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This volume, one in a series of books examining religious rivalries, focuses in detail on the religious dimension of life in two particular Roman cities: Sardis and Smyrna. The essays explore the relationships and rivalries among Jews, Christians, and various Greco-Roman religious groups from the second century bce to the fourth century ce. The thirteen contributors, including seasoned scholars and promising newcomers, bring fresh perspectives on religious life in antiquity. They draw upon a wide range of archaeological, epigraphic, and literary data to investigate the complex web of relationships that existed among the religious groups of these two cities—from coexistence and cooperation to competition and conflict. To the extent that the essays investigate how religious groups are shaped by their urban settings, the book also offers insights into the material urban realities of the Roman Empire. Investigating two cities together in one volume highlights similarities and differences in the interaction of religious groups in each location. The specific focus on Sardis and Smyrna is broadened through an investigation of methodological issues involved in the study of the interaction of urban-based religious groups in antiquity. The volume will be of particular interest to scholars and advanced students in Biblical Studies, Classical Studies, and Archaeology.

For one, ... is not at the end of a line, where abbreviations normally occur, but in the middle of a line. [...] no dot follows ... to signify an abbreviation, and no words in this or other Sardis inscriptions are abbreviated without such designation. 9 Most important, ...P is clearly crowned with a horizontal stroke.

The great late antique Sardis synagogue is often taken as a proof and a symbol of the integration of a major, long-standing Jewish community into its environment. A community of standing is conjured up, allocated a former basilica in the heart of the city as its synagogue, as early as the second century; a community, whose worship in this edifice of marble and rich mosaic was, famously, conducted hard up against the civic baths-gymnasium; a community which contributed to the city, producing, in the surviving inscriptions alone, nine Sardian councillors among some thirty donors. Among its humbler members, this community could number a maker of marble menoroth tellingly called Socrates. God-fearers, to be understood as sympathizers with Judaism or as affiliates, emerge as an active part of the community, at least in their operation as benefactors recorded on equal terms with others, just as we find them in the comparable milieu of Aphrodisias.

Although it was discovered in 1962 and its excavation was completed by the mid-1970s, the synagogue of ancient Sardis in western Asia Minor, with its nearly eighty Greek inscriptions, remains the single most important archaeological source for our knowledge of western diasporan Judaism and its relationship to the wider Greco-Roman world. Despite its historical importance, however, scholars have rarely questioned the assumptions and conclusions of its original interpreters, Andrew Seager and Thomas Kraabel. Yet, for example, on the crucial question of dating (that is, when the building actually became a synagogue) these authors clearly disagreed among themselves, as is evident from a careful reading of their jointly written analysis, published in 1983. Their long-awaited report on the Sardis synagogue may clarify this question as well as other important issues. At present, however, confusion abounds in the secondary literature, because in general this literature continues to accept uncritically Kraabel's selection and interpretation of the relevant evidence. Although I have reexamined the major aspects of the question of dating in a previous article, as has Helga Botermann independently and in more detail, the analysis of the building history reflected in this present article is also indebted to John H. Kroll's excellent but still unpublished manuscript of the Greek inscriptions.