Imagining the everyday life of Jewish and Christian “neighbors” in Late Antique Capernaum: Beyond church and synagogue – and back again

Abstract

Adapting several insights from the work of social theorists Michel de Certeau and Pierre Mayol on the concepts of “everyday life” and the “neighborhood,” as well as Cynthia Baker’s work on the architecture of gender in Late Antique Galilee, Cirafesi explores how the neighborhood architecture of the ancient Galilean village of Capernaum contributes to the way in which we imagine Jews and Christians having lived together in this ancient village as “neighbors.” The chapter ties this discussion of neighborhood architecture into the enduring question of the supposed “religious” boundary projected by the architecture of Capernaum’s famous octagonal church and basilical synagogue. Recognizing the limitations of the archaeological record, several contemporaneous and geographically proximate literary sources are mobilized that provide further hermeneutical insight into the entangled relationship between Capernaum’s monumental and domestic landscapes and that allow us to generate a more robust historical imagination of the Jewish – Christian interaction in the town.