Book Chapter

The Gifts of God at Sardis

Rajak, Tessa

1998

Overview

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.

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Subject: Classical History / Judaism and Jewish Studies
• ISBN: 0198150784, 9780198150787