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Ehud Netzer didn’t expect to find the world’s oldest known synagogue when he began excavating a 2,000-year-old palace built by Herod The Great near the end of the first century BCE. Netzer, a Hebrew University professor of archeology, began work on the site near Jericho in Wadi Kelt in 1973. The dig was interrupted in 1987, but Netzer returned early in 1998 to resume excavations. He soon discovered the remains of an even earlier royal residence beneath Herod’s. Historical records and artifacts show that the cluster of buildings was the winter palace, destroyed by an earthquake in 31 CE, of the Hasmonean kings who ruled Judea before the Herodian dynasty. On March 28, 1998, within the palace complex, he found remains of a house of prayer similar to one found on the Golan Heights that is only about 30 years younger. Netzer believes the synagogue was built between 75-50 BCE, during the reign of Queen Salome or one of her sons. The sides of the 50 x 35-foot main room are lined with colonnades; a stone bench some 18 inches high extends around all four walls. A corner niche may once have held Torah scrolls. Next to the synagogue are remains of a mikveh, or ritual bath. To the west of the basilica-shaped main hall is a room that appears to have been added years later. Measuring about 20 by 16 feet, it includes a U-shaped bench some 52 inches wide and almost the length of the room. Netzer believes that this bench was used for ceremonial meals. Until now, the only evidence of such synagogue repasts from this period has come from historical accounts and from ancient inscriptions found at Caesaria in northern Israel and in Yugoslavia. The discovery of this Hasmonean place of worship may help resolve an issue debated by historians: Why Jews in Israel began using synagogues. From about 950 BCE, Jewish ritual centered on the temple erected by Solomon on the Jerusalem hilltop where the Book of Genesis says that Abraham prepared to sacrifice Isaac. Generations of priests descended from Aaron oversaw elaborate rituals and interpreted the laws of Moses for the citizenry. In 586 BCE, the Temple was destroyed by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar. Returning from exile late in the sixth century BCE, Jews rebuilt it. This Second Temple was razed by the Romans in 70 CE; its western wall, which was also part of Solomon’s original edifice, remains Judaism’s holiest site. Without a temple, there was no place to practice the prescribed rituals. Judaism adapted. The synagogue, which gets its name from the Greek word synod or congregation, became central to Jewish prayer and study. Until Netzer’s discovery, most scholars supposed that Second Temple-era synagogues were manifestations of a protest movement against the Second Temple and its priestly cult. Still other scholars argued that synagogues did not even come into being until about a century after the Second Temple’s destruction. Professor Donald D. Binder of Southern Methodist University, however, has long believed the opposite: That early synagogues were an extension of the Jerusalem temple and functioned as “Distant Temple Courts.” Since the Hasmoneans who built the synagogue discovered by Netzer’s team were not merely kings but also the Temple’s high priests, Netzer's find suggests close ties between the Temple in Jerusalem and synagogues in distant parts of ancient Israel. http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/Synagogue.htm |