century CE, a sort ofcompromise was in principle available, at any rate for Jews whose commitmentto the Law was not too rigid. Ulpian reports that Septimius Severus and hisson Antoninus (Caracalla) had laid down that Jews could hold city oces(honores) and that functions could be imposed on thembut only such as didnot oend their superstitio.18 Short of the eective operation of any such com-promise, we have to imagine the Jewish communities, in those Graeco-Romancities in Palestine where they represented a minority, as conducting their col-

17 N. Belayche, Iudaea-Palaestina: the Pagan Cults in Roman Palestine (Second to Fourth Cen-tury) (2001).

18 Digest L.2.3.3, see A. Linder, The Jews in Roman Imperial Legislation (1987), no. 2.


lective lives, following the Law and, in some cases building synagogues, incontexts which were not wholly dissimilar to those which obtained in the Di-aspora (and not forgetting that marginal zone as between native Jewish terri-tory and the gentile world represented by neighbouring cities like Tyre, Gerasaor 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 theTabula Imperii Romaniseries, itself a priceless source of historical information.19 Synagogues are at-tested archaeologically in a scatter of places in southern Palestine, includingones which were or became Greek cities, such as Ascalon, Gaza and Beth Gu-vrin/Eleutheropolis; also at Caesarea and in Scythopolis and its territory (thefamous cases of Beth Alpha and Rehov), and at Hammat Gader in the terri-tory of Gadara, and in the cities of Tiberias and Sepphoris/Diocaesarea. Butthe bulk of archaeologically attested synagogues belong very clearly in thenon-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 synagoguesnotoriously keeps changing, and Belayches label, secondfourth centuries,should probably be seen as misleading. It seems more likely now that the char-acteristic period for synagogue construction was the fifthsixth centuries (thesixth 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 generalpattern is correct, it has profound implications for Schwartzs argument, aswe 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, arealmost invisible in our epigraphic and archaeological evidence. Given themassive scale of losses, the creation of a pagan colonia as a substitute forJerusalem, from whose territory Jews were excluded, and the step-by-stepcreation of a network of Greek cities, whose territories between them cameto occupy almost the whole provincial area, we might be struck rather by thefact that Jewish communal life, Jewish observance and the use of Hebrew sur-vived at all. On the other hand, it could be thought that the low profile ofJewish communities in this period might be due rather to the low level of theepigraphic habit in most of these cities, compared (for instance) to those ofAsia Minoran equally pagan environment, where Jews have left a signifi-cant number of communal inscriptions.21

S.s particular contribution to the interpretation of what Palestinian Ju-daism 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 withJewish 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 Ju-daicarum II (1952), no. 1165, for the Aramaic inscription mentioning King Ioustinos (eitherJustin I, 51827, or II, 56578).

21 See W. Ameling (ed.), Inscriptiones Iudaicae Orientis II: Kleinasien (2004).


dedications in Scythopolis, or someone with a Jewish name acting as agora-nomos in Ioppe. S.s important discussion highlights, for instance, coins (p.136f.), inscriptions and pagan artin particular the well-known pagan mo-saics of Sepphoris (p. 142f.) and Tiberias (p. 145f.), places which appear inthe rabbinic sources as centres of rabbinic learning.22 It thus becomes possi-ble to imagine various contrasting patterns: eective extinction of Jewish lifeas an eect of the Bar Kochba war; wholesale assimilation to the pagan en-vironment, with abandonment of Jewish names; retention of Jewish names(and identity), but acceptance of some forms of pagan cult; participation ina (predominantly) gentile public life, but with avoidance of pagan rituals (asin the ruling by Severus and Caracalla, above); the observance of Judaismin communities living invisibly in a pagan/gentile environment; Jewish com-munities constructing monumental synagogues in spite of living in a widergentile environmentas unquestionably happened later, when the context inquestion had become predominantly Christian; or a substantial Jewish mi-nority, or even majority, in what was nominally a Greek city like any other,successfully preventing the construction of pagan temples or the communalobservance of pagan public rituals, such as animal sacrifice. A comparablepattern, from the early period of Christian expansion, in the fourth century,is presented in the famous account by Epiphanius (Panarion 30, 412) of theComes Josephus of Tiberias, a prominent Jewish convert to Christianity ofthe time of Constantine. Once converted, so the story in this notoriously un-reliable source runs, he attempted to construct churches in Galilee in Tiberiasitself and in Diocaesarea (Sepphoris) and in Capernaum and others (cities,that is, though Capernaum strictly was not a city). Allegedly, there was oneprevious temple, to the Emperor Hadrian, in Tiberias, but it had subsequentlybeen used as a bath-house (30.12). Since the architecture of a temple is whollydistinct from that of a bath-house, this idea seems entirely unconvincing.Probably there had always been a bath-house named after Hadrian. Againstopposition from a Jewish crowd, Josephus is said to have succeeded in con-structing 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 predomi-nantly Jewish zone, is surely correct. S. is surely justified also in emphasisingthe fact that both in the world of gentile cities and even in the relatively re-mote, un-urbanised Jewish hinterland in the extreme north of Palaestina, Ju-daism and Jewish observance left very few physical, documentary or literarytraces 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 necropo-

