Diaspora Synagogues

For it was perfectly clear that the rumour of the overthrowing of the synagogues beginning at Alexandria would spread at once to the nomes of Egypt and speed from Egypt to the East and the nations of the East and from the Hypotaenia and Marea, which are the outskirts of Libya, to the West and the nations of the West. For so populous are the Jews that no one country can hold them, and therefore they settle in very many of the most prosperous countries in Europe and Asia both in the islands and on the mainland, and while they hold the Holy City where stands the sacred Temple of the most high God to be their mother city, yet those which are their by inheritance from their fathers, grandfathers, and ancestors even farther back, are in each case accounted by them to be their fatherland in which they were born and reared, while to some of them they have come at the time of their foundation as immigrants to the satisfaction of the founders. And it was to be feared that people everywhere might take their cue from Alexandria, and outrage their Jewish fellow-citizens by rioting against their synagogues and ancestral customs (Philo, Flacc. 45-47).

This quotation not only exhibits Philo's view that synagogues existed throughout the Greco-Roman world in the first century, but also his belief that Gentiles saw them as the central targets for anti-Jewish attacks. Note also how Philo expresses his conviction that a strong solidarity existed between the Jerusalem Temple and the Jews living in the diaspora.

Having conceived a violent enmity to them [Gaius] took possession of the synagogues in the other cities after beginning with those of Alexandria, by filling them with images and statues of himself in bodily form. For by permitting others to install them he virtually did it himself. The temple in the Holy City, which alone was left untouched being judged to have all rights of sanctuary, he proceeded to convert and transmogrify into a temple of his own to bear the name of Gaius, "the new Zeus made manifest" (Philo, Legat. 346).

Here Philo presents the Roman emperor Caligula as launching a unified assault against the Jews in 40 CE, targeting both the Jerusalem Temple and the synagogues scattered throughout the empire. Notice that the culprits turned the synagogues into imperial shrines, just as Caligula had planned to do with the Temple (see below for an example of an attack on a synagogue at Dora).

When [Moses] forbids bodily labour on the seventh day, He permits the exercise of the higher activities, namely, those employed in the study of the principles of virtue’s lore. For the law bids us take the time for studying philosophy and thereby improve the soul and the dominant mind. So each seventh day there stand wide open in every city thousands of schools of good sense, temperance, courage, justice and other virtues in which the scholars sit in order quietly with ears alert and with full attention, so much do they thirst for the draught which the teacher’s words supply, while one of special experience rises and sets forth what is best and sure to be profitable and will make the whole of life grow to something better (Philo, Spec. 2.61–62).

Philo frequently referred to synagogues as "schools" (didaskaleia), perhaps because of his own scholarly leanings. While the mention of "thousands" of synagogues is hyperbole, the passage nevertheless reiterates Philo's view that synagogues existed throughout the empire in the first century CE.

Many and great are the services which I have rendered you in the course of the war, with the help of God, when I was in Coele-Syria and Phoenicia, and when I came with the Jews to Leontopolis in the nome of Heliopolis and to other places where our nation is settled; and I found that most of them have temples, contrary to what is proper, and that for this reason they are ill-disposed toward one another, as is also the case with the Egyptians because of the multitude of their temples and their varying opinions about the forms of worship; and I have found a most suitable place in the fortress called after Bubastis-of-the-Fields, which abounds in various kinds of trees and is full of sacred animals, wherefore I beg you to permit me to cleanse this temple, which belongs to no one and is in ruins, and to build a shrine to the Most High God in the likeness of that at Jerusalem and with the same dimensions, on behalf of you and your wife and children, in order that the Jewish inhabitants of Egypt may be able to come together there in mutual harmony and serve your interests. For this indeed is what the prophet Isaiah foretold, "There shall be an altar in Egypt to the Lord God," and many other such things did he prophesy concerning this place (Onias IV [?] ap. Josephus, Ant. 13.65–68).

This letter, purportedly written by Onias IV (son of a deposed high priest), petitions the Ptolemaic rulers to build a rival Jewish temple in Leontopolis. The rulers granted the request, and the Temple--which does not appear to have developed much of a following among Egyptian Jews--was built in the middle of the second century BCE. It existed until 74 CE when it was destroyed by the Romans. Most synagogue scholars understand the mention of Jewish "temples" (hiera) as a reference to Egyptian synagogues, which are attested in Egypt as early as the third century BCE. Incidentally, the famous Egyptologist Sir William Flinders Petrie claimed to have discovered the remains