TheSynagogue in the Agora of Athens is a putative formerJewishsynagogue located in theAncient Agora of Athens. Its existence was hypothesised byHomer Thompson andA. Thomas Kraabel on the basis of a marble fragment, showing a Jewishmenorah and alulav (palm branch), discovered near theMetroon in 1977. Thompson proposed that the Metroon may have been partly converted into a synagogue after thesack of the city by the GermanicHeruli people in 267 CE; Kraabel suggested that the structure's northern room, similar in plan to a Christianbasilica, was used for this purpose. It is unclear whether this proposed synagogue would have been the one that the apostlePaul is described as visiting in theActs of the Apostles.
Athens is known to have been home to a Jewish community from the second century BCE, which probably maintained a building for collective worship.[1]
During an excavation in the summer of 1977, a piece ofPentelic marble apparently once part of a curvilinear frieze over a doorway or niche was discovered a few meters from the northeast corner of theMetroon, a second-century BCE temple originally dedicated to a mother goddess.[2] The fragment is incised with the images of a seven-branchedmenorah and alulav, or palm branch.[3] The putative synagogue is thought to date from the period between 267 and 396 CE: thecontext in which the fragment was found dated to between the late fourth and early fifth centuries CE, and the Agora excavation director,Homer Thompson, considered the marble likely to have come from a building constructed after thesack of the city by the GermanicHeruli people in 267 CE, and to have been damaged by the invasion ofAlaric I of theVisigoths in 394 CE.[2]
Thompson hypothesized that the Metroon may have been partly converted into a synagogue after 267 CE.Thomas Kraabel suggested that the northern room of the structure, which was converted after the late third century into an apsidal room in the same shape as a Christianbasilica, was a likely candidate for this synagogue, on the grounds that it shared a shape with the known synagogue inSardis and (like the Sardis synagogue) was paved with a mosaic floor without motifs identifiable frompre-Christian Roman religion.[4] In 2019, Mark Wilson described the identification of this synagogue as "possible",[5] while Nicholas Stravroulakis and Timothy J. DeVinney described it as "probable" in 1992.[6]
The apostlePaul is said in theBook of Acts to have visited a synagogue in Athens,[7] during his visit to the city in 54 CE.[8] The identity of that synagogue cannot be firmly established,[9] thoughWilliam A. McDonald argued in 1941 that it was probably one outside the Agora, on the basis that Acts describes Paul as preaching "in the synagogue and in the Agora".[10]
^Barrett, C. K.A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles. Vol. 2. London: T&T Clark International. p. 828.ISBN0-567-08395-0.
^abKraabel, A. Thomas (1998). "The Diaspora Synagogue: Archaeological and Epigraphic Evidence since Sukenik". In Urman, Dan; McCracken Flesher, Paul Virgil (eds.).Ancient Synagogues: Historical Analysis and Archaeological Discovery. Leiden: Brill. p. 125.
^Hachlili, Rachel (1998).Ancient Jewish Art and Archaeology in the Diaspora. Leiden: Brill. p. 323.
^Kraabel, A. Thomas (1998). "The Diaspora Synagogue: Archaeological and Epigraphic Evidence since Sukenik". In Urman, Dan; McCracken Flesher, Paul Virgil (eds.).Ancient Synagogues: Historical Analysis and Archaeological Discovery. Leiden: Brill. p. 125.. For the reconstruction of theMetroon, seeThompson, Homer A. (1937). "Buildings on the West Side of the Agora".Hesperia.6 (1): 68.JSTOR146486.
^Wilson, Mark (2019). "The Ancient Synagogues of Asia Minor and Greece". In Fine, Steven (ed.).Jewish Religious Architecture: From Biblical Israel to Modern Judaism. Leiden: Brill. p. 122.ISBN978-90-04-37009-8.
^Stavroulakis, Nicholas P.; DeVinney, Timothy J. (1992).Jewish Sites and Synagogues of Greece. Athens: Talos Press. p. 32.ISBN960-7459-01-6.
^Acts 17:17;Barrett, C. K.A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles. Vol. 2. London: T&T Clark International. p. 828.ISBN0-567-08395-0.
^Llewellyn Smith, Michael (2004).Athens: A Cultural and Literary History. Oxford: Signal Books. p. 80.ISBN1-902669-81-9.
^Bruce, Frederick Fyvie (1988).The Book of the Acts. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. p. 329.ISBN0-8028-2505-2.
Ancient synagogues (Second Temple and Talmudic periods)