lis of Beth Shearim, interestingly discussed by S. on pp. 1538, but perhapsnot given quite enough weight as a counter-example to the generally low ar-chaeological 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 episodesfrom 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).


the third century. It is no disrespect to the heroic excavations of the 1930s1950s to say that the entire corpus of material from Beth Shearim needs to bereviewed now.23 It is surely extremely significant for the evolution of Jewishsociety and Jewish identity in the period that in Shaye Cohens classic articleon epigraphical rabbis we meet no less than 28 persons with the appellationrabbi, who are either buried at Beth Shearim or are recorded as relativesof other persons buried there; along with the other examples from places inSyria Palaestina which Cohen collected, these inscriptions show beyond ques-tion that the term was now an established title attached to personal names inthe third person (and not just used as a form of address), and that it could befound, in various dierent forms, in both Hebrew and Greek (and elsewherein Aramaic).24 That is to say, we have perfectly concrete evidence that livingwithin a wider gentile environment, and being dependent on forms of artis-tic expression drawn from that environment, as well as the fact of being initself systematically bi- (or tri-) lingual (with regular use of Greek), had notprevented 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 mate-rial could be systematically reviewed to see if more precise datings could beestablished.25

In contrast, therefore, to the documentary, or contemporary literary, ma-terial from up to CE 135, which provides not a single item of evidence forthe use of rabbi, in the third person, as a descriptive title or appellation,the inscriptions from Beth Shearim and elsewhere provide strong support forthe traditionally accepted story of the rabbinic movement. Precisely whatrole rabbis played in (say) the third century is of course another question. Wehappen to have no documents (contracts, marriage-deeds, deeds of divorce)illustrating Jewish social life in Syria Palaestina in this period, and so cannotknow whether, if any were published, rabbis would make an appearance inthem.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 assuch at all (it is not even listed in the index). But the very fact of the generationor 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 theExcavations during 193640: the catacombs 14 (1973); M. Schwabe, B. Lifshitz, II: The GreekInscriptions (1974); N. Avigad, III: Report on the Excavations during 19531958: Catacombs 1223 (1976). The summary account inNew Encyclopaedia of Archaeological Excavations in the HolyLand I (1993), 23648, does not explain where, if anywhere, catacombs 511 were published, orhow clear a correspondence there is between the dating of the buildings on the surface (allegedto have been destroyed in the revolt under Gallus in the 350s) on the one hand, and that ofthe catacombs on the other. None of the inscriptions includes an explicit date. Note also theimportant 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 TheJewish 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 surfaceoccupation at least continued into the early Byzantine period.


written down, whenever that was, and devoted in part to the memory of theTemple and for the rest to the disputed rules as to how to conduct a Jewishlife in an environment in which pagans were ever-present, must be seen asan extraordinary, even unique, aspect of the cultural history of the Romanprovinces. Perhaps the co-existence of Greek and Egyptian culture in Egyptmight oer some parallel. But neither Palmyra, where an extensive bi-lingualcorpus of inscriptions oers a real insight into local religious practice,26 nor inPhoenicia nor in Nabataea/Arabia do we find anything remotely comparable.Early Syriac literature might oer the closest comparisonbut Christianityvery rapidly becomes dominant in it.The historical study of theMishnah demands an approach to a whole series

