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Transcript of THE DURA EUROPOS SYNAGOGUE: THEOLOGY OF ART AS TEXT
GARDNER-WEBB UNIVERSITY
THE DURA EUROPOS SYNAGOGUE: THEOLOGY OF ART AS TEXT
SUBMITTED TO PROF. C. ROBERTSONIN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY
BY SAMUEL B HARRELSON
12 FEBRUARY 2008
A BRIEF HISTORY OF DURA EUROPOS
Dura Europos was established as a town sometime shortly after the death of Alexander
the Great in 323 B.C.E. As Alexander's empire split into its successive parts, the generals
who served under him struggled for control over certain areas. Seleukos, a general under
Alexander, claimed Syria and Mesopotamia as his own territory
Just as Alexander had championed an immense building program of new cities to
consolidate power and disseminate Hellenistic culture, his generals followed suit in their
respective areas of control. Dura Europos was founded on an escarpment above the
Euphrates River along a trade route from the larger and more prosperous cities of
Palmyra and Aleppo through the deserts of Syria and what is now western Iraq as one of
these cities.
The city received its original name, Europos (the prefix Dura was a later addition)
from the Macedonian hometown of General Seleukos. As a result, the name “Dura
Europos” never existed until after the 1930's. Dura Europos was laid out in a Hellenistic
grid plan with a central agora and marketplace that changed little over the course of the
city’s existence (besides growing population density).
A century later in around 113 BCE, the city fell to the rapidly advancing Parthian
Empire. The Parthians, as the Macedonians before them, were tolerant of other religions
and cultures and mostly interested in trade. The Greek culture of the city elites began to
mix with the Semitic culture and Parthian influences to create a hybridization of various
2
cultures, traditions and artistic programs. Many of the religious buildings dating from this
period attest to this blending of cultures with Greek deities being absorbed into the
Semitic or “oriental” culture and their representations taking on a more Eastern rather
than Hellenistic look.
The city flourished under the rule of the Parthians due to an increased presence of
trade and the liberal social policies of the Parthian kings. However, during the first
century BCE, the growing Roman Empire began a series of skirmishes with the Parthian
rulers and Parthian cavalry stationed at Dura was a part of the battles to fend off the
invading Romans. The Parthians would go on to hold off the Romans until 20 BCE when
Augustus came to a peace accord with the Parthian leadership, setting the boundaries 40
miles upstream from Dura Europos, allowing the city to stay in Parthian control.
For a short while in 116 CE, the city fell into Roman control under the advances
of Trajan (who erected a ceremonial arch outside of Dura Europos), but soon fell back to
Parthia after Trajan's death a year later. Finally, in 165, the Romans army returned and
captured the city. A Roman garrison was installed and the city was soon transformed
from a tolerant trading center with a mix of cultures to a frontier fort with dwindling
importance and finances. The city would eventually fall in 256 C.E. to the Sassanian
Empire under the leadership of Shapur. Soon afterwards, the city would be abandoned
and subsequently forgotten until the 1930’s. However, it is during the Roman period of
the city that we now turn our attention.
3
RELIGIOUS COMMUNITY AT DURA EUROPOS
During the Roman occupation of Dura Europos, the city experienced a number of
changes. The physical aspects of the city were quickly altered as a garrison of Roman
soldiers was soon stationed in the city. As a result, the relatively small amount of space
available to townspeople inside the city walls (due to a large ravine on two sides, a steep
cliff on the other and the desert wall separating the city from the wilderness and nearby
necropolis) became even more scarce and valuable.
The Hellenistic grid plan of the city also change as the Roman camp was
expanded over the century long occupation. Inside the area of the Roman camp, all
temples and shrines were demolished with the exception of the Temple of Azzanathkona
and the Temple of Bel, as their cults were popular with the soldiers. Only four new
religious buildings were constructed during this time including a temple to Jupiter
Dolichenus, a Mithraeum, the Synagogue and a Christian House2. Although this century
of Dura's five centuries of existence saw a decrease in the city's prosperity and a
dampening of the tolerant religious attitude of the former Greek and Parthian rulers, most
scholars continue to focus on this period of the city's history.
