Into the Temple Courts: The Place of the Synagogues in the Second Temple Period

DONALD D. BINDER, Into the Temple Courts: The Place of the Synagogues in the Second Temple Period (SBLDS 169; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 1999). Pp. xix + 566. $60.

Excavations in the last thirty years in the Galilee and Golan have given new impetus to the study of the synagogue as a Jewish religious institution. While interpretation of the data provided by these archaeological projects has given scholars new perspectives on early Palestinian Judaism, some perplexing questions still remain. Among these is the origin of synagogue as an assembly of the faithful and as a building to house that assembly. In this revised doctoral dissertation, directed by Victor P Furnish of Southern Methodist University, Binder aims to answer some of these questions.

Binder has provided a very thorough study of the literary sources, inscriptions, and archaeological evidence that have been associated with synagogues in Palestine and the Diaspora during the Second Temple period (516 s.c. to n.D. 70). His thesis is that Second Temple synagogues were "subsidiary sacred precincts that extended spatially the sacrality of the Temple shrine...