Academic literature on the topic 'Synagoga (Christian art)'

Marianne Moyaert shows the potentially violent nature of comparisons between Jewish and Christian scriptures by recollecting the story of the sibling rivalry between Jacob and Esau and exploring how it has been interpreted. She notes some classical Christian (and anti-Jewish) readings of this story, which to her mind are exemplary of what Nicholson has termed the “old comparative theology.” Consequently, she formulates some ground rules for comparative theology after the Shoah, such as may help minimize the problem of violence in the comparative use of another’s tradition. In the last section of her chapter, she makes the proposed ground rules come alive by returning to the Jacob and Esau saga. A careful study of this story together with rabbinic interpretations—including contemporary readings such as that of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks—not only interrupts thought patterns of replacement and substitution but also initiates constructive theological reflections about the relation between Esau and Jacob, Church and Synagogue, and Christians and Jews.

This chapter examines Olyka's main synagogue, known as the Great Synagogue, reconstructing it as a virtual site of memory. At the centre of a fertile area populated by Ukrainians and ruled at different times by members of the Ruthenian/Ukrainian, Polish, and Lithuanian nobility, it attracted a community of Jews, who settled there and plied their various trades and crafts for three and a half centuries. Though these activities connected them to the local population and to the rulers of the city, the Jews preserved their identity in a local population dominated by Christian denominations, including Orthodox, Calvinist, and Greek and Roman Catholic. Central to both Jewish and Christian communities was the visible sacred symbol of the synagogue or church, and in their synagogue architecture, Jews felt a need to substantiate a Jewish presence, organized around their sacred space, in their own eyes and in the eyes of other communities. Belarusian, Ukrainian, Russian, and Polish historiographies are informative concerning the Jewish past of Olyka, while Jewish sources are largely silent, or give a legendary narrative of events. Thus, both legend and history contribute to the construction of a place of memory.

This chapter examines how graffiti was inscribed and painted by ancient Jews to communicate with and about the divine. It begins with a discussion of paintings and carvings that cover the surfaces of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre—revered by many Christians as the site where Jesus was crucified and buried—and serve as physical vestiges of pilgrims' devotions, rather than marks of defacement. It then considers common assumptions that govern studies of ancient Jewish prayer before analyzing Aramaic and Greek signature and remembrance graffiti in the Dura-Europos synagogue and elsewhere in Dura, as well as devotional graffiti written by Jews in shrines shared by pagans and Christians, such as Elijah's Cave. The chapter suggests that certain acts of graffiti writing are in reality modes of prayer conducted by Jews and their neighbors alike, and that ancient Jews prayed in a variety of built and natural environments.

This chapter seeks to ground individual expressions of the new rhetoric in concrete details of the social context of apostasy that spawned it. It discusses how Jews and the Conversos engaged in the construction and reconstruction of their respective identities in response to the mass conversions. It also emphasizes how the Jew was an entirely contemporary concept and representative of real Jews and Conversos that is firmly rooted in the realities of social interaction during the fifteenth-century Castile. The chapter recognizes the elusiveness and mutability of ethnic and religious identity in formulating the essential characteristics of the self. It describes images of the anthropomorphized figures of Church and Synagogue that adorn the Christian art of western Europe and which contain theological and social messages revealing the chasm separating Christianity and Judaism.

The enlargement of Muslim domination to include Morocco, Spain and eventually Sicily meant that the southern half of the Mediterranean became a Muslim-ruled lake, offering splendid new opportunities for trade. Jewish merchants emerge most prominently from the records. Whether this is an accident of survival, or whether they were more successful than Coptic and Syriac Christians or Muslim townsmen of North Africa, Spain and Egypt is uncertain. There are grounds for thinking that non-Muslim merchants had a distinct advantage. Muslims were constrained by legal rulings that forbade them from living or even trading in infidel lands. Over the centuries this meant that the rulers of Muslim cities in the Mediterranean opened their doors to Christian and Jewish traders, but their Muslim inhabitants were wary of venturing to Italy, Catalonia or Provence. The reason so much is known about the Jewish traders is that hundreds of their letters and business documents have survived in the collection known as the Cairo Genizah. In the mid-seventh century, the Arab invaders of Egypt established their base at Fustat (meaning ‘the Ditch’) on the edge of modern Cairo, and only later moved their capital to the surroundings of the great citadel of New Cairo. Old Cairo, or Fustat, became the base for the city’s Jewish and Coptic population; in the eleventh century one group of Jews rebuilt the Ben Ezra synagogue, incorporating on the upper floor a storeroom, or Genizah, accessible only by ladder, into which they threw and stuffed their discarded papers and manuscripts. They wished to avoid destroying anything that carried the name of God; by extension they did not destroy anything written in Hebrew characters. It has been well said that the Genizah collection is ‘the very opposite of an archive’, because the aim was to throw away documents without destroying them, in effect burying them above ground, rather than to create an accessible room that could be used for systematic reference.

