Abstract
In this article, I consider a set of contextual questions related to the social and economic influences on the construction and use of Capernaum’s great limestone synagogue, and ask what these influences might tell us about Jewish–Christian relations in this village during the fifth and sixth centuries CE. After a survey of current scholarship, I address issues of method and engage in the interpretation of the relevant primary sources, some of which have only very recently been discovered, while others have been overlooked in discussion of the question, or are deserving of reinterpretation. Building upon previous proposals, and in places revising them, I argue that we should see a dynamic interplay at work between local and non-local sources of funding for the synagogue and an intensely interactive and relational setting for the town’s Jews and Christians.
Highlights
In this article, I consider a set of contextual questions related to the social and economic influences on the construction and use of Capernaum’s great limestone synagogue, and ask what these influences might tell us about Jewish–Christian relations in this village during the fifth and sixth centuries ce
In the summer of 1838, the American explorer Edward Robinson and his travelling companions came to the ruins of Tell Ḥum, a village resting just off the north-west shore of the Kinneret Lake and today firmly identified as the site of ancient Capernaum known from the New Testament as the hometown of the Apostle Peter and a centre of activity for Jesus of Nazareth.[1]
Upon a second expedition in May of 1852 – fourteen years after his initial visit and after having seen the comparable ‘Jewish remains’ at Kefar Bar’am and Meiron – Robinson changed his mind and became the first to conclude that the edifice at Tell Ḥum was a synagogue: ‘The edifice was once a Jewish synagogue, apparently of unusual size and magnificence; surpassing everything of the kind, which we saw else where’ (Robinson 1856: 346; see fig. 1).[3]
Summary
In the summer of 1838, the American explorer Edward Robinson and his travelling companions came to the ruins of Tell Ḥum, a village resting just off the north-west shore of the Kinneret Lake and today firmly identified as the site of ancient Capernaum known from the New Testament as the hometown of the Apostle Peter and a centre of activity for Jesus of Nazareth (see Robinson 1841: 288–301, esp. 297–8).[1]. However, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Virgilio Corbo and Stanislao Loffreda chal lenged the consensus view in favour of a latefourth-century or fifth-century dating on the basis of the stratigraphic analysis that resulted from their systematic excavations underneath. Adopting this late-fifth / sixth-century dating, I wish to consider in this article a set of contextual questions related to the social and economic influences on the synagogue’s con struction and use, and to ask what these influ ences might tell us about Jewish–Christian relations in Capernaum during this period. Corbo went on to propose that the building might have been funded out of the imperial treasury during a time of renewed sympathy for Jews and Judaism under Julian
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