A new archaeological study suggests that the ruins of a building until now thought to have been a paleo Christian church may in fact have been a synagogue dating from the 4th or 5th century CE. The ruins are in the heritage complex of the ancient city of Cástulo, near present-day Linares in Andalucía.
The study, titled “Una posible sinagoga tardoantigua en Cástulo. Estudio del Edificio S de la ciudad” (A Possible Late Antiquity Synagogue in Cástulo. Study of Building S of the City), was authored by archaeologists Bautista Ceprián del Castillo, David Expósito Mangas, and José Carlos Ortega. It was published this year in the journal Vegueta of Las Palmas University.
The research emerges from the excavations carried out between 2011 and 2021 under the Andalucían regional government’s Castulo Sefarad Primera Luz project, an archaeological project that seeks to uncover the town’s Jewish history. The site had originally been excavated between 1985 and 1991 by the archaeologist and historian José María Blázquez Martínez, who interpreted the ruins as a Christian church.
The ruins of the building in question — known as “Edificio S” or “Building S” — are located within the former urban area of Cástulo and feature a basilica-style plan with a tripartite nave and apse.
The new research includes material finds that support the use of “Building S” as a synagogue, dating back to between the late 4th and early 5th centuries CE — or at least the presence of a Jewish community at that time.
These include three oil lamps decorated with menorahs, a ceramic lid inscribed with Hebrew inscriptions, and a fragment of a roof tile with a menorah motif. The translation of the Hebrew fragment on the lid can be “Song to David” or “Light for Forgiveness,” though the incomplete and irregular inscription makes the interpretation difficult.
“During the 2012-2013 [dig], we found the roof tile with the five-armed [menorah],” Bautista Ceprían del Castillo was quoted by The Guardian as saying. “Until that moment, we didn’t know that there could have been a very small Jewish community in Cástulo.”
He and his co-authors argue that in addition to the material finds, the architectural layout, absence of burials (which would contradict Jewish law prohibiting tombs near synagogues), and the building’s location — isolated on a dead-end street and adjacent to Roman public baths, which were shunned as pagan or even demonic relics by the local Christian authorities — also point toward its use as a synagogue.
They also highlight parallels with other known Late Antiquity synagogues in ancient Palestine and the Mediterranean region, particularly in layout, orientation, and urban context.
According to the authors, the quadrangular appearance of the Cástulo synagogue, shared with the other synagogues, was “atypical of Christian churches in general and particularly of those in Hispania,” and this feature “could serve as evidence […] of ongoing exchanges and communication among Jewish communities across the Mediterranean region […], and, above all, of a shared characteristic or perhaps a general architectural approach among Jewish communities of the western Mediterranean Diaspora.”
If confirmed, the Cástulo ruins would provide some of the earliest archaeological evidence of Jewish communal life and worship in the Iberian peninsula. But the authors were careful to recognize that much still needs to be proven.
“[W]e believe that Building S at Cástulo has many objective characteristics typical of Jewish religious buildings, leading to a high probability that it should be considered a synagogue,” they wrote.
However, the absence of specific epigraphy related to its function or a clearer material record of Jewish worship makes it impossible to determine with absolute certainty whether it was a synagogue, since there will always be a small probability that this building is an anomalous Christian construction, given the geographical location where it is located, which is entirely and predominantly Christian, and the fact that the Jewish communities have always mimicked, as far as possible, as long as they did not contradict the Law of Moses, the material records and customs of the majority communities in which they were located.
Still, we do not lose hope that, in future excavations in the ancient city of Cástulo, an element may be found that confirms the attribution of this building to a Synagogue that served the Jewish religious community that inhabited Cástulo, at least between the end of the Late Empire and part of Late Antiquity.
Read the full article (in Spanish) online.
Watch a video in Spanish about the Cástulo Archeological Complex