Jewish Glass and Christian Stone by Smith Eric C

Author:Smith, Eric C.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)

Clay vessels

So far I’ve focused on the oil lamp from Beth She’arim, which has decoration that we might call Christian but which was found at a site that fits with what we understand to be Judaism. It’s an interesting case because it’s an object that seems to be out of place, like the gold glass in the Catacomb of St. Marcellinus and St. Peter—an object bearing the markings of one group found in the space of a different group. But another category of material presents a related but distinct set of questions: objects that display the symbols of both Jewish and Christian traditions. Two such objects, another oil lamp and a seal stamp, along with some related materials, deserve our attention here.

A peculiar oil lamp is described and pictured in a 1964 article by Erwin R. Goodenough—an article actually mainly devoted to describing the seal stamp to which we will turn our attention shortly.25 The lamp is presented late in the article as a comparandum to the stamp, and Goodenough narrates correspondence with Michael Avi-Yonah about the lamp in question, and includes a photograph of the lamp as his figure 8.26 Goodenough calls the lamp “Palestinian” and gives no further information about its provenance in this article; in his third volume of Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period, Goodenough includes a photograph of the lamp.27 The lamp itself is typical of lamps in the period, and not so different from the one bearing the chi-rho from Beth She’arim. But this lamp makes prodigious use of its limited space for decoration; it is adorned with an arch on its spout, two columns under that, a seven-branch menorah, a nine-branch menorah, two long palm branches circling the bottom of the lamp, and, on the middle of each side, additional arches, each circling a cross.28 The standout features here are obviously the two menorahs and the two crosses, juxtaposed as they are on a single lamp. In Goodenough’s short article, he focuses on the spatial arrangement of the crosses and menorahs, seeing the former as subordinate to the latter, and Avi-Yonah agrees with him. The subordination does not appear as clearly to me (on a lamp that is roughly circular, I cannot discern much of a hierarchy in organization), but the very fact of the crosses’ and menorahs’ appearance together is provocative.

Goodenough concludes, as did A. Reifenberg before him, that “Jewish Christians” must have been responsible for this lamp.29 Noting the geographical and temporal spread of objects exhibiting this kind of mixture of symbolism, Goodenough asks whether “such Christianity” (that is, Jewish Christianity) “was more widespread and persistent than we had ever supposed.”30 He answers his own question in the negative, albeit cautiously:

I do not think that so large a conclusion is justified, yet the fact of the evidence remains, and seems to me to show unmistakably that at least some Christians, probably many, carried over strictly Jewish symbols into their new faith … Presumably the old Jewish value was given new Christian explanations.

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