This article scrutinizes the synagogue category and explores what value might be gained if it were to become inclusive of polytheistic occupational guilds comprising of Judeans and members from other ethnicities. It is argued that the traditional, narrow, understanding of ancient synagogues as ethnic-based groups functions to preserve the notion of a fixed and bounded practice of Judaism in antiquity, housed in synagogues. If this synagogue concept is allowed to persist, the insights gained from critical theory for understanding the fluidity and heterogeneity of Judean identity, ethnicity, and cult practice will be counteracted. The thirty other synagogues analyzed in this study are craft guilds that are often neglected in scholarship or classified as something other than synagogues. The act of excluding these guilds from the synagogue category falls outside of ancient linguistic practices and is at odds with the increasing insistence that synagogues from antiquity should be classified under the association genus.
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Philip A. Harland, Associations, Synagogues, and Congregations: Claiming a Place in Ancient Mediterranean Society (Minnesota: Fortress, 2003), 28-29; John S. Kloppenborg, “Collegia and Thiasoi: Issues in Function, Taxonomy and Membership,” in Voluntary Associations in the Graeco-Roman World, ed. John S. Kloppenborg and Stephen G. Wilson (London: Routledge, 1996), 16-30, esp. 23. See section 4 below for discussion.
Josephus, Ant. 14.213-216, 225-227, 235, 244-246, 256-261; 16.42-3, 162-165, 300-305. For a full list of synagogue references in Josephus’s writings, see the index in Runesson et al., Ancient Synagogue, 322.
Samuel Krauss, Synagogale Altertümer (Berlin: Harz, 1922), 103.
Krauss, Synagogale, 182. Krauss’s comprehensive (by 1922) study does, however, include mention of Jewish trade guilds in Palestine (pp. 200-201, 209) and Alexandria (pp. 261-65), but these do not shape Krauss’s understanding of the “synagogue” institution as one which cut through ᾽Ιουδαϊσµός.
Victor Tcherikover, Hellenistic Civilization and the Jews (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1959).
Tcherikover, Hellenistic Civilization, 297; cf. 344-55, 299-303 (emphasis added).
James Tunstead Burtchaell, From Synagogue to Church: Public Services and Offices in the Earliest Christian Communities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 201-27.
Erich S. Gruen, Diaspora: Jews amidst Greeks and Romans (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), 126.
Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 170. Levine, though, understands the “synagogue” to have served Judean populations specifically. This may have been the case in the early formation of Judean immigrant populations. But Gideon Bohak has shown that such immigrant populations may not have continued to exist as bounded communities for many generations after the initial establishment of the settlement. See Gideon Bohak, “Ethnic Continuity in the Jewish Diaspora in Antiquity,” in Jews in the Hellenistic and Roman Cities, ed. John R. Bartlett (New York: Routledge, 2002), 175-92.
Harland, Associations, 28-29; Kloppenborg, “Collegia and Thiasoi,” 23.
See Josephus, War 6.114-115; cf. Miller, “Number of Synagogues,” 62.
Robert, Nouvelles, 46-47; cf. Applebaum, “Organization,” 480.
See Trebilco, Jewish Communities, 30; and Harland, “Acculturation,” 223-27. Only twenty-three Judean epitaphs have been located in Hierapolis, but this does not suggest a small Judean population; there are less than 400 ancient epitaphs in total from the city. For the Judean inscriptions, see now, Miranda, “La comunità giudaica,” 109-55. For other inscriptions from Hierapolis, see Walther Judeich, “Inschriften,” in Altertümer von Hierapolis, ed. Carl Humann et al., JdI 4 (Berlin: Reimer, 1898), 67-181; and Fabrizio A. Pennacchietti, “Nuove iscrizioni di Hierapolis Frigia,” Atti della Accademia delle Scienze di Torino: ii classe di scienze morale storiche e filologiche 101 (1966-1967): 287-328.
Tullia Ritti, “Nuovi dati su una nota epigrafe sepolcrale con stefanotico da Hierapolis di Frigia,” Scienze dell’antichità storia archeologia antropologia 6-7 (1992-1993): 41-68, esp. 59-60; Ameling, Kleinasien, 422.
Erich Ziebarth, Das griechische Vereinswesen (Stuttgart: Hirzel, 1896), 129; Applebaum, “Organization,” 480-83; Miranda, “ ‘La comunità giudaica,’ ” 140-45.
Harland, “Acculturation,” 237. For the inscriptions from the architraves, see Tullia Ritti, Fonti letterarie ed epigrafiche, Hierapolis scavi e ricerche 1 (Rome: Bretschneider, 1985), 108-13.
Harland, “Acculturation,” 238; cf. Trebilco, Jewish Communities, 178-79.
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This article scrutinizes the synagogue category and explores what value might be gained if it were to become inclusive of polytheistic occupational guilds comprising of Judeans and members from other ethnicities. It is argued that the traditional, narrow, understanding of ancient synagogues as ethnic-based groups functions to preserve the notion of a fixed and bounded practice of Judaism in antiquity, housed in synagogues. If this synagogue concept is allowed to persist, the insights gained from critical theory for understanding the fluidity and heterogeneity of Judean identity, ethnicity, and cult practice will be counteracted. The thirty other synagogues analyzed in this study are craft guilds that are often neglected in scholarship or classified as something other than synagogues. The act of excluding these guilds from the synagogue category falls outside of ancient linguistic practices and is at odds with the increasing insistence that synagogues from antiquity should be classified under the association genus.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 282 | 43 | 7 |
Full Text Views | 273 | 6 | 0 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 121 | 16 | 1 |