The Other Synagogues · The Other Synagogues 331 Journal for the Study of Judaism 47 (2016) 330-363 categorized as Greco-Roman associations.2 The assumption behind this clas-

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Journal for the Study of Judaism 47 (�0�6) 330-363

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Journal for the Study of

Judaism

The Other Synagogues

Richard LastDepartment of Humanities, 231 Vanier College, York University, 4700 Keele St. Toronto, ON M3J 1P3

[email protected]

Abstract

This article scrutinizes the synagogue category and explores what value might be gained if it were to become inclusive of polytheistic occupational guilds comprising of Judeans and members from other ethnicities. It is argued that the traditional, narrow, understanding of ancient synagogues as ethnic-based groups functions to preserve the notion of a fixed and bounded practice of Judaism in antiquity, housed in synagogues. If this synagogue concept is allowed to persist, the insights gained from critical theory for understanding the fluidity and heterogeneity of Judean identity, ethnicity, and cult practice will be counteracted. The thirty other synagogues analyzed in this study are craft guilds that are often neglected in scholarship or classified as something other than synagogues. The act of excluding these guilds from the synagogue category falls outside of ancient linguistic practices and is at odds with the increasing insistence that synagogues from antiquity should be classified under the association genus.

Keywords

Craft guilds – ethnicity – occupations – Judaism – synagogues – associations

1 Synagogues and Craft Guilds1

Judean craft guilds presently occupy a marginal place in the study of ancient synagogues. Most regularly, they are distinguished from synagogues, and

1 I would like to thank Richard Ascough, Philip Harland, Anders Runesson, Jordan Ryan, and the anonymous JSJ reviewer for their helpful feedback on previous versions of this study. I am grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for generous

331The Other Synagogues

Journal for the Study of Judaism 47 (2016) 330-363

categorized as Greco-Roman associations.2 The assumption behind this clas-sification is that synagogues, unlike craft guilds, were groups where a specific Judean ethnic population practiced its bounded ancestral tradition.3 Since

funding that permitted me to do this research. Epigraphic and papyrological abbreviations follow G. H. R. Horsley and John A. L. Lee, “A Preliminary Checklist of Abbreviations of Greek Epigraphic Volumes,” Epigraphica 56 (1994): 129-69; John F. Oates et al., eds., Checklist of Editions of Greek Papyri and Ostraca, 5th ed., BASPSup 9 (Oakville, CT: American Society of Papyrologists, 2001). Abbreviations not included in these guides are as follows: GRA I = John S. Kloppenborg and Richard S. Ascough. Attica, Central Greece, Macedonia, Thrace, vol. 1 of Greco-Roman Associations: Texts, Translations, and Commentary, BZNW 181, (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2011); GRA II = Philip A. Harland, North Coast of the Black Sea, Asia Minor, vol. 2 of Greco-Roman Associations: Texts, Translations, and Commentary, BZNT 204 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2014); AGRW = Richard S. Ascough, Philip A. Harland, and John S. Kloppenborg. Associations in the Greco-Roman World. A Sourcebook (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2012); ASSB = Anders Runesson, Donald D. Binder, and Birger Olsson. The Ancient Synagogue from its Origins to 200 CE A Source Book, AJEC 72 (Leiden: Brill, 2008); Kroll = John H. Kroll, “The Greek Inscriptions of the Sardis Synagogue,” HTR 94 (2001): 5-55; IHierapMir = Elena Miranda, “La comunità giudaica di Hierapolis di Frigia,” EA 31 (1999): 109-55. Translations are my own unless indicated otherwise.

2 Shimon Applebaum refers to Judean trade guilds in Alexandria as “a third form of organi-zation” within the Judean settlement in the city, distinct from the governing body of the local Judean politeuma (i.e., the Gerousia), and the synagogues, in “The Organization of the Jewish Communities in the Diaspora,” in The Jewish People in the First Century: Historical Geography, Political History, Social, Cultural and Religious Life and Institutions, ed. Shemuel Safrai and Menahem Stern, 2 vols. (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1974-1976), 1:464-503, at 476. See also Aryeh Kasher, The Jews in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt: The Struggle for Equal Rights, TSAJ 7 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1985), 352-54. For this same distinction in more recently scholarship, see also, Shaye J. D. Cohen, From the Maccabees to the Mishnah, 2nd ed. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2006), 106-10, 113-14; and Tessa Rajak, “Synagogue and Community in the Graeco-Roman Diaspora,” in Jews in the Hellenistic and Roman Cities, ed. John R. Bartlett (New York: Routledge, 2002), 22-39, esp. 34. Scholarship on associations also tends to reserve the designator, “synagogue,” for Judean groups whose primary func-tions relate to the religious and communal practices of Judeans. See, for example, the Italian study by Elena Miranda, wherein Judean-deity craft guilds are called corporazioni rather than sinagoghe, in “La comunità giudaica,” 141-44. The major recent studies of synagogues tend to neglect Judean-deity craft guilds almost entirely. At most, a page or two is offered while discussing data concerning Judean organizations in Alexandria (Egypt) and Palestine. See, for example, Carsten Claussen, Versammlung, Gemeinde, Synagoge: Das hellenistisch-jüdische Umfeld der frühchristlichen Gemeinden (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2002), 92.

3 I follow Michael L. Satlow’s position on ethnicity as “fluid and perspectival” in “Jew or Judaean?” in “The One Who Sows Bountifully”: Essays in Honor of Stanley K. Stowers, ed. Caroline Johnson Hodge et al., BJS 356 (Providence: Brown Judaic Studies, 2013), 165-75,

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craft guilds devoted to the Judean deity recruited their members from local populations of tradespeople (e.g., carpet-weavers, bakers, goldsmiths), they could be and often were culturally heterogeneous, which has resulted in their exclusion from the currently narrow third-order synagogue category.

When situated within the broader context of research on Greco-Roman associations, the modern practice of differentiating occupation-based groups from ethnic-based groups devoted to the Judean deity by designating them with different names—craft guilds for the former, synagogues for the latter—seems rather peculiar. The following two associations are helpful for illustrating how odd it would be if historians applied this typology to private cult groups devoted any other deity. The first is an ethnic-based Zeus group of Phrygian immigrants living in diaspora. It tends to be classified under the rubric of Greco-Roman associations by classicists:

Γάιος Ἰούλιος Ἡφαιστίωνουἱὸς Ἡφαιστίων ἱερατεύσαςτοῦ πολιτεύματος τῶν Φρυ-γῶν ἀνέθηκε Δία Φρύγιον,

5 (ἔτους) κζʹ Καίσαρο Φαρμοῦθ Σεβαστῇ. (IAlexandriaK 74 = AGRW 316; Pompeii, Italy; 3rd c. BCE)

Gaius Julius Hephaistion, son of Hephaistion, having served as priest of the corporate body (politeuma) of Phrygians, dedicated this to Phrygian Zeus. The twenty-seventh year of Caesar (Augustus), month of Pharmouthis, Ausgustan day. (Translation by Harland)

The identity of members in this Zeus association (πολίτευμα) was relatively homogeneous in terms of ethnicity (Phrygian) and cult preference (Phrygian Zeus). If this group were a private πολίτευμα of Judeans (rather than of Phrygians) living in diaspora, then it would be classified as a synagogue in

at 166. Judean ethnicity tends to be understood as rather fixed and bounded in literature on synagogues. Shaye Cohen provides a responsible definition of Judean ethnicity on that model: “The Jews (Judaeans) of antiquity constituted an ethnos, an ethnic group. They were a named group, attached to a specific territory, whose members shared a sense of common origins, claimed a common and distinctive history and destiny, possessed one or more dis-tinctive characteristics, and felt a sense of collective uniqueness and solidarity . . . The most distinctive of the distinctive characteristics of the Jews was the manner in which they wor-shiped their God, what we today would call their religion” in The Beginnings of Jewishness: Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 7.



much scholarship.4 By virtue of being tagged with this third-order synagogue designator, it would then be imagined as categorically distinct from the follow-ing group whose membership profile was based on common occupation rather than common ethnicity, and whose cult behaviours were more diversified—but whose patron deity was the same:

[Διὶ Ὑ]ψίστῳ καὶ Ἥρᾳ[Ο]ὐρανίᾳ καὶ Ποσει-[δ]ῶνι Ἀσφαλείῳ καὶ[Ἀ]πόλλωνι καὶ τοῖς

5 ἄλλοις θεοῖς πᾶσιεὐχαριστήριον ὑπὲρ τῆςΚώιων πόλεως οἱ σακ-κοφόροι οἱ ἀπὸ τῆς Κα-λυμνίας ἐποίησαν ἐκ τῶν

10 ἰδίων. (IKosS EV 199 = SEG 43 549; Kos, Aegean; 2nd c. CE)

Thanks to Zeus Hypsistos, Hera Ourania, Poseidon Asphaleios, Apollo, and to all the other gods on behalf of the polis of the Koans. The porters from Kalymna made this from their own resources.

This occupational association comprises of porters who live on the island of Kalymna, an ethnically mixed group theoretically. Interestingly, the group provides cult to several deities in addition to Zeus, a practice that tends to be matched by Judean craft guilds in diasporic settings (see section 5).

It would be striking to find these two Zeus groups classified under differ-ent genera by classicists simply because they originated from different types of social networks.5 Curiously, many scholars of ancient synagogues tend to restrict their focus to ethnically homogeneous groups of Judeans and, fur-ther, exclude occupation-based groups devoted to the Judean-deity (i.e., craft guilds) from the third-order synagogue category. Since the late twentieth- century, researchers of Greco-Roman association have described the associa-tion genus as comprised of several types of private cult groups distinguishable from one another (yet still all from the same association genus) on the basis

4 For this scholarship see n. 2 and sections 2 and 3 below.5 I borrow the language of an association genus from Richard S. Ascough, “Paul, Synagogues,

and Associations: Reframing the Question of Models for Pauline Christ Groups,” Journal of the Jesus Movement in its Jewish Setting 2 (2015): 27-52.