of factual questions, which can be no more than hinted at here. Does it, withinthe existing text, proclaim its own authorship, origin, place of composition,or purpose? No. If not, is there any later account which does? The astonish-ing 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 studyby Margarete Schlter oers what seems to be the first translation into anyEuropean language, and is thus invaluable. But a truly historical treatmentremains to be undertaken. The basis, and the status, of the historical knowl-edge of the world of the Roman provinces as it had been in the second andthird centuries which prevailed in Babylonia in the late 10th century wouldbe a taxing and evocative subject. It is significant that while the author, RabSherira Gaon, used the Seleucid era for dating he did so only for the rab-bis of Babylonia, beginning (para. 155) with the move of Rav to Babyloniain the year 530 (CE 219), and in the days of R(abbi Yehuda), and contin-uing through the second half of the work to the 10th century. No dates areoered for the Judaean/Palestinian material in the first half of the work. Tal-mudic references to Rabbi Yehuda, however, universally regard him as havingbeen the progenitor of the Mishnah, and some make him the contemporaryof a Roman Emperor called Antoninuspossibly Caracalla (CE 21117) orElagabal (CE 21822)but do not to my knowledge oer precise dates. Evenif 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 anyexternal report (unless detailed study were to show a firm basis for Sherirasdating). The world from which the Mishnah emerged, and to which it re-lates, can only be reconstructed step-by-step from within the text itself: fromplace-names, technical terms for local institutions or Roman ocial posts,personal names, allusions to the ruling power. However, as an approximatedate of compilation, let us accept provisionally the normal assumption that it

26 See T. Kaizer, The Religious Life of Palmyra (2002).27 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, Intro-duction to the Talmud and Midrash (1991), 7. See now M. Schlter, Auf welche Weise wurde dieMisha geschrieben? Das Antwortschreiben des Rav Sherira Gaon (1993), providing a textual andliterary analysis, and facsimile of the edition painted in Constantinople in 1566 and of the Berlinmanuscript (Or. 160), and parallel translations of two recensions (pp. 43282).


belongs CE 200. The task of examining what sort of world we can discernbetween its lines was best performed in Martin Goodmans State and Society(n. 15 above). By contrast, any treatment claiming to provide a valid histor-ical account which proceeds, without further methodological discussion, tocombine 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 ofthe date, social setting and geographical origins of each text used, must by itsnature 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 inHebrew of the scale and nature of the Mishnah could be compiled, and (asis evident) could come into use in written form, in an area largely coveredby Greek cities and their territories, is in itself of enormous historical signifi-cance. For the clear and undeniable implication is that a complex and detailedview of the way of life which Jewishness ought to entail could be compiled ina world in which Jewish communities shared village and city life, in varyingproportions, with their gentile neighbours. The Mishnah presents a world inwhich a network of Jewish communities did actually exist, even if they werelargelybut not entirelyinvisible in the archaeological and documentaryrecord.

6. Rabbinic Judaism

Since the vast majority of the potentially relevant evidence consists of a hugemass of internally directed and mutually referential rabbinic texts, one possi-ble stratagem, perfectly legitimate in itself, is just to abandon the search forany anchor in a datable and geographically locatable historical context, andsimply to explore the nature of the world, whether imaginary or real, whichthe texts construct. A perfect model of how to do this is in fact provided by thelate Moses Finleys classic The World of Odysseus, analysing the society rep-resented in the text of Homers Iliad andOdyssey, without (for the most part)asking when, if ever, it had really existed.28 In those terms Catherine Hezsersimpressive book on the rabbinic movement can be fully justified in method.29

But if the claim is to be writing history, namely reconstructing events, socialstructures and relationships as they had actually been in the Syria Palaestinaof the second and third centuries (or even in the Judaea of the earlier pe-riod) by using the Jerusalem or Babylonian Talmuds, then I submit that wemust suspend belief, not permanently of course, but while the claims of theseworks to report veridically on earlier periods are critically examined. This isof course no more than standard procedure. But, to my knowledge, it has notbeen systematically carried out in this area. S.s treatment, on pp. 112f., doeschallenge 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 M. Finley, The World of Odysseus (1956; 2 1977).29 C. Hezser, The Social Structure of the Rabbinic Movement in Roman Palestine (1997).


