The Jews of the Graeco-Roman Diaspora donors describe themselves astheosebeis, a term which we can now be con-
fident meant a gentile attached to a Jewish community without being a full
convert.^17 Others are labelled asbouleutēs, ‘‘town councillor,’’ an indication of
high social standing even in a period when this role was frequently an unwel-
come burden. Perhaps most striking is the mosaic inscription which reads
‘‘Vow of Samoe,hiereusandsophodidaskalos.’’Inthecontexthiereus(priest) can
only mean that he was acohen;sophodidaskalosshould mean ‘‘teacher of wis-
dom,’’ perhaps to be thought of as a translation oftalmid ḥacham. Whether
we should think of such a person as a ‘‘rabbi,’’ and if so how we should (once
again) conceive of the relations between the ‘‘rabbinic’’ Judaism of Palestine
and that of the diaspora, are questions to which we will come back below.
The Sardis synagogue, however, tells a different story from those of Stobi,
Apamea, or Gerasa, for it seems to have remained in use as a synagogue until
the seventh century. But all of them will serve to remind us that we have
to see the religious history of the later Roman Empire at various different
levels, one of which is the elementary one of street-level co-existence, or
conflict, between groups professing different beliefs. Jewish synagogues,^18
Christian churches, and pagan temples co-existed as visible structures within
the bounds of provincial towns. The temples of course had long been there.
But visible, recognisable synagogues were quite a new feature, and churches
even more recent. Dura-Europos on the Euphrates may provide a model
for the earlier period; when the town was destroyed by the Persians in the
s, it already had a Christian church and synagogue—but both had been
constructed within existing houses like the first version of the synagogue
at Stobi.^19 How visible and recognisable as structures synagogues in pagan
towns typically were in the classical period remains unclear, though for in-
stance the Alexandrian mob in.. had had no difficulty in finding those
in the city and forcibly setting up pagan ornaments in them.^20 But the few ar-
chaeologically known synagogues of the fourth century were more elaborate
and explicitly Jewish structures than any attested before; and churches, con-
structed as such, were a wholly new and revolutionary feature of the urban
. J. Reynolds and R. Tannenbaum,Jews and Godfearers at Aphrodisias(), ff.
. Not to speak of Samaritan ones, see A. D. Crown, ‘‘The Samaritans in the Byzantine
Orbit,’’Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester (): –; A. M.
Rabello,Giustiniano, Ebrei e SamaritaniI ().
. M. Rostovtzeff,Dura-Europos and Its Art(); C. H. Kraeling,The Excavations at
Dura-Europos. Final ReportVIII.:The Christian Building(); C. H. Kraeling,The Excava-
tions at Dura-Europos. Final ReportVIII.:The Synagogue(; revised with additions, );
J. Guttmann, ed.,The Dura-Europos Synagogue: A Re-evaluation().
. Philo,Flacc. –.