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The third inscription was executed in A.D. 56 under the Emperor Nero. It was discovered in the city in 1938 and subsequently lost, but its photograph has been preserved.[925] The slab was broken, and its lower part was missing, but what remained of its upper part was sufficient to show the contents and purpose of the text and to prove that the missing portion was not large. This too is a resolution of the community commemorating monetary donations made by its wardens and members for the repair of the synagogue. The photograph of the inscription, taken when it was in situ, shows stretches of wall each side of it, leaving no doubt that it was found in its original position within the synagogue building to which it refers. Thus the discovery gives us the site of the synagogue, which stood facing the sea, like the synagogues in several other Greek cities such as Miletus, Ephesus, and Caesarea Palaestinae. The slab differs in several features from the two former inscriptions, whose styles were similar, their language precise and their lettering elegant; the letters of the third inscription are less refined, and several errors are discernible in its drafting and grammar.[926]

The most important difference between this inscription and the earlier ones concerns the body adopting the resolution. While the two earlier resolutions were taken by the archons and the politeuma, the deciding body in this inscription is the synagogue (συναγωγή), here denoting the community, and subsequently the building. Secondly, the list of contributors, eighteen in number, begins with the archons, of whom there are now ten; they are not, as formerly, named before the community as a whole. The reason for the change in the name of the deciding body may have been that the archons were themselves among the contributors and could not therefore propose a vote of thanks to themselves; hence the thanks are expressed by the entire synagogue. But this explanation does not account for the absence of any reference to the politeuma. Whether this change implies a change in the constitution of the community between the years A.D. 25 and 56, must remain undecided.[927]

The increase of the number of archons from seven in the year 8/6 B.C. to ten under Nero, is also of interest. It is difficult to believe that this increase was without significance; probably it arose from the growth of the community. Naturally this fact itself is no proof of the election of the community wardens by democratic methods, but there does appear to have been a certain coordination between the size of the community and the number of its wardens, and therefore we should not be too positive concerning the non-democratic structure of the Jewish communities of the hellenistic and Roman world.[928]

The third inscription records thirty-five names in all (13 men and three women). Most of the names of these members of the community and their fathers are Greek; only two (Jonathas, Marion) are Hebrew. In the first inscription only one is Hebrew (Iosippos); in the second, in so far as the names of the archontes can be read, no Hebrew name is to be found except Simon, which is both a Hebrew and a Greek name. On the other hand the third inscription lists several Greek names which were particularly common among Jews in the hellenistic and Roman periods, such as Dositheos (twice), Jason, Isidorus (cf. Isidora in the same inscription, line 8), Alexandras and Theophilos. The name Zosimeter (Ζωσιμήτηρ), which occurs on this stele, must be a translation of “mother of all life”, in other words, Eve.[929] By contrast, no fewer than twelve names among those on the third inscription recur at Cyrene as those of non-Jews: in other words, these are normal and characteristic Cyrenean names.[930] Thus the composition of these names at Berenice reflects assimilation to the Cyrenean environment and to the peculiar onomasticon of Cyrenean personal names. It may also be remarked that four of the names on the third inscription recur on Jewish epitaphs at Apollonia and Teucheira.[931] Straton and Euphranor further appear in the second Berenice inscription. An innovation in the third document is the listing of women together with the men. This phenomenon is not without parallel in the Jewish world, and in the later Roman imperial period, at least, we encounter the names of Jewish women taking part in the paving of synagogue floors,[932] or honoured with the title of “mothers of the synagogue”. It is worthy of note that at the head of the list of donors and at the end of the list of archons, appears the name of a priest, Cartisthenes son of Archias, who occupies, it would seem, the first place of honour in the lists of simple congregants.

It is not evident whether the synagogue of Berenice was destroyed or damaged by enemies, or whether the inscription commemorates a repair of the building after damage by nature or the passing of time. However, the recorded contributions, which are not large, suggest simple repairs rather than reconstruction. The symbol /_ which appears before every sum stands for “drachmai”,[933] and the contributions, in so far as they are preserved, add up to 283 drachmas. This is a considerable sum, but not sufficient to erect a complete new structure.

What kind of building was the amphitheatre in which the Jewish community of Berenice assembled on the first day of the month, on festivals, and on sabbaths?

Scholars disagree whether it was Jewish, or a building of the Greek city, in which the Jews had received permission to set up their commemorative and honorary steles.[934] J. and G. Roux[935] reached no conclusion on this question; L. Robert expressed the view that the building was Jewish.[936] The writer’s opinion is that already expressed, to wit, that the words describing the work of Decmus Valerius Dionysius at the end of the first inscription, that he had plastered the floor (?) and the amphitheatre, and also adorned it with figure-paintings at his own expense, as a gift to the community (Tὸ ἔ[δ]αφος ἐκονίασεν καὶ τὸ ἀμφιθέατρον καὶ ἐζωγράφησεν τοῖς ῖδίοις δαπανήμασιν, ἐπίδομα τῶι πολιτεύματι), prove that it was Jewish property. Had the building belonged to the city rather than the Jews, the word “polis” would have taken the place of “politeuma”, and it is hardly to be imagined that the community (however assimilated to Greek habits) would have met to pray in a building contaminated by gentile idolatry.

The word “amphitheatre” was comparatively new when the said inscription was set up: such buildings begin to be built at Rome, still of timber, only in the time of Julius Caesar. The oldest known stonebuilt amphitheatre is that at Pompeii, erected in 70 approximately:[937] it was called “spectacula”.[938] The Greek term “amphitheatre” is first found in the writings of Strabo,[939] (64/3 B.C.-A.D. 21) and Flavius Josephus mentioned it in connexion with Herod’s building-activity about 25 B.C.[940] We learn from the inscriptions honoring Valerius Dionysius that the building at Berenice was already standing in 8/6 B.C., and its language means that the repairs were on a considerable scale, hence the amphitheatre had then existed some decades, and was probably built at approximately the same time as Herod’s amphitheatres at Jerusalem and Caesarea, not long after the first experiments at Rome. The Berenice inscription, to the best of my knowledge, is the first known that mentions an amphitheatre in Greek (the Latin word appears later, in Pliny). It must therefore be stressed that the word’s meaning was then elastic and fluid, nor was the building’s form necessarily like that of the crystallized amphitheatres known in Italy or the East. But the name obliges one of two assumptions: either that it was circular or elliptical, or that the seats of the audience were ranged on two sides opposite to one another (ἄμφω means “on both sides”). It is nevertheless difficult to suppose that the Jews derived the idea from a structure designed only for wild-beast hunts and gladiatorial contests, much less in Greek Berenice, the heads of whose community were deeply imbued with hellenistic culture.