October 30, 2019
For the third
year in a row the Madison Biblical Archaeology Society sponsored a major
lecture to celebrate International Archaeology Day. Jordan Ryan, a Wheaton
College professor of New Testament, reported that the Gospel accounts of the
Apostles Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John provide information about early
synagogues that is unknown from other sources. And while the beginnings of the
synagogue are still pretty much shrouded in mystery, there are some hints in
the Old Testament that might explain the origin of the synagogue.
Ryan said that various accounts in the Old Testament, as well as archaeology,
indicate that city gates in the Iron Age had a square where people could
gather. The town council met there, judicial decisions were made and carried
out there. The king would sit in the city gate. “In Nehemiah,” he
said, “the city gate becomes the place where the law is read
publicly.”
Later on the design of the city gate changed. “What some scholars have
proposed is that the shift in gate architecture led to the development of a
building specifically meant to have all of those functions and things you would
have done at a city gate in earlier times,” Ryan said.
Intriguingly, the synagogue at Gamla in the Golan Heights, the largest of the
eight first century synagogues that have been excavated and identified so far
in Israel, is located right at the gate of Gamla.