Jews of Jerusalem invited their compatriots in Egypt to commemorate the
purification of the Temple in their own Diaspora location.
As noted earlier, the structures in which Jews of the Diaspora met of-
ten carried the designation ofproseuchaior prayer houses. That term ap-
plies regularly to Jewish meeting places in Egypt but also in the Bosporan
region, in Delos, in Halicarnassus, and doubtless in other communities
where the evidence fails us. The implication seems clear enough: such
gatherings included prayers, acts of worship of some sort that gave voice to
the particular Jewish relationship with the divinity. Such places of assem-
blage, whether calledproseuch 3 orsynagZg 3 ,served also as a site for collec-
tive Torah study and for other instructional activity that reinforced the
continued commitment to Jewish tradition.
Philo, the learned Alexandrian Jew, places particular emphasis upon
this aspect of synagogue activity, noting that the laws were read out to
weekly meetings on the Sabbath. Priests or elders, according to Philo, took
responsibility for reading and commenting on the sacred laws, even keep-
ing the congregation at it for hours, and providing them with great impe-
tus toward piety. In Philo’s portrayal, perhaps somewhat shaped by his
own philosophic proclivities, congregants sit in their synagogues, read
their sacred books, and discuss at length the particulars of their ancestral
philosophy. He reckons the synagogue as a Jewish replica of a philosophi-
cal academy. The presentation may be slightly skewed but surely not far off
the mark.
The book of Acts portrays Paul repeatedly entering Jewish synagogues
in various cities of the Diaspora, in Thessalonica, Athens, Corinth, and
Ephesus, and arguing with Jews about the meaning of the Scriptures. Close
attention to holy writ obviously remained central to Jewish activity outside
Palestine — and to Jewish self-perception. The vitality of the Torah was
undiminished. The stimulus for translation into Greek suffices to establish
that. And, as Philo reports, the completion of the project receives annual
celebration on the island of Pharos, where the translators allegedly
worked, a strong signal of Jewish pride in the heritage that marked them
out from others.
The tenacious adherence to signature principles occurred perhaps
most obviously in the Jewish insistence upon rejecting idolatry. The affir-
mation did not consist, strictly speaking, in pitting monotheism against
polytheism. Jewish intellectuals recognized that Greek philosophic think-
ing often expressed itself in terms of a supreme deity or a single divine
principle. What Jews resisted unequivocally was the worship of deities in109Judaism in the DiasporaEERDMANS -- Early Judaism (Collins and Harlow) final text
Tuesday, October 09, 2012 12:03:56 PM