ReViews

072

Sacred Realm: The Emergence of the Synagogue in the Ancient World

Edited by Steven Fine

(Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press and Yeshiva Univ. Press, 1996) xxix + 203 pp., 51 color plates, 105 b&w illustrations, $25 (paperback)

Just a century ago, many scholars deemed the Jews of antiquity artistically deficient. By strictly adhering to the second commandment’s prohibition of images, these Jews, the theory went, had lost the ability to create great art. Even some Jews agreed. The Jewish Encyclopedia of 1902 explained: “It was the religion of the Jews that precluded the full development of the art of sculpture … The same reason … prevented any development of painting.” And in 1905, when the pioneering German investigators Heinrich Kohl and Carl Watzinger explored the ancient synagogues of Galilee, they concluded that Rome must have built these structures for the Jews, who could not have done it themselves.

The archaeological discoveries of this century have disproved these canards. Indeed, our most important legacy of the Judaism that developed in the Greco-Roman Diaspora is neither a text nor a system of thought, but an architectural and social symbol—the synagogue, both the building and its community. And if you thought that the Judaism of the rabbis overshadowed that of the synagogue in the Land of Israel, the present volume offers a challenging counter-view. (And a counter-question: “To what extent was Judaism a visual piety after all?”)

Sacred Realm reviews the present state of ancient synagogue studies. A catalogue of an exhibition at the Yeshiva University Museum in New York, this beautifully illustrated volume includes essays by recognized authorities on buildings, liturgy, symbolism, art and social context.

Lawrence Schiffman gives the plot away in his foreword: “It was the synagogue that made possible the adaptation of Judaism to the new reality created by the destruction of the Second Temple” in 70 C.E. The Roman armies, he notes, had forced upon the Jews “a new religious world: one in which the Temple no longer stood, the priests no longer offered the sacrifices, and the Levites had ceased to chant the Psalms.”

Israeli scholars provide chapters on synagogues in the Land of Israel. In a thorough review of art and architecture, Rachel Hachlili, of Tel Aviv University, rejects Michael Avi-Yonah’s long-dominant synagogue typology:

Early period (second-third century C.E.): Galilean-type basilica, as at Capernaum and Baram;

Transitional period (fourth-fifth century C.E.): the Khirbet Shema’ broadhouse;

Late period (sixth century C.E.): apsidal basilica, as at Beth Alpha.

Instead, Hachlili proposes that such things as regional and local traditions, the social and economic standing of the donors, and even differing religious conceptions are behind this variety of architectural types—a conclusion similar to those being made about the diversity of Diaspora synagogues as well.

Avigdor Shinan, of Hebrew University, writes on synagogue literature, including translations of Scripture (into Aramaic targumim), sermons, and liturgical texts in poetry (piyyutim) and prose. Shinan focuses on the Akedah, the story of the Sacrifice (literally the “Binding”) of Isaac in Genesis 22:1–19, as it appears in synagogue literature and in a sixth-century C.E. mosaic from the Beth Alpha synagogue, in the Jezreel Valley. In this intriguing essay, Shinan blends archaeological and liturgical evidence to recreate something of the communal life that existed in these ancient buildings.

The leading American synagogue archaeologist, Eric Meyers of Duke University, offers a fine review of his field: its origins, it pioneers, its methods and particularly its place in the development of modern Israel’s historical self-consciousness. Editor Steven Fine, of Baltimore Hebrew University, care carefully traces a theme that is becoming 074increasingly important for understanding both Judaism and Christianity under the Roman Empire: how the synagogue gradually assumed some of the sanctity once awarded only to the Temple, to become “the undisputed Sacred Realm for Jews throughout the Greco-Roman world.”^a

The Diaspora synagogue comes into its own in two solid chapters by Louis Feldman (Yeshiva University) and Leonard Rutgers (University of Utrecht). Previously, when scholars contrasted the Land of Israel and the Roman Diaspora (on any subject), the Homeland was usually given priority and the Diaspora was measured against it. It is becoming increasingly clear, however, that the gentile world within which Diaspora Jews lived made its own positive contribution to their communities.

Take, for example, a new idea in classical studies: euergetism (a word which made it into the authoritative Oxford Classical Dictionary only in its most recent, third edition). “Euergetism” means private liberality for public benefit (Paul Veyne). Rutgers suggests euergetism as an explanation for the well-attested phenomenon of the influential gentiles (pagans!) becoming benefactors of local synagogues. “In the ancient world status depended to a large extent on the sums of money one was able to spend for the benefit of the entire urban community [that is, euergetism]—normally in the form of building projects.” Rutgers suspects that “one of the ways to augment one’s status within ancient society as a whole [my emphasis] was by becoming a benefactor of the local synagogue.” He continues: thus “the donation of money [by Gentiles] to the Diaspora synagogue indicates that the Jewish communities of the Diaspora commanded much respect” from Gentile neighbors.