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of the various different kinds of social networks from which they originated.6 Whether they recruited primarily from domestic networks, neighborhood rela-tionships, occupational ties, or some other type of network, private voluntary cult groups all fall under the rubric of Greco-Roman associations rather than in different taxa.7 A similar approach to synagogues, hereafter, Judean-deity groups/associations—an inclusive term for ancient synagogues that does not presume anything about the ethnicity of the groups’ members—would bet-ter account for the ancient evidence of Judean-deity groups, and also would hold value in raising new questions concerning recruitment to, and behaviour within, Judean-deity associations of Mediterranean antiquity.

A further problem with synagogue as a third-order descriptor is that ancient writers actually classified Judean-deity craft guilds as synagogues (e.g., בית הכנסת in b. Meg. 26a), and so the origins of the contemporary his-torical practice of sectioning off Judean-deity craft guilds from the synagogue category cannot be traced back to antiquity.8 The quotation above from the Babylonian Talmud might seem rather late for exemplifying such a point, but the text does not represent a development in the ancient usage of synagogue terminology that would weaken the applicability of this point to the Roman or Hellenistic periods.9 Indeed, we have a first or second century CE attestation to an occupational συναγωγή of barbers (IPerinthos 49 Side A = GRA I 86; Thrace, Danube and Black Sea Area),10 which illustrates the usage of synagogue termi-nology for occupational associations in earlier periods, as well.

6 Philip A. Harland, Associations, Synagogues, and Congregations: Claiming a Place in Ancient Mediterranean Society (Minnesota: Fortress, 2003), 28-29; John S. Kloppenborg, “Collegia and Thiasoi: Issues in Function, Taxonomy and Membership,” in Voluntary Associations in the Graeco-Roman World, ed. John S. Kloppenborg and Stephen G. Wilson (London: Routledge, 1996), 16-30, esp. 23. See section 4 below for discussion.

7 See section 4 below.8 For ancient synagogue terms, see Anders Runesson, The Origins of the Synagogue: A Socio-

Historical Study, ConBNT 37 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2001), 171-73.9 As with Greco-Roman associations more generally, Judean-deity associations (as I will call

them for lack of a better phrase), underwent some development over time. This phenome-non does not significantly impact the major suggestions in the present study. For discussion of development from Persian to Byzantine periods, see Runesson, Origins; and Lee I. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005).

10 There is nothing from this inscription to indicate which god(s) this association honoured. Recent scholarship has made the important observation that synagogue terminology does not necessarily indicate the presence of Judean members in the association that employs this language, but such an insight should not be taken so far as to assume that all synagogues without explicit mention of Judean members worshipped Greek deities.



Josephus may provide the model for the contemporary, narrow, ancient synagogue concept, but this is only by chance: in his fourteen narratives that mention Judean-deity groups, eight appear within Roman decrees or in other political contexts where the issue at hand is the legal rights of the Ἰουδαῖοι as ethnic populations living outside of Palestine, and the others are less descrip-tive, giving little indication of the institution’s diversity or unity.11 So, although in Josephus Judean-deity associations happen to be groups where a distinctive, Roman recognized, homogeneous ethnic/cultural identity (i.e., ᾽Ιουδαϊσμός) was represented and practiced, Josephus would not necessarily limit the insti-tution to this description, and if he had occasion to discuss craft guilds devoted to the Judean deity, it would be interesting to know what designator he would choose for them.

This article proposes that the contemporary, bounded, concept of the ancient synagogue has its origins in modern research, wherein it has func-tioned as a substitute for the now rejected bounded and fixed concept of ancient Judaism. Despite recent critical scholarship which emphasizes the fluidity and heterogeneity of Judean identity, ethnicity, and cult practices,12

In this particular example of the association of barbers, the group’s primary officer is called an ἀρχισυναγωγός—of course, that does not help us in identifying the group’s cult practices (see Tessa Rajak and David Noy, “Archisynagogoi: Office, Title and Social Status in Greco—Jewish Synagogue,” JRS 83 [1993]: 75-93), but it does demonstrate that occupational associations self-identified as synagogues as early as the first or sec-ond centuries CE. See also the synagogue of oar-dealers in IPerinthos 49 = GRA I 86 (Perinthos-Kerakleia, Thrace, Danube and Black Sea area; 1st-2nd c.CE); and the many other occupational associations who appointed συναγωγόι or αρχισυνάγωγοι (“synagogue leaders”): SEG 42 (1992), No. 625 = GRA I 75 (Thessalonike, Macedonia); CIRB 1134 = GRA II 93 (Gorgippia, Bosporan Region, Danube and Black Sea areas; 173-211 CE).

11 Josephus, Ant. 14.213-216, 225-227, 235, 244-246, 256-261; 16.42-3, 162-165, 300-305. For a full list of synagogue references in Josephus’s writings, see the index in Runesson et al., Ancient Synagogue, 322.

12 Cohen, Beginnings, 3 has shown persuasively that “Jewishness was a subjective identity, constructed by the individual him/herself, other Jews, other gentiles, and the state” (emphasis added). This is seen in the lack of a stable, uniform, mechanism for identify-ing Judeans in Mediterranean antiquity. Indeed, no attempted mechanism seems fool-proof. Payment of the fiscus Iudaicus might make some people seem like Judeans to outsiders (Cohen, Beginnings, 63 n.150). But Josephus suggests that people contributed two drachmas to the temple who did not self-identify as Jews (Ant. 14.110). Many ancient writers identified Judeans as individuals who practiced Judean ancestral laws (see, for example, Josephus, Ant. 14.228, 234, and Dio Cassius 66.7.2; cf. Cohen, Beginnings, 58-66). But other texts differentiate Judeans from those who just “act the part” (Arrian, Epict. diss. 2.19-21; Ignatius, Magn. 4; b. Meg. 13a; cf. Cohen, Beginnings, 60-61). See also Caroline

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ethnic descriptions of Judean-deity associations have preserved a fixed and bounded concept of Judean culture: the result is the idea that no matter how pervasive Judean acculturation was, or how fluid Judean identity became in ethnically heterogeneous settings, the so-called synagogue offered a location where a pure, uncorrupted form of Judean culture could be practiced in ethnic groups consisting almost entirely of Judeans. It is for this reason that poten-tially polytheistic, ethnically diverse, craft guilds devoted to the Judean deity tend to be excluded from the third-order synagogue concept.

The third-order synagogue concept, when used in reference to ancient orga-nizations, should either be broadened to include all associations in which the Judean deity was offered cult—even if the group was mostly comprised of Greeks and even if it mostly participated in non-Judean cultic customs—or not used at all and replaced comprehensively with the association designator.13 I have used synagogue up to this point in the article in order to present the prob-lem as clearly as possible, but it seems best to avoid it in the future when refer-ring to private Judean-deity associations. Hereafter, when the term needs to be used, which is mostly in historiographical contexts, it will be placed in quota-tions. Other associations do not each have their own unique designators and so it is difficult to justify why the nomenclature for associations that provide cult to the Judean deity should be peculiar.14 As a replacement for “synagogue,” the phrases “Judean-deity groups” and “Judean-deity associations” work better as designators since they resemble terms currently employed for associations devoted to other deities (e.g., Zeus groups, Christ groups, Dionysos groups), do not imply anything about the ethnicity of the groups’ membership, and do not privilege one association self-designator (συναγωγή) over others employed by different Judean-deity groups (e.g., σύνοδος, κοινόν ἐκκλησία, etc.).15

Johnson Hodge, If Sons, Then Heirs: A Study of Kinship and Ethnicity in the Letters of Paul (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); Satlow, “Jew or Judaean,” 165-75; and, for insights concerning Greek ethnicity that are applicable to Judean sources, Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), 22-30; and Jonathan M. Hall, Hellenicity: Between Ethnicity and Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 1-29.

13 I believe that the designator ought to be maintained at least for the one public “syna-gogue” of each of various locales in Israel. For the distinction between public and private “synagogues” see Runesson, Origins, 467-86.

14 The one exception is the special name sometimes still given to Christ associations (i.e., “churches”).

15 For an expanded discussion of these points, see Richard Last, The Pauline Church and the Corinthian Ekklēsia: Greco-Roman Associations in Comparative Context, SNTSMS 164 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 26-42.



2 “Synagogues” as Judaism

Two portrayals of ᾽Ιουδαϊσμός have co-existed in scholarship from at least the early twentieth century: a ᾽Ιουδαϊσμός that was part of the fabric of broader Mediterranean antiquity culture, and a pure, uncorrupted version of Judean ancestral traditions that existed apart from Greek and Roman culture, and that was preserved in “synagogues.”16 For instance, in Samuel Krauss’ 1922 study of “synagogues,” the author recognized that there would have been persistent cul-tural intermingling between Judeans and adherents to other cults in Hellenistic and Roman localities.17 But he identified the “synagogue” as rather bound up specifically within ᾽Ιουδαϊσμός and isolated from wider Mediterranean cultural forms. For Krauss, “synagogues” appear generalized as sites for Judean ances-tral worship (“Gottesdienste”)18 and they are situated at the centre of Jewish life (“Mittelpunkt des jüdischen Lebens”).19

Later descriptions of “synagogues” affirmed Krauss’s convictions that the “synagogue” institution preserved a pure form of ᾽Ιουδαϊσμός otherwise assimi-lated into Hellenistic culture. The revised Schürer contends that Judeans had “constant contact with Greek culture,” which “influence[d] . . . the internal development of Judaism in the Diaspora.”20 This understanding of ᾽Ιουδαϊσμός as fluid and heterogeneous is ultimately countered by a second notion, namely, the concept of ᾽Ιουδαϊσμός as practiced in “synagogues.” These groups, in their diasporic settings, had as their “specific object that not only Jewish worship

16 I follow Daniel Boyarin in understanding the “origins” of what we now call Judaism as emerging only when another signifier came to exist which could serve as its seman-tic opposition (i.e., Christianity). See Daniel Boyarin, “Semantic Differences; or, ‘Judaism’/‘Christianity,’ ” in The Ways that Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. Adam H. Becker and Annette Yoshiko Reed, TSAJ 9 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 65-85. In light of the work by Boyarin and others, I will use ᾽Ιουδαϊσμός over Judaism throughout this study unless it is necessary to employ the latter for history of research purposes.