Christian Community at Dura
The Christian House's baptismal is a “unique document of pre-Constantinian baptismal
practice.”1 It is the earliest Christian baptismal discovered to this point, and like the
1 Annabel Jane Wharton, Refiguring the Post-Classical Ciety (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ Press, 1995) 54.
4
nearby Synagogue, included rich program of art reflecting theological convictions and
even textual scenes. As with similar early Christian congregations, the Dura group met
and worshiped in a private house that would later be renovated into its final format before
the destruction of the city.
Again, Meeks points out that these meeting houses were common in both Jewish
and Christian communities in the early centuries of the common era:
“The practice of meeting in private houses was probably an expedient used by
Jews in many places as it was for the Pauline Christians, to judge from the
remains of synagogue buildings at Dura-Europos, Stobi, Delos, and elsewhere
that were adapted from private dwellings.”2
In the Christian House, the group would celebrate the Eucharist and practice the
important rite of baptism. The Christian House was renovated in around 240 CE, just two
decades before the destruction of the city at the hands of the Sassanians.
The Christian House, like the Synagogue and Mithraeum, point inwards. By this, I
mean that they do not follow the classical Roman ideal of being sun-splashed buildings
open to the street. Instead, each of these buildings are non-descript on their public facades
and follow the patterns of the residential structures around them. While it is tempting to
interpret this as a sign that these cults were trying to remain secretive or avoid persecution
from the Romans then inhabiting the city, however, this is not a convention of secrecy.
Rather, this format is a cultural convention of the art and context. These groups were not
seeking privacy but exclusivity and a sense of mystery within their doors. The art
programs, such as that of the Baptismal, reinforce this interpretation.
2 Meeks, 38
5
Jewish Community of Dura
Among these communities, the Jewish population at Dura has been the focus of a large
portion of the scholarship on the site. What is factual is that the Jewish community there
constructed a meetinghouse, which has puzzled scholars since its discovery in the sixth
season of excavations (1934-1935). The synagogue was converted from a residence
between 165 and 200 C.E. The Synagogue at Dura Europos was representative of a broad
house type of structure, which was common in the Diaspora, but most similar the
synagogues at Naro and Khirbet Shema.3 This building type featured an east-west
orientation of its columns, which differed from examples of broad house buildings found
in Palestine.
The Synagogue was then refurbished around 244 or 245 C.E., including the rich
painted scenes incorporating narratives from the Hebrew Bible. Wayne Meeks points out
that “before the excavations in Dura-Europos in 1932 most people would have thought the
notion preposterous that third-century Jews in a Roman garrison town would have covered
the walls of their synagogue with narrative paintings.”4
All four walls of the large central meeting room were painted and the ceiling was
decorated with a rich program of tiles, some with personal attributes and signatures of
patrons. The raised seat in the center of the preserved western wall of the meeting room
includes a seat of honor for the elder or archisynagogos.5 The feature is traditionally
described as the “Torah niche.” Over the niche is a clamshell design with symbols of
3 Richard Horsley, Archaeology, History and Society in Galilee: The Social Context of Jesus and the Rabbis (Harrisburg: Trinity International Press, 1996), 136.4 Wayne A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 32.5 Horsley, 142.
6
fertility (normally ascribed to non-Israelite cultures) such as grape vines and wild animals.
Horsley points out that these chairs cannot be the symbolic seats of “Jewish legal
authority” because the head of such an assembled court would not have sat alone, but with
other members of the court. He also points out that interpreting this seat as a place of
teaching the Torah is problematic because the rabbis did not have such functions in
synagogues in this context.6 Instead, he suggests that the niche, or chair, may have had
connections to Syrian buildings which represented an empty throne for a particular deity.
