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A very short time after this, certain young men of Dora, who set a higher value on audacity than on holiness and were by nature recklessly bold, brought an image of Caesar into the synagogue of the Jews and set it up. This provoked Agrippa exceedingly, for it was tantamount to an overthrow of the laws of his fathers. Without delay he went to see Publius Petronius, the governor of Syria, and denounced the people of Dora (Josephus, Ant. 19.300–301).

Publius Petronius, legate of Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, to the leading men of Dora speaks: Inasmuch as certain of you have had such mad audacity, notwithstanding the issuance of an edict of Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus pertaining to the permission granted the Jews to observe the customs of their fathers, not to obey this edict, but to do the very reverse, in that you have prevented the Jews from having a synagogue by transferring to it an image of Caesar, you have thereby sinned not only against the law of the Jews, but also against the emperor, whose image was better placed in his own shrine than in that of another, especially in the synagogue; for by natural law each must be lord over his own place, in accordance with Caesar’s decree (Publius Petronius ap. Josephus, Ant. 19.303–305).

Caesar Augustus, Pontifex Maximus with tribunician power, decrees as follows. Since the Jewish nation has been found well disposed to the Roman people not only at the present time but also in the time past, and especially in the time of my father the emperor Caesar, as has their high priest Hyrcanus, it has been decided by me and my council under oath, with the consent of the Roman people, that the Jews may follow their own customs in accordance with the law of their fathers, just as they followed them in the time of Hyrcanus, high priest of the Most High God, and that their sacred monies shall be inviolable and may be sent up to Jerusalem and delivered to the treasurers in Jerusalem, and that they need not give bond (to appear in court) on the Sabbath or on the day of preparation for it (Sabbath Eve) after the ninth hour. And if anyone is caught stealing their sacred books or their sacred monies from a synagogue or an ark (of the Law) [or a banquet hall], he shall be regarded as sacrilegious, and his property shall be confiscated to the public treasury of the Romans (Augustus ap. Josephus, Ant. 16.162–165).

Now the Jews though naturally well-disposed for peace could not be expected to remain quiet whatever happened, not only because with all men the determination to fight for their institutions outweighs even the danger to life, but also because they are the only people under the sun who by losing their synagogues were losing also what they would have valued as worth dying many thousand deaths, namely, their means of showing reverence to their benefactors, since they no longer had the sacred precincts [hieroi periboloi] where they could set forth their thankfulness (Philo, Flacc. 48).

Here, Philo states that the synagogues form "sacred precincts" for the Jews. Outside of Jewish usage, this designation normally represents the sacred area surrounding a temple shrine.