Image Details

Ezra displays the law in this wall painting from the third-century A.D. synagogue at Dura-Europos, Syria. Although some scholars identify this scene as Moses reading the law after he had received it on Mt. Sinai, the painting seems to better illustrate Nehemiah 8:5, “Ezra opened the scroll in the sight of all the people,” for the writing on the scroll faces outward as if being shown to the people. On the floor beside Ezra’s right foot rests a cloth-covered box that may be a portable ark, or scroll case, in which the scrolls of the law that Ezra brought from Babylon could be kept. When Ezra in essence canonized the Pentateuch at Jerusalem in 458 B.C., he effectively outlawed other, already-existing additions and expansions of the Torah. Subsequently, Stegemann proposes, portions of other Torah scrolls were collected—together with five additional literary sources—into a new book that we now call the Temple Scroll.