In this reading, he connects the Torah and niche to Moses and posits that such features
represented the “chair of Moses.”7
When the city was sacked by Sassanian invaders in 255 or 256 C.E., fortifications
made by Dura inhabitants along the western wall of the city (by cutting off the roofs of
buildings adjoining the wall and filling them with rubble and debris) preserved the
elaborate paintings and Torah niche of the west wall. This action also preserved the
Christian House and the Mithraem for posterity.
Before going too far into the presentation on the specifics of the Dura Europos
Synagogue’s artistic program, let us evaluate some of the problems with 20th century
assessments of Dura Europos art and how that affects traditional understandings of the
cultures represented.
6 Horsley, 1437 Horsley, 144
7
STATE OF DURA EUROPOS SCHOLARSHIP
Scholarship concerning Dura Europos is largely undeveloped and not mature in its scope,
approach, and insight. Since its accidental discovery by British troops digging trenches
on an alluvial plateau above the Euphrates River in 1920, the site has experienced periods
of great interest and relative obscurity. What has remained constant is the dated approach
scholars have taken when discussing or writing about Dura.
This approach is largely derogatory, and seeks to discover Dura's place in an
evolutionary view of the triumph of Western art. For instance, the first work concerning
Dura Europos to be published was the aptly named Oriental Forerunners of Byzantine
Painting8 by initial observer, James Henry Breasted. This title still commands much of
the thought concerning Dura, relegating it to the Western pre-occupation of 'oriental' and
proclaiming the art of the site as some missing link in the chain that eventually led to
frontal Byzantine Painting and eventually to the height of western culture, the
Renaissance.
Equally slighted in the corpus of scholarship on Dura Europos are the religious
and sociological aspects of the city. In general, scholars focus on the relatively brief
period of Roman occupation of the city (165-255/6 CE) and much has been done on the
military aspects of Dura Europos as a frequently termed “small frontier outpost”.
Work has been done on the Jewish Synagogue, the Christian domus ecclesia, and
8 James Henry Breasted, Oriental Forerunners of Byzantine Painting, University of Chicago Oriental Institute Publications, (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1924), 16.
8
a few other temples, but they are limited in their scope, range and mid-twentieth century
art historical approaches. Annabel Jane Wharton includes a chapter on Dura Europos and
her concerns over Dura scholarship in her convincing work, Refiguring the Post Classical
City.9 Indeed, I will make numerous references to this important work in this paper.
However, I will seek to examine a specific paint scene on the walls of the Synagogue in
light of the criticisms I raise to the monolithic voice of general Durene scholarship. By
turning to the Esther and Mordecai scene on the west wall of the Dura Synagogue, I hope
to establish a space for the study of the relationship between text and image in the Durene
Jewish community at the time of the paintings (3rd century C.E.). In this exploration, I
hope to critically assess some of the techniques used in conveying messages in this form
such as cultural resistance and context/intra-text.
Scholarship concerning Dura Europos is largely undeveloped and not mature in
its scope, approach, and insight. Since its accidental discovery by British troops digging
trenches on an alluvial plateau above the Euphrates River in 1920, the site has
experienced periods of great interest and relative obscurity. What has remained constant
is the dated approach scholars have taken when discussing or writing about Dura.
The approach described as Orientalism is largely derogatory, and seeks to
discover Dura's place in an evolutionary view of the triumph of Western art. For instance,
the first work concerning Dura Europos to be published was the aptly named Oriental
Forerunners of Byzantine Paintings by initial observer, James Henry Breasted.
This title still commands much of the thought concerning Dura Europos,
relegating it to the Western pre-occupation of 'oriental' and proclaiming the art of the site
9 Annabel Jane Wharton, Refiguring the Post-Classical City (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1995), 19.
9
as some missing link in the chain that eventually led to frontal Byzantine Painting and
eventually to the height of western culture, the Renaissance.
