226 CHAPTER EIGHTThe Second and Third Centuries and the Rabbis^35
Despite the absence of archaeological evidence, it is certain that synagogues
existed in second- and third-century Palestine.^36 One possible explanation for
their absence fro mthe record is that though the institution quickly spread in
the wake of the Destruction, the synagogues were not monumental but, like
Christian churchesof the same period,were situated mainlyin private dwell-
ings.Ifthiswereso,however,weshouldexpectthatatleastinsomeplaces,the
private houses would have been “monumentalized” in the fourth century—a
development that leaves detectable material traces and is in fact attested for
several Diaspora synagogues. But such a development is almost unknown in
Palestine; the only example that I am aware of is the so-called Bet Leontis,
in Beth Shean, a private dwelling transformed into a synagogue in thesixth
century.^37 The monumental village synagogues seem to have been built from
scratch. It is more plausible to suppose that the synagogue was still not wide-
spread in the second and third centuries, that it was found, as earlier, only in
the largest settlements.^38
(^35) I thank Catherine Hezser for her comments on this section. T. Zahavy quotes and briefly
discusses all mentions of synagogues in the Mishnah and Tosefta, and also lists their counterparts
inthePalestinianTalmud,inStudies in Jewish Prayer(Lanham,Md.:UniversityPressofAmerica,
1990), pp. 45–84;the Tannaitic material is discussed inmore detail in Fine,This Holy Place, pp.
35–59. The latter is problematic in several fundamental ways, apart from its incompleteness
(though parts of the discussion are unobjectionable): the Mishnah and Tosefta are not treated
separately but are thought simply to reflect the views of thetannaim, as if the documents were
unaffected by editorial intervention; Fine believes that fundamental to the Mishnah and Tosefta
is the sense that the post-Destruction period is essentially different from the time of the Temple
and that in the former, the synagogue was, for the rabbis, the centrally important institution of
Jewishlife.Nodoubttherabbisdidregardthepost-Destructionperiodasdifferent,buttheTannai-
tic corpora strikingly and pointedly fail ever to articulate such a notion (which is found only in a
single baraita,i.e.,an allegedlyTannaitic statementquoted in theBabylonianTalmud). Itis obvi-
ous that in the worldview of the documents, the synagogue was of little importance: its existence
was taken for granted, but it is mentioned only a handful of times and treated in detail only in
thepassagesdiscussedbelow.FortheTannaiticcorpora,theTemple,notthesynagogue,continues
to stand at the center of Jewish life. The most important account remains Baer’s, “Origins.”
(^36) On Qasyon, see previous section. Outside Palestine, the synagogue at Dura is securely dat-
ableto244C.E.;butmostDiasporasynagogueswereconstructedinthefourthcenturyandfollow-
ing: see L. Rutgers,Hidden Heritage, pp. 125–35.
(^37) On the archaeology of the Diaspora synagogues, see “Diaspora Synagogue,” with some up-
dating by L. M. White, “Delos Synagogue”; and White, “Synagogue and Society in Imperial
Ostia:ArchaeologicalandEpigraphicalEvidence,”HTR90(1997):23–53;andseetheextensive
survey by L. V. Rutgers in Fine,Sacred Realm, pp. 67–95; and Fine,Hidden Heritage, pp. 97–
124;ontheBetLeontis,seeN.Zori,“TheHouseofKyriosLeontisatBethShean,”IEJ16(1966):
123–34.
(^38) Contrast Levine,Ancient Synagogue, pp. 165–72, who tries to explain away the paucity of
rabbinic, and the absence of archaeological, evidence for the synagogue in the second and third
centuries.