THE SYNAGOGUE: ORIGINS AND DIFFUSION 223community, but mostly perhaps in peripheral ways. The common meals of
the Asian Jews remind us that even local Jewish communities might assume
sectarianorcollegialtrappings.^23 Indeed,thesehaveneverbeentotallyabsent
in any Jewish community, even if the participants have been unaware of their
implications.
Ofgreaterinterest,though,arethefirst-centuryPalestiniansynagogues,ap-
parently nonsectarian, which may imply the existence of some limited and
specialized religious corporations with a partly local character. The New Tes-
tament mentions synagogues in Capernaum, Nazareth, and Jerusalem, and
the Synoptic Gospels take for granted the presence of synagogues at least in
relatively large settlements (komopoleis, “village-cities,” presumably what we
would call towns: Mark 1:38–39; in the Lukan parallel, “cities”: 4:43–44; in
Matthew 9:35, “cities and villages”). But caution is in order: although the
synagogues in Nazareth and Capernau mfigure as the scenes of i mportant
stories in all the Gospels and so need to be taken seriously (and there were
unquestionably synagogues in Jerusalem), other mentions of synagogues ap-
pear in“redactional” passagesand thusreflect theefforts ofthe authorsof the
Gospelstoprovidetraditionalstoriesandsayingswithsettingstheyconsidered
realistic. But the authors of the Synoptic Gospels all lived in the Diaspora,
and it is presumably no coincidence that the Gospel writer with the strongest
interest in the Diaspora, Luke, mentions synagogues most frequently. Nor is
it coincidental that John, the Gospel most likely to have been composed in
Palestine,mentionsthesynagogueonlyonce,inconnectionwithCapernaum
(6:59), as in theSynoptics.^24 (The silence of Paul may alsobe noted.) In sum,
the Gospels may show that there were synagogues in some of the largest vil-
lages, at least in Galilee. But the silence of John, not to mention of Josephus,
and for the most part of archaeology (see below), warn us against supposing
that they were widespread.^25
The “synagogue of Theodotus” in Jerusalem, whose existence is attested
inaGreekinscription,wasalmostcertainlybuiltatleastinlargeparttoserve
(^23) Cf. Philo, De Vita Contemplativa 80–1, and J. E. Taylor and P. R. Davies, “The So-Called
Therapeutae ofDe Vita Contemplativa: Identity and Character,”HThR91 (1998): 10, passim;
on common meals, see Baumgarten,Flourishing of Jewish Sects, pp. 91–100.
(^24) The otherpossible mention,18.20, seems morelikely to referto “assemblies.”John further-
more believed that the Jews had decided that believers in Christ should beaposynagogoi(ex-
pelled fro mthesynagoge: Jn 9.22; 12.42; 16.2). But as Schrage acutely observed (see next note),
this refers to expulsion not fro ma local co m munity/synagogue, but fro mthe Congregation of
Israel as a whole. In that case—whether the world was in common use, despite being unattested
elsewhere,orisaJohannineinvention—itislikelytoreflecteithertheSeptuagint’snormalusage
ofthewordsynagogetotranslated’edahorqahal,inthesenseofallIsrael,orperhapsanenviron-
ment,presumablyeithersectarianordiasporic,inwhichthelocalsynagogewasineffectcoexten-
sive with Isreal.
(^25) The evidence on the synagogue from the New Testament is assembled by W. Schrage,
“synagoge,”inTDNT7.830–38.Forsomeratherpositivisticdiscussion,withup-to-datebibliogra-
phy, see Levine,Ancient Synagogue, pp. 43–49.