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THE END of PAGAN TEMPLES in ROMAN PALESTINE Gregory ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: THE END OF PAGAN TEMPLES IN ROMAN PALESTINE Gregory William Stoehr, Doctor of Philosophy, 2018 Dissertation directed by: Professor Hayim Lapin, Department of History I am investigating fate of polytheist temples in Late Antique Roman Palestine, with a primary focus on the archaeological remains of the temples themselves. This focus is a deliberate effort to steer the conversation about “Christianization” and the “end of paganism” into the domain of empirical evidence. The inner religious states of individuals, and hence populations, confound efforts at quantification. Thus, this dissertation is instead an accounting of the fate of the public venues that were used by pagans, for specific ritual behavior that enhanced status, in what was the most significant part of the Empire in terms of the history of Christianity. Ancient Palestine in the third and early fourth centuries was part of the normal Mediterranean pagan milieu. Cities such as Bet Shean, Aelia Capitolina, and Caesarea Maritima provide us with evidence for dozens of pagan temples. This study finds evidence for forty-four temples. There were certainly many more than those for which we have evidence. All of these pagan temples eventually went out of commission. Only three temples in Palestine had endings that were remarkable enough to be preserved in the literary record. The ending of the rest was far less dramatic, if we even know about it. A combination of neglect, natural disaster, extended quarrying through time, and encroachment of ritual space by other buildings was significantly more common than more dramatic scenarios that involved overt social conflict. What we hear from impassioned literary sources does not seem to be typical when compared with the archaeology. It might be hypothesized that an urban culture of enlightened indifference preferred to allow temples to linger and slip away, in an unremarkable fashion, rather than forcibly eliminate them. THE END OF PAGAN TEMPLES IN ROMAN PALESTINE by Gregory William Stoehr Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2018 Advisory Committee: Professor Hayim Lapin, Chair Professor Arthur Eckstein Professor Zeev Weiss Professor John Weisweiler Professor Maxine Grossman © Copyright by Gregory William Stoehr 2018 Dedication This dissertation is for Kenneth Holum, to whom I owe tremendous debts that I will never be able to repay in full. It was an honor to work with him and he will be missed. ii Acknowledgements This dissertation gestated for an extended period of time, which might be reasonably common for grad students, but in this case it is also very sad. This is because my advisor, Kenneth Holum, passed away in the fall of 2017. Only a few chapters existed in draft form at that time. Dr. Holum had an incalculable formative influence on this project and on me. This dissertation has its origin in a long-running conversation between the two of us, ultimately contingent upon numbers that we did not have at our disposal at the time. Completing my dissertation was difficult. I feel the utmost gratitude to my committee, Professors Hayim Lapin, Arthur Eckstein, Zeev Weiss, Johnathan Weisweiler, and Maxine Grossman, for seeing this project through with me. I cannot imagine having a better mentor, in terms of using quantitative methods for researching the history of Roman Palestine, than Dr. Lapin. My entire committee’s help was vital, but his especially. My family and loved ones allowed me to keep my human credentials through the entire process. Xavier Blair did this by permitting me to make up bedtime stories for him. iii Table of Contents Dedication…………………………………………..…………………………………….ii Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………..………......iii Table of Contents…………………………………………………………….….………..iv List of Tables……………………………………………………………………..………..v List of Figures………………………………………………………………….…………vi Chapter I Delimiting the Study…………………………………..……………..….………1 Chapter II The Religious Landscape of Pre-Constantinian Palestine…………....………..45 Chapter III An Accounting of the Temples………………………………….……..……..66 Chapter IV Constantine’s Churches in the Holy Land……………………………...…...139 Chapter V The Exceptional Case of Gaza……………………………….…..…………..182 Chapter VI Results and Conclusions……………………………………..……………..195 Appendix………………………………………………………………….…………….209 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………210 iv List of Tables Table 6.1: Urban and Rural Sites and Temples…………………….......................……..197 Table 6.2 Data Cross-Tabulation………………………………………………...…...…202 Table 6.3 Final State of Known Temples……………………………….……..………...202 Table 6.4 Approx. Date of Destruction of Known Temples……………………...