The history of scholarship on Dura Europos has produced a great number of
valuable insights and observations about the site, which can't simply be dismissed due to
ideological concerns. However, the vast majority of the scholarship has kept in single file
line, declaring that the importance of Dura lies in its appropriation into the line of
development leading to Christian Byzantine art. In this appropriation, the art of Dura is
often lumped together into a single mass and declared static, unimaginative and inferior
to Western productions. For example, Michael I. Rostovtzeff, a famed Near Eastern
historian who led the excavations at Dura in the 1930's wrote,
“The features are always somewhat effeminate, with peculiar languid eyes
traits which are both highly typical of the later Oriental art of the Near
East. In this they remind one of the sensuous late-Hellenistic sculptures of
Babylonia in the Parthian period. Despite their military dress, the military
gods of Palmyra are refined, elegant ephebes of the Oriental type...We
have here a tendency towards the almost complete negation of the
body which is not Greek; indeed, it is a complete and conscious negation
of the principles of Greek art."10
Such appropriations of forerunner and oriental status create a very limited space
for the understanding of the very important communities (and their art) represented in the
historical record at Dura as an outpost of civilization, far removed from the more
culturally relevant communities to the West.
Equally slighted in the corpus of scholarship on Dura Europos are the religious
and sociological aspects of the city. In general, scholars focus on the relatively brief
10 Michael I. Rostovtzeff, “Dura and the Problem of Parthian Art,” Yale Classical Studies, 5 (1935), 237-238.
10
period of Roman occupation of the city (165-255/6 CE) and much has been done on the
military aspects of Dura Europos as a frequently termed “small frontier outpost.” Work
has been done on the Jewish Synagogue, the Christian domus ecclesia, and a few other
temples, but they are limited in their scope, range and mid-twentieth century art historical
approaches.
11
DURA EUROPOS SYNAGOGUE FRESCOES
The art of Dura Europos is unique and astounding in its depiction of life, theology and
culture. Given the city’s strategic point along the Euphrates along with its place in time
as a literal crossroads of various cultures (founded as a Greek city by Alexander’s
generals, then became Persian then Roman, then ultimately sacked) within a relatively
short period of existence.
The Dura Europos Synagogue with its impressive wall of frescoes is one of these
fascinating buildings preserved in the city. This art program not only tells us a great deal
about the Jewish community in terms of Old Testament theology and meeting space
ideals, but we also get a glimpse into how this community of early third century Jews
were appropriating the ideologies from the surrounding religious communities into their
own worship and artistic spaces.
Among all of the religious communities, the Jewish population at Dura Europos
has been the focus of a large portion of the scholarship on the site. Many commentators
have even ventured into the murky realm of trying to make definitive statements about
the historical reality of the Jewish community there.
What is factual is that the Jewish community there constructed a meeting house
which has puzzled scholars since its discovery in the sixth season of excavations (1934-
1935). The Synagogue was converted from a residence between 165 and 200 C.E. The
Synagogue was then refurbished around 244 or 245 C.E., including the rich painted
scenes incorporating narratives from the Hebrew Bible. All four walls of the large central
12
meeting room were painted and the ceiling was decorated with a rich program of tiles,
some with personal attributes and signatures of patrons.
When the city was sacked by Sassanian invaders in 255 or 256 C.E., fortifications
made by Dura inhabitants along the western wall of the city (by cutting off the roofs of
buildings adjoining the wall and filling them with rubble and debris) preserved the
elaborate paintings and torah niche of the west wall. This action also preserved the
Christian House and the Mithraem for posterity.
The discovery of the Synagogue frescoes sparked a good deal of debate and
inquiry into the possibilities of why the Dura Jewish community would have proceeded
with such a decorative program in light of the biblical injunctions, particularly the second
commandment and other passages in the Deuteronomistic writings, against doing so.
