The Spanish discovery suggests that the Roman era ‘Church’ may have been a synagogue

Seventeen centuries after they were last burned, a handful of broken oil lamps could shed light on a small and long-term Jewish community that lived in the Late Roman era in southern Spain, while the old gods were eradicated by Christianity.

Archaeologists who dig up the Ibero-Roman city of Cástulo, whose ruins are close to the current Andalucían city of Linares, have discovered the evidence of an apparent Jewish presence there in the late fourth or early fifth century AD.

In addition to three excerpts of oil lamps decorated with Menorahs and a roof tile with a five-fed Menora, they also encountered a piece of the lid of a cone-shaped pot with a Hebrew graffito. While experts are divided on whether the engraving is “light of forgiveness” or “Song to David”, its existence points to a previously unknown Jewish population in the city, which eventually fell into decline and abandonment 1000 years later.

The discovery of the materials has caused the team to consider whether the ruins of a nearby building are supposed to be an early Christian basilica that could have been a synagogue from the fourth century AD where the Jewish community of Cástulo came to worship.

When the site of the supposed church was first dug up between 1985 and 1991, archaeologists assumed that it was a Christian structure. “During the 2012-2013 [dig]We found the roof tile with the five -armed [menorah]”Said Bautista Ceprían, one of the archaeologists who worked on the Cástulo Sefarad of the Andalucían Regional Government, Primera Luz Project, which aims to discover the Jewish history of the city.” “Until that moment we did not know that there could have been a very small Jewish community in Cástulo.”

In A recently published articleCeprian and his Colleses David Exposito Mangas and Jose Carlos Ortega Disidad the possibility that the ‘church’ could in fact be and be a synagogue.

They claim that the lack of Christian materials on the site, combined with an absence of proof of funerals or religious remains – that would normally be expected in a Christian church of the era – could indicate its use as a Jewish temple. A nearby baptism, on the other hand, has already produced Christian finds and funerals. However, Jewish religious law prohibits the funeral within 50 tbsp (23 meters) of a residential area.

“When we looked a little more at the interior of the building, there were a number of strange things for a church; there was something that could have been the hole for a big Menorah,” said Ceprián. “It is also strange that this building has no graves.”

The authors also point to the architectural characteristics of the site, such as the layout, which is reminiscent of some synagogues in Palestine.

“Synagogues of that time can be four can be in shape than Christian Basilikas, because there is usually a central bimah in Jewish worship [raised platform]Which people are hanging around, “said Ceprián.” In a church the priest performs the rituals in the apse, which means that things are more rectangular. “

Then there is the location of the possible synagogue; It would have been in an isolated part of the city near a destroyed Roman bathhouse that would have been feared and hated by the local bishops.

“The Roman baths were the last pagan place that remained in a city,” said Ceprián. “It was something devilish and therefore something that had to be outside the Christian world. It seems to be the case that the baths in Cástulo were already closed towards the end of the fourth century, or the beginning of the fifth century.”

He claims that the location of the Synagogue, so close to a font of paganism, would have helped the local Christian hierarchy with its efforts to combine Judaism with irretitude: “The Jews would have had few options and at that time it is clear that they are the bishops who are unable to relate to the Jews.”

If the theories of the researchers were confirmed, the Cástulo synagogue would be the most oldest Jewish temples on the Iberia peninsula. The handful of surviving original synagogues of Spain are mainly medieval. The most recently discovered Synagogue, in the Andalucían city of Utrera, dates from the 1300s.

The problem for Ceprián and his colleagues – as they acknowledge – is the lack of written historical confirmation. “I am sure there will be criticism, which is completely legitimate – that’s how science works and how it should work,” he said. “But of course we believe that we have given data with sufficient seriousness to leave ourselves.”

Whether the building was a church or a synagogue, those who dig up Cástulo have discovered the evidence of what a small Jewish community would seem to be, if only for a while, in peaceful existence with their Christian neighbors. As the centuries wore and the Church wore the otherness of the Jewish inhabitants of Spain to forge and to galvanize a Christian identity, there were pogroms and finally the expulsion of the Jewish population of the country in 1492.

“It shows us that there was a good coexistence between all the different social groups or religious groups that were there at the time,” said Ceprián. “But later, from the moment that the Christian Church is getting stronger in the Roman government, you start to get powerful groups that are weaker in society. Strangely enough, that is also something that is happening now.”