284 CHAPTER TENInscriptionsasSocialActs:EuergetismandEgalitarianismLike the biblical and rabbinic communities of Israel, the ideology of the late
antique Jewish community was characterized by tension between hierarchy
and egalitarianism, though in a rather different way. While the Torah and
the rabbis granted special status t opriests and scribes/sch olars, there is little
evidence for these groups in the synagogue inscriptions. In the quasi-euergetis-
tic world of the community, it is the handful of named donors who occupied
a special position.
There can in fact be no question that the ideology of the community de-
pended heavily on that of the Greco-Roman city, in which the wealthiest
citizens were expected to fund public construction, festivals, and games; they,
in turn, expected to be honored by a notionally egalitarian citizen body, with
the transaction commemorated by public writing. In an important recent
study of the inscriptions from Diaspora synagogues, Tessa Rajak has explored
the ways in which the Jews transformed euergetism as they adopted it.^23 Some
of these transformations seem conscious attempts by Jews living in high impe-
rial cities to distance themselves from some of the characteristic discourse and
practice of euergetism, while retaining its essence. For example, while pagan
benefactors emphasized that their donations came from their own possessions
(ek ton idion), Jewish benefactors played this down or even implied that their
wealth was a gift of God.^24
Most of the Palestinian inscriptions, whatever language they were written
in, come from a time when the culture of urban pagan euergetism was dying
or dead, having given way to the (closely related) culture of Christian charity.
The Palestinian inscriptions thus do not reflect the same sort of self-conscious
distancing from the discourse ofphilotimia. For example, they quite often
note that gifts were madeek ton idion(or its Aramaic equivalents).^25 Neverthe-
less, here, too, the language ofphilotimiahas in general yielded t othat of
religious obligation. In Greek inscriptions, donations are often calledprospho-
certain Law-abiding woman”), if Naveh’s restoration and interpretation are correct (On Mosaic,
no. 34).
(^23) “Jews as Benefactors,” in B. Isaac and A. Oppenheimer, eds.,Studies on the Jewish Diaspora
in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods, Te’uda XII (Tel Aviv: Ramot, 1996), pp. 17–38.
(^24) The common expression at Sardis was, “X gave thisek ton tes pronoias” (from the gifts of
Providence); see Kraabel, “Pronoia at Sardis,” pp. 75–96. A similar locution is used in an inscrip-
tion from Kokhav Hayarden (Naveh no. 42): “[May... be remembered for good] who donated
this lintel from the gifts of the Merciful One and from his own property”; for a similar phrase
(“[donated] from the things of the god, under Absalmos”) carved on a plaque bearing a Mithraic
tauroctony, probably from Syria, see A. de Long, “A New Mithraic Relief,”Israel Museum Journal
16 (1998): 85–90, misinterpreted by de Long.
(^25) see Naveh, no. 17, Lifshitz, no. 77a, Naveh, nos. 58, 74, Lifshitz, no. 66. In Palestinian
Christian inscriptions, donations are often calledprosphorai(offerings) orkarpophoriai(offerings
of firstfruits).