First Century B.C.E. Synagogues

Rylands Papyrus IV 590; CPJud. I 138

The word synagoge, “congregation,” was reserved for a meeting or for the community itself. Thus, in a papyrus from the end of the first century B.C.E., we are told of a meeting (synagoge) of a Jewish association in a house of prayer (proseuche). A document dating from Diocletian’s reign relates how a Jewish woman and her two (or three) children, who had been enslaved, were redeemed by the Jewish community of Oxyrhynchos, synagoge ton loudaion, represented by its leaders (Oxyrhynchos Papyrus IX 1205; CPJud. III 473, 291 C.E.)

Source: Modrzejewski, Joseph M. The Jews of Egypt