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It is natural to assume that the ancient “temple” referred to by Procopius at Boreion in the south of the country, where the Jewish inhabitants were forced to adopt Christianity by Justinian, was a synagogue. The building became a church. This community possessed a tradition that their “temple” was established in the time of King Solomon.[1074]

Halls of Council and Assembly. As we have seen, the Berenice community possessed in the 1st century B.C. a place of assembly called an amphitheatre. We do not know if it was identical with the prayerhouse or near it, but it is natural to suppose from what was normal in the hellenistic world — and the Berenice Jews were profoundly assimilated to Greek culture, to judge by their inscriptions, their procedures and the amphitheatre itself — that the building stood in the vicinity of the place of prayer, and was even connected with it.[1075]

9. The Jews of Cyrenaica in the Rural Areas

As most of the evidence is indirect, it may be well to sum up the grounds for supposing that a considerable section of the Jews of Cyrenaica were settled on the land outside the cities in the hellenistic and early Roman periods. Attention has already been drawn[1076] to the close connection seen by Josephus between the Jewish settlement in the country and their settlement in Egypt, nor does papyrology leave room for doubt that a considerable portion of Egyptian Jewry lived on the countryside in the Ptolemaic and earlier Roman periods, engaged in agriculture and made a valuable contribution both to the armed forces of Egypt and to its military cultivators.[1077] It has further been noted that the juridical situation in the Greek polis was such as to oblige immigrants who took up agriculture to settle on land outside the city territories, since the right of acquiring city-land was rarely granted to noncitizens. The Cyrenean prejudice against trade and the crafts throughout the hellenistic period, on the other hand, would have ensured that those Jews who acquired citizenship at the beginning of the Roman period would have been owners of land.

Additional evidence of the residence of Jews in the rural areas of the country is furnished by the Greek expressions used in a number of sources to describe the Jewish community; for example, in the Acts: “the Jews who live in the districts of Libya about Cyrene” (καὶ τὰ μέρη τῆς Λιβύης τῆς κατὰ Κυρήνην).[1078] This phrase is translated into Latin as “Libyae quae est circa Cyrenen”, and is also found in Eusebius — καὶ προσέτι κατὰ Κυρήνην οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι.[1079] We find a parallel expression in Josephus: καὶ δσους (sc. Ἰουδαίους)ἡ πρὸς Κυρήνην Λιβύη κατέσχεν,[1080] This form clearly refers to the Jews outside the city of Cyrene, and that this was so is testified by the following examples, drawn from ancient literature and epigraphy and applying to Cyrenaica: Augustus calls the province of Cyrene in his edicts τῆι κατὰ τὴν Κυρήνη ἐπαρχήαι;[1081] the Ptolemaic governor in charge of the Libyan tribal regions is described as ό Λιβυάρχης τῶν κατὰ Κυρήνην τόπων;[1082] the inhabitants of the port of Apollonia term themselves Ἀπολλωνιᾶται κατὰ Κυρήνην;[1083] and the Libyan tribes outside the territory of Cyrene are referred to in an inscription of the 1st century B.C. as τὰ κατὰ τὰν χώραν ἔθνεα.[1084] A similar conclusion may be drawn from the appearance of the form Βερνικίς in the inscription of the Jewish community of that city in A.D. 56, since this form possesses a suffix which denotes the entire city-land. An isolated confirmation of the evidence relating to Cyrene comes from Severus of Ashmunein’s Coptic Lives of the Patriarchs of Alexandria, which reports that the parents of the evangelist Mark were Jewish peasants from the neighbourhood of Cyrene.[1085]

Our detailed examination of the remains of the Jewish community of Teucheira, dated between the 2nd century B.C. and the 2nd century A.D. (Ch. IV) concluded that the main nucleus of this group was composed of cleruchs or katoikoi settled here by the Ptolemies; their residence about the city is made probable by the information that the entire coastal plain between Teucheira and Bengazi lay waste and in need of resettlement after the revolt of 115-117. Elsewhere (p. 170) we have assembled evidence concerning ‛Ein Targhuna, and concluded that this was a settlement of Jewish military agricultural settlers. Greek epitaphs including Jewish names are also known at al-Bagga, on the coast east of Ptolemais,[1086] At the other end of the country, in the Martuba area, is a second point, whose exact locality has not been identified, called Topos Magdalis (Τόπος Μαγδαλίς), recorded in a survey of lands and property of the late 2nd century A.D.[1087] Papyrology provides evidence that settlements with similar names in Egypt were inhabited by immigrants from Syria, including Jews, in the Ptolemaic period and even earlier.[1088] Several other indications confirm the impression that a Jewish village-population existed in eastern Cyrenaica. A Jewish gnostic cameo found at Regensburg bears several names, including the word Ἴαβοχ,[1089] which appears to be the Ἰοββαχ recorded by Papyrus Vatican II (the property survey already mentioned) in the Martuba region,[1090] and here was also located the Βασσαχέιως Παρατόμη,[1091] which must be reflected in the name of the Jewish woman Βεῖσχα buried at Teucheira.[1092]

The memory of another Jewish settlement of the Cyrenean countryside reaches us from an unexpected quarter. Its name, which is Semitic, tells us that it was in a rural area: this is the Καπφάροδος or Καπφάροδις referred to by Synesius at the end of the 4th century A.D.;[1093] the name appears to conceal the Hebrew words “kefar hadash” (ככּר חדש) or “new village”.

Reports or unauthenticated information are to hand of other rural sites where Jewish finds have been made, and there is no point in listing them here.[1094] But it were well to refer to the Jewish settlement of Iscina Locus Augusti Iudaeorum near Medinat es-Sultan, west of Cyrenaica on the coast of the Syrtis; this place will be discussed later, but it is relevant to mention, that considerable signs of ancient field-boundaries[1095] are to be seen there, and it can hardly be doubted that this remote settlement supported itself on agriculture.

Of some significance for our subject is the Jewish influence alleged to have existed among the Libyan tribes mainly in the Byzantine period and at the beginning of the Arab conquest. This influence began long before the Byzantine epoch, and was not one-sided, as appears from the evidence of the Teucheira tombs; nor would it have been possible if Jews had not been dispersed over the country’s rural areas. It is therefore relevant to reiterate that the evidence at Teucheira is in any case in favour of the association of Jews with agricultural settlement. The indications of close contact between Jews and Libyans are also traceable in the Barka plain, in the view of some scholars; the earliest trace may be the conversion of the Libyan name Aladdeir (Ἀλάδδεφ), king at Barka in the time of Arkesilaos III,[1096] (his descendants being resident in the city in the 3rd century B.C.),[1097] — to Eleazar (Ἐλεάζαρ) in the writings of the hellenistic writer Lobon.[1098]