The Magdala Stone and What We Think We Know

Happy Chanukah!  As I help my family celebrate their holiday, I am aware of the intense variation in experience that art brings to our experience of religion.  Coincidentally, the NYTimes had a large article about the Magdala Stone yesterday (subscription limited so if you want to read about the find in detail, you can check here and here as well).

The Magdala Stone was found in the remains of a 1st century synagogue in Magdala.  The important context is that the Second Temple was still active in the period between 50 BC-100 AD that this dates to; from coin evidence it may date to 29, and most likely predates the 70 CE destruction of the Temple by the Romans under Titus.  The area was a hotbed of revolutionary fervor against the Romans and it was actually razed (partially? fully?) by the Romans when they conquered Migdal (Magdala). The synagogue was decorated with a mosaic floor and frescoes on the wall.  This large block is decorated on the top (a large rosette, ringed with petals), and the sides, with the most notable side showing a seven-branched menorah, flanked by 2 large amphorae.

Magdala Stone, 1st c. BCE-1st c. CE

One of the striking things for archaeologists and historians is the way this stone calls into question what role the synagogue might have played in this late Second Temple period.  What strikes me is the reminder of how far away the Temple in Jerusalem was, and that a stone like this might be carved with deliberate symbols and suggestive architecture to evoke the holiness of the Temple, to bring it in to the local experience.  There are plenty of medieval Christian examples where round buildings evoke the Holy Sepulchre as a way of connecting the two sites spiritually.  There's no reason not to suggest that the importance of the synagogue as a place of study and assembly is enhanced by an object that connects the viewer to the holiest of places.

A consistent fallacy of Jewish art is the idea that it didn't exist in the pre-modern period, that the Second Commandment prohibiting graven images (Exodus 20: 4-6) prohibited making imagery and displaying it in holy contexts.  Sufficient discovery of mosaics, frescoes, etc. from catacombs and synagogues, especially in border towns like Dura Europas, have long argued for the production of Jewish art in religious contexts.  It seems important to me to specify that these works exhibit a lot of what we consider outsider traits in production and that we see them here on the Magdala Stone: very flat, linear carving style of what are three-dimensional objects (perhaps countering the false naturalism of Greco-Roman idols), tremendous shifts in scale (amphora as large as the architecture) and perspectives (often showing profile and aerial views mixed together).  When the NYT writes:

Ms. Talgam concluded that she was looking at a three-dimensional depiction of the Temple of Herod, including its most sacred inner sanctum, known as the Holy of Holies.

I think it's really important to spell out what we mean.  The Stone itself is a three-dimensional altar-like or table form.  The decoration is emphatically not.  It resists the context of the mainstream artistic style of the oppressors.

I do wonder about function here.  We know mosaics and frescoes jazz up those plain stone walls while serving a potential didactic function.  Was this a spot for sacrifices which we thought only happened in the Temple? Could we set the Torah here for reading and studying?  Was it a podium for speaking from? 

Ultimately, I think the point of this stone is to remind us that religious experience is fluid in space, time, and audience.  What a good message for Diaspora Judaism at Chanukah.  What a good message in a time of religious fundamentalism, prejudice, and fear.