17 Samuel Krauss, Synagogale Altertümer (Berlin: Harz, 1922), 103.18 Krauss, Synagogale, 102.19 Krauss, Synagogale, 182. Krauss’s comprehensive (by 1922) study does, however,

include mention of Jewish trade guilds in Palestine (pp. 200-201, 209) and Alexandria (pp. 261-65), but these do not shape Krauss’s understanding of the “synagogue” institution as one which cut through ᾽Ιουδαϊσμός.

20 Schürer, History, 138.

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but also Jewish law should be applied among Jews everywhere.”21 Schürer continues by noting that each week “the regular Sabbath services in the syna-gogue were an all-important means of maintaining the ancestral religion in the Diaspora communities.”22 This ethnic depiction of “synagogues” as entirely Judean in focus—and, in fact, as the place where the ancestral culture is “maintained”—suggests that “synagogues” were designed to stand apart from Greco-Roman culture (a point made explicit by later researchers). Schürer proceeds to outline how “synagogues” (i.e., locations of bounded Judaism) were everywhere in the Diaspora—noting Philo’s comment that “on the Sabbath days in all the cities thousands of houses of learning [διδασκαλεῖα] were opened” (Philo, Spec. 2.62).23 This leaves the impression that “synagogue Judaism”24 was the pervasive and dominant form in which ᾽Ιουδαϊσμός was experienced in Greco-Roman antiquity.

This idealized concept of “synagogue Judaism” tends to be perpetuated as a counterpoint to concessions of Judean assimilation and acculturation, as in Victor Tcherikover’s 1959 monograph.25 In Tcherikover’s work, both con-cepts of Judean culture can be located. First, acculturation is strongly stated: in terms of education, legal rights, language, and nomenclature “the Jews of the dispersion were strongly influenced by Hellenism and sometimes did not muster the strength to overcome the temptation ‘to be like all the peoples.’ ”26 But, second, the “synagogue” preserved a distinctive Jewish identity. It quelled the temptation of Judeans to assimilate to Greek culture and provided a venue for a different, narrower, practice of Judean culture to thrive: “in every land of the West where Jews lived, organized Jewish communities were founded, and a form of public life was created which gave the people of Israel the strength to resist assimilation.”27

21 Emil Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (175 BC-AD 135), ed. Geza Vermes, Fergus Millar, and Martin Goodman, rev. ed. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1986 [1885-1924]), 3.1.107 (emphasis added). For the characterization of “synagogues” specifically in this book, see History of the Jewish People, 3.1.91.

22 Schürer, History, 141.23 Quoted from Schürer, History, 141 (emphasis added).24 I use this term differently than does A. T. Kraabel, “Unity and Diversity among Diaspora

Synagogues,” in The Synagogue in Late Antiquity, ed. Lee I. Levine (Philadelphia: American Schools of Oriental Research, 1987), 49-60, esp. 50.

25 Victor Tcherikover, Hellenistic Civilization and the Jews (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1959).

26 Tcherikover, Hellenistic Civilization, 354; cf. 344-77.27 Tcherikover, Hellenistic Civilization, 297; cf. 344-55, 299-303 (emphasis added).



It is now commonplace to reject the notion that the ancient “synagogue format” was “uniform or universal,”28 and, albeit less so, to acknowledge the existence of craft guilds devoted to the Judean deity.29 But the conviction from decades prior that a rather pure form of Judaism was practiced in the “syna-gogue” persists. For example, John M. G. Barclay’s excellent 1996 monograph, which proposes a three level spectrum of assimilation (“high”, “medium,” “low”) on which any individual Judean might fit at any given time, identifies occupa-tional networks as generative of “medium” and “high” levels of assimilation.30 Mixed-ethnic craft guilds, universally barred from the “synagogue” descriptor in contemporary scholarship, would best be situated here in Barclay’s outline.

“Synagogues,” on the other hand, for Barclay, are institutions that fostered experiences of “low level assimilation” among Judeans.31 The “synagogue” buildings themselves were “a physical token of the distinct character of the Jewish community.”32 They functioned to “maintain in strength” the Judean “national identity.”33 Barclay further suggests that, although this would have varied by location and for each individual, “even a rudimentary communal organization loyal to its national traditions served as a counterweight to the tendency of individuals to submerge their ethnic difference in the interests of social success.”34

The same two forms of Judean culture are apparent in twenty-first cen-tury social historical works. For example, Erich Gruen, in his highly nuanced study of diasporic Judean culture in antiquity, proposes, on the one hand, that ᾽Ιουδαϊσμός was practiced in harmony with participation in educational, ath-letic, and other cultural activities associated with Greek gymnasia and theatre institutions,35 and even in conjunction with service in polis governance.36 On the other hand, Gruen suggests, the “synagogue” allowed for the maintenance of Judean ancestral traditions relatively isolated from the Greek way of life. Gruen recognizes that these organizations had positive external relationships with

28 James Tunstead Burtchaell, From Synagogue to Church: Public Services and Offices in the Earliest Christian Communities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 201-27.

29 See n. 2.30 John M. G. Barclay, Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora: From Alexander to Trajan

(323 BCE-117 CE) (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996), 111-12.31 Barclay, Jews, 117.32 Barclay, Jews, 26.33 Barclay, Jews, 27.34 Barclay, Jews, 27.35 Erich S. Gruen, Diaspora: Jews amidst Greeks and Romans (Cambridge: Harvard University

Press, 2002), 126.36 Gruen, Diaspora, 9, cf. 123-32.

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Greek civic leaders and were, generally, part of the fabric of the ancient city.37 But, crucially, internally they were private ethnically-cohesive organizations of Judeans that functioned to preserve Judean ancestral traditions:

Membership in synagogues had nothing to do with one’s trade or profes-sion . . . birth and ethnic identity linked synagogue participants; and the bonds that defined them stretched beyond local corporations and civic identities to a larger Jewish world.38

Although Gruen insists that these groups “did not promote private enclaves or segregated seclusion,”39 the notion of ethnic isolation is built into his descrip-tion: “synagogues” were ethnic groups of Judeans that existed within a world-wide Judean network and outside of local networks established between Judeans and their neighbours in Greek cities, such as trade networks. Indeed, Gruen contends that “the institutions [the Jews] created and the activities [these institutions] conducted supplied the means to preserve traditions and advance the interests of the clan,”40 and thereby perpetuate the functional argu-ment of previous generations concerning the “synagogue’s” rather exclusivist purpose. Gruen’s description of “synagogues” in Syria, Egypt, Cyrenaica, Asia Minor, and Italy focuses entirely on ethnic-based associations devoted to the Judean deity.41 Since these culturally homogeneous institutions “served as a prime signal of Jewish existence,”42 one’s impression of Judean identity in diasporic settings is overly determined by Gruen’s ethnic-based description of the “synagogue,” while the data that Gruen presents that is suggestive of heterogeneous Judean identity tends to lose some of its force.

Gruen’s nuanced study demonstrates that the linguistic practice of calling Judean-deity groups “synagogues,” and the historical practice of describing these groups as exclusively ethnic-based formations, prevents scholarship on Hellenistic and Roman period Judeans from fully endorsing its own critical insights about the fluidity and heterogeneity of Judean culture in Mediterranean antiquity. It is unquestionable that ethnic-based Judean-deity groups such as

37 Gruen, Diaspora, 126.38 Gruen, Diaspora, 121.39 Gruen, Diaspora, 105.40 Gruen, Diaspora, 105 (emphasis added). Gruen further stresses that Judean-deity groups

“announced a continuing commitment to traditions that characterized the clan” (p. 115).41 Gruen, Diaspora, 105-23.42 Gruen, Diaspora, 105.



the ones Gruen describes existed, but we should investigate why scholarship has so strongly resisted inclusion of occupation-based associations into the “synagogue” category.