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 someof it is also devoted (pp. 215f.), again extremely fruitfully, to that (apparently)other, and (supposedly) dierent, Judaism represented by the known syn-agogues, their mosaic floors and their inscriptions, in Hebrew, Aramaic andGreek. 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 onlyon the ethnarch, or patriarch) to the evidence of Origen, writing in Caesareatowards the middle of the third century, and does not cite Nicholas de Langesbook of 1976.30 For, while he devotes a valuable section (ch. 5) to The Rabbisand Urban Culture, he perhaps does not stress suciently the fact that thiswill necessarily have meant that the rabbis in question fulfilled their functionsin a bi-lingual and bi-cultural environment, whether in Sepphoris, Tiberias,Scythopolis, Akko/Ptolemais or Caesarea itself. Origen, coming fromAlexan-dria, certainly did not speak fluent Aramaic or Hebrew, and the discussionswhich 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 influencewith Theodosius I. But, as we can follow step by step in J. N. D. Kellys mas-terly biography,31 Jerome was resident in Palestine from the mid-380s to hisdeath in 420. He was not in fact perfectly placed geographically for observa-tion of contemporary Jewish life, in that his monastery was situated in Bethle-hem, in the territory of Aelia Capitolina, which had been ethnically cleansedafter the Bar Kochba revolt. But he still provides invaluable evidence, includ-ing 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 com-menting on a passage of the NT where the word is alluded to as an honorificform 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 theLaw) from Tiberias, much admired among the Hebraei, with whom he stud-ied the book of Chronicles.33 Moreover, in Letter 121, written in about CE410, he refers to Jewish teaching by using the Greek term deuterosis, literallyrepetition, 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, quiaiussum est, ut diebus sabbatorum sedeat unusquisque in domo sua et nonegrediatur nec ambulet de loco, in quo habitat... solent respondere et dicere:Barachibas et Symeon et Helles, magistri nostri, tradiderunt nobis, ut duo mil-

30 N. R. M. de Lange, Origen and the Jews: Studies in JewishChristian Relations in Third-Century 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.


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 . . . More-over, because it is commanded that on Sabbath days each shall sit in his ownhouse and not go out or take a walk from the place where he lives . . . they areaccustomed 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 upsilontilde, 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 studentshoi sophoi deuterousin, that is the wise men are teaching the traditions.

Brief as they are, these two passages reveal that there was a characteris-tic pattern of teaching by the wise; give an example of a possible subject-matter, namely the rules limiting movement on Shabbat;34 and name threewell-known teachers (magistri), who were not necessarily contemporaries.Perhaps more important still, the two passages make quite clear that therewas an established vocabulary in Greek which could be deployed in explain-ing to Jerome what Jewish religious teaching was like. The inscriptions fromthe mosaic floors of Late Roman synagogues in Palestine confirm the bi-(or tri-) lingual nature of Jewish religious life there, as a function or reflec-tion of a local society exhibiting a mixture of languages, religious adherenceand ethnicity.35 It is worth noting that Jerome, though normally resident inBethlehem, did also visit Galilee, and that when he was there he experienceda sort of Jewish religious tourism, in which sites with Biblical associationswere shown and identified to visitors, in a way which was now common inthe Christianised landscape of Palestine. In this case he records being shownby local Jews a small ruined village called Elcesi, identified as the home ofthe father of the prophet Nahum.36 His evidence on contemporary Palestine,which would deserve much fuller exploration,37 certainly represents crucialexternal testimony to the role and character of the Jewish elementbut asone 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 LandscapeTransformednamely the (almost) all-embracing symbolic Christianisationof the land, whereby not only sites mentioned in the New Testament butalso some from the Old were given a Christian meaning, and received organ-

34 The rule relating to 2000 cubits is attested in M. Eruvin 4:5 and elsewhere.35 For a sketch of these patterns of diversity in the Late RomanNear East see F.Millar, Ethnic

Identity in the Roman Near East, 325450: Language, Religion and Culture, MediterraneanArchaeology 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, FirstFifteenthCenturies (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.


