“The Redeemer to Arise from the House of Dan”: Samson, Apocalypticism, and Messianic Hopes in Late Antique Galilee

Grey, Matthew J.

doi:10.1163/15700631-12340391

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…(Levine 2016;Laderman 2021). Especially noteworthy are the two recently excavated synagogues at Huqoq (Magness et al 2014(Magness et al , 2018Grey and Magness 2013;Britt and Boustan 2017;Gordon and Weiss 2018;Cielontko 2023) and Wadi Hamam (Leibner 2010;Leibner and Miller 2010), which greatly expand our knowledge of synagogue art and iconography in late antiquity. The depictions of an elephants, workers (Tower of Babel), a large male figure in military gear (Samson), among others, have elicited much discussion among scholars and different interpretations.…”

Section: Internal Jewish Developmentsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Introduction

Hezser

2023

The Routledge Handbook of Jews and Judaism in Late Antiquity

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By focusing on Jews and Judaism in late antiquity, this Handbook fills a gap left by other volumes that deal with early Byzantine Christianity only. Jews interacted and competed with pagans and Christians and experienced a number of significant developments between the third and seventh centuries, which marks this period as a time of transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages: the emergence of synagogues as religious centers of local communities, the increasing significance of rabbinic Judaism and the compilation of rabbinic documents, the consolidation of Jewish Diaspora communities, and the expansion of rabbinic Judaism to Sasanian Persia (Babylonia), which eventually topped Byzantine Palestine in its importance for the development and survival of Judaism.Late antiquity, that is, the time period between the third and the seventh centuries C.E., is a particularly interesting period as far as Jews and Judaism are concerned. Within the wider contexts of the late Roman, early Byzantine, and Sasanian Persian Empires, in competition and conflict with Graeco-Roman, Christian, and Zoroastrian cultures, Jewish religious leadership structures, institutions, and practices developed that are still relevant today. Major developments occurred in this period --from small teacher-disciple circles to a distinct rabbinic group identity; from oral instruction to written documents; from synagogues as multi-functional buildings to centers of local religious communities; from the aniconism of the Second Temple period to the emergence of Jewish figurative art; from a focus on the Land of Israel to increasingly significant Diaspora communities --which indicate a transition from the time after the destruction of the Second Temple to a medieval Judaism with an established communal structure based on rabbis, synagogues, and academies.

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Section: Internal Jewish Developmentsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Introduction

Hezser

2023

The Routledge Handbook of Jews and Judaism in Late Antiquity

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“…Worth noting, however, are the surprising findings from Huqoq, whose floors may be among the most spectacular of any discovered in Roman Palestine: see Grey 2013: 553–89; Magness et al . 2014; Magness et al .…”

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confidence: 99%

Memory, Postmemory, and Place in the Synagogues of Roman Syria

Stern

2019

Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies

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Considerations of Jews in antiquity commonly emphasize the role of common institutions (such as the Jerusalem Temple) and shared traumatic experiences (such as exile) in generating distinctive modes of memory formation and memorialization. This paper takes a different approach. By drawing from recent discussions of memory and postmemory developed in the fields of sociology, anthropology, and visual studies, and by considering diverse data from wall paintings, ceiling decorations, inscriptions, graffiti, and mosaics, the ensuing analysis demonstrates how variegated were the practices and dynamics of memory among Jews living in Roman Syria and elsewhere. Asking different types of questions about memorial practices documented in synagogues and surrounding buildings in Dura-Europos and Apamea challenges regnant assumptions about commonalities in Jewish memory and argues for a more localized and spatial approach to Jewish memory practices, the dynamics of which were as personal as they were collective, and as particular as they were locally contingent.Syria, can assist efforts to triangulate more locally inflected insights into Jewish life and memory practices.Syria, in particular, offers a critical test-site for a contextual reconsideration of memory and memorial practices among ancient Jews, because archaeological evidence for regional Jewish populations remains relatively rich and abundant. 4 Only in Syrian Apamea, for instance, did excavators uncover the best-preserved synagogue floor from anywhere in the ancient Jewish diaspora as an intact mosaic carpet, replete with geometric designs and dedicatory inscriptions. 5 And only in the remarkably preserved town of Dura-Europos did excavators discover an ancient synagogue that retained its standing walls, decorated with narrative scenes interpreting the Hebrew Bible; an elaborate ceiling, whose tiles were painted with fanciful designs and commemorative inscriptions; and components of walls and doorways, encrusted with scores of memorial graffiti. In the case of Dura, moreover, exemplary preservation of neighbouring buildings ensures something commensurately unusual: an ability to examine how substantively did certain dimensions of local Jews' memory practices emerge from (and respond to) those of their immediate cultural environments.This paper argues that attention to certain images and texts from the Dura-Europos synagogue, when compared to examples from other Durene buildings and from synagogues in Apamea and elsewhere in the region, reveals how complex and localized certain aspects of ancient Jewish practices of memory and memorialization were, both regionally and chronologically. As such evaluations ultimately indicate, memory practices were neither uniform among Jews throughout ancient Syria, nor were they likely so elsewhere in antiquity. They were not, moreover, wholly or identically related to traumatic events of 'global' proportions, such as the destruction of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem (70 ce). 6 Analysing identifiable epigraphic, architectural, and dec...

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