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The oldest original synagogue building in the Diaspora: the Delos synagogue reconsidered
Hesperia, Fall, 2004 by Monika Trumper
A comprehensive comparison of GD 80 with all constructions in Delos that might be attributed to use by an association is beyond the scope of this article. The following comparison is limited to meeting places that are similar to the Etablissement des Poseidoniastes and might, therefore, have been built and used by a similar association. A comparison with such buildings has been presented above and has shown that GD 80 lacks some features characteristic of this type of structure in Delos: commercial space (shops, workshops, magazines), sacred space (chapels, niches) and specific equipment, (144) a latrine, and, most probably, a large peristyle-courtyard with a proper vestibule.
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As the fittings (such as pavements, stucco, drains or other installations, furniture, equipment, and small finds) of GD 80 in its first phase cannot be reconstructed, comparisons must be restricted to the architecture. Common traits shared by meeting places and GD 80 are limited to a large hall, a water supply, and some additional rooms; a colonnade might have embellished the facade of the building but certainly would not have compensated for a closed, fully usable peristyle-courtyard.
If the original hall A/B, whose fittings and decoration are only partly known, (145) was used in a way similar to that of its counterparts in pagan meeting places, it was multifunctional and could have served for banquets, symposia, and assembly meetings, but nothing hints at a pagan cultic use of this room. (146) With its unusual size, it must have been conceived for large meetings from the beginning; it easily could have offered, for example, space for 20-22 or even more couches set up on the north, west, and south walls, and it certainly could have accommodated many more than 40-44 symposiasts stretched out on couches, if gatherings included seating on benches. (147)
The limited repertoire of separately usable rooms in GD 80 did not change considerably in phases 2-4 if these phases involved only the addition of some small rooms in the south and an open three-winged portico in the east (Figs. 36, 37, 38:a, b). But with the possible addition of a closed peristyle-courtyard in the fourth phase (Fig. 38:c), the building would have become similar to local meeting places for associations and would have offered space for a new range of activities.
In sum, before the fourth or even the fifth phase, there is no evidence for a remarkable alteration of the building that would clearly attest a change of ownership or use. (148) Further, the architecture suggests that this edifice was erected by a group whose needs were different from those of the associations that used the known association buildings in Delos. This view is supported by the unusual location of GD 80.
Although the position on the shore has often been noted and claimed as specifically apt for Jewish or Samaritan use, nobody has explained it with regard to the supposed non-Jewish or non-Samaritan, or private or semipublic, use of the first building. (149) The adherents of the private house theory could find some parallels on the western coastline, but the supporters of the meeting-place theory would have considerable difficulty in finding convincing comparisons. (150) Given the clearly commercial aspects of the cited association meeting places, the remote position of GD 80 in a mainly residential, noncommercial quarter does not support the thesis that a pagan association with commercial interests deliberately chose this place for its meeting place. (151) Therefore, it seems most likely that the building was planned and realized by a group that gathered neither because of common commercial interests nor in order to venerate pagan gods in temples or chapels and with sacrifices--and this very well could have been a Jewish or Samaritan group.
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