Annabel Wharton writes,
"…the frescoes of the Dura Synagogue have disturbed received Western wisdom in a way few other archaeological discoveries have: the paintings protest the construction of Jews as anconic and nonvisual. The decorative program of the Synagogue, one of the most extensive figural painting cycles salvaged from antiquity, threatens the neat, nineteenth century formulation, still very much with us, of the Jews (the East) as verbal and abstract and the Greeks (the West) as visual and figural."11
To accommodate this disturbance of the typical assumptions about ancient Jewish
art, scholars have mounted rather unsubstantiated arguments about the question of the
Durene Jewish community’s own orthodoxy. Carl Kraeling in his important, but
frequently biased and assuming, volume entitled (authoritatively) The Synagogue12,
argues that the Durene community was keeping with local Durene customs rather than
11 Michael I. Rostovtzeff, “Dura and the Problem of Parthian Art,” Yale Classical Studies, 5 (1935), 237-238.
12 Carl Kraeling, The Synagogue (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1979), 4.
13
following the traditional biblical injunctions against images. Scholars before and after his
work have followed suit and announced that the Durene Jews were either seeking to
replicate works from the Synagogue at Antioch or entirely heterodox in their
appropriation of images.
Scholars such as E.R. Goodenough have put forth claims that Durene Judaism
was unorthodox compared to Palestinian standards.13 His argument holds that and relied
on the interpretation of hired local artists more familiar with working with pagan subject
matter. These local craftspeople would have decorated the synagogue according to their
own cultural conventions. Goodenough posits that these conventions would have
differed from the Jewish community of the area. However, because of the constraints of
building materials in the stone poor area surrounding Dura Europos and the influence of
various sources of artistic and religious traditions brought in by Roman soldiers and the
constant caravans travelling the Euphrates trade routs, the synagogue would have
necessarily taken on a “local Syrian flavor.”14
Along with blurring the received “Judeo-Christian” tradition and its assumptions
about Jewish art, the paintings also have caused scholars much spilled ink in searching
for biblical texts to explain the paintings. In fact, this search for corresponding texts has
so freighted the discussion of the Dura Synagogue that any serious monograph on the
subject has traditionally been seemingly more occupied with that endeavor rather than the
actual frescoes! Once again, I turn to the insights of Annabel Wharton,
“Most scholars have sought to provide the paintings with a rational scheme by identifying their content. It seems that the identification of
13 E.R. Goodenough, Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period IX-XI: Symbolism in the Dura Synagogue (New York, 1964) IX, 200, 228.
14 Goodenough, 224.
14
subject matter offers some scholarly control over these unruly images. In any case, the search for the meaning of individual panels [of the Synagogue] and the theme of the entire program has resulted in a vast academic production. This desire for a unitary message has promoted the literary text. The priority of the written word and the propensity for exclusive meaning are the objects of my criticism. The prominence of the literary text in the analysis of the images of the Synagogue (and also the Christian building) has many other grounds: the celebration of the written word in the West at least since the invention of printing, the availability of relevant literary texts to modern scholars (if not to the ancient programmers) and, in the case of the Synagogue of Dura, the absence of competing claims by the frescoes themselves.”15
15 Wharton, 42.
15
SPECIFIC EXAMPLE: ESTHER PANELS OF DURA SYNAGOGUE
In turning to the panels concerning Esther, I hope to posit these two positions (the unfair
subjugation of the Durene Jewish community as a heterodox one, and the primacy of the
written word over the actual image on the panel itself) as points of contention. In doing
so, I think a look at the actual Esther panels themselves will provide an alternative insight
into the actual Durene Jewish community and show the irony of these images lies on the
walls of the Synagogue (now in the National Museum in Damascus) and also in the
reception history constructed by mid twentieth century scholars.
16
The Esther scene is in a single frame to the immediate left of the Torah niche on
the west wall in the assembly room. This is a prominent position, and the scene seems to
have direct connotations of the Festival of Purim. On the right side of the panel,
Mordecai, in Persian garb with a flowing robe, is depicted as riding on a brilliant white
horse apparently being led by Haman, who is clothed in the garb of a stable attendant.
To the right of this, four onlookers, apparently a crowd who is praising Mordecai,
dressed in long chitons faces the triumphant Mordecai on horseback. To the right of this,
King Ahasuerus (dressed in the same Persian regal garb as Mordecai) and Queen Esther
sit on thrones of equal height. There are three attendants and what appears to be a
messenger either delivering or receiving a letter from the King.
