have been as apparent to a non-Jewish city dweller looking at the synagogue
community, as it would have been obvious to a member of the Jewish synagogue
community. To the Jew, the city’s structure and institutions would be experienced
as “natural” and “self-evidently appropriate” in light of his or her experience within
the structures and institutions of the Jewish community. Moreover, to that same Jew,
the synagogue community’s structure, institutions, and roles would seem completely
“normal” in light of his or her experience of the city’s institutions of governance.
Finally, it would have been the expectation of the Jewish community that their
non-Jewish urban neighbors and the urban authorities would themselves perceive
the analogy at least at the implicit level.
The experience of this homology by both Jews and non-Jews is in my view expressed
indirectly when Jews singly or as groups engage in public acts of benefaction in their
host cities (see Harland 2003), and especially when prominent non-Jewish city dwellers
act as benefactors of the synagogue and the Jewish community and receive appro-
priate honors. We have had occasion to note above the cases of Claudia Severa and
Marcus Tittius. The former is honored in an inscription as the provider of a build-
ing and property to serve as the synagogue. She is mentioned in the same breath as
prominent members of the Jewish community who subsequently provided the
means to renovate the synagogue in a subsequent phase of its development (Rajak
1999, see also Rajak and Noy 2002). The case of Marcus Tittius (Lüderitz 1983:
71, discussed in Barclay 1996: 236) is even more instructive; his benefactions to the
Jewish community of Cyrenaica were recognized in an inscription which pledges to
honor him not only at each meeting of the Jewish community or its representatives,
but also by an inscription in the city’s amphitheater. This same Jewish community
honors another non-Jewish benefactor, Decimus Valerius Dionysius, for his con-
tribution to the Jewish community (politeuma). What contribution? He paid for repairs,
made in the Jewishcommunity’s name, to the civic amphitheater (Lüderitz 1983:
70, again discussed in Barclay 1996: 237). He too was to be honored at regular
gatherings of the Jewish community and by an inscription in the amphitheater paid
for by the Jewish community. These are fascinating and instructive instances of
“crossover” benefactions and honors, between Jews and a non-Jewish patron, and
in the cases from Cyrenaica, between Jewish communal and civic institutions. They
serve to highlight that Jews’ actions effectively represented their own and the city’s
institutions as somehow alike, and they portray how in some locales these actions
reinforced such perceptions in others by confounding Jewish and civic benefactions
and honors. These examples notwithstanding, I do not claim that the homologies
between the synagogue and the city were often or always explicitly acknowledged
and communicated; rather I maintain that they usually are implicitly communicated
in the “homologous shape of things,” and, perhaps, they are all the more powerful
in their effects for remaining at an implicit level of communication.
Final Remarks
An exhaustive discussion of Roman Diaspora Judaism is not possible in a chapter
such as this. Nevertheless, the foregoing has attempted to reconstruct in general terms376 Jack N. Lightstone