This is a plausible hypothesis, even if the relationship it assumes between synagogue communities and their Gentile neighbors differs significantly from the traditional picture of Diaspora Jewish life. For the standard explanation has always been that such a benefactor had to have been religiously motivated: he or she (for women donors are attested too) was—or was becoming—a God-fearer, semiproselyte or convert.

The major difference between living inside and outside the Land of Israel was not language, economic status or educational level. It was simply that life in the Diaspora meant being a member of a minority, with all that implies. Insights drawn from this ancient, archetypal Diaspora will be particularly interesting to those living in a diaspora situation today.

Christian readers of BAR, like this reviewer, will find in Sacred Realm a better way of describing to our co-religionists the transitions and transformations of Judaism after the completion of the Hebrew Bible. The outmoded “progression” of Old Testament to Intertestamental Period to New Testament is not only supersessionist, it fails to encompass those developments in Judaism that we now know included the Qumran (Dead Sea Scroll) movement, the Jesus movement, the rabbinic movement, the loss of the Temple and the flourishing of the Diaspora. Sacred Realm offers a healthier, more productive way of telling that story. Accessible enough for public libraries and substantial enough for academic collections, this book belongs in every congregational library, Jewish or Christian.

The Archaeology of Early Christianity: A History

William H.C. Frend

(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996) xix + 412 pp., 10 color plates, 28 b&w illustrations, $39 (hardcover)

Digging at a spot revealed to her in a dream, in 326 C.E. Empress Helena, mother of Constantine, uncovered the remains of what she identified as the True Cross. The discovery conveniently coincided with her son’s efforts to commemorate the holy places associated with Jesus’ life and death and to transform Jerusalem into a Christian city.

Helena’s discovery and many more recent finds—such as the Gnostic gospels from Nag Hammadi, Egypt; St. Peter’s tomb in Rome; and the Dead Sea Scrolls—are recounted in William Frend’s The Archaeology of Early Christianity: A History.

Frend’s book is not, however, about the uncovered remains themselves or about key periods in church history; rather, it is a unique chronicle of the archaeological discovery of early Christian remains.

As an expert in church history, doctrinal conflicts and archaeology (he’s a preeminent church historian from the University of Glasgow), Frend examines these discoveries from all three perspectives. For example, he uses his experience from excavations in North Africa to clarify the power and the amazingly widespread presence of Donatist churches in North Africa during the fourth century. As a historian, Frend can identify the motivations for archaeological research—showing how the military and political ambitions of the major world powers have influenced Christian archaeology from the time of Napoleon on.

Instead of concentrating on the most spectacular, sensational or pivotal finds, Frend stresses the activities of archaeologists and their sponsors over the centuries. Writing chronologically, Frend can identify relationships 076between events that might otherwise be overlooked. The delays in the publication of the Nag Hammadi texts and Dead Sea Scrolls, for example, were as much the result of modern politics (over which country should control publication) as of personality conflicts or the complexity of the material.

Despite the numerous rewards of this kind of historical study, Frend’s approach has its problems. The finds from a particular site or region do not appear in chronological sequence but in the order in which they were discovered. For example, the Scottish archaeologist William Ramsay’s early (between 1880 and 1914), tentative findings of evidence for the development of the Christian church in Asia Minor must be discussed before the later discovery and publication (by J.G.C. Anderson and W.M. Calder) of the extensive, critical “Christians for Christians” inscriptions, which firmly established the public presence of the Church in Phrygia as early as 242 C.E. The major 19th-century discoveries in catacombs in Rome are discussed without reference to the 20th-century excavations under the church of St. Sebastian, which have uncovered a room where third-century Christians ate in the presence of Peter and Paul—a practice critical for any reconstruction of Roman Christianity and the function of catacomb burials. Understandably, the reader will need some other guide to understand the historical development of a particular site or region.

Further, Frend’s historical approach offers little room for interpretation of finds. As an impartial chronicler of the history of discovery, Frend must relate the interpretations of those who made the finds rather than establish his own. Occasionally he winces over a difference of opinion, as with the date assigned the demise of the churches around Hippo. But as a historian, he cannot censure the excavator, who is merely an actor in a scene that Frend must record objectively.