What about the presence of God-fearers in Judean-deity associations, it might be protested at this point? Has not the scholarly focus on these par-ticipants provided some nuance to descriptions of ancient Judean-deity groups that otherwise stress ethnically and culturally homogeneous practices? First, the very attempt to erase them from the history of the ancient “syna-gogue” is interesting in light of the historical practices outlined in this section. Second, while it is clear that Greeks participated in Judean-deity associations (Josephus, Ant. 14.110; War 7.45; IJO II BS7 [Panticapaion, Bosporan region, 1st-2nd c. CE])—even if they were not known as σεβόμενοι and φοβούμενοι τὀν θεόν—previous scholarship tends to imagine non-Judeans with the most peripheral of roles in “synagogues.” As the traditional model goes, Greek affiliation to “synagogues” could happen at some level but only on the condi-tion that Greeks were willing to play by the rules, so to speak, established by a hegemonic and rather homogeneous Judean culture.43 One might wonder what role non-Judeans could really play in Lee Levine’s following description of “synagogues”: “for all its borrowings and diversity, the Jewish communal institution [i.e., the synagogue] remained quintessentially Jewish. It served the Jewish community and housed its rites and observances, which were influenced first and foremost— though far from exclusively—by a common Jewish past and present.”44

3 “Synagogues” Unbounded

Although Levine preserves the earlier notion of a bounded, “synagogue Judaism,” he also helps to overturn it by highlighting as others had done that the “religious aspect” of the ancient “synagogue” was simply one part of its broader communal functionality, included educational, political, and economic

43 These rules varied by time and location. For an excellent overview, see Joyce Reynolds and Robert Tannenbaum, Jews and Godfearers at Aphrodisias, Cambridge Philological Society Supplementary 12 (Cambridge: The Cambridge Philological Society, 1987), 42-66.

44 Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 133 (emphasis added).

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functions.45 By de-emphasizing the (distinctively Judean) “religious”46 com-ponent of “synagogues,” researchers have set the stage to analyze how the “synagogue” reached outside of the Romans’ legal discussion of Ἰουδαῖοι and ancestral customs. Levine continues:

The proclivity among many scholars today to describe the synagogue in religious terms derives not only from our own associations with contem-porary synagogues as religious institutions, but also from the fact that ancient literary sources tend to refer to the synagogue in religious terms.47

Other recent studies have drawn similar conclusions. For example, Carsten Claussen gives primacy of place to the religious purposes (“religiösen Zwecken”) of “synagogues,” but he also highlights several other functions held by ancient “synagogues,” including schooling, legal activities, and offering places of accommodation for travelers.48 The observation that the “synagogue” served broad social functions theoretically allows for the possibility that, as an institution, it cut across various ethnic groups in any given city.

A further step is taken in Anders Runesson, Donald Binder, and Birger Olsson’s source book. In this publication, the editors provide an avenue for an alternative paradigm on the “synagogue’s” place within urban and rural set-tings. They observe that:

Most often claims about, descriptions of, and references to “the syna-gogue” and its activities comment on Judaism as a religious or ethnic tra-dition rather than inform the reader about institutional realities in any given century.49

45 Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 170. Levine, though, understands the “synagogue” to have served Judean populations specifically. This may have been the case in the early forma-tion of Judean immigrant populations. But Gideon Bohak has shown that such immi-grant populations may not have continued to exist as bounded communities for many generations after the initial establishment of the settlement. See Gideon Bohak, “Ethnic Continuity in the Jewish Diaspora in Antiquity,” in Jews in the Hellenistic and Roman Cities, ed. John R. Bartlett (New York: Routledge, 2002), 175-92.

46 For the argument that there was not a separate sphere of life that was conceptualized as “religion” in antiquity, see now Brent Nongbri, Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013).

47 Levine, Ancient Synagogue, 170.48 Claussen, Versammlung, 222.49 Runesson, Binder, and Olsson, Source Book, 1 (emphasis added).



This insight by the editors opens the possibility of situating Judean-deity associations outside of or cutting through ᾽Ιουδαϊσμός, which is helpful for bringing together “synagogues” and Judean-deity craft guilds typologically. Runesson has more recently developed a new approach to the study of ancient Mediterranean religions which he calls “institution criticism.” This methodol-ogy allows him to look past the “monolithically construed entity designated ‘Judaism’ ”50 and, instead, focus on “the varied ‘bodies’ in which the soul of Judaism dwelled.”51 Runesson correctly observes that any contemporary understanding of ᾽Ιουδαϊσμός should be sensitive to the “various institutions and collectivities within which” Judean ancestral customs took place,52 an approach that prevents any notion of “synagogue Judaism” (as I have called it) as fixed or homogeneous to be maintained. In taking this approach, Runesson shows that “what has often been understood as sharp ‘religious’ boundaries appear to dissolve.”53

Runesson’s work amounts to a paradigm shift in that it requires an abandon-ment of the homogeneous and fixed form of Judaism formerly attributed to “synagogue” life. Now, activity in the institutions formerly labeled “synagogues” should be understood consistently with Judean identity more broadly: diverse, heterogeneous, and fluid. Ancient attestations to occupational Judean-deity groups provide an important dataset for illuminating how social networks based on common neighborhood and profession shaped the practice of ᾽Ιουδαϊσμός within associations.54

50 Anders Runesson, “Placing Paul: Institutional Structures and Theological Strategy in the World of the Early Christ-Believers,” SEÅ 80 (2015): 43-67, at 47.

51 Runesson, “Placing Paul,” 48.52 Runesson, “Placing Paul,” 43.53 Runesson, “Placing Paul,” 48.54 I cite here some studies that have taken steps forward in this direction by highlight-

ing the presence of guilds within and through Judaism: Isaac Mendelsohn, “Guilds in Ancient Palestine,” BASOR 80 (1940) 17-21; Rajak, “Synagogue and Community,” 37; Richard S. Ascough, Paul’s Macedonian Associations: The Social Context of Philippians and 1 Thessalonians, WUNT 2.161 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 102-3; Philip A. Harland, “Acculturation and Identity in the Diaspora: A Jewish Family and ‘Pagan’ Guilds at Hierapolis,” JJS 57 (2006): 222-44; David Instone-Brewer and Philip A. Harland, “Jewish Associations in Roman Palestine: Evidence from the Mishnah,” JGRChJ 5 (2008) 200-221; Runesson, “Placing Paul,” 43-67.

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4 A Membership-Based Typology of Ancient Associations

Greco-Roman associations, including Judean-deity groups,55 have been typol-ogized recently by Philip Harland on the basis of five different sources of membership. Harland, who builds upon an earlier study by John Kloppenborg, proposes five association species distinguishable from one another by the kinds of social networks primarily responsible for their origins. These networks are as follows: (1) household networks; (2) ethnic connections; (3) inhabitants of a common neighbourhood; (4) occupational networks; and (5) cult affiliations.56 Harland’s typology does not create bounded sub- categories of associations because the primary social network from which any given association recruits its members would not necessarily represent the only type of social relations that connected affiliates.

In supplement to Harland’s typology, I would suggest that most associations recruited individuals from neighborhood or street based network, a notion that holds much significance for how we might understand the membership profiles of Judean-deity associations because it emphasizes convenience of location as a primary recruitment factor over other determinants such as the ethnic identity of current members or cult preference of the association as a collective.57 Similar insights were made already by Krauss and, more recently, by Kloppenborg and Richard Ascough.58 In Krauss’s discussion of the city of

55 Although many researchers now fit “synagogues” into the association genus, the practice of differentiating linguistically between “synagogues” and “Judean craft guilds” seems to undermine this typological argument. For identification of (some) “synagogues” as asso-ciations, see, for instance, Runesson, Origins, 467-86; Rajak, “Synagogue and Community,” 22-39; Peter Richardson, “Early Synagogues as Collegia in the Diaspora and Palestine,” in Voluntary Associations in the Graeco-Roman World, ed. John S. Kloppenborg and Stephen G. Wilson (London: Routledge, 1996), 90-109.

56 Harland, Associations, 28-29; Kloppenborg, “Collegia and Thiasoi,” 23.57 Some of the more prestigious associations offered social benefits to members that out-

weighed the inconvenience of relatively lengthy travel to get to the clubhouse. For exam-ple, the social benefits of affiliation with a club that had an elite patron might have made, say, a twenty or thirty minute walk past multiple houses and buildings where other per-fectly average associations assembled worth the trouble. For instances of elite patronage, see IG II2 1368 = GRA I 51 (Athens, Attica; 164/5 CE); IGUR 160 (Terre Nova, Campania, Italy; ca. 150 CE); and TAM V 1462 = ILydiaKP I 42 (Philadelphia, Lydia, Asia Minor; 2nd c. CE). I would also classify monumental synagogues such as the one in Alexandria (Egypt) as exceptions since they seem to have been able to draw individuals from a large area (see t. Sukkah 4.6).

58 Recently, John Kloppenborg and Richard Ascough suggested a correlation between guild selection and locational convenience. Using a guild of leather workers from Saittai (Lydia)



Tiberias (Galilee) in the years immediately after the Bar Kokhba revolt, he observed that the migration of Judeans to Galilee made Tiberias the centre of Judaism (“Schwerpunkt des Judentums”) at this time.59 The increased Judean population in Tiberias naturally (“naturgemäß”) resulted in an increased num-ber of “synagogues” in the city.60 Crucially, Krauss recognizes that residents of Tiberias would not construct just one monumental public “synagogue” that could accommodate and draw Judeans from all over the city.61 Rather, several smaller, neighborhood-based, Judean-deity associations (my designation) would have been founded. The unstated, entirely reasonable, assumption here is that people typically would not have travelled very far to attend a “syna-gogue’s” meetings, and so they would have settled for whatever was nearby. Some association evidence also illustrates the importance of the group’s loca-tion for its ability to recruit.62 Evidence of multiple neighborhood-based or local occupational-based Judean-deity associations in each of Jerusalem and Alexandria (Egypt) further attest to the habit of selecting association member-ship from what was available locally.63

as an illustration, they proposed that it “no doubt consisted mainly of leather workers, but it might have had a few non-leather worker members who happened to live on or near that street” in Kloppenborg and Ascough, Attica, 2; cf. John S. Kloppenborg, “Membership Practices in Pauline Christ Groups,” Early Christianity 2 (2013): 183-215, esp. 192.

