This new (yes, another) translation from Protestant scholars highlights some of the concerns of my article. The presuppositions and aims of this translation are completely devoid of any necessity for or attachment to the Spirit-filled Church of the apostles. It is a completely scholarly and human effort — this quest to find the “original” text (that never really existed).

Lord, have mercy.

In case your comment was directed to me, please let me explain my above comment. While some synagogues did definitively exist in ancient Judea after the sixth century BC destruction of Solomon’s Temple, most villages did not have them. Because first century life in Judea was primarily agricultural and rural, most people did not have as regular access to a synagogue as they would in later centuries when most Jews fled Palestine to live in ‘Jewish districts’ in Roman cities around the Mediterranean following Emperor Hadrian’s order destroying post-Temple Roman Jerusalem. This is borne out by the fact that partially preserved ruins of synagogues have only been found in cities and settlements which functioned as market towns or important trading centers. The first synagogues in Judea were built when most of the Israelite Diaspora returned to Jerusalem following the Persian conquest of Babylon.

Importantly, Jews living outside Israel, especially in the Alexandria Diaspora in and around the Ptolemaic capital and the Nile delta, could only infrequently visit the Temple, and so synagogue life developed there in ways unique to their circumstances. As in Judea, the Egyptian synagogues remained the predominant locus of communal events, performances of mikveh, and singing of the psalms.