{"id":80,"date":"2005-08-11T14:07:47","date_gmt":"2005-08-11T19:07:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/?p=80"},"modified":"2023-02-11T08:39:42","modified_gmt":"2023-02-11T13:39:42","slug":"those-other-pagan-synagogues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/2005\/08\/those-other-pagan-synagogues\/","title":{"rendered":"Those other (“pagan”) synagogues"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unofficial groups in the Greco-Roman world that I (and others) typically call “associations” used a variety of terms to describe themselves. Some of the favourite Greek terms were synodos<\/span> (“synod”), koinon<\/span>, synergasia <\/span>(“guild”), thiasos<\/span> (“cult-society”), and mystai<\/span> (“initiates”). Today, when people (including many scholars) hear the term synagogue or head-of-the-synagogue (archisynagogos<\/span>) they tend to assume some Jewish group (or building) is in mind. However, the term synagogue (stemming from the Greek synag\u014d<\/span>, meaning to gather or bring together) was also used by other “pagan” associations and was not necessarily a sign of Jewish connections.<\/p>\n

Thus, for instance, one monument from Apamea in Bithynia (northern Asia Minor \/ Turkey), which involves a group of men and women devotees (thiasitai <\/span>and thiastides<\/span>) honouring a priestess of Cybele (the Great Mother), mentions that the inscription was set up in the “synagogue” of Zeus (IApamBith<\/span> 35). Across the Propontis in Perinthos-Herakleia in Thracia, there was an occupationally-based “synagogue of oar (or small-ware) dealers” that shows no sign of Jewish connections (IPerinthos<\/span> 59 [first or second century]). At both Beroia and Hagios Mamas in Macedonia there were associations (devoted to Poseidon and a hero-god respectively) whose main leader was known as the head-of-the-synagogue (archisynagogos<\/span>) (IMakedD<\/span> 747 [second century]; SEG<\/span> 27 [1977] 267). And there are many other “pagan” cases where the chief leader of the group, as in some Jewish gatherings, was termed head-of-the-synagogue (e.g. NewDocs<\/span> I 5; IG X.2 288-289; SEG<\/span> 42 [1992] 625).<\/p>\n

Diaspora Jewish groups (including Jesus-devotees) shared more in common with “run-of-the-mill” associations of the Greco-Roman world than often acknowledged, and their “gatherings” would have been viewed as such by outsiders in some important respects.<\/p>\n

To read more about associations in the Greco-Roman world, as well as their relevance to early Judaism and Christianity, go to the Associations in the Greco-Roman World site (under my websites above).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Unofficial groups in the Greco-Roman world that I (and others) typically call “associations” used a variety of terms to describe themselves. Some of the favourite Greek terms were synodos (“synod”), koinon, synergasia (“guild”), thiasos (“cult-society”), and mystai (“initiates”). Today, when people (including many scholars) hear the term synagogue or head-of-the-synagogue (archisynagogos) they tend to assume […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5,467],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-associations","category-greco-roman-religions","category-religions-of-the-ancient-mediterranean-blog-archive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13634,"href":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80\/revisions\/13634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}