59 Krauss, Synagogale, 205.60 Krauss, Synagogale, 205.61 To be sure, at least one Judean-deity group in Tiberias was the central, grand, type of

institution that might be defined ethnically as Judean (Josephus, Life 54). But the others were likely smaller associations that brought together residents on the same street, or practitioners of the same occupation, no matter their ethnicity. Krauss, Synagogale, 210 draws the same correlation between Judean population and number of “synagogues” in his discussion of Sepphoris.

62 While association documents rarely reference the spatial distance between members’ houses and association meeting places, three interesting club regulations from Tebtynis (Egypt) provide some information on this phenomenon. These regulations clarify that all three village associations met mostly in the village where their members resided but that, occasionally, they also assembled in the metropolis or somewhere else outside of the vil-lage. Strikingly, fines for absenteeism increased according to the distance of the meeting from the village, which suggests that absenteeism was more of a problem at meetings outside of members’ neighborhood/village. See P. Mich. V 243.4 = AGRW 300 (14-37 CE); P. Mich. V 244.7-9 = AGRW 301 (43 CE); P. Mich. V 245.34-7 = AGRW 302 (47 CE).

63 The oft-cited Yerushalmi passage where R. Yehoshua (3rd c. CE) states that there were 480 houses of assembly (כניסיות -in Second Temple period Jerusalem can be ref (בתי erenced cautiously as further evidence that the location of a “synagogue” was a factor which limited its membership size (y. Meg. 3, 73d). Although this number seems fictional

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While some of these neighborhood-based or occupational-based Judean-deity associations might have arbitrarily comprised of mostly Judeans, the very fact that they were open to individuals of a common profession or neighbor-hood rather than restricted to an ethnically homogeneous membership profile is the key point. In neighborhoods such as the one where a certain Judean, Aristeas, lived (Akmoneia, Phrygia, Asia Minor), associations might form and initially provide cult to Greek deities exclusively, yet upon the involvement of a Judean who happens to live in the neighborhood, they could eventually include the Judean deity in their cult practices. This is where the problem of a “synagogue” concept limited to ethnically-cohesive associations becomes most noticeable.

The Judean Aristeas gave to an association of the neighborhood of the “first gateway” (ἡ γειτοσύνη τῶν πρωτοπυλειτὼν) in Akmoneia the responsibility to decorate the grave of his wife with roses during the Rosalia festival each year. The grave owner specified that if the association did not comply then it would face “the justice of God” (ἡ δικαιοσύνη τοῦ θεοῦ).64 This club brought together individuals who lived in the “first gateway” area quite regardless of their eth-nicity or cult affiliations.65 Aristeas could have given this grave responsibility to a different club in Akmoneia—namely, one that is typically regarded as an ethnic-based “synagogue of Judeans” (IJO II 168 = GRA II 113; late 1st/early 2nd c. CE).66 The possibility that there was an ethnic-based Judean-deity association in Akmoneia raises questions about whether Aristeas joined this

(see Stuart S. Miller, “On the Number of Synagogues in the Cities of Erez Israel,” JJS 49 [1998]: 51-66, esp. 52-55), scholars generally agree that Jerusalem would have been able to accommodate a fairly high number of small “synagogues” at the time. Similar phenom-ena are observable in diasporic settings. Alexandria was home to a monumental “syna-gogue” building that could accommodate people from all over the city, including various occupational associations (see t. Sukkah 4.6). In addition to this grand institution, Philo reveals that there were many (πολλαί) prayer houses (προσευχαί) “throughout each section of [Alexandria]” (καθ’ ἕκαστον τμῆμα τῆς πόλεως) (Philo, Legat. 132).

64 IJO II 171, C, 3-4 (Akmoneia, Phrygia, Asia Minor; 215-295 CE).65 One possibility is that some Judeans lived in this neighborhood and so joined the asso-

ciation, presumably for convenience. For ethnic heterogeneity even in so-called “Judean neighborhoods,” see Cohen, Beginnings, 57-58.

66 Harland, North Coast, 152 (emphasis original). Walter Ameling quite correctly observes that even if Aristeas’s guild was a “Jewish neighborhood group” (notice that Ameling does not call it a Synagoge) as opposed to William Ramsay’s earlier suggestion that it was a Christian association, Judeans most likely lived in other quarters of the city, too. See Walter Ameling, Kleinasien, vol. 2 of Inscriptiones Judaicae Orientis, TSAJ 99 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), 360.



association “of the neighborhood of the first gateway” simply because it was conveniently located in his neighborhood of residence.

By virtue of Aristeas’s guild’s connection to ᾽Ιουδαϊσμός, it should—like the occupational guild of porters who provided cult for Zeus—be categorized with the same name that we give to ethnic associations devoted to the Judean deity (i.e., “synagogue,” or a new, inclusive, term). This taxonomical issue is what distinguishes the present paper from much previous literature on Judean-deity groups. Whereas a group formerly needed to have members of a domi-nantly Judean geographic origins and culture in order to be designated as a “synagogue,” I am proposing that any presence of the “Judean way of life” in an association’s activities should qualify it for inclusion into the same category as ethnically-homogeneous “synagogues” are placed. The present practice of differentiating between a purely Judean-deity group on the one hand, and a mixed ethnic Judean-deity group on the other hand, seems rather arbitrary in light of nomenclature practices in ancient Judean literature as well as in con-temporary historiographies of Greco-Roman associations.

5 The Other “Synagogues”

In the remainder of this article, I will present some of the available data on the “other synagogues” from Palestine and Asia Minor, and supplement it with a table of thirty Judean-deity associations of the occupational type (Table 1). These professional guilds come from various temporal periods, which might put into question whether they should each be classified under the modern Greco-Roman association rubric. Isaac Mendelsohn, for instance, having observed that craft guilds existed in Palestine prior to contact with the Greek world,67 concluded that these early guilds did not emerge “under the direct influence of the Graeco-Roman world.”68 Despite possible genealogical differ-ences among the groups in Table 1, these are all occupation-based Judean-deity groups and, therefore, worthy of analogical comparison. The typical, singular, modern designator for them, even in Mendelsohn’s article, is “craft guild,” even though ancient writers sometimes called them “synagogues” (e.g., y. Ber. 3.6a; b. Meg. 26a). I am using the inclusive Greco-Roman associations model heuris-tically to approach the modern distinction between Judean-deity groups with ethnic-based membership profiles (“synagogues”), and Judean-deity groups with occupation-based membership profiles (“craft guilds”) from a new angle.

67 Mendelsohn, “Guilds,” 17.68 Mendelsohn, “Guilds,” 20.

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Since private groups devoted to any particular non-Judean god or hero tend to be classified under the same association genus by contemporary historians of antiquity (and by ancient writers) despite their different primary sources of members, the unique modern designation practices for Judean-deity groups require scrutiny.

If the third-order category, “synagogue,” is to be maintained in scholarship, the data below requires the concept behind the category to be broadened sufficiently to bring a description of ancient Judean-deity groups into coher-ence with broader reflections on the fluidity and heterogeneity of Judeans and ᾽Ιουδαϊσμός in antiquity, and to protect against the strategic usage of the “syna-gogue” for preserving a culturally bounded concept of ancient Judaism.

5.1 PalestineOur most sustained record of Judean-deity trade guilds from any location is Palestine, where the literary texts claim a presence of occupational “synagogues” from the Mesolithic period to Byzantine times. Krauss found it not unlikely (“nichts Unmögliches”) that Jerusalem alone would have had hun-dreds of synagogues in the late Second Temple period,69 though the archaeo-logical record from this era is far from supporting such an argument.70

Professional guilds in Palestine represent part of a wider pattern of “synagogue” formation on the basis of non-ethnic commonalities in this region. For example, we have references to a “synagogue” in Jerusalem which recruited immigrants from Alexandria (t. Meg 3:6). Luke, in an ambiguous passage, men-tions a synagogue that seemingly recruited according to even narrower cri-teria for membership: freedperson status (λιβερτῖνος) and immigration from Alexandria, Cilicia, Asia, and Cyrene (Acts 6:9). Another immigrant association is recorded in third-century Sepphoris, the בכנישתא דגופא דציפורין (y. Ber. 3.6a), which may have consisted primarily of priests from Gofnah (approximately 30 km north of Jerusalem).71 To be sure, in this instance of an occupational guild, Judean ethnicity is implied.

These “synagogues” main criterion for membership was the location from which new residents in a city or town came, not ethnicity, even if most Alexandrians in Jerusalem happened to be Judean. So, the “synagogue” of Alexandrians in Jerusalem theoretically would have been closed to Judeans

69 Krauss, Synagogale, 200; cf. y. Meg. 3.73d; b. Ketub. 105a.70 The most secure archaeological find in this regard is still the Theodotos inscription (CIJ II

1404). For data concerning Judean-deity groups in Jerusalem up to 200 CE, see Runesson, Binder, and Olsson, Source Book, 42-54.

71 See Josephus, War 6.114-115; cf. Miller, “Number of Synagogues,” 62.



from Palestine but open to any Greek Alexandrians now residing in Jerusalem. In addition to these non-ethnic factors restricting membership, these groups’ members would also have been affected by the practical consideration of the guilds’ location in relation to their houses—that is, a priest from Gofnah who lived in Sepphoris probably would not have attended the “synagogue of priests from Gofnah in Sepphoris” very much if its place of assembly was inconve-niently far away from his house.

Turning to Judean trade guilds, we encounter guilds of goldsmiths (Neh 3:8, 31), perfumers (Neh 3:8), prophets (Amos 7:14; 2 Kgs 2:3), priests (Hos 6:9; 1 Sam 10:5, 10), scribes (1 Chr 2:55), craftsmen (1 Chr 4:14), and weavers (1 Chr 4:21) in various biblical texts. Hosea explicitly calls the כהנים (“priests”) a חבר (“guild,” “fellow tradesperson,” “company”).72 Since Judean-deity groups (i.e., “synagogues”) could be named by any one of various designators, it would be special pleading to suggest that this trade guild (חבר) is somehow categori-cally different from a בית הכנסת simply due to its designator.

