Synagogue

The synagogue was a meeting place where Jews gathered to read and study the law and to pray. How and when it began is not known. By one view it grew up during the Babylonian exile, when there was no temple; by another, later, among Jews living far from Jerusalem in the Greek period. The first certain evidence comes from Egypt in the 3rd century BC: inscriptions dedicating a “place of prayer”, the term Acts uses at Philippi (Acts 16:13). In Nehemiah 8, where Ezra reads the law and the Levites explain it, scholars see the elements of later synagogue reading.

By the 1st century AD there were synagogues across Galilee, Judea and the Roman world. Those excavated at Gamla, Magdala and Masada are simple halls with stepped benches along the walls. An inscription from Jerusalem, probably from before AD 70, tells of a synagogue built by a priest named Theodotus for reading the law and teaching the commandments, with guest rooms for visitors. On the Sabbath the Law and the Prophets were read, and a qualified man might be invited to speak (Acts 13:15). A synagogue leader kept order, and an attendant looked after the scrolls (Luke 4:20).