ised commemoration and architectural expression, with churches springingup almostbut not quiteeverywhere. A perfect introduction to the Chris-tianisation of the Palestinian landscape is provided by Jeromes famous Letter108, written in 408, and describing Paulas journey through the country in themid-380s. The additional Christian elements which he was able to incorporatewhen composing his up-dating of Eusebius Onomasticon also provide vividfurther evidence. The eect was that Jewish Palestine was now under moresustained ideological pressure even than it had been in the phase of Graeco-Romanisation mentioned above. S. is thus wholly justified in stressing thisfactor; 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 LowerGalilee, around the cities of Sepphoris/Dioscaesarea and Tiberias, continuedin the period of Christianisation to be a frontier-zone between predominantlyJewish and predominantly gentile territory. We cannot pin-point the precisemoment when each city first received a bishop. But with the aid ofG. Fedaltospriceless reference-work on the bishoprics of the East and their holders,39 wecan at least establish by what date an episcopal see is attested. It emerges thatmost places in Palestine had bishops in the fourth century, while a significantnumber of others, among them Tiberias, appear with a bishop only in thefifth; but no bishops are attested for Tabor and Diocaesarea/Sepphoris until518. It is crucial to our understanding of at least one aspect of Jewish Pales-tine that north of the Sepphoris/Tiberias line there was quite an extensivezone 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 ofvillages 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 andMaximianopolis in the east. The inscriptions from this areareveal a mixed population in a rural context.40 If this sketch of the distribu-tion of the Jewish population of Palaestina is more or less correctnamelymany Jews living in predominantly gentile areas, but with a concentration inthe unurbanised north, where they may have been a majority (and probablywith a border-zone of alternating predominance in between), it may not beat all easy, or safe, to generalise, either about the impact of Christianity, andthe spread of congregations, and of actual churches, in cities and villages, orabout Judaism. To what places and times do the works which make up thecorpus of Palestinian rabbinic writings relate? If, as S. suggests, and I believerightly, the construction of monumental synagogues, often with extensive mo-saic floors containing both visual representations and inscriptions, is to beseen 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 (even-tually 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: Greekand other Inscriptions of the Roman and Byzantine Eras (1996).


these architecturally ambitious communal structures to be found, and whenwere 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 re-ligious experience of the same communitiesor, if they are thought to havebeen 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 pe-riod, and ones which I believe to represent a major step forward. So I venturein conclusion, firstly, to make one very tentative suggestion, and secondly totake the opportunity of pointing to major advances, since the publication ofS.s book, in the archaeology of synagogues. Firstly, as regards the centraldocument, or expression, of Late Antique Judaism in Palestine, namely thePalestinian 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 inthe latter part of the fourth century CE, or at the latest the early fifth. Sowe might take it as a working hypothesis that this Talmud reflects the situ-ation of Jews in Palestine in the period of something like a century and ahalf to two centuries since the redaction of the Mishnahbut not later. Ques-tions of dating, and of the evolution of the wider context, are vital here. TheChristianisation, and the Christian monumentalisation, of the landscape ofPalestine did indeed begin immediately after Constantines conversion, as wesee vividly reflected in the report of the Bordeaux Pilgrim of CE 333. But theachievement of a real Christian dominance took time, and it would be right tosee the period between Constantine and Theodosius I (CE 37995) as repre-senting a situation of balance, or unresolved conflict, between paganism andChristianity, a situation perfectly portrayed in Jeromes brilliantly journalisticevocation of the Life of Hilarion, as a monk near Gaza in the first half of thecentury (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 thepublic practice of paganism had been repressed. Notoriously, when Porphyrytook up the bishopric of Gaza in 395, the main pagan temples of the citywere still open, and the Christian congregation numbered only a few hun-dred out of a population of perhaps 1520,000. The decisive victory of theChristian side came only in the first couple of years of the fifth century, whenImperial aid was invoked, and the temples were destroyed. In other words, tocome round to the point, might it be the case that, even allowing for immensediculties over textual transmission, both as regards overall structure andthe wording of individual passages, we ought to read this product of rabbinicJudaism, 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.