Some of the other references listed above could be rendered in kinship terms, but they more likely designated guilds. For example, Neh 3:8 men-tions a certain Hananiah who was a בן־הרקחים “son of the perfumer-makers.”73 Here, בן must be employed fictively to designate a “member” of a group—and, therefore, to signify an affiliate of a trade guild. Other texts use different fictive kinship and household terms that are attested in association language more broadly.74 For example, the fictive-families, i.e., guilds, (משפחות), of scribes Chr 4:21) are referenced in 1 ,עבודת הבץ) Chr 2:55) and linen-workers 1 ,ספרים)this language.75 And the reference to linen-workers in 4:21 specifies that this is a “house” (בית)—i.e., “synagogue”/association—of workers.

These references can be supplemented with less direct indications of other trade guilds. For example, in Jer 37:21 we hear of a street of bakers (אפים). There is no mention of a guild here, but it would have been typical practice for bakers

72 For the “guild” rendering of this term, see Moshe Weinfeld, The Organizational Pattern and the Penal Code of the Qumran Sect: A Comparison with Guilds and Religious Associations of the Hellenistic-Roman Period, NTOA 2 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986), 10; and Instone-Brewer and Harland, “Jewish Associations,” 209-21.

73 For this construction, see also Neh 3:8, Amos 7:14, 2 Kgs 2:3, 5, 15; cf. Mendelsohn, “Guilds,” 18.

74 For kinship language in associations, see Philip A. Harland, “Familial Dimensions of Group Identity: ‘Brothers’ (ΑΔΕΛΦΟΙ) in Associations of the Greek East,” JBL 124 (2005): 491-513; Harland, “Familial Dimensions of Group Identity (II): ‘Mothers’ and ‘Fathers’ in Associations and Synagogues of the Greek World,” JSJ 38 (2007): 57-79.

75 See Mendelsohn, 18-19 for משפחה as a guild designator in these passages.

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to organize themselves into a trade guild inclusive of cooks on the street, pre-sumably even non-Judeans of the common occupation.76

In the Second Temple period we also hear about a synagogue (בית הכנסת) of in Jerusalem, which has been interpreted as either a guild of weavers טורסייםor coppersmiths (b. Meg. 26a). Some researchers posit that טורסיים in this text should be taken to signify a group of foreigners from Tarsus (Cilicia), since the word can hold geographic or occupational meaning.77 Synagogues of טורסיים are attested elsewhere in Palestine, too—namely, in Lydda (before 132 CE)78 and Tiberias (around 300 CE).79 In a tractate from the Tosefta, the organiza-tion of טורסיים is clearly one of tradespeople rather than of foreign residents from Tarsus because they are listed along with other tradespeople such as silversmiths, blacksmiths, bronze workers, and goldsmiths (t. Sukkah 4:6). Epigraphic evidence from Jaffa provides additional attestation to the occupa-tional signification of 80.טרסי

Other references to trade networks in rabbinic literature help to affirm the prevalence of occupational bases for organizing private groups. For example, we hear of the “head [ריש] of the butchers of Sepphoris” (t. Ḥul. 3:2; cf. b. Ḥul. 58b; b. B. Qam. 99b). This term had a fairly wide semantic range, including “president” of a guild.81 In any period of time, it is possible that the butchers of Sepphoris might have been culturally heterogeneous and, therefore, that their guild might have been, as well. Rabbinic literature attests to at least one butcher in the city whose ethnicity is questionable.82 Reference to a guild president ,is also made with respect to the weavers (b. ʿAbod. Zar. 17b). Moreover (רבן)the Tosefta attests to various groups of professionals, such as donkey-drivers .(in unspecified locations (t. B. Meṣ. 11:24-26 ,(חמרין)

76 For other bakers’ guilds, see TAM V 966 = GRA II 125 (Thyatira, Lydia, Asia Minor; 2nd-3rd c. CE); IEph 215 (Ephesos, Ionia, Asia Minor; ca. 150-200 CE).

77 See, for example, Marcus Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature (Brooklyn: Traditional Press, 1903), 1:555b. In t. Meg. 3:6 and y. Meg. 73d, this group is called a “synagogue of Alexandrians.”

78 t. ʾOhal. 4:2; cf. b. Naz. 52a.79 Midr. Lev. Rab 35:12.80 Samuel Klein, Jüdisch-palästinisches Corpus Inscriptionum (Ossuar-, Grab-, und

Synagogeninschriften) (Vienna: Löwit, 1920), 46-47 (nos. 131-132); CIJ II 931; cf. Ben-Zion Rozenfeld and Joseph Menirav, Markets and Marketing in Roman Palestine, JSJSup 99 (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 218 n. 30.

81 Midrash Tehillim 12; cf. Mendelsohn, “Guilds,” 19.82 See Lev. Rab 5:6; cf. y. Ter 8:5 45c; Shaye J. D. Cohen, The Significance of Yavneh and Other

Essays in Jewish Hellenism, TSAJ 136 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 288.



The function and organization of these Judean-deity trade guilds fit well within the spectrum of activities practiced by occupational associations devoted to other patron deities.83 Since membership numbers in associations devoted to the Judean deity would have been limited by their meeting space,84 it is conceivable that these craft guilds, which were theoretically open to locals of any ethnicity as long as they practiced the same trade, would have been the primary associations in which people in the Land offered cult to the Judean deity. To exclude these occupational cults from the broader “synagogue” cat-egory strips the synagogue institution of the variability attested so thoroughly.

5.2 Asia MinorAlthough our evidence for any single Judean-deity craft guild from Sardis, Ephesos, and Hierapolis (the focuses of this section) is incomplete, the inscrip-tions discussed below are nonetheless illuminating as they attest to occu-pational associations devoted to the Judean deity that were demonstrably populated by members from different ethnic groups. In contrast, our investiga-tion of Judean-deity groups in Palestine was mostly limited to literary sources that did not provide much information on the ethnic profile of the attested craft guilds.85 These West Asian guilds are also interesting because ᾽Ιουδαϊσμός was not in the hegemonic position of controlling their practices even though some Judeans joined them.

We begin in Sardis and gradually move towards regions where evidence for Greek associations inclusive of Judean customs becomes increasingly secure. Shops and restaurants were built alongside the southern wall of the monumental synagogue structure in Sardis by the third century CE.86 Some of

83 For analysis of the function and organization of these guilds, see Mendelsohn, “Guilds,” 19-20; and Rozenfeld and Menirav, Markets, 218-19.

84 For space as a factor that limited membership size, see Kloppenborg, “Membership Practices,” 190-92; and Dennis E. Smith, “The House Church as Social Environment,” in Text, Image, and Christians in the Graeco-Roman World: A Festschrift in Honor of David Lee Balch, ed. Aliou Cissé and Carolyn Osiek, PTMS 176 (Eugene: Pickwick, 2012), 3-21, esp. 13.

85 There is evidence for non-Judean cult practices and non-Judean inhabitants in second-century Tiberias. This includes archaeological finds such as coins with images of Greek deities, as well as literary attestations to the presence of Greeks in the first century (Josephus, Life 65-67). See Yizhar Hirschfeld, “Tiberias,” Excavations and Surveys in Israel 9 (1989-1990): 107-9; and Ya‘akov Meshorer, City Coins of Eretz-Israel and the Decapolis in the Roman Period (Jerusalem: Israel Museum, 1985), 36-37.

86 For the shops, see George M. A. Hanfmann, “The Seventh Campaign at Sardis (1964),” BASOR 177 (1965): 2-37 esp. 19-29; Hanfmann, “The Tenth Campaign at Sardis (1967),”

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these shops may have been the meeting places of smaller ethnically-diverse trade associations devoted to the Judean deity. In light of this possibility, it is interesting that one of the donors of the grand “synagogue’s” mosaic floors, laid in the fourth century CE,87 is possibly identified by his affiliation to a local association:

Αὐρ. Ὀλύμπιος, φυλῆς Λεοντίων, μετὰ τῆς συμβίου κὲ τῶν παιδίων εὐχὴν ἐτέλεσα (Kroll no. 10).

Aurelios Olympios of the phyle of Leontioi [set this up] with his wife and children. I completed my vow.

There are several interpretations of this dedication’s phrase, “phyle of Leontioi.” The Israelite tribe of Judah is characterized by the lion in Gen 49:9, and so the phrase could be a Greek signification for this tribe.88 Potentially supportive of this suggestion is Louis Robert’s point that Leontios was a common name among Greek-speaking Judeans.89 In light of this data, John Kroll wonders if the detail “was primarily intended to identify the donor as a Jew.”90

Caution should be exercised in any attempt to frame the matter in strictly Judean terms. Paul Trebilco highlights evidence demonstrating that lion (λέων) imagery and language was impressively frequent in local Lydian culture, as attested by the many excavated lion statues in the city of Sardis, as well as in the usage of the lion in Lydian mythology.91 In light of Trebilco’s findings, it is

BASOR 191 (1968): 2-41, esp. 16-22; Hanfmann, Sardis from Prehistoric to Roman Times: Results of the Archaeological Exploration of Sardis 1958-1975 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), 161-67; Charles H. Greenewalt, “The Seventeenth Campaign At Sardis 1974,” AASOR 43 (1976): 61-71, esp. 67. From the epigraphy in this area, we learn of four Judeans: Jacob, a presbyter of a “synagogue,” Theoktistos, John, and Sabbatios; see Louis Robert, Nouvelles inscriptions de Sardes, Ier fascicule: Décret hellénistique de Sardes, dédicaces aux dieux indigènes, inscriptions de la synagogue (Paris: Librairie d’Amérique et d’Orient, 1964), 57; Hanfmann, Sardis, 165-66; Trebilco, Jewish Communities, 40-52. For a proposed later date for this Judean-deity group, see Jodi Magness, “The Date of the Sardis Synagogue in Light of Numismatic Evidence,” AJA 109 (2005): 443-47.