Although scholars generally agree that the action on the left side of the panel is
17
the triumphant Mordecai riding on his steed (Esther 6.6), they disagree on the right side.
It is even difficult to understand how the various scenes in the assembly room fit together
meta-narratively (if they do at all). Searching for a biblical text or rationale to explain the
Synagogue scenes, especially this scene, not only places the primacy of the written text
above the actual image available, but also assumes that there is one meaning ‘encoded’ in
these images for the viewer to decipher and discern based on the written texts.
Reading of the Esther Panels
Rather than looking for a single canonical text to explain these scenes, we should look at
the space already made available by the interplay of the Esther painting itself and with
the other extant scenes. This can be done in two ways.
First, by looking at con-texts and intra-texts and the space of cultural resistance
supported by Jas Elsner16, the Esther sequence can be investigated in its own validity and
the realities constructed in its program.
Wharton proposes a need for the examination of midrash as a guide for examining
the intertextual space of the Synagogue frescoes.17 In this argument, she lays out the
importance of con-texts and intra-texts and rallies against the general scholarly activity of
trying to understand the Synagogue frescoes by correlating them to a specific text:
“The presupposition that an image can legitimately have only one “true” subject is opposed by the midrash, which provides a model for an alternative relationship between text and meaning. This other reading allows the image to have a particular verse from Esther as its subject at one moment and a different narrative at another moment, depending on
16 Jas Elsner, “Cultural Resistance and the Visual Image: The Case of Dura Europos,” Classical Philology (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press) vol. 96 n.3 July 2001.
17 Wharton, 42.
18
how it operates for its reader/viewer. Both midrash and fresco exemplify how the juxtaposition of narrative fragments produces a new text.”18
In the Esther fresco, as in midrash, signifiers point to other elements from outside
of the actual event depicted to associate the viewer with a contemporary situation. For
instance, costumes of the figures in the Esther panels are not meant to replicate those of
the actual persons of Esther, Mordecai or even Ahasuerus. Rather, they connect the
viewing audience of the assembly hall with certain important events in the history of the
Jewish people.
The Feast of Purim is an important event in the Jewish calendar, and for a people
under subjugation to the Roman army and empire, the festival would be seen as a link to
a past under domination by other empires, such as the Persians (which would have
particular resonance in the city of Dura because of its peculiar location between the
“East” and the “West”). Therefore, the reconstructed reality presented by the Esther
fresco ties the all-important reader-responder to the past and the importance of the
present situation that community found itself in at the moment of the paintings, much in
the same way a rabbi would construct a reality in midrash.
These constructed realities need not be canonical nor monolithic, but just as in
midrash, could be multivalent and point to various moments of insight drawing from the
scenes themselves and the outside elements that are drawn in.
The only text which can be factually claimed to have existed in the Synagogue are
the Aramaic and Middle Persian inscriptions made on the walls of the assembly room, in
many cases on the frescoes themselves. Kraeling comments on these inscriptions in a
18 Wharton, 46.
19
complete chapter of The Synagogue, however they are only translated and their
significance in relation to the frescoes is not explored. Kraeling’s thesis is that they are
simply graffiti in the lowest sense of the word, made by passers through, and not essential
to worship or the experience of the congregation.
However, if these ten inscriptions, or intra-texts, are viewed as important and
meaning loaded texts, the association between them and the frescoes becomes much more
intimate, reaching a level similar to a rabbi expounding in midrash. Many of these
inscriptions appear to have weight and be of importance due to their positioning on the
frescoes. In the ground above the figure of Mordecai reads the Persian inscription, “This
is I, Aparsam, the scribe.”
These inscriptions follow the movement of the frescoes themselves, and often
appear in black placed upon the flesh color of individuals within the frescoes. Rather than
being simple “I was here” graffiti, these inscriptions are signs that point to the authority
of interpreters, whether rabbis or scribes, who were importing their own meanings into
the discussion and viewings of the frescoes, and thereby allowing a multivalence of
interpretations of the frescoes themselves.