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 incor-porating elaborate zodiacs, and with inscriptions which may be in Hebrew,Aramaic, Greek, or all three, and may provide records of ocials, contribu-tors or craftsmen. S. gives considerable importance, in the last three chaptersof his book, to the emergence of synagogues as visible communal religiouscentres, in towns and particularly in villages, and to the fact that, in words orimages or both, their mosaics carried explicit religious messages. Moreover,he sees this process as reflecting, and being stimulated by, the spread of Chris-tianity, 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 viewthis conception of a conscious re-assertion of Jewish identity is correct, andof considerable importance.The fact that synagogues in this period were not formally rabbinic insti-

tutions, each with a Rabbi to conduct religious observance, in the modernstyle, but were communal ones, is a triviality. But I cannot myself see any-thing in the evidence to show that the learned individuals who earned thehonorific appellation Rabbi, which had long come to be attached to theirnames, will not have been members of such communities, and may not havetaught, or oered opinions, or even given judgement, on the types of ques-tion reflected in the Talmud. One of the benefactors recorded in an Aramaicinscription from the synagogue at Hammat Gader actually is a rabbi, RabTanh.um the Levite.42 So I must admit to remaining puzzled as to why adivision, or contrast, between synagogal Judaism on the one hand and rab-binic 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 donot overlapbut sometimes (see below) in fact do. And it may also be thecase, if the Palestinian Talmud in fact reflects the fourth-century situation,while the more elaborate synagogues which S. rightly sees as expressing a re-assertion of Judaism typically belong later, in the late fourth, fifth, sixth andseventh centuries CE, that the two bodies of material represent dierent stagesin the history of Palestinian Judaism. As was claimed earlier, place and timeare fundamental.In any case, notoriously, there is one place where archaeology and epigra-

phy on the one hand and rabbinic texts on the other coalesce, namely in themosaic floor of the synagogue at Rehov, a few kilometres south of Scythopo-lis/Beth Shean, excavated in 197480, and not yet the subject of a detailedfinal 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 ofHammath-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. theplan of the locality, with the placing of the baths, the synagogue and the theatre (p. 3), and thepublication 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


280), but surely, even in our present state of very incomplete information, de-served more attention. What is claimed in the reports so far available is thatthe archaeological record shows three successive phases: (1) an original struc-ture of the fourth century CE, destroyed by fire; (2) rebuilding at the end ofthe fifth century CE; (3) extensive modifications between the fifth and the sev-enth 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 inscrip-

tion from the mosaic floor of the narthex containing prescriptions on tithingand the Sabbatical Year. More remarkably still, the successive sections of thetext closely resemble passages from Talmudic texts: yDemai and Shevi it VI;Tosefta Shevi it IV; Sifre Deuteronomy 51. Photos, transcriptions and transla-tions of this important text are readily available.44 We thus have documentaryversions (also providing evidence for spelling and letter-forms for these textsas they were at the relevant period) which are centuries earlier than any of themedieval mss on which printed texts depend, and are found in the context ofa synagogue lying in the territory of a Greek, and now Christian, city whichin the sixth century was in a spectacular phase of urban development.45 Inthe light of this inscription, the notion of a division between rabbinic andsynagogal Judaism seems bizarre.But that is not all, for the summary account, with references to earlier lit-

erature, published in 1993 in the New Encyclopaedia (to my knowledge, thelatest discussion) records that the columns which belonged to phase (2), at-tributed 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 thelaws of tithes and the Sabbatical year (the same text as that later incorporatedin the mosaic of the narthex?).46 So, as it seems, the documentary expressionof rabbinic Judaism at Rehov goes back further still, and is here containedin a painted text, and thus one whose lettering must have been much closer tomanuscript lettering than mosaic lettering could be. So, were the people whoselected these passages, first, for painting on a column and then (as it seems,considerably later) for incorporation in the floor-mosaic, implicitly quotingfrom established written texts which were already in circulation? It might wellbe the case that this synagogue, like others of the fifthseventh centuries, post-dates the main period of the redaction of rabbinic texts in Palestine. Or, arewe witnessing the deployment of stretches of text which had not yet beenincorporated in larger works? In either case we are brought, thanks to thediscovery of this synagogue, into direct contact with the written discourse ofrabbinic Judaism in a way which medieval manuscripts by their nature can-not 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.


