L. Michael White

The Delos Synagogue Revisited Recent Fieldwork in the Graeco-Roman Diaspora

Recent studies and archaeological work have focused attention once again on an old problem—the origins and development of the synagogue—by bringing two sides of the issue to light. On the one hand, some studies have reconsidered theories of synagogue origins in the Babylonian, Persian, or Hellenistic periods. The result is that several traditional assumptions typified in the works of Julian Morgenstern, Solomon Zeitlin, George Foot Moore, and Louis Finkelstein have been questioned. The question of origins has come to rest on the Palestinian setting and on the nature of the “synagogue” not as institution in the later Talmudic sense, but as “assembly.” There is no clear archaeological evidence for synagogue buildings from Second Temple Palestine. Only after 70 CE and the destruction of the Temple, did it emerge as the central institution of Pharisaic-Rabbinic Judaism.

Synagogue and Society in Imperial Ostia: Archaeological and Epigraphic Evidence

This study presents and analyzes evidence for the social location and organization of Jewish groups in the environs of Rome, specifically from the port city of Ostia. Scholars have generally recognized that the presence of a thriving Jewish community in Rome, as elsewhere in the eastern Mediterranean, is a crucial element to understanding developments in the Christian movement throughout the first centuries CE. Such discussions have become more common in recent studies. Still, one will look long and hard in New Testament and early Christian studies to find direct discussion of the primary data for the Jewish communities of metropolitan Rome.

Reading the Ostia Synagogue: A Reply to A. Runesson

A scholar who respects the nature of historical and archaeological evidence can hardly complain when others take his work seriously and read it carefully. So it is with gratitude that I offer this reply to Anders Runesson for his forgoing article in which my own work figures so prominently. I can honestly say that I have learned some things from it. Nor do I take undue umbrage at the clearly critical, albeit rather strident, tone. Some of it I attribute to the natural give-and-take of scholarly debate; some, to a few key misunderstandings on the part of Runesson regarding the terminology and intention in my earlier argument; and others, to the complex nature of the material under discussion. It is a matter of reading the evidence.