Introduction

In the year 70 the Romans destroyed the Second Jewish Temple in Jerusalem.1 In the centuries that followed, Judaism was transformed from a religion centered on a temple building where a sacrificial cult was conducted by a priestly caste to a religion consisting of community worship and prayer in synagogues. Although Jewish society after 70 was presumably no less diverse than it had been previously, nearly all of the evidence we have for this period relates to the rabbinic class.2 The rabbis (or sages) preserved and codified a mass of legal rulings on Judaism - most prominently the Mishnah and Talmud - that remain authoritative until today.3

Although most of the existing literary and archaeological evidence for Judaism after 70 relates to Palestine, Diaspora communities flourished around the Mediterranean, including in Egypt and North Africa, Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy.4 Perhaps the most important Diaspora population was in Babylonia, descended in part from the Judean exiles of the late seventh and early sixth centuries B. C.E. The illustrious rabbis and academies in Babylonia produced the Babylonian Talmud, which is considered more authoritative than the Palestinian Talmud.5

Aside from the Babylonian Talmud, little evidence of Babylonian Jewry in the first five centuries of the Common Era has survived. However, in the early 1930s an ancient synagogue decorated with a stunning cycle of wall paintings was discovered at Dura Europos

In modern Syria.® The paintings are preserved thanks to an earthen embankment piled along the inner face of the city wall, which buried the synagogue during the Sasanian siege in 256, when Dura was destroyed and abandoned.7 The synagogue is located in a residential block next to the western wall of the town. It was originally a private dwelling that was converted for use as a synagogue, probably between 165 and 200.8 In 244/245 the building was remodeled and decorated with a new set of paintings.9 The paintings on the west wall are preserved to their full height. On the north and south walls fewer than half of the paintings are preserved, and on the east wall only parts of the lowest registers are preserved.10

The main hall or hall of assembly consists of a single room lined with benches and a Torah Shrine in the center of the west (Jerusalem-oriented) wall (Fig. 8.1). The synagogue was accessed through an open courtyard surrounded by additional rooms that presumably served the Jewish community. The building had a flat roof with wooden ceiling beams forming a framework for ceiling tiles.11

The Dura synagogue provides important archaeological evidence for Diaspora Judaism in the third century. Furthermore, in my opinion it is the earliest surviving synagogue building with permanent liturgical furniture (a built Torah Shrine) and distinctive Jewish ico-nography.12 However, because Dura is located in Mesopotamia, far from the major Babylonian and Palestinian centers, scholars have long recognized the problems inherent in understanding the Dura synagogue and its community in light of rabbinic writings.13 We simply do not know to what extent the Jews of Dura were familiar with or observed rabbinic law (halakhah) or whether the rabbis exercised any authority at Dura.14

The extent to which rabbinic law (halakhah) was followed by the Jews of Dura has been an important factor in discussions of the synagogue and its paintings. In this paper I consider a find that has also been viewed through the lens of rabbinic Judaism but has received much less attention than the paintings: a deposit of human bones buried under the threshold of the main doorway to the synagogue. Contrary to scholarly consensus, these bones would not have conveyed ritual impurity to those entering the building even if rabbinic law was followed at Dura. I

8.1. Dura, plan of the synagogue. Kraeling 1956, Plan VI; reproduced with permission of Yale University Press.

Propose that this deposit represents the remains of someone who the congregation hoped would intercede with God on their behalf, perhaps a priestly leader. To conclude, I review evidence for the prominence of priests in the Dura synagogue and consider the possibility that apocalyptic expectations circulated among the Jews of Dura.