Older scholars doubted that purpose-built synagogues even existed in Jesus' day. Then came the buildings: a benched hall at Gamla, destroyed by Rome in AD 67; a first-century synagogue at Magdala with a carved stone showing the Temple menorah; and a Greek inscription from Jerusalem in which one Theodotos records building a synagogue “for the reading of the Law,” with lodging for travellers. The Gospels' picture of Jesus teaching in Galilean synagogues turns out to rest on real architecture.
- What it is
- Pre-AD-70 synagogue buildings at Gamla and Magdala (the latter with a carved “Magdala Stone” bearing a menorah), plus a Greek dedication inscription from a Jerusalem synagogue
- Date of artifact
- 1st century BC – AD 70
- Discovered
- Gamla (Golan), Magdala (Sea of Galilee), and the City of David, Jerusalem (the inscription, found 1913) (various excavations; the Magdala synagogue in 2009)
- Where it is now
- In situ; the Theodotos inscription in the Rockefeller Museum, Jerusalem
- Related to
- The synagogue buildings the Gospels and Acts assume Jesus and Paul taught in
- Scripture
- Mark 1:21 · Luke 4:16 · Acts 15:21
What this find showsThat synagogue buildings — with the reading of the Law, and “rulers of the synagogue” — existed across Judea and Galilee before AD 70, exactly as the Gospels and Acts describe.
What it does not proveNone of these can be shown to be a building Jesus personally used; they establish the institution, not a specific scene.
Contested: A claim that no pre-70 synagogue buildings existed (and that the Theodotos stone was later) is now rejected by almost all scholars on the epigraphy and stratigraphy.
Sources & further reading