A city with a strong and vibrant Jewish community during the Roman period, as well as a center for the worship of Artemis and home to a significant Christian community, Sardis is an intriguing place to visit for anyone interested in biblical studies or ancient religious history. The partially restored 3rd-century-C.E. synagogue in the city is the largest known synagogue outside Palestine from ancient times. Ancient shops, a bath-gymnasium complex, and the Temple of Artemis provide glimpses of the life of this ancient city. Once the capital of the ancient Lydian Kingdom, Sardis (Sart) lies approximately 60 miles east of Izmir along the modern highway (E96/300) connecting Izmir to Ankara in the Hermus River valley (today called the Gediz River). Portions of the ruins of Sardis are situated adjacent to the highway and are easily accessible. The ancient city was built along the Pactolus River, a tributary of the Hermus, and at the foothills of the Tmolus Mountains. The city’s acropolis was strategically located atop a spur of the Tmolus Mountains. The Tmolus Mountains (or Mt. Tmolus) were, according to some ancient traditions, the birthplace of the gods Dionysus and Zeus. Sardis first came to prominence during the 1st millennium B.C.E. when it served as the center of the powerful Lydian kingdom, which encompassed most of the western half of Asia Minor. The Lydians supposedly were the first to develop a technique to dye wool and also to invent dice games, knucklebones, and other games. (Interestingly, archaeologists found a terra-cotta die in the ruins at Sardis.) Legend says that Midas, the mythical Phrygian king, was able to rid himself of his golden touch by bathing in the Pactolus River. As a result, the sands of the river turned to gold. Though legendary, this account points nonetheless to the enormous wealth enjoyed by the Lydian kingdom. The earliest Lydian rulers belonged to the Heraclid dynasty, which according to Herodotus (5th-century-B.C.E. Greek historian) lasted 505 years. They were succeeded by the Mermnad dynasty, of which the first king was Gyges (r. ca. 680–ca. 652 B.C.E.).

Virtually nothing remains from the ancient city of Beroea, once the second city of the Macedonian Empire. In the 1st century the Apostle Paul found Beroea hospitable to his message, and today the city contains the most notable individual monument in Greece to the Christian missionary. The ancient city of Beroea today is known as Veria, located 42 miles west of Thessaloniki and 9 miles northwest of Vergina. Public buses are available from Thessaloniki’s KTEL stations (be sure to use the west side stations). Check carefully for departing and returning times, as the frequency of connections varies. Fares are inexpensive, less than $10 round trip. It is possible, if desired or time is limited, to make a day trip from Thessaloniki to nearby Vergina, go on to Veria, and return. Beroea was first mentioned by Thucydides in his histories when he records that the Athenians failed to take the city by siege in 432 B.C.E., during the Peloponnesian War. Plutarch later tells of a successful siege of Beroea in 288 B.C.E., after which the city was occupied by Pyrrhus. The Gauls who later robbed the royal tombs at Vergina were unsuccessful in taking Beroea. The city became part of the Roman Empire in 148 B.C.E. and was the site of training for the armies of Pompey, who spent the winter of 49–48 B.C.E. in Beroea prior to the battle of Pharsalos (48 B.C.E.). In the 1st century C.E. Beroea found favor with several of the Roman emperors and became an international city of varied races and religions. The Apostle Paul visited the city in 50 C.E. Later Diocletian made Beroea one of the two capitals of Macedonia. The biblical account of Paul’s visit to Beroea, following his escape from the hostility at Thessalonica, is found in Acts 17:10–15: . . . That very night the believers sent Paul and Silas off to Beroea; and when they arrived, they went to the Jewish synagogue. These Jews were more receptive than those at Thessalonica, for they welcomed the message very eagerly and examined the scriptures every day to see whether these things were so. . . .