Frend’s is a fascinating narrative, full of interesting finds, such as William Ramsay’s discovery and interpretation (in 1883) of the famous Avircius inscription from Hieropolis. Previously known only from a sixth-century copy, the inscription speaks freely of Jesus as the holy shepherd, a meal of fish seized by a holy virgin from a pure fountain, and wine with bread. Ramsay found fragments of this loquacious inscription on two stones in Hieropolis and determined it was actually the original epitaph of Avircius Marcellus, bishop of Hieropolis in the late second century C.E. Doubting, with good reason, the plausibility of such a theologically developed inscription in the second century C.E., Gerhard Ficker, a student of the church historian Adolf von Harnack, disagreed, declaring it was not even Christian! Somewhat prematurely, Harnack defended his protégé. The inscription will always be controversial, but as Frend shows, the ensuing debate depended more on personal and academic hubris than on scientific analysis.

At times Frend tones down the stories. He does not report that one of the first excavators of St. Peter’s tomb, Engelbert Kirschbaum, published a picture of the “bones of Peter,” which on further examination, turned out to be those of a woman! Though Frend relates that Margherita Guarducci, who began excavating the tomb in 1952, traced and identified the surviving relics of Peter (Pope Paul VI approved the identification in 1964), he bypasses her story of how Peter’s missing bones had, at the instigation of the building superintendent, been secretly placed in a box by a sanpietrino (custodian in St. Peter’s) and hidden in a broom closet until Guarducci brought them to light in 1953.¹

Though I am fascinated by Frend’s stories and his historical approach—especially his focus on political and military motivations for archaeological research—I do miss an account of other possible motivations. Frend does note that Ramsay and other British archaeologists, unlike their German and 077French colleagues, were funded by universities and other scholarly interests. But Frend never mentions the influence of religious faith. Following in the tradition of Empress Helena, American archaeologists at least were often motivated by a desire to find the places where Jesus walked or where Paul journeyed.² A Century of Biblical Archaeology (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1991). Discovery of archaeological sites was certainly an extension of national policies, but it was also—for good or ill—an expression of religious fervor.³

Nomads, Farmers, and Town-Dwellers

Gideon Avni

(Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority, 1996) 108 pp., 65 b&w illustrations, $23.00 includes shipping (paperback)

Following the signing of the 1978 peace agreement between Israel and Egypt, and the redeployment of the Israel Defense Forces in the Negev, Israel undertook an emergency archaeological survey of this region. The systematic and comprehensive project was designed to locate unknown sites and record finds from the semi-arid “outback” of the Negev highlands.⁴

Each archaeologist was assigned an area of about 40 square miles. Scouring the remote region, they recorded an unexpected number of Late Byzantine and Early Islamic remains (sixth to eighth century C.E.). The wine presses, threshing floors, animal pens, terraced fields and cisterns they discovered provide evidence of the region’s agricultural character.

One of the survey participants, Gideon Avni, who has already published the results of his survey of Har Saggi, in the southern Negev highlands, has now gathered the finds of his colleagues in this slim volume. Most of Avni’s well-organized publication deals with the physical evidence: the background of rural settlement in the Negev highlands, the nature of the field survey, the archaeological data, the chronology of settlements in the southern highlands, and a case study of one such settlement (at Har ‘Oded). Some 50 photographs and several maps well illustrate this material.

The strength of Avni’s work lies in his treatment of physical evidence of nomadic settlement. His discussion of the demography and historical context of these settlements, however, is disappointing. Avni’s estimates of the nomadic population in a specific region over three centuries cannot even be accepted as “guesstimates.”

In establishing the historical context of the Negev settlements, Avni relies on literary and documentary evidence taken almost helter-skelter from a wide range of sites, from Sinai to the urban centers of the Negev highlands. Yet he does not take into account the equally wide range of differences in sedentary life. Avni cites one of the papyrus documents (P.Ness. 58) found at Nessana as evidence for nomad sedenterization in this town. In so doing, he fails to recognize that settled agricultural life in the urban centers of the Negev highlands is not possible without corporate effort and planning beyond the interest or capabilities of nomads or semi-nomads. The agricultural installations of an urban center such as Nessana, for example, required organized manpower for the construction and maintenance of check-dams, diversion channels and other devices that prevent erosion and breaches of facilities.

There is much sound material in this publication. It is unfortunate that an attempt was made to turn it into a magnum opus along anthropological lines.

Sacred Realm: The Emergence of the Synagogue in the Ancient World