87 Though see Magness, “Date of the Sardis Synagogue,” 443-47.88 Robert, Nouvelles, 46-47; cf. Applebaum, “Organization,” 480.89 John H. Kroll, “The Greek Inscriptions of the Sardis Synagogue,” HTR 94 (2001): 5-55,

at 58; cf. Robert, Nouvelles, 40, 46-47; Baruch Lifshitz, Donateurs et fondateurs dans les synagogues juives, Cahiers de la Revue Biblique 7 (Paris: Gabalda, 1967), 27.

90 Kroll, “Greek Inscriptions,” 9.91 Trebilco, Jewish Communities, 45.



striking that the two other inscriptions that are beside this one (on the western side of the building’s forecourt), whose lettering looks similar, and which are contemporary with it,92 attest to donations by God-fearers (θεοσεβεῖς).93 These inscriptions name two individuals, Aurelios Polyippos and Aurelios Eulogios (both θεοσεβεῖς), who made donations to the “synagogue” in fulfillment of vows.

Unfortunately, the social relationship between these three donors is obscure. One possibility, of course, is that the φυλή of Leontioi was a Judean-deity craft guild that brought together Judeans and non-Judeans, among the latter were the θεοσεβεῖς. Such a hypothesis is partially consistent with an earlier sug-gestion put forward by Shimon Applebaum. He proposed that the “phyle of Leontioi” could be an association of goldsmiths that was “an integral part of the synod of the Jews of Sardis.”94 Applebaum does not provide examples of associations who employed this association self-designator, but it is striking that φυλή was indeed used as a name by some occupational associations spe-cifically in late antique Lydia.95

To be sure, Aurelios Olympios does not identify himself as a goldsmith and so even if this φυλή were a guild, we would not know which sub-category of association best describes it (e.g., occupational association? domestic asso-ciation?). If it were possible to support Applebaum’s suggestion that it was an occupational association, the notion that the members were goldsmiths seems reasonable. Two other donors mentioned among the inscriptions do identify as goldsmiths—and this is the only profession that is mentioned in the eighty or so inscriptions located in the “synagogue.” The goldsmiths include a certain Pegasios, a councillor (Kroll no. 25), and an unnamed donor (Kroll no. 36).

While Aurelios Olympios’s inscription was located in the building’s Forecourt with two other inscriptions by θεοσεβεῖς, the goldsmiths’ vows were situated elsewhere, in Bays 6 and 7. This may hold relevance for the goldsmith theory since the inscriptions from Bay 7 are generally datable to the second half of the fourth century CE, which is consistent with the dedications of Aurelios Olympios and the two θεοσεβεῖς.96 If the other goldsmith inscription,

92 Kroll, “Greek Inscriptions,” 19.93 Kroll nos. 8-9.94 Applebaum, “Organization,” 480.95 A tribe of leather-workers: IGLAM 656.11 = Waltzing no. 147 (Philadelphia, Lydia, Asia

Minor, 2nd-3rd c. CE); a tribe of wool-workers: CIG 3422.28 = IGLAM 648 (Philadelphia, Lydia, Asia Minor, after 212 CE). The discursive practice of self-designating one’s associa-tion as a tribe is part of a wider inclination of associations to mimic civic terminology for their self-designations, office titles, and honorific practices.

96 Kroll, “Greek Inscriptions,” 13, 15.

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from Bay 6, is later, there is no way to date it precisely before 616 CE when the building was destroyed.97

In Ephesos, we locate another potential Judean-deity craft guild: an asso-ciation (συνέδριον) of physicians (ἰατροί) who assembled in the local μουσεῖον.98 Since this association was involved in guarding the graves of its members (IEph 2304 = AGRW 175, unknown date), it is interesting to find that a certain Julius, a “head physician” in Ephesos, and a possible participant in this Ephesian physicians network, left his grave under the supervision of the local Judeans. Was this “head physician” a Judean?99 And if so, did he incorporate aspects of ᾽Ιουδαϊσμός into the practices of the Ephesian physicians’ guild? Julius’s grave inscription reads as follows:

[τὸ μνημεῖόν ἐστιν] Ἰο[υλίου?][—] ἀρχιιατροῦ [καὶ][τῆς γυναικ]ὸς αὐτοῦ Ἰουλίας[—]ης καὶ τέκνων αὐτῶν·

5 [ζῶ]σιν· [ταύτης τῆ]ς σοροῦ κήδον-[ται οἱ ἐν Ἐφέ]σῳ Ἰουδεο̑ι.

This is the memorial of Julius, head physician, and of his wife, Julia . . . and of their children. They are still alive. The Judeans in Ephesos are in charge of this grave (IEph 1677 = AGRW 174 = IJO II 32; Ephesos, Ionia, Asia Minor, 150-250 CE).

Although Julius is not named as a member in the local physicians’ associa-tion, he held the title, “head physician.” Several other Ephesian inscriptions use this designation as an association office title.100 The title could also designate a civic position and these types of “head physicians” may not have been regular members in physician guilds.101 Others who carried the civic title may have been local physicians and these public officials could have a more sustained

97 Kroll, “Greek Inscriptions,” 15.98 IEph 1386 (1st c. CE); IEph 719 = AGRW 165 (ca. 102-114 CE); IEph 2304 = AGRW 175 (unknown

date); IEph 3239 (unknown date).99 See IEurJud I 76 (Venosa, Italy) for a Judean head physician. Cf. Harland, Dynamics,

136 n. 50.100 See, for example, TAM V 1097 (Thyateira, Asia Minor; 2nd-3rd c. CE). For examples from

Ephesos, see Harland, North Coast, 272.101 For example, in IEph 719 (2nd c. CE), the head physician employed by Trajan.



social relationship with the local physicians guilds than their imperial counter-parts. In light of these data, Harland suggested that Julius “may be [an] internal functionary within the association of physicians.”102

Participation in this Ephesian guild included cult practices in honour of Asklepios and the emperors (IEph 719) at least by the start of the second cen-tury CE, as well as opportunities to take part in the local “contests of the phy-sicians.” This raises a provocative question. Namely, if Julius, a Judean, was a member of this guild, should it be considered a “synagogue”? It was apparently ethnically diverse but so were many other Judean-deity groups with Greeks as members. It provided cult to Greek and Roman deities, but perhaps it also offered cult to the Judean deity under the influence of Julius (and, potentially, other Judean members). Is it possible that Julius could have used his tenure as a guild officer (“head physician”) to incorporate into the association practices traditionally classified as ᾽Ιουδαϊσμός, such as celebrating Judean festival days? We are on more solid ground in attributing these mixed ethnic and cultic fea-tures to the guild that we explore next.

In an interesting inscription from Hierapolis, we encounter a trade guild that can seemingly only be differentiated from “synagogues” arbitrarily. Between the second and fourth centuries CE, there was a notable population of Judeans living in Phrygian Hierapolis (Asia Minor).103 Following Krauss’s suggestion that a city’s number of “synagogues” would correlate to the size of its Judean population, it is imaginable that there would have been multiple small, local-ized, cult groups in the city wherein Judeans and people of other ethnicities could club together with others of the same profession or neighborhood, and could honour the Judean deity. In fact, the local epigraphy from this period includes mention of three different names for Judean institutional organiza-tions in the city, including: “the people” (λαός, IHierapMir 5, line 5 = IJO II 206; late 2nd/early 3rd c. CE), “the most sacred synagogue” (ἡ ἁγιωτάτη συναγωγή, IHierapMir 14, Side b, line 5 = IJO II 191; after 250 CE), and “settlement” (κατοικία, IHierapMir 16, line 4 = IJO II 205; 161-200 CE). These different designators could

102 Harland, North Coast, 273.103 See Trebilco, Jewish Communities, 30; and Harland, “Acculturation,” 223-27. Only twenty-

three Judean epitaphs have been located in Hierapolis, but this does not suggest a small Judean population; there are less than 400 ancient epitaphs in total from the city. For the Judean inscriptions, see now, Miranda, “La comunità giudaica,” 109-55. For other inscrip-tions from Hierapolis, see Walther Judeich, “Inschriften,” in Altertümer von Hierapolis, ed. Carl Humann et al., JdI 4 (Berlin: Reimer, 1898), 67-181; and Fabrizio A. Pennacchietti, “Nuove iscrizioni di Hierapolis Frigia,” Atti della Accademia delle Scienze di Torino: II classe di scienze morale storiche e filologiche 101 (1966-1967): 287-328.

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possibly all refer to the same group, but the guilds to be explored next were surely separate from the abovementioned Judean-deity group(s).

