How to Tell a Samaritan Synagogue from a Jewish Synagogue
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Footnotes
1. The passage in which Josephus gives his version of 2 Kings 17:24–41 is Jewish Antiquities 9:288–291. See also Steve Mason, “Will the Real Josephus Please Stand Up?” BAR 23:05.
See Zvi Gal, “Israel in Exile,” in this issue. Gal notes that the absence of archaeological remains in Galilee for the period following the Assyrian assault indicates that this region was not resettled.
See Reinhard Pummer, “The Samaritans—A Jewish Offshoot or a Pagan Cult?” Bible Review, October 1991.
See Alan Crown, “The Abisha Scroll—3,000 Years Old?” Bible Review, October 1991.
Endnotes
The name does not occur in the Pentateuch; it appears as Abishua in Chronicles 5:30 and 6:35 (in English 1 Chronicles 6:4 and 6:50), as well as in Ezra 7:5.
See Itzhak Magen, “Mount Gerizim and the Samaritans,” in Frédéric Manns and Eugenio Alliata, eds., Early Christianity in Context: Monuments and Documents, Studium Biblicum Franciscanum, Collectio Maior 38 (Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing Press, 1993), pp. 91–148; and “Gerizim, Mount,” in The New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), vol. 2, pp. 484–492.
In the opinion of most scholars, these are the synagogues of Gamla, in Galilee, and of Herodium and Masada. Recently, a fourth one was excavated in the vicinity of Modi’in.
The so-called Theodotos inscription was found during excavations in 1913–1914; for the most recent detailed discussion see Lea Roth-Gerson, The Greek Inscriptions from the Synagogues in Eretz-Israel (Jerusalem: Yad Itzhak Ben-Zvi, 1987), pp. 76–86 (in Hebrew); for an English translation, see Lee I. Levine, “The Second Temple Synagogue: The Formative Years,” in The Synagogue in Late Antiquity, ed. Levine (Philadelphia: American Schools of Oriental Research, 1987), p. 17.
See Corpus Inscriptionum Judaicarum 1440 and Corpus Papyrorum Judaicarum III, 1532 A, both from the reign of Ptolemy III Euergetes (247–221 B.C.E.); and Corpus Papyrorum Judaicarum I, 129, dated May 11, 218 B.C.E. In all three cases the name for synagogue is
The inscriptions were first published by Phillipe Bruneau in his article “‘Les Israélites de Délos’ et la juiverie délienne,” Bulletin de Correspondence Hellénique 106 (1982), pp. 465–504; they were recently reexamined by L. Michael White in “The Delos Synagogue Revisited: Recent Fieldwork in the Graeco-Roman Diaspora,” Harvard Theological Review 80 (1987), pp. 133–160.
For the ongoing discussion about the identity of this building, see White, “The Delos Synagogue Revisited,” p. 140.
It is the so-called Synagogue A, located almost 300 meters north of the Byzantine wall, excavated in 1962 by N. Zori, who distinguished three phases in the construction of the building, spanning the end of the fourth or beginning of the fifth century C.E. to 626–640 C.E., when the synagogue was destroyed.
Similar depictions of tongue-like objects have been found on the synagogue mosaic of Sepphoris; see Ze’ev Weiss and Ehud Netzer, Promise and Redemption: A Synagogue Mosaic from Sepphoris (Jerusalem: Israel Museum, 1996), p. 18.
Tahebmeans, literally, the “Returner” and “Restorer (of Divine Grace).” For a summary of the beliefs about the Taheb see Ferdinand Dexinger, “Taheb,” in A Companion to Samaritan Studies, ed. Alan D. Crown, Reinhard Pummer and Abraham Tal (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1993), pp. 224–226.
See Ruth Jacoby, “The Four Species in Jewish and Samaritan Tradition,” Eretz Israel 25 (1996), pp. 404–409 (Hebrew); p. 103* (English summary).
Another depiction of a Torah shrine was found engraved on a stone that may once have decorated the apse.