The Christian Church and the Jews of the Diaspora [the] holy place [agios topos]. Amen. Sela. [The] peace of the synagogue.’’ A
closely parallel text is offered by an Aramaic inscription in the mosaic floor,
reading ‘‘Peace on all Israel. Amen. Amen. Selah,’’ and giving three names,
presumably of benefactors: Phinehas son of Baruch, Yose son of Shmuel, and
Yudan son of Hezekiah.
There is of course a question as to whether this synagogue should be clas-
sified with other diaspora ones or with those of Palestine. Scythopolis, in
the province of Palestina Secunda, with several late Roman synagogues in
the city and its territory, lay some forty-eight kilometres to the north-west,
across the deep valley of the Jordan;^30 and Hammath-Gader, with both elabo-
rate baths and another late Roman synagogue with extensive Aramaic in-
scriptions, was some fifty-five kilometres to the north-north-west, near the
south-east corner of the Sea of Galilee.^31 So Gerasa lay not far from the prin-
cipal zone of Jewish settlement, though in this area it was a matter of mixed
settlement, not Jewish alone. But that should not be enough to make us cate-
gorise it as a ‘‘Palestinian’’ or ‘‘Judaean’’ synagogue, which strictly it was not;
instead, it should be taken as another sign that too rigid a distinction should
not be presupposed. In any case, as we will see later (text following n.
below), a Christian writer of the early fifth century can presume that Jewish
and Samaritan synagogues might be found anywhere along the route which
led through the Near Eastern provinces from Cilicia to Egypt.
Apamea, SyriaJust as Gerasa does, the major Greek city of Apamea on the Orontes reveals
a Jewish synagogue of the late Roman period which was subsequently over-
laid directly by a Christian church. Unlike almost all the other documents
discussed here, two of the sixteen mosaic inscriptions from the synagogue
at Apamea carry a precise date, year of the Seleucid era, so../.^32
. For the synagogues of Scythopolis, see E. Stern et al. (n. ), –. For a fine analy-
sis of the evolution of the city in the late Roman period, see Y. Tsafrir and G. Foerster,
‘‘Urbanism at Scythopolis–Bet Shean in the Fourth to Seventh Centuries,’’Dumbarton Oaks
Papers (): .
. For the best introduction to the site of Hammat Gader, see Y. Hirschfeld, ed.,The
Roman Baths of Hammat Gader(). The synagogue is thought to date to the early fifth
century, and reveals four quite substantial inscriptions in Aramaic, all recording the names
of benefactors. As a famous place of resort, producing also extensive Greek inscriptions,
Hammat Gader was plainly a place of mixed culture.
. The inscriptions areCIJII, nos. –; the dated texts are nos. and . See also,
for all these texts,Ins.Gr.etLat.delaSyrieIV, nos. –, and for a selection B. Lifshitz,