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The oldest original synagogue building in the Diaspora: the Delos synagogue reconsidered
Hesperia, Fall, 2004 by Monika Trumper
According to Binder, the third point "suggests the existence on Delos of a synagogue with an ancillary banquet hall used to hold feasts on sacred days." (194) But it is far from certain that this decree was referring to the Jews in Delos. It is addressed to the "magistrates, council, and people of Parium," and mentions [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.].
Parium is usually identified with the island of Paros and not with the city of Parium in the Troad, but this does not explain if and why the regional magistrates in Parium were responsible for the Delian Jews. (195) Regardless of the location of the privileged Jews, it seems fairly safe to imagine that sacred rites and customs of Jews on neighboring Cycladic islands did not differ considerably, and that common dining played an important role in all of them.
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Because the bisection of the large hall (fifth phase) and the permanent furnishing of the resulting new rooms, A and B, were most likely not realized as early as 50-40 B.C. but instead much later, there is no need to search for a separate dining room in GD 80. The undivided hall could well have served for common meals, with its participants seated on benches or resting on couches. It is readily conceivable that the Jewish community, as attested in the 40s B.C., still needed an assembly hall that they maintained, repaired, and adorned with care. The partial, stabilizing rebuilding sometime after 88 B.C. (third phase) and the embellishment and enlargement (fourth phase) of GD 80 would fit well in this picture.
Despite the information provided by literary evidence, a number of questions remain unanswered. Why did the Jews stay on Delos when the profitable international trade had shifted to successful rival ports such as Puteoli and Ostia? How did they earn their living, and where did they obtain the means to repair and sustain their synagogue and finance the different aspects of communal life, for example the common meals? Did they enlarge their synagogue (fourth phase) in connection with the confirmation of their rights, or later? In other words, was their social and financial position stable over decades or even centuries, thus enabling them to initiate major building activities as late as the first or second century A.D.? Or did the Delian Jewish community consist mostly of people of modest means who eked out a living on a nearly deserted island? (196) If a dedication by the Athenian people and the inhabitants of Delos in honor of Herodes, tetrarch of Galilee, in A.D. 6 was really motivated by the presence of Jews, the latter must have had at least a modest number of influential, wealthy patrons. (197)
Further epigraphic and literary evidence is limited to what is found on a few modest votive offerings, the lettering of which suggests a date late in the first or even in the second century A.D.; these could have been offered by either Jews or Samaritans. (198) The five inscriptions found in GD 80 itself imply an active use and votive praxis for two or even three centuries; if the other inscriptions, especially the two rather early Samaritan ones, really referred and belonged to this building, such a period could have been even longer. (199) The extent of the votive and honorific activities performed by Delian Jews and the location and arrangement of the respective objects cannot be determined due to the scarce evidence and, presumably, to the installation of the lime kiln in their synagogue.
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