the synagogue were actually to be published.The same complaint could most decidedly not be made concerning the Sep-

phoris synagogue, whose remarkable mosaic floor was discovered in 1993,and was the subject of excavations directed by Ehud Netzer and Zeev Weissin 19934 and 19968. S. is of course familiar with Netzer and Weisss pre-liminary, and extremely suggestive, publication of 1996,47 and treats the inter-pretation oered there with some scepticism (pp. 248f.). But now, only twelveyears after the initial discovery, we have Zeev Weisss magnificent final report,which, in its detailed treatment of the archaeological and iconographic evi-dence, and its interpretation of the complex programme of the floor mosaic,along with relevant rabbinic material, represents, in my view, a quite new levelof sophistication in the study of Late Antique Judaism.48 In a word, I acceptthat the viewer, or reader, of this mosaic, as he or she entered the synagogue,encountered first a mosaic panel representing the Angels visit to Abrahamand Sarah, and then two showing the Binding of Isaac. Moving on beyondthe central panel representing the zodiac, the viewer, or worshipper, came toelements portraying the consecration of Aaron, and others recalling the Tem-ple and its sacrifices. Given the long-established tradition that it had been onthe site of the Binding that the Temple had been established, a coherent themelinks 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 Ro-man provinces of Palaestina which, in either elaboration of architecture, inthe deployment of visual messages on their mosaic floors, or in the scale andcomplexity of the inscribed or painted texts which they contain, can con-tribute to supporting S.s thesis of a conscious reassertion of Jewish iden-tity. Opinions will dier on which of the known synagogues meet these cri-teria (and we may, for the moment anyway, ignore the parallel evolution ofSamaritan 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, eachdescribed as the priest (); Ma on; Rehov; and now Sepphoris, dated tothe earlier fifth century. There remain of course many features which remainhighly debatable. As indicated above, the idea of a division between rabbinicand synagogal Judaism seems to me to be rendered problematic by our doc-umentary evidence. But was there, on the other hand a special role in thesynagogue for men of priestly or levitical descent? Note that the Aramaic in-scriptions from the aisle-mosaic of the Sepphoris synagogue, now publishedfor the first time, record a man described as the priest () and anotherdescribed 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 Archaeo-logical and Socio-Historical Contexts (2005), briefly and appreciatively reviewed by the presentauthor in Scripta Classica Israelica 45 (2005), 321.


to the cost of the mosaic floor.49 Similarly, how important was the conceptu-alisation, or memory, of the Temple in Late Antique Judaism? 50 Once again,Jeromes testimony is suggestive. In his Commentary on Jeremiah, written inPalestine in about 41520, he records:51

But after the captivity which took place under Vespasian and Titus and after-wards under Hadrian, the ruins of Jerusalem are due to remain until the end oftime, although the Jews think that Jerusalem is to be restored to them, goldenand adorned with gems, and that once again (there are to be) victims and sacri-fices 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 inseveral synagogue floor-mosaics? 52

8. Conclusion

All of the above amounts, in essence, to saying that I believe the broad propo-sitions put forward by S. to be correct, and certainly worth the attention of allstudents of Judaism. My comments on the earlier phases of the story, up tothe third century C.E., amount to acceptance of his working principle, whichhe describes (p. 2) as moderately positivistic, and are aimed only at suggest-ing that both within Judaism and (importantly) in the pagan world outsideand around it, there is rather more empirical evidence to be moderately posi-tivistic 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 thevast, and dicult, corpus of rabbinic writing on the other (explicitly broughttogether in the material from the Rehov synagogue), and between S.s sweep-ing and challenging survey on the other hand, and Zeev Weisss interpretationof the Sepphoris synagogue on the other, we can indeed now claim to be ableto see very significant features of a re-born Jewish identity.53

49 Weiss, op. cit. (n. 46), 203 (ins. 3); 205 (ins. 6).50 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 JewishAramaic tomb inscriptions from Zoar of the fourthsixth centuries CE; see S. Stern, Calendarand 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 andthe Power of the Past: Canaan, Ancient Israel and Their Neighbours from the Late Bronze Agethrough Roman Palaestina (2003), 363, also discussing the role of priests in the Late Antiquesynagogue, and now also S. Fine, Between Liturgy and Social History: Priestly Power in LateAntique 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 proposi-tions contained in this review article to Hannah Cotton, Martin Goodman, Jodi Magness andSacha Stern. I also thank Jodi Magness very warmly for letting me have a copy of her unpub-lished discussion paper on Imperialism and Jewish Society, given at the SBL in 2003, and YaronEliav for a copy of his illuminating review of in Prooftexts 24 (2004), 116. The paper has beengreatly improved, but I could not claim to have been able to address adequately all the pointsraised. 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 ourconception of complex and evolving communal and religious relationships in this area.

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