The matrix provided is one where the scribe or the rabbi doing the inscription is
establishing their own authority upon the fresco and signifying the importance of the
space that exists in their teachings that correlate to the programs presented on the walls.
Wharton points out that,
“the act of inscribing the paintings permanently affirms the authority of the authors at the same time that it confers their privilege on the images. The dipinti thus presume additional strata of meaning within the Synagogue frescoes, further contradicting the notion that these images
20
were closed or canonical in their signification.”19
In this way, the paintings do correspond closely to a midrashic understanding and
appropriation of the text rather than just illuminations of biblical passages. This
importance is key to understanding and appreciating their function for the Dura Jewish
community.
The synagogue at Dura, as other synagogues both in Palestine and in the Diaspora
functioned as much more than just learning centers and Torah research. The synagogue,
both in the sense of an assembly and in the building proper, was more than a place of
worship. Social-political dimensions were inseparable from the religious dimension, so
to speak of any synagogue, including the Dura synagogue, as a place of worship or Torah
research is lacking.20
As Richard Horsley points out,
“It seems clear, therefore, that “synagogues” in Galilee, as well as in Diaspora communities in the first century C.E., were the assemblies of the local communities.”21
Due to the place of the synagogue as a cultural center of socio-political, as well as
religious, interaction, the paintings take on significant ramifications outside of simple
illustrations of biblical passages.
Therefore, the significance of the entire Esther panel comes into play as a vehicle
for constructing realities based on authorial privilege (of the rabbi) and reader response.
Instead of being static representations of biblical stories or participating in some
19 Wharton, 46.20 Horsley, 146.21 Horsley, 148.
21
heterodox mystical program, the frescoes acted very much like midrash and allowed the
interpretation of contemporary events through and with the representations of the past.
Instead of being un-original, these paintings were based on local oral tradition and
interpretation and therefore hyper-original in their undertaking and performance. Instead
of being poor interpretations lacking sophistication in execution, these frescoes taken
with their intra-texts are important windows into the social world, concerns and needs of
the Durene, and northern Syrian, Jewish community.
In a recent article, Jas Elsner attempts to use various shrines at Dura as an
example of the use of visual images for cultural resistance.22 Elsner’s thesis is
fundamentally separate from the argument I make here, but many issues he raises,
particularly in respect to the Synagogue frescoes, are appropriate to this discussion.
Just as Wharton attempts to locate the intertextual space of the frescoes, Elsner
attempts to locate the space for resistance in various sacrificial scenes in the numerous
shrines and temples of Dura. He identifies the Synagogue as the most active program of
denigration to other religions at Dura by attacking the polytheistic deities of other
religions practiced, and the specific act of sacrifice23.
In particular, Elsner focuses on panels such as the transportation of the Ark of the
Covenant through the wilderness in light of this resistance theme. Such panels are
indicative of an explicit effort by the members of the Jewish community at Dura to create
a 'history of their own' appropriating the tools (artwork and cultural conventions) of the
local community to establish a space and history with their own victory coming in the
22 Jas Elsner, “Cultural Resistance and the Visual Image: The Case of Dura Europos,” Classical Philology (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press) vol. 96 n.3 July 2001.
23 Elsner, 91.
22
conquering of foreign deities represented as broken vessels around the Ark24.
However it is his comments on the Synagogue itself, which are most appropriate
for the discussion of the Esther panels. In creating space for the active resistance to other
religious practices at Dura Europos, Elsner is supporting the argument that the frescoes
are not simply illuminations of biblical texts. Frescoes such as the Esther panel play an
important role in a combined attempt to discredit other religions and cults by portraying
the victory of the Jewish religion over its foes.
For example, just as Mordecai is riding triumphant at the behest of Haman, and
Esther, who has been crowned Queen, is enthroned at the parallel height of a foreign
ruler, the Durene Jewish community participates in a reality of victory over foreign
domination in a city of various cults and practices. This place of honor for Mordecai and
Esther in the frescoes puts the entire community in a place of honor themselves, and
allows the space for rabbinic expositions on their current situation rather than just a static
interpretation of the written word.
