258 CHAPTER NINEperhaps still a cult performed on high (as some apocalyptists thought) in which
we participate through our actions below.
The movement from the world, from actual scenes of worship, or of nature,
to the cosmic realm (not an easy movement, guarded as it is by fierce crea-
tures, reminiscent of the guardians of the heavens in the Hekhalot texts),
within the space of the synagogue, may also reflect, or be reflected in, the
increasing ritualization and professionalization of the liturgy, the increasingly
elaborate performance associated with it .These synagogues, that is, are not
lociof undifferentiated sanctity, like the generally slightly earlier “Galilean”
synagogues, where the markers of sanctity areapparentlyconfined to the fa-
c ̧ade .Such developments—the differentiation of the sanctity of the synagogue
interior, and the ritualization of the liturgy—are suggested by the tendency
in the fifth and sixth centuries increasingly to mark off, to block general access
to, the most potent space in the synagogue, that surrounding the ark, and
perhaps in a rather different way by the rise of thepiyyut .Both may imply a
service conducted by a clergy and a basically passive congregation; both, and
the pavements as well, imply a service increasingly pervaded by an aura of
hieratic mystification.
Of course matters were not so simple .Some synagogues were decorated
with only single components of the common scheme .Others featured several
of the elements but in a different order or had altogether different types of
decoration—geometric patterns, birds, nature scenes, or narrative scenes not
easily identified .This decorative variety strengthens our reluctance to suppose
that the synagogue images worked as a kind of simple code, which we could
break with enough effort and if only we knew more .Even in the synagogues
that did use the common scheme, the reception of it was infinitely more
complex than I have just suggested .For example, the congregant who visited
the synagogue repeatedly for many years certainly had occasion to reflect on
the components of the decoration individually .That some of these compo-
nents were used to decorate graves and a variety of small objects confirms the
notion that they could be meaningful even in isolation .Furthermore, in view
of the importance of astrology in late antique Judaism in general, as indicated
in the Hekhalot texts and magical books like the Sefer Harazim, it is not
surprising that the commissioners of the Sepphoris mosaic would have been
anxious that the zodiac might be used as a horoscopic aid, in a way that
abstracted it from its artistic context in the synagogue pavements .Indeed, a
liturgical poem discovered some years ago among the Cairo genizah docu-
ments in the Cambridge University Library, peculiar for having been com-
posed in Aramaic, may confirm that zodiac circles were sporadically used as
such .For this poem, composed to be recited on the Sabbath preceding the
new moon of Nisan (the beginning of the year, according to Exodus 12), is