Jews and Others
by the written use of Hebrew, and of what is always, in this context, called
by moderns ‘‘Aramaic,’’ by both Jews and Samaritans, which must be seen as
a conscious assertion of a separate identity.
It must be stressed again that neither in the case of the Jews nor in that of
the Samaritans did this identity find any formal expression in the shape of
political or administrative control of any area. The religious and communal
life of both groups was conducted entirely within the framework of a net-
work of Greek cities, nearly all of which were now also the seats of Christian
bishops, belonging to a predominantly Greek-language church.
That is not to say, however, that there were no areas where the Jewish
community had the upper hand, and where the church found it hard to gain
a foothold. This situation is clearly mirrored in the story told by Epipha-
nius in hisPanarion, of Joseph of Tiberias, a converted Jew who was given
the rank ofcomesby Constantine, and who was commissioned to establish
Christian churches in communities which had none, namely Tiberias itself,
Sepphoris (now called Diocaesarea), Nazareth, and Capernaum. In the face
of resistance, he managed finally to construct a small church in Tiberias, and
later succeeded in building churches in Diocaesarea ‘‘and some other cities’’
(no details are given).^55 The story is significant as a somewhat pale reflection
of a Palestinian world in which not only Christians and Jews, but also pagans
and Samaritans, lived in a complex symbiosis, in which contrasting commu-
nal, or ethnic, identities were expressed primarily through different religious
practices. This symbiosis, or mutual conflict, was expressed also in the form
of very conspicuously contrasting religious buildings: pagan temples (as in
the story, mentioned above, of the wholesale destruction of those at Gaza
early in the fifth century); Christian churches, now visible almost every-
where;^56 Jewish synagogues, now coming to be adorned with elaborate floor
mosaics, sometimes containing extensive inscriptions; and Samaritan syna-
gogues, identifiable above all by the use in their inscriptions of the distinctive
Samaritan script.^57
The immensely complex social, religious, and linguistic history of late
Roman Palestine remains to be told, and no attempt is made here to go be-
yond touching on a few points. What is clear above all is that the story cannot
. Epiphanius,Panarion, , –.
. See A. Ovadiah,Corpus of the Byzantine Churches of the Holy Land(); Y. Tsafrir,
ed.,Ancient Churches Revealed().
. See F. Hüttenmeister and G. Reeg,DieantikenSynagogeninIsraelI.DiejüdischenSyna-
gogen, Lehrhaüser und Gerichtshöfe II, f.: Die samaritanischen Synagogen(); L. I. Levine,
ed.,Ancient Synagogues Revealed();The Synagogue in Late Antiquity().