TEN

THE SYNAGOGUE AND THE IDEOLOGY

OF COMMUNITY

L

ATE ANTIQUE JEWS regarded themselves as constituting religious
communities and used a special terminology to convey the idea.^1 In-
scriptions from Jericho, Bet Shean, Susiyah, Caesarea, Huldah, Hu-
sefa-Usfiyyeh, Bet Alfa, Maon, and Hammat Gader mention gifts made to
synagogues by theqahal(qadishah),benei havurta qadishta,benei qarta,’iraya
(townspeople?), and thelaos; the inscription from the En Geddi synagogue
discussed in chapter 9 may refer t othe t ownspe ople as the’am(nation), which
corresponds closely to the Greeklaos.^2 Such terms asbenei qarta, like their
counterparts in Christian and Syrian pagan inscriptions, taken in isolation,
inform us mainly of a faint and diffuse rural self-consciousness, according to
Fergus Millar not uncommon in the Syrian countryside even in the second
and third centuries.^3 This conception, though never directly attested in Pales-
tine in that period, perhaps constitutes another line of ancestry, along with
the sectarian community, of the late antique religious community. But words
likeqahal,’am, andlaosare ideologically loaded. Like the word “Israel,” also
common in the synagogue inscriptions,qahaland the others inescapably
evoke the biblical people of Israel and thus reflect what might be seen (and
what the rabbis, who avoided the words, perhaps saw) as a kind of arrogation
by the small settlement of the special religious status, the obligations, and the
promises that God granted to and imposed upon the Jews as a whole, ac-
cording to the Bible.^4

(^1) See Baer, “Origins,” 6–10.
(^2) See Naveh,On Mosaic, nos. 69, 46–47, 75–85 (from Susiyah, referring to both thebenei
qartaandqahala qadisha), nos. 39, 43, 57, 32–35 (H. Gader: Naveh suggests’irayameans the
inhabitants of a place called ’Ir; cf. Sokoloff, s.v.’irayy; even if it means “townspeople,” which is
unlikely since’irayais Aramaic in form, but’irmeans “town” only in Hebrew, the term may be
meant to connote not “community” but “permanent residents,” as opposed to the visitors respon-
sible for most of the donations. H. Gader was a popular resort frequented by wealthy Jews, as we
know from the Talmud and Epiphanius, among others); Lifshitz,Donateurs, nos. 64–67, 81.
(^3) References to something like “the community” are rare in Palestinian Christian and pagan
inscriptions; I have found only the following, from a church at Kafr Makkar, published by Ovad-
iah,Mosaic Pavements, no. 76: “Lord help this village, by the vow of Ioulianos.” See also Millar,
Roman Near East, pp. 250–56.
(^4) On these words, see the excellent account by M. Weinfeld inEJ, s.v. “Congregation.”