Invention of the first-century synagogue

Abstract

Each of the case study sites has been approached in the same way: by gathering every possible excavation detail, as well as literary, epigraphic, and other sources and material evidence. Each site has been painstakingly and closely examined so as to illustrate the specifics of the excavations, the known history of those sites, and any literary, epigraphic, or other information that might cast light on their function in their ancient context, as well as on specific problems with excavations and subsequent analyses over the years. I have visited and photographed each site, drawn plans showing the relevant contexts and the relationship between elements of the sites, as well as the locations of artefacts, inscriptions, and architectural and other physical elements, and have analysed the individual elements that led to each identification. This methodology has had a completely unexpected benefit in that it has enabled illustration of the points at which scholarly opinion and interpretation of the archaeology has departed from fact (and sometimes reason!), and where this has been built on, over time, to produce the identification mythologies that we now see in relation to these five sites. As a consequence of this, it also became necessary to separate out some of the more specific claims made in relation to each of the individual sites and to locate them within the case studies. Therefore, in each chapter, there is a recitation of the main scholarly interpretations of the particular site, showing where these have relied on previous scholarship, or on misinterpretation rather than on the reality of the archaeological, epigraphic, or textual evidence.