FRIENDS OF ASOR WEBINARS
Synagogues as Jesus Knew Them
Friends of ASOR present the next webinar in our monthly series on December 2, at 7:00 pm EST, featuring Prof. James R. Strange. For decades, the accepted wisdom among scholars of the canonical gospels was that the “synagogues” that featured in Jesus’ ministry were not buildings but congregations. After all, “gathering” is the plainest meaning of the Greek word synagōgē. Furthermore, in stories in which Jesus taught and healed, and in which he experienced rejection in his hometown of Nazareth, nothing requires that he did these things in a building. Once first-century synagogue buildings started turning up in excavations in Judea, scholars began to accept that some Galilean villages might have included synagogue buildings, and excavations in Capernaum and Gamla appeared to confirm expectations. Then another dispute emerged: some argued that the Jewish synagogue had been a religious institution from its founding while others contended that, so long as the Jerusalem temple stood, synagogues in Palestine were used for secular gatherings. Therefore, these structures began to accommodate religious practices only after the temple was destroyed in 70 CE.
This webinar lecture will draw from literary texts, inscriptions, and archaeological remains to explore these debates. We will ask whether or not synagogue buildings existed in the Galilee during Jesus’ ministry, what happened in early synagogues, which sites have archaeological evidence for the earliest synagogues, and where we should expect to find more as we continue to dig. Join us for this deep dive into how these buildings played a role in Jewish society during Jesus’ lifetime. Dr. Strange will conclude his webinar with a live Q&A session.
James Riley Strange is Charles Jackson Granade and Elizabeth Donald Granade Professor in New Testament at Samford University’s Howard College of Arts and Sciences, where he teaches courses in New Testament and archaeology. He has been directing the Shikhin Excavation Project in Lower Galilee since 2012. Excavations in the village ruins have turned up remains of a ceramics and oil lamp industry and a synagogue that dates to the Roman period. Alongside David A. Fiensy, he is co-editor of the two-volume set, Galilee in the Late Second Temple and Mishnaic Periods (Fortress Press, 2014 and 2015), and he is the author of One Problem After Another: An Introduction to Archaeology, the Gospels, and Understanding Roman Galilee (Eerdmans, forthcoming in 2022).
ASOR Sustaining Members: $0 | ASOR Members: $5 | Public: $10
To receive your ASOR member discount, log into the online store. If you are new to ASOR, please click on the “New Visitor Registration” link to register your e-mail address and choose password for our online store. Once logged in, navigate to “Meeting and Event Registration” to register for the webinar and pay the fee. Each paid registrant will receive a confirmation e-mail when you pay for the webinar. If you do not receive this e-mail, then you are not registered. Please e-mail membership@asor.org with any questions or issues with registering.
You will be e-mailed the Zoom Webinar link in the week prior to the lecture on December 2, 2021. If you do not receive the link by the close of business on the Tuesday before the webinar, please e-mail membership@asor.org immediately. All webinars are recorded and all paid registrants will be sent a link to view the recording.
All proceeds from this lecture are used to fund scholarships for members impacted by COVID-19 as well as increasing ASOR’s online resources, which are free to the public.
