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INTO THE TEMPLE COURTS: THE PLACE OF THE SYNAGOGUES IN THE SECOND TEMPLE PERIOD. By Donald D. Binder. SBL Dissertation Series 169. Pp. xix + 566. Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 1999. Cloth, $60.00.
The present monograph was originally defended as a Ph.D. dissertation at Southern Methodist University in 1997 under the direction of Victor P. Furnish. The topic of ancient synagogues is especially timely, following upon the recent publication of Lee I. Levine's ambitious and classic study, The Synagogue: The First Thousand Years (Yale University Press, 2000). A more narrowly focused study by Steven Fine, This Holy Place: On the Sanctity of the Synagogue During the Greco-Roman Period (The University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), emphasizes the post- 70 CE. Temple legacy. Unfortunately, Binder was unable to utilize either in his impressive study. His main hypothesis, that the Second Temple synagogues in both Palestine and the Diaspora share fully in the sanctity and liturgical program of the Second Temple, places him at odds with the consensus communis, but he has made an admirable case in the light of an extensive, if not near exhaustive, survey of the literary and archaeological materials.
To show how far Binder has placed himself in relation to the consensus, let me quote from Fine's This Holy Place:
The two possible sources of synagogal holiness in latter Second Temple period Palestinian synagogues were the sanctity of Scripture and the application of Temple forms to communal worship. The extant evidence stems from marginal groups within Jewish society at the time, the defenders of Masada, the Qumran sectarians, and Philo's Essenes. There is no evidence to suggest that these phenomena were prevalent among wider segments of Jewish society... (p. 33).
Levine recognizes the sacred...