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It is instructive to see the similarities and the differences between the account of the origins of the synagogue in the Jewish Encyclopedia of 1907 and the more extended discussion of the subject in the Encyclopedia Judaica of 1971. In the earlier work, Wilhelm Bacher observes that by the time the synagogue had become the central institution in Judaism, it was already regarded as of ancient origin, dating back to Moses.1 He was of the opinion that the synagogue as a permanent institution originated during the Babylonian captivity,2 and conjectured that the reference in Isa 56. 7 to the temple as a ‘house of prayer’ was to be understood as connected with the term for place of prayer, proseuche, which was used during the exile and among Jews in the diaspora in later centuries. Balcher's theory continues that it was Ezra and his successors who reorganized the religious life of Israel into congregational worship, with special place for prayers and the reading of the scriptures. This development, he proposed, took place in