Between Ancient Rhodes and Israel: Comparing Literary and Material Cultures

By: Richard Freund

The ancient Mediterranean world was formed of countless interconnections. I have been working at Bethsaida, a city by the north shore of the Sea of Galilee for the past 25 years. Part of our work has been to map the roads system connecting Bethsaida to the coast and to the Mediterranean beyond, Damascus to the east, and to trace influence down to Egypt, from the Iron Age through the Roman period.

This work has led to our assessing the trade connections between the Mediterranean and ancient Israel. It has also prompted an entirely new field project on the island of Rhodes.

The project to understand the interaction between Rhodes and Israel and more specifically with Bethsaida, began with our assessment of Bethsaida as a Galillean site located between the competing Ptolemian and Seleucid kingdoms in during the third and second centuries BCE. We carefully assessed the Ptolemian and Seleucid presence at Bethsaida through coins and pottery. Although we have hundreds of fragments of Rhodian amphorae, we discovered 14 stamped Rhodian handles and three of them had the famed symbol of Rhodes, “the Rose” on the handle. Just 30 km to the north of Bethsaida, Tel Anafa had 162 Rhodian stamped handles, and there are arrays of Rhodian stamped handles that continue all the way down to Jerusalem and beyond. Some sort of major connection with ancient Israel and Rhodes is clear.

We assumed that it is not just non-Jews who had a taste for Rhodian wine (or whatever else may have been in the Rhodian amphorae). But how did the relationship work in the other direction? Is there material culture or other ethnic markers of a Jewish presence in Rhodes during the Hellenistic and Roman periods? Our project combines the literary and material evidence for Jews in Rhodes to see if we can confirm a relationship between Judea and Galilee/Golan and Rhodes, and perhaps even a Jewish community in Rhodes, as early as the 2nd century BCE.

The University of Hartford, in association with the archaeological Ephorate of Rhodes, began working on the island in 2014 to assess the antiquity of the Rhodes Jewish community. One of our goals is to determine if there was a stable Jewish community in Rhodes by the 2nd century BCE, with material culture indicative of trade relations with Judea and Galilee.

Literary sources suggest a relationship between Rhodes and Israel was established in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. References in the Book of Maccabees (I Maccabees 14.23) in the second century BCE, but there are also multiple references in the writings of Josephus Flavius to Herod the Great’s visits and connections with Rhodes in the first century BCE. In the first half of the second century CE, Suetonius has references to a certain Diogenes Grammaticus who is disputing with Jews on the Sabbath. The existence of a Hellenistic synagogue on the Greek island of Delos points to Greek Jewish religious life during the 2nd century. The presence of Rhodes as one of the locations visited by the Apostle Paul in the New Testament may again point to an established Jewish community that formed part of his missionizing.

The Jewish community of Rhodes is mentioned again in the writings of Theophrastus and Bar Hebreaus, who describe a 7th century episode involving the conquest of the island by the Arab leader Muawiyah I in 653 CE. The Jews were apparently instructed to help move the bronze debris of the Colossus of Rhodes that had remained near the port. The existence of pottery, especially oil lamps with Jewish symbols such as the Menorah, from the early Byzantine period on Rhodes indicated Jewish merchants were present during the transition from the Byzantine to the early Islamic periods.

A documented Jewish community with multiple synagogues is noted by the Jewish 12th century Jewish traveler, Benjamin of Tudela. In the early 14th century the Knights Templar arrived on the island and according to literary accounts came in contact with the Jews on Rhodes. Our archaeological work involves assessing two synagogues and an area thought to have been an early synagogue near the port of Rhodes (designated today as “The Church of the Victory”). In addition, we worked with the Ephorate on the discovery of the Hellenistic walls of the city now buried under the Grandmaster Palace.

The University of Hartford’s archaeological and geoscience research on the two surviving 16th century synagogues (Kahal Gadol and Kahal Shalom) in the Old Town of Rhodes have revealed a destroyed sub-stratum that predates the Sephardic influx to the island after the expulsion from Spain in 1492. Using ground penetrating radar areas we have identified anomalies that we will be excavating in coming years.