……...204 v List of Figures Figure 4.1: Plan of Aelia Capitolina (from Magness 2000)…………………....………...154 Figure 4.2: Excavations in the Katholikon (from Corbo 1982)…………………...……..156 Figure 4.3: Hadrianic retaining wall (from Corbo 1982)………………………..………156 Figure 4.4: Mamre Temenos and Church (from Mader 1957)…………………….…....166 vi Chapter I Delimiting the Study My dissertation is an investigation of the fate of polytheist temples in Late Antique Roman Palestine. I aim to emphasize the material evidence and quantifiable data, thus laying the groundwork for statistical analysis of the topic. Underlying this focus is the question of the social forces that regulate the change of deep-seated ideology. This chapter will outline the parameters of my research, theoretical and practical. The theoretical parameters concern the problematic nature of measuring religious belief. The parameters that I have established grant an empirical perspective and suggest some of the social forces that permitted or inhibited the destruction of pagan temples. The goal has been to create a data-set by collecting together what we know about the temples found in third century Palestine, evaluating how and when these temples were destroyed, and literally counting and comparing the results. Out of the forty-four temples accounted for by this study, the majority appear to have passed away in a fashion that is best characterized as unremarkable. For the purposes of my dissertation I will freely use both “paganism” and “polytheism” to refer to traditional ancient religious practices. “Polytheism,” a term imported from anthropology, might be marginally preferable. Conventional usage, however, often still employs “paganism.” “Hellene” was how urban pagans in the East were known in Late Antiquity. All three terms are problematic in modern usage for a variety of reasons. The common difficulty is the implication that the traditional religions of the Mediterranean were unified in a formal sense.1 The reader needs to be alert to the fact that the historical forces that molded our language failed to give us the accurate and 1 Alan Cameron, The Last Pagans of Rome (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 15-32. 1 succinct terminology that we need, and that there is no good alternative option possessing recognizable currency. Paganism was most certainly a deep-seated ideology even in Palestine, renowned as the place of origin for remarkable monotheistic faiths. The ideology of paganism mandated a set of religious practices, (sacrifice) for which temples served as specialized, large-scale, and public venues. Going into the fourth century, the religious landscape of the Empire, including Palestine, was full of pagan temples. To virtually the same degree as elsewhere, the social hierarchy of Palestine was dominated by an elite group that used temples to justify and enhance their position. The many religions of the ancient world were entrenched through millennia of committed practice by the population-at-large. Yet, the collection of various pagan systems of public practice that had held ancient society together was replaced within a century, in the most visible places, by the public practices of a single religion, Christianity. This was remarkable. I have adopted a tight geographical focus on Palestine, placing the birthplace of both Christ and the Christian religion into the spotlight. Palestine was exceptional in terms of how Christians defined their own identity. Further, it was the place of execution for many Christians under Diocletian. For these reasons, a unique set of circumstances surely regulated the treatment of pagan temples in Palestine. Focusing on the place of origin of the religion isolates a potential special case, one that is presumably the “most” special case, in terms of this treatment. Given the special relationship between Christians and Palestine, one might expect the political ascendancy of Christianity in the fourth century to have resulted in a ferocious backlash against temples, in an effort to cleanse the Holy Land. Or perhaps we would expect street-level violence, as protestors and 2 counter-protestors clashed over the fate of monuments dedicated to a discredited and hated central institution and ideology. There is a well-known literary record from antiquity that paints the end of paganism in such colors. Sozomen, Mark the Deacon, and Eusebius give a glimpse of the end of paganism that involves, or implies, social conflict. Gaza, Alexandria, parts of Syria, and probably Jerusalem were among the most prominent places where violence, or the potential for such violence, was manifested in the literary record. The result was the ritualistic destruction of temples. These authors recorded a very specific means of destroying a pagan
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