Of particular interest for present purposes is an epitaph from the second or third century CE104 from the family grave (limestone sarcophagus) of Public Aelius Glykon and Aurelia Amia (IHierapMir 23 = IJO II 196 = GRA II 116; 161-250 CE). The inscription lacks reference to any of these three terms above that are traditionally taken as dominantly Judean communities or as “synagogues,” and it also lacks a Judean ethnic identifiers. In it, Glykon leaves behind mon-etary donations to two local associations of carpet-weavers and purple-dyers in return for grave ceremonies on Judean festival dates. This grave inscrip-tion puts into focus the evidence cited above because it provides a concrete example of Greek or Phrygian associations (see below for the ethnic identity of these guilds’ members) incorporating aspects of ᾽Ιουδαϊσμός into their activi-ties, as well as acting like Greek trade guilds. This causes the breakdown of an older paradigm which differentiates between “synagogues” and “trade associa-tions.” Glykon’s bequests read as follows:

κατέλι||ψεν δὲ [κα]ὶ τῇ σεμνοτάτῃ προεδρίᾳ τῶν πορφυραβάφων στεφα|νωτικο[ῦ] ⁕ διακόσια πρὸς τὸ δίδοσθαι ἀπὸ τῶν τόκων ἑκάστῳ τὸ | αἱροῦν μη(νὸς) ζʹ ἐν τῇ ἑορτῇ τῶν ἀζύμων. ὁμοίως κατέλιπεν καὶ τῷ συνε|δρίῳ τῶν ἀκαιροδαπισῶν στεφανωτικοῦ ⁕ ἑκατὸν πεντήκοντα, ἅτι|vac. να καὶ αὐτοὶ δώσουσι ἐκ τοῦ τόκου || διαμερίσαντες τὸ ἥμισυ ἐν τῇ ἑορτῇ τῶν καλανδῶν, | μη(νὸς) δʹ, ηʹ, καὶ τὸ ἥμισυ ἐν τῇ ἑορτῇ τῆς πεντηκοστῆς. (ll. 4-11)

[Glykon] left behind 200 denarii as grave-crowning funds to the most holy presidency of the purple-dyers, so that it would produce from the interest enough for each to take a share in the seventh month during the festival of Unleavened Bread. Likewise he also left behind 150 denarii as grave-crowning funds to the association of carpet-weavers, so that the revenues from the interest should be distributed, half during the festival of Kalends on the eighth day of the fourth month and half during the festival of Pentecost.105

The arrangement outlined in this epitaph assumes that these two associations would perpetually commemorate Glykon and his family on the dates speci-fied: the association of purple-dyers during the festival of Unleavened Bread; and the guild of carpet-weavers during the festival of Kalends (the Roman New

104 For the dating, see Ameling, Kleinasien, 416.105 Translation from Harland, North Coast, 167.



Year celebration) as well as in the festival of Pentecost. The actual commemo-rative activity specified is a grave-crowning ceremony which involved placing crowns on the family tomb and each member “taking (a share)” (τὸ αἱροῦν) on these dates—that is, participating in a commemorative banquet.

Since Glykon is never identified as a Judean—which distinguishes this inscription from most or all other known Judean epitaphs from Hierapolis106—and since both Judean and Roman religious festivals are mentioned in the epi-taph, questions arise concerning the ethnic identities of Glykon as well as the membership of the two guilds. It has been suggested that Glykon was ethni-cally a Ἰουδαῖος rather than a gentile who took on devotion to the Judean deity.107 The rationale for this proposal is that a Ἰουδαῖος would most likely give primacy of place in such an epitaph to the celebration of festivals in honour of the Judean deity, as is done in Glykon’s grave inscription.

Ameling argues that it is easier to imagine a Judean participating in Gentile traditions (“heidnischer Bräuche,” i.e., the festival of Kalends) than it is to imagine a non-Judean celebrating Passover.108 It seems to me, however, that since the non-Judeans in the purple-dyers association would be celebrating this Judean festival date, the behaviour that Ameling finds difficult to imagine might actually be attested in this very inscription. But Ameling makes the rea-sonable concession that Glykon could be a θεοσεβής (God-fearer).

An important datum that has not been considered appropriately in previ-ous scholarship is that in the extant twenty-three Judean inscriptions from Hierapolis, the Glykon inscription is the only one where the word, Ἰουδαῖος, does not appear. In most instances, the owners of Judean tombs identi-fied themselves as Ἰουδαῖοι immediately consecutive to the mention of their names. In the five exceptions pointed out by Elena Miranda (nos. 5, 6, 15, 16, 23), one is missing the tomb owner’s name (no. 6).109 Two others (nos. 5 and 15) actually seem to fall in line with the typical pattern, although they evidence variations of it. In one instance (no. 5), the tomb owners, Aurelia Glykonis and Marcus Aurelius Alexandros Theophilos, are designated as being “of the Judeans,” which is probably synonymous with the ethnic identifier in most of the other epitaphs. Next, in no. 15, while the owner’s name is not followed by

106 Out of the twenty-three inscriptions produced by Judeans, eighteen explicitly name the epitaph’s owner as a Ἰουδαῖος. See Harland, “Acculturation,” 224.

107 Tullia Ritti, “Nuovi dati su una nota epigrafe sepolcrale con stefanotico da Hierapolis di Frigia,” Scienze dell’antichità storia archeologia antropologia 6-7 (1992-1993): 41-68, esp. 59-60; Ameling, Kleinasien, 422.

108 Ameling, Kleinasien, 422.109 Miranda, “La comunità giudaica,” 136.

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the ethnic marker Ἰουδαῖος, the lone word in the inscription’s first line, ἰουδαίου (l.1), identifies the owner as born a Ἰουδαῖος or, at least, a proselyte. This leaves us with the Glykon family inscription and no. 16, both of which lack any sort of reference to the tomb owners’ ethnic affiliation, and both tomb owners, I argue, might be better understood as non-Judeans. No. 16 reads as follows:

ἡ σορὸς καὶ ὁ περὶ αὐτὴν τόπος Αὐρ(ηλίας) Αὐγούστας Ζω-τικοῦ ἐν ᾗ κηδευθήσεται αὐτὴ καὶ ὁ ἀνὴρ τῆς Γλυκωνιανὸςὁ καὶ Ἄπρος καὶ τὰ τέκνα αὐτῶν· εἰ δὲ ἔτι ἕτερος κηδεύσει, δ-ώσει τῇ κατοικίᾳ τῶν ἐν Ἱεραπόλει κατοικούντων Ἰουδαί-

5 ων προστείμου (δην.) ⁕ τʹ καὶ τῷ ἐκζητήσαντι ⁕ ρʹ. ἀντίγραφονἀπετέθη ἐν τῷ ἀρχίῳ τῶν Ἰουδαίων.

This grave and the surrounding place belong to Aurelia Augusta, daugh-ter of Zotikos. In it she, her husband, Glykonianos also known as Hagnos, and their children will be buried. But if anyone else is buried here, the violator will pay a fine of 300 denarii to the settlement of the Judeans who are settled in Hierapolis and 100 denarii to the one who found out about the violation. A copy of this inscription was stored in the archive of the Judeans.110

In light of the designation of tomb owners as Ἰουδαῖοι in twenty-one of the twenty-three suspected Judean inscriptions from Hierapolis, it seems best to consider the possibility that the tomb owner in the epitaph quoted above, and also Glykon’s family, were not Ἰουδαῖοι. On this model, the tomb owners of no. 16 would be a family of Greeks who affiliated themselves to the local Judean communities as God-fearers, benefactors, or Greeks who simply respected the reputation of the group who watched over their grave for its trustworthy track-record in performing this practice.111

Glykon, on the other hand, was probably also somehow affiliated with local Judeans given his celebration of Judean festival dates. But, crucially for this study’s thesis, he selected trade guilds as the recipients of his bequest. Did Glykon’s influence on the practices of the purple-dyers and carpet-weavers make them “synagogues”?

110 Translation from Harland, North Coast, 175.111 Similarly, for donors’ selection of associations for their good reputations for fulfilling their

responsibilities, see Harland, “Acculturation,” 234, 236.



The ethnic identities of the purple-dyers’ and carpet-weavers’ guilds are actually of greater relevance for present purposes since it is their guilds which I propose should be classified along with “synagogues” for the reason that they are associations wherein the Judean deity is honoured.112 Unfortunately, noth-ing is known about the carpet-weavers of Hierapolis outside of the Glykon fam-ily epitaph, which enlists them with celebrations of both Judean and Roman festivals. More can be said about the purple-dyers, though, from whom Glykon requested services only on the festival of Unleavened Bread. Erich Ziebarth, followed by Miranda and others, propose that the purple-dyers were “perhaps,” a guild of Judeans.113 Ziebarth’s rationale for this supposition is that Glykon and his family requested the purple-dyers to provide an act of commemo-ration only on a Judean religious festival. Miranda would later distinguish Glykon’s request for service on a Judean festival date made to this club with Glykon’s donation made to the carpet-weavers in return for commemoration on Judean and Roman festival dates, which implied to Miranda a mixed-ethnic guild of carpet-weavers that would divide itself in order to follow through with the request (i.e., the Judean carpet-weavers would perform the Judean celebra-tion, while the non-Judeans would perform the Roman celebration).

Harland was the first to approach the membership profile of the purple-dyers in light of the seven other second to third century inscriptions produced by this guild. He observes that in 209 CE this guild collaborated with civic orga-nizations in funding the construction of architraves in the city’s theatre. While the purple-dyers’ own inscription, which was a dedication of the lower archi-trave, does not mention anything indicative of any deity they honoured, the upper architrave was dedicated by the polis to Apollo Archegetes and other local deities.114 The other epitaphs that enlist the purple-dyers association in funerary or tomb services make no mention of Judean festivals or customs. One such epitaph mentions a donation of 3000 denarii to the purple-dyers, the interest of which is to be used for services at the tomb “on the custom-ary day” (τῇ ἐθίμῳ ἡμέρᾳ, HierapJ 227 = AGRW 155; 190-250 CE). In an honorific

112 If the “synagogue” designator is to be maintained, it should be inclusive of all associatio

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