SYNAGOGUE AND COMMUNITY 277other differences between Jews, and such differences in fact are an important
aspect of the late antique Palestinian remains, it subtly shaped Jewish life,
which as a result came everywhere t ohave a certain sameness.^8 Almost all
Jewish settlements built synagogues, thought about themselves in similar
terms, perhaps believed they had similar sorts of obligations to the poor
(though there is little evidence for this outside rabbinic literature),^9 and even-
tually came to employ similar sorts of religious functionaries.
Community and Village
Let us begin with an observation and some questions. Any collection of peo-
ple, even in the simplest societies, is bound (e.g., by familial, tribal, political,
ethnic, linguistic, and economic ties) in overlapping, exclusive, and contradic-
tory networks of organization, some of which are more self-consciously con-
structed than others. In the case of the late antique Jewish communities, we
must wonder to what extent an ideology of partial religious self-enclosure
was generated or accompanied by, or served to generate, other types of social
organization. Granted that communities in rural areas were normally coexten-
sive with villages, were villages coextensive with clans? To what extent did
they participate in networks of trade? Did relationships of social dependency,
including marriage, cross village lines? (This is an especially important ques-
tion in light of the possible existence of communal charitable foundations:
did these serve to unravel networks of patronage, or were communal charities
largely symbolic, with only limited socioeconomic effects?) Were the syna-
gogue patrons named in inscriptions patrons of their villages in a technical
sense? Small-town euergetai? Did villages participate in other sorts of net-
works, for example, centered on the patriarch, before 425, or on rabbis? In
sum, precisely how compartmental was the religious community, how con-
structed, and how far did it succeed in shaping late antique Jewish life?^10
Some of these questions may be discussed summarily, either because they
are unanswerable or because the answers are unproblematic. It is obvious, for
instance, that the vast majority of day-to-day contacts occurred within villages.
At the same time, in some areas villages might be separated by no more than
(^8) Contrast L. Levine’s emphasis on the diversity of the remains, throughoutThe Ancient
Synagogue.
(^9) See, e.g., Julian,Letter to Arsacius, High Priest of Galatia, apud Sozomen,Historia Ecclesias-
tica5.16.5ff. =GLAJJ2.482, written around 362, encouraging the establishment of charitable
funds “in every city....Foritisdisgraceful that, when n oJew ever has t obeg, and the impi ous
Galileans (= Christians) support not only their own poor but ours as well, all men see that our
people lack support from us.”
(^10) This paragraph is informed by A. Macfarlane,Reconstructing Historical Communities(Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), pp. 1–25.