Rewriting the History of Ancient Synagogues and Early Jewish – Christian Relations

By the time of the emergence of Islam in Palestine in the seventh century, after hundreds of years of religious rhetoric from the mouths and pens of Christian literary elite, the concept of 'the synagogue' had been firmly constructed as an irreconcilable rival to 'the church.' Although forged in antiquity, this totalizing portrait of 'the synagogue' has had remarkable staying power. It has penetrated centuries of modern scholarship, and it continues to this day to function as the basic point of departure in historical research on the New Testament and the so-called 'parting of the ways' between Judaism and Christianity. Indeed, despite the recent growth in synagogue studies as an academic discipline, it remains the case that precious little attention has been paid to how the diverse institutional and material realities of synagogues impacted the formation of Jewish and Christian identities and their interaction in the first seven centuries of the Common Era. The history of Jewish – Christian relations in this period continues to be written within the paradigm of 'irreconcilable rivals,' from the point of view of the ancients who were rhetorically and politically powerful. The main goal of my project, therefore, is to rewrite this history from the 'bottom–up,' from the perspective of on-the-ground — and, archaeologically speaking, in-the-ground — social realia of ancient synagogues, in order to generate new knowledge about the entangled and mutually influential development of early Jewish – Christian relations.

The research project I am working on as Pro Futura Scientia XVI Fellow aims to understand how ancient synagogues functioned as both physical and rhetorical "sites" of Jewish – Christian interaction and exchange.