JUDAIZATION 241century Torah reading was widespread as part of the synagogue service, though
there is no way of knowing if it was yet universal and if the scrolls were often
kept in the synagogue .Josephus even claimed that the practice of Torah read-
ing was instituted by Moses (AgAp2.175). Josephus also reported that there
were many holy books among the spoils of Jerusalem, which Titus allowed
him to keep (Life 417–18) .Were these all from synagogues, or does the story
suggest that the well-to-do priests and functionaries of Jerusalem might own
copies of their own (which should hardly come as a surprise)? Did their post-
Destruction successors, among them the rabbis, also possess personal copies
of the holy books?
The Mishnah, we have just seen, believed the synagogue’s sanctity was
derived entirely from the Torah scroll—a view apparently shared by some
members of John Chrysostom’s Antiochene flock in the late fourth century.^1
This implies that all synagogues possessed scrolls .The Mishnah likewise takes
it for granted that the Torah was read in the synagogue on Sabbaths and holi-
days (M .Berakhot 4:4; M .Megillah 3), though it does not yet describe a
regular weekly lectionary cycle, still less a regular cycle of supplementary
readings from the Prophets, though it presupposes the practice of prophetic
readings .It was only at the very end of antiquity that the lectionary cycle began
to acquire some regularity in Palestine, and even then, there were many local
variations.^2
There may be little reason to doubt the implications of the Mishnah in this
case, and in fact no scholars have done so .But perhaps some qualifications
are in order .The first is that we simply cannot be certain, in the absence of
external confirmation, that Torah reading was universally practiced and that
all synagogues possessed scrolls .Once again, the expense of the Torah scroll
may have prevented some communities from owning one, though they may
still have aspired to do so .It may be best to suppose that by the third century,
the Torah scroll was deemed a regular feature of the synagogue, even if not
every synagogue had one .(Certainly in the fourth and fifth centuries the
imageof the Torah shrine was a fixed component of synagogal iconography;
see below.)
In the fourth to sixth centuries, as the synagogue itself was reaching its
maximal diffusion in the Palestinian countryside, the scroll was gradually
given an increasingly central place in the structure of the synagogue—a devel-
opment paralleled in the Diaspora in the same period .That is, though it was
(^1) John Chrysostom,Discourses against the Jews1.5.1–8.
(^2) See Shinan, in Fine,Sacred Realm, pp .132–33 .In Babylonia, by contrast, the cycle achieved
something like its present form by the time of the Amoraim, at least among the Amoraim; see
now S .Naeh, “Sidrei Qeriat Ha-Torah Be-eretz Yisrael: Iyyun Mehudash,”Tarbiz67 (1998):
167–87.