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Synagogue in the Agora of Athens

Coordinates: 37°58′29″N 23°43′20″E / 37.9747°N 23.7222°E / 37.9747; 23.7222
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Synagogue in the Agora of Athens
Religion
AffiliationJudaism (former)
Location
LocationAncient Agora of Athens (now modern-day Athens)
CountryGreece
Synagogue in the Agora of Athens is located in Athens
Synagogue in the Agora of Athens
Location of the former synagogue in Athens
Geographic coordinates37°58′29″N 23°43′20″E / 37.9747°N 23.7222°E / 37.9747; 23.7222
Architecture
TypeSynagogue architecture
Completed267–394 CE
MaterialsPentelic marble

The Synagogue in the Agora of Athens is a putative former Jewish synagogue located in the Ancient Agora of Athens. Its existence was hypothesised by Homer Thompson and A. Thomas Kraabel on the basis of a marble fragment, showing a Jewish menorah and a lulav (palm branch), discovered near the Metroon in 1977. Thompson proposed that the Metroon may have been partly converted into a synagogue after the sack of the city by the Germanic Heruli people in 267 CE; Kraabel suggested that the structure's northern room, similar in plan to a Christian basilica, was used for this purpose. It is unclear whether this proposed synagogue would have been the one that the apostle Paul is described as visiting in the Acts of the Apostles.

Proposed reconstruction

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Athens is known to have been home to a Jewish community from the second century BCE, which probably maintained a building for collective worship.[1]

During an excavation in the summer of 1977, a piece of Pentelic marble apparently once part of a curvilinear frieze over a doorway or niche was discovered a few meters from the northeast corner of the Metroon, a second-century BCE temple originally dedicated to a mother goddess.[2] The fragment is incised with the images of a seven-branched menorah and a lulav, or palm branch.[3] The putative synagogue is thought to date from the period between 267 and 396 CE: the context in which the fragment was found dated to between the late fourth and early fifth centuries CE, and the Agora excavation director, Homer Thompson, considered the marble likely to have come from a building constructed after the sack of the city by the Germanic Heruli people in 267 CE, and to have been damaged by the invasion of Alaric I of the Visigoths in 394 CE.[2]

Thompson hypothesized that the Metroon may have been partly converted into a synagogue after 267 CE. Thomas Kraabel suggested that the northern room of the structure, which was converted after the late third century into an apsidal room in the same shape as a Christian basilica, was a likely candidate for this synagogue, on the grounds that it shared a shape with the known synagogue in Sardis and (like the Sardis synagogue) was paved with a mosaic floor without motifs identifiable from pre-Christian Roman religion.[4] In 2019, Mark Wilson described the identification of this synagogue as "possible",[5] while Nicholas Stravroulakis and Timothy J. DeVinney described it as "probable" in 1992.[6]

The apostle Paul is said in the Book of Acts to have visited a synagogue in Athens,[7] during his visit to the city in 54 CE.[8] The identity of that synagogue cannot be firmly established,[9] though William A. McDonald argued in 1941 that it was probably one outside the Agora, on the basis that Acts describes Paul as preaching "in the synagogue and in the Agora".[10]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Barrett, C. K. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles. Vol. 2. London: T&T Clark International. p. 828. ISBN 0-567-08395-0.
  2. ^ a b Kraabel, A. Thomas (1998). "The Diaspora Synagogue: Archaeological and Epigraphic Evidence since Sukenik". In Urman, Dan; McCracken Flesher, Paul Virgil (eds.). Ancient Synagogues: Historical Analysis and Archaeological Discovery. Leiden: Brill. p. 125.
  3. ^ Hachlili, Rachel (1998). Ancient Jewish Art and Archaeology in the Diaspora. Leiden: Brill. p. 323.
  4. ^ Kraabel, A. Thomas (1998). "The Diaspora Synagogue: Archaeological and Epigraphic Evidence since Sukenik". In Urman, Dan; McCracken Flesher, Paul Virgil (eds.). Ancient Synagogues: Historical Analysis and Archaeological Discovery. Leiden: Brill. p. 125.. For the reconstruction of the Metroon, see Thompson, Homer A. (1937). "Buildings on the West Side of the Agora". Hesperia. 6 (1): 68. JSTOR 146486.
  5. ^ Wilson, Mark (2019). "The Ancient Synagogues of Asia Minor and Greece". In Fine, Steven (ed.). Jewish Religious Architecture: From Biblical Israel to Modern Judaism. Leiden: Brill. p. 122. ISBN 978-90-04-37009-8.
  6. ^ Stavroulakis, Nicholas P.; DeVinney, Timothy J. (1992). Jewish Sites and Synagogues of Greece. Athens: Talos Press. p. 32. ISBN 960-7459-01-6.
  7. ^ Acts 17:17; Barrett, C. K. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles. Vol. 2. London: T&T Clark International. p. 828. ISBN 0-567-08395-0.
  8. ^ Llewellyn Smith, Michael (2004). Athens: A Cultural and Literary History. Oxford: Signal Books. p. 80. ISBN 1-902669-81-9.
  9. ^ Bruce, Frederick Fyvie (1988). The Book of the Acts. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. p. 329. ISBN 0-8028-2505-2.
  10. ^ McDonald, William A. (1941). "Archaeology and St. Paul's Journey in Biblical Lands: Part II: Athens" (PDF). The Biblical Archaeologist. 4 (1): 3.
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