Ancient Synagogues in Palestine: A Re-evaluation Nearly a Century After Sukenik's Schweich Lectures

Ancient Synagogues in Palestine: A Re-evaluation Nearly a Century After Sukenik's Schweich Lectures

Jodi Magness

Schweich Lectures on Biblical Archaeology

• Accessible to non-specialists through its introduction and historiography
• Provides fine-grained archaeological analyses of excavated synagogues
• Revises Sukenik's typology and chronology of Jewish communities living under Christian rule
• Available as an Open Acess title under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license

Dozens of ancient synagogues have been discovered around the Mediterranean, most of which date to the fourth-sixth centuries CE and are concentrated in Palestine. In the 1930 Schweich Lectures, Eleazar Lipa Sukenik established a typology and chronology for these buildings. Ancient Synagogues in Palestine evaluates Sukenik's conclusions in light of new discoveries since his time. It opens with an overview of ancient synagogues in the region, followed by a survey of the historiography of the study of these buildings, highlighting its ideological roots in the early Zionist movement. In the final chapters, Magness examines the evidence for the dating of the synagogues at Khirbet Wadi Hamam and Capernaum, arguing that different synagogue types overlapped and were contemporary to the fourth-sixth centuries CE instead of being sequential, as Sukenik thought. This conclusion contradicts a widely accepted view that late antique Jewish communities in Palestine suffered and declined under supposedly oppressive Christian rule.

List of Illustrations
Preface
1. Ancient Synagogues in Palestine: An Overview
2. The History and Historiography of Archaeological Research on Ancient Synagogues in Palestine and the Chronology of the Galilean Type
3. The Date of the Khirbet Wadi Hamam Synagogue(s): An Analysis
4. Capernaum
Endnotes
References (Works Cited)
Index