The Christian Church and the Jews of the Diaspora from the gifts of Providence, the menorah [heptamyxion].’’ Most significant
of all is surely the mosaic inscription (no. ) with ‘‘Vow [euchē] of [S]amoe,
priest [hiereus]andsophodidaskalos.’’ It is a matter of speculation what, if any,
were the special functions of acohenin a diaspora synagogue in this period.
But the concept of a ‘‘sophodisdaskalos,’’ even if we clearly cannot just trans-
late it as ‘‘rabbi,’’ does hint strongly at an interpretative and expository func-
tion, which there is no reason to suppose to have been wholly distinct from
the communal functions performed by rabbis.
The feature which is most striking about the Jewish presence in Sardis,
however, is the small scatter of Hebrew inscriptions. Of the six known texts,
recently published by F. M. Cross,^26 five come from the synagogue itself and
are very brief, consisting of a single word or name each; they thus hardly at-
test to the currency of any real literacy in Hebrew among the community.
But the sixth, a stray find from near the temple of Artemis, is a grammatical
sentence, using a verb in the perfect tense: ’NY SMRH BN LYHW KTBTY
(‘‘I, SMRH son of LYHW, have written’’). Its possible implications are there-
fore quite considerable.
The potential significance of the Sardis synagogue is therefore very great,
limited for the moment only by uncertainty as to when the basilical hall
was acquired for Jewish use, and as to the time span to which we should at-
tribute the inscriptions. The presence of Hebrew might itself tend to suggest
a late date.
Antinoopolis, EgyptNo such problem of dating attaches to the unique papyrus document now in
Köln, which attests to the existence of a Jewish community at Antinoopolis,
or Antinoe, in middle Egypt, situated on the Nile some kilometres south
of Alexandria. This is a marriage contract (ketubba) written in Aramaic, and
dated at the top (in Greek written in the Hebrew alphabet) to the year
...^27 In it Samuel son of Sampati, resident at Antinoopolis, declares that
he is taking Metra, daughter of L’ZR from Alexandria as his wife ‘‘according
to the law (NMWS nomos) [of all the daughters] of Israel’’ (line ).
This document has attracted far less comment than it ought to have, since
its publication in , perhaps precisely because of its unique character,
which necessarily makes it difficult to put in context. The document is full of
. F. M. Cross, ‘‘The Hebrew Inscriptions from Sardis,’’Harv.Th. Rev.():.
. C. Sirat, P. Cauderlier, M. Dukan, and M. A. Friedmann,La Ketuba de Cologne: un
contrat de marriage juif à Antinoopolis().