Art as Pre-Text
However, rather than tie the artwork to a specific piece of biblical narrative, I would like
to follow the lead of Wharton and suggest a pre-textual reader (participant) response
exegesis of the image. Rather than relying on a canonical or extra-canonical text to
supply a meaning for this or any image in the Synagogue does damage to the community
of expression. The emphasis of finding a specific meaning for these texts, outside of
themselves, commits the same sins as a reader-response critic would argue that a
24 Elsner, 89.
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historical-critical reading of a text which seeks to understand keywords and narrative
moments based on time and place contexts does to a text.
In other words, the Synagogue at Dura Europos provides modern (and post-
modern) readers with a firm lesson to avoid the ease of falling into the trap of relying on
authoritative texts to provide sole rationales of meaning for a particular set of other texts,
or even works of art. In the case of the Synagogue frescoes, such as the Esther panels,
this is especially true. Although viewing the religious art of the baptismal in terms of an
illustration of the biblical text, the more powerful reading comes from stressing the
importance of the interaction of the narrative (oral) culture that was transferring these
narratives.
Rather than relying on the canonical, redacted and heavily copied (subject to error
in terms of historical transmission) text that we have interpreted in the twenty first
century, allowing the art-as-text to speak for itself in an authoritative manner can be just
as powerful for contemporary religious congregations as the experience of participation
in the Dura Europos Synagogue must have been eighteen hundred years ago. In other
words, the meaning of the art (and reversely, in text itself) lies with the
viewer/initiate/reader who must draw their own conclusions about the faith experience
rather than rely on the biased interpretations of others.
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CONCLUSION
Dura Europos is positioned at an interesting place in the world of scholarship and
constructed history. In most every book detailing the history of Christianity or Western
art, Dura is placed in “forerunner” status and given a place in the evolutionary chain that
clearly begins at Sumer and makes its way through the centuries to Michelangelo.
However, as the various ideologies of past scholars are examined, interesting and
neglected cases, such as the site of Dura, come into focus. The various temples and
shrines at Dura posit an incredible chance to explore the interplay of text and image,
author and audience, authority and object. Scholars who view such projects as the fresco
program of the Dura Synagogue seriously limit and threaten the multivalence of this art.
The Esther panels provide a unique chance to discover such interplays and the irony
involved in constructing new realities.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Breasted, James Henry. Oriental Forerunners of Byzantine Painting, University of Chicago Oriental Institute Publications. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1924.
Downey, Susan. Terracotta Figurines and Plaques from Dura-Europos. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 2003.
Elsner, Jas. “Cultural Resistance and the Visual Image: The Case of Dura Europos,” Classical Philology (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press) vol. 96 n.3 July 2001.
Gates, Marie-Henriette. “Dura-Europos, A Fortress of Syro-Mesopotamian Art,” BiblicalArchaeologist Magazine, ed. Eric Meyers. Philadelphia: American Schools of Oriental Research, September 1984, p. 166-181.
Goodenough, E.R. Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period IX-XI: Symbolism in the Dura Synagogue. New York: Scholars Press, 1964.
Gutmann, Joseph. The Dura Europos Synagogue: A Re-evaluation (1932-1992). Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992.
Horsley, Richard. Archaeology, History and Society in Galilee: The Social Context of Jesus and the Rabbis. Harrisburg: Trinity International Press, 1996.
Kraeling, Carl. The Synagogue. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1979.
Matheson, Susan. Dura Europos: The Ancient City and the Yale Collection. New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 1982.
Meeks, Wayne A. The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul. New Haven:Yale University Press, 1983.
Rostovtzeff, Michael I. “Dura and the Problem of Parthian Art,” Yale Classical Studies, 5 (1935), 237-238.
Wharton, Annabel Jane. Refiguring the Post-Classical City. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1995.
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