242 CHAPTER NINEuncommon before the fifth century for synagogues to be built with fixed Torah
shrines, many older synagogues were then renovated to have one installed.^3
By the sixth century, furthermore, many synagogues were built with apses—
a feature borrowed from the basilical church but adapted for use as a niche
for scrolls .Many such synagogues also had chancel screens, sometimes finely
carved in marble, in front of the apses (another borrowing from ecclesiastical
design), often produced in the same workshops as the church screens .The
precise interpretation of this development is unclear; perhaps it is even unwise
to attempt one.^4 It seems obvious, though, that the construction of a special
area for the scroll, the gradual establishment of zones of special sanctity
around it, and the concomitant limitation of the congregation’s access to it
mark a transformation in the popular conception of the Torah and/or of the
notion of sanctity.
There are other indications, too, that the Torah came to possess an ever
increasing numinosity, reflected in regularly performed ritual .Philo and Jose-
phus claimed that the Torah wasstudiedin the synagogues .Though this claim
normally appears in an apologetic context (the Jews, unlike the Greeks, actu-
ally know their laws because they are obliged to study them every week), its
persistence at least raises the possibility that it was true for some places, as is
weakly confirmed by the fact that in Alexandria, the Torah was apparently
read in Greek alone, the language of common speech .But the Palestinian
Talmud and other late antique Palestinian writings indicate that something
very different happened in the synagogues in the fourth century and following:
not study but a highly ritualized performance.^5 The reader would read a verse
from the scroll (recitation from memory was forbidden); another functionary,^6
who was required to stand beside the reader, would then improvise (not read,
though written texts were available) a translation into Aramaic .The Talmud
itself regarded this practice, calledtargum, as a ritual reenactment of the giv-
ing of the Torah on Mount Sinai.^7 This is why the reader was not permitted
(^3) For a survey, see Hachlili,Ancient Jewish Art, pp .166–92; Levine,Ancient Synagogue, pp.
291–356.
(^4) See J .Branham, “Vicarious Sacrality: Temple Space in Ancient Synagogues,” in D .Urman
and P .V .M .Flesher, eds .Ancient Synagogues: Historical Analysis and Archaeological Discovery
(Leiden: Brill, 1995), 2: 319–46, and in greater detail, “Sacred Space in Ancient Jewish and Early
Medieval Christian Architecture” (Ph.D. diss., Emory, 1993), for an attempt, with responses of
Fine .See also Hachlili,Ancient Jewish Art, pp .187–91.
(^5) My discussion is informed by S .Fraade, “Rabbinic Views on the Practice of Targum, and
Multilingualism in the Jewish Galilee of the Third-Sixth Centuries,” inGalilee, pp .253–86, the
most sophisticated treatment of this issue I am aware of.
(^6) So I assume he was, notwithstanding Fraade, “Rabbinic Views,” pp .261–62.
(^7) For the rabbis, the practice also resonated with what some of them regarded as the second
giving of the Torah, reported in Nehemiah 8, according to which Ezra and his assistants read the
Torah out to the peoplemeforash, which the rabbis understood (probably correctly!) to mean,
“with translation”; see S .Schwartz, “Language, Power, and Identity,” 12 n .14.