JEWS OR PAGANS? 135less straightforward way aspects of, and are evidence for, the popular Judaism
practiced for centuries throughout the Mediterranean world. It was this same
mystical variety of Judaism that, according to Goodenough, had been pro-
pounded in articulate and (semi)systematic form in the works of Philo, and
againstwhichthesociallyandpoliticallymarginalrabbiswereformanycentu-
ries unable to prevail.
Goodenough’smethodconsistedinpartofinterpretingiconographicitems,
which he regarded as having universal “values” (i.e., religious/emotive con-
tent)asdistinctfrom“interpretations”(i.e.,theexplanationsgivenbycontem-
poraries)bymeansofintrospection.Goodenoughhimselfcheerfullyacknowl-
edged the utter subjectivity of this method and not even his greatest admirers
haveeverhadthesheerinsouciance, orratherhutzpah,toimitatehim.Butif
Goodenough’sarthistorywasafailure,hisfundamentalhistoricalobservation
based on his unchallengeably exhaustive collection of archaeological mate-
rial—that there is nothing in the Talmud to prepare us for the quantity and
character of ancient Jewish art and that it must therefore indicate that the
rabbis were far less powerful than was normally believed—has been highly
influential, including on this account. On the other hand, those influenced
byGoodenoughseemtohavedespairedoforlostinterestinthetaskofmaking
sense of ancient Jewish art, except to reiterate, in an almost ritualistic way,
that it disproves the proposition that the rabbis controlled the religious life of
the Jews.
Avi-Yonah’s and Goodenough’s common tendency to offer judaizing inter-
pretations of the archaeological material was to some extent a consequence
ofitsconsensualchronology.Itwasgenerallythoughtthatmanyorevenmost
Palestinian synagogues were built in the second and third centuries, so that
statuary and decorated pottery from the high imperial cities, imported sar-
cophagi in third-century Beth Sheari mand elsewhere, and si milar material,
were contemporaneous with the synagogues, whose decoration often com-
bined pagan and Jewish elements. It thus seemed reasonable to both Avi-
Yonah and Goodenough to suppose that almost all the pagan iconography
was used by people who were in some sense “good,” Torah-oriented, if not
rabbinic, Jews. Goodenough argued that the pagan imagery was the visual
counterpart of Philo’s use of Greek religious language and concepts to de-
scribe a profoundly hellenized but still basically “Jewish” version of Judaism,
but he also acknowledged the existence of genuine syncretism, paganizing
Judais mand judaizing paganis m.
In the last two decades, however, the traditional chronology of the ancient
synagogueshascollapsed.Itseemsunlikelythatanypost-DestructionPalestin-
ian synagogue whose remains survive much predates 300C.E. Furthermore,
scholarsofRomanreligiontendnowtoreject,oratleastfeelsqueamishabout,
the nakedly teleological clai mthat by the second or third century Greco-
Roman paganism was somehow moribund; it must on the contrary be admit-