Could 1,600-year-old Galilee synagogue rewrite history of Jewish life under the Romans?

For decades, scholars have widely held the view that after Emperor Constantine gave Christianity legal status at the beginning of the 4th century CE, the Jewish people were terribly oppressed. However, new research on a magnificent synagogue in the Galilee has revealed that this notion might need reconsidering.

A team of international scholars has successfully conducted radiocarbon dating on several samples collected at Huqoq, an ancient village located north of Tiberias. The results, published in the PLOS ONE journal earlier this month, confirmed that Huqoq’s mosaic-filled synagogue was erected in the late 4th or early 5th century CE, as already suggested by the pottery and artifacts unearthed at the site, and not in the 2nd or 3rd century, as suggested by the architectural style.

This discovery could have far-reaching implications on how that period is viewed, according to Huqoq’s director of excavations Dr. Jodi Magness from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, one of the authors of the academic paper.

“When I started to excavate at Huqoq, one of my biggest research questions concerned the dating of Galilean-type synagogues, the most famous example of which stands in Capernaum, not far from Huqoq,” Magness said.

Galilean-type synagogues are monumental structures built of large stone blocks. They feature a basilica plan with the narrow sides oriented north-south and the main entrance (or entrances) in the southern, Jerusalem-oriented wall. The interior of these buildings was surrounded on three sides (east, west, and north) by a row of columns, which divided them into a central hall (nave) surrounded by narrower spaces (aisles).

“This type of synagogues has traditionally been dated to the 2nd and 3rd century CE,” Magness noted. “However, while analyzing excavation reports of these structures over the last couple of decades, I had concluded that the archaeological evidence indicated a later time for them, mostly 4th to 6th centuries.”

The archaeologist highlighted that the difference between the periods is substantial.

“If these synagogues were built in the 2nd or 3rd centuries, then it was in a pagan Roman environment, whereas the 4th to 6th centuries would put them already in a Christian environment,” Magness said.

“Many of my colleagues object to a later dating precisely because they argue that Christian rule was oppressive to Jews, and they could not have built such monumental synagogues,” she added.

A new center of Jewish life

After the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 CE, the Galilee became the new center of Jewish life in the Land of Israel for several centuries, as attested by Jewish sources such as the Mishna and the Jerusalem Talmud, which is believed to have been primarily redacted in Tiberias.

The site of Huqoq is located about three kilometers northwest of the Sea of Galilee. The modern Arab village Yakuk stood there until 1948. Amid its ruins, several artifacts, such as fragments of columns, initially suggested the presence of a Galilean-type synagogue.

Magness and her team began excavating the site in 2011 and continued for 11 seasons, concluding their fieldwork in 2023. They uncovered an impressive Galilean-type synagogue featuring stunning multicolor mosaics.

“I wanted to ascertain the date of a Galilean-type synagogue based on evidence that I excavated rather than reports by others,” Magness said.

“For this purpose, it was important to use all the available means of dating,” she noted. “We archaeologists usually rely on pottery, coins, inscriptions, or other dateable artifacts, but in this case, we also went for radiocarbon dating.”

Magness highlighted that the excavated artifacts already pointed out to the synagogue dating to the 4th century CE and not earlier.

“In our last season, we completed the excavation of the foundation trench that was sealed by a very thick and hard layer of building chips,” she said. “Beneath, we uncovered a significant amount of coins and pottery, the latest of which date to the mid-4th century CE. We also found an imported pottery that first appeared around 370 to 375 CE, and was used until the second half of the 5th century.”

Over their multiple seasons of excavation, the archaeologists collected several organic items, including from the bedding of the mosaics and the fills underneath them.

The items collected by the team included four samples of charred seeds or olive pits and seven of wood charcoal, all of which were sent to the Weizmann Institute of Science for radiocarbon dating.

“​​The samples are both what we call short-lived — mostly seeds — and long-lived, wood charcoal,” Prof. Michael Chazan from the University of Toronto, another author of the PLOS ONE paper, told The Times of Israel. “One of the strengths of the Weizmann radiocarbon lab is that they meticulously identify every sample before analyzing the radiocarbon.”

The analysis confirmed that the synagogue was built at the end of the 4th or the beginning of the 5th century CE.

A lingering mystery

If artifacts and radiocarbon determined when the synagogue was built, both methodologies did not solve another mystery: When the grand structure fell out of use or why.

“We could not find any artifacts or remains above the floor of the synagogue to help us date when it was last in use,” Magness said. “This is something that we cannot explain. It appears that the synagogue just stood empty for centuries.”

At some point, the roof and upper walls collapsed, possibly because of an earthquake or just due to time.

The building was later restored and expanded in the early 14th century once again to be used as a synagogue, according to Magness and her team.

“A new floor was laid down about a meter above the level of the previous floor, dumping a significant quantity of dirt on it,” the researcher said. “Nothing was more recent than the 5th century in this dirt.”

The result left all the scholars surprised.

“I had expected that above the mosaic floor, there would be layers of debris from the period after the synagogue was abandoned and before it was rebuilt,” Chazan said. “We are all familiar with how abandoned buildings in Israel fill up with all kinds of debris to this day. If this was the case, the pottery and radiocarbon dates above the floor should have included material that postdated the synagogue construction and provided an age for when the synagogue went out of use. But this was not the case.”

All organic samples in the dirt date back to earlier than the mosaics.

“Microscopic analysis of the sediment — micromorphology — confirms that there was no occupation debris; this dirt was clean fill brought in to raise the floor level for the construction of the later synagogue,” Chazan said. “We are left without direct evidence of the activities that went on in the synagogue.”

“I would say that speculatively, this suggests that the activities in the synagogue did not produce a large amount of garbage, as would be expected, for example, from feasts with large groups of people, or perhaps it simply indicates that the synagogue area was kept clean and refuse dumped at a distance,” he added.

Since the author is dead, look at physical evidence

Magness pointed out that historical sources for the 4th and 5th centuries mainly consist of early Christian authors and Roman legislation. Both tended to be very hostile toward Jews.

“Since Christian sources presented a very negative view of Judaism, the assumption has been that the relations between Jews and Christians were not good and Jews must have been persecuted,” Magness said. “However, my impression based on archaeological evidence has always been the opposite.”

“Jewish settlements continued to exist during this period,” she noted. “It’s not a uniform picture, but overall, there was relative continuity, relative prosperity, and it was against this background that monumental buildings like the Galilean-type synagogues were erected.”

Magness also conducted some research on Diaspora synagogues during the same period. She said that while for many of them the dating is also controversial, she believes that her conclusions suggesting a relatively prosperous Jewish life under Christian Roman rule also apply to Jews outside of the land of Israel.

According to Magness, it is even possible that Christian churches inspired Jews to build massive buildings.

“Before Constantine, Christians could not worship openly, but in the 4th century, they started to erect these monumental churches for prayer and worship decorated with paintings and mosaics to broadcast the Christian message, which stated that Jesus had replaced the Temple,” Magness noted.

“I think that in that same period, Jews started to use the synagogue to reinforce the Jewish message, stating that the Temple still needed to be rebuilt and biblical law was still valid,” she said.

The impressive mosaics uncovered at Huqoq, depicting scenes from the Bible such as the construction of the Towel of Babel, Noah’s Ark, and the parting of the Red Sea, could have been part of this cultural and religious endeavor.

“The results from the Huqoq site have important implications on our understanding of this period,” Magness said. “They show the value of archaeology in supplementing an incomplete picture based on historical or literary sources alone.”