A "Nomen Sacrum" in the Sardis Synagogue

Abstract

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.) The Sardis synagogue displays several notable differences from other ancient synagogues known to us. At eighty-five meters long and twenty meters wide-large enough to accommodate a thousand people-it is largest synagogue ever found in the Roman world.1 Many synagogues in the ancient world were located on the periphery of towns and cities, but the Sardis synagogue shares pride of place in city-center with a colonnaded row of shops on the south and a spacious palaestra and mammoth bath-gymnasium complex on the north and west. Unlike other known synagogues of antiquity, there is no evidence of benches along the outer walls of the Sardis synagogue, and no staircase or upper gallery for the separation of women from men. Whether these two features imply mixed-gender worship or the exclusion of women from worship is not clear. No less unusual is the presence of a huge marble table in the apse of the synagogue, the supports of which are decorated by Roman eagles clutching thunderbolts. The table is flanked by two sixthcentury b.c.e. sculpted lions from the Temple of Cybele, recycled in the synagogue ostensibly as lions of Judah. The synagogue of Sardis is the largest known and probably most magnificent synagogue of antiquity-and compared to other synagogues of the Mediterranean, the most eclectic and syncretistic.2 To this list of unique features of the Sardis synagogue may now be added another-the presence of a nomen sacrum in the wall inscriptions. This appears to be the first known example of a nomen sacrum in a synagogue, and perhaps the first certain example of a nomen sacrum in a written Jewish source. I. THE SARDIS SYNAGOGUE The Sardis synagogue originated as a Roman basilica that was previously part of a Roman gymnasium. It was adapted to a synagogue in the latter part of the third century, and over the next century it flowered, in the words of John Kroll, into most significant monument of diaspora Judaism in Roman Asia Minor.3 The final stage of the synagogue in which the inscription appears dates to 360.370 c.e.4 The size, decor, and more than eighty wall inscriptions of the Sardis synagogue make it single most important building left to us by the Jews of the ancient world.5 For the most part, the wall inscriptions commemorate members of the synagogue who contributed to its structure, decor, and furnishings. With the exception of six Hebrew fragments, all the inscriptions are Greek.6 On the wall near the entrance, at the most prominent place for members of the congregation to record their dedications, 106 extant letters of the twenty-ninth inscription at Sardis read: ... (. . . with my wife and our children, in fulfillment of a vow, I gave out of the gifts of Almighty God all the skoutl.sis of the [bay?] and the painting).7 All letters in the original inscription (sometimes called the Regina inscription) are unaccented capitals. Kroll takes ... as a simple abbreviation and reconstructs the reading to ... But ... of the original inscription-clearly visible in the digital image on the following page8-is scarcely a mere abbreviation. For one, ... is not at the end of a line, where abbreviations normally occur, but in the middle of a line. Moreover, no dot follows ... to signify an abbreviation, and no words in this or other Sardis inscriptions are abbreviated without such designation. 9 Most important, ...P is clearly crowned with a horizontal stroke. The horizontal stroke is omitted and unmentioned in Kroll's article on the Sardis inscriptions, as well as in the archaeological report of Sardis edited by G. M. A. Hanfmann. The horizontal line is equally visible in the fragments of the inscription before it was reassembled.10 The other letters of inscription 29, although clearly legible, display the irregularity of a free hand. The ... by contrast, is slightly larger, and exactly uniform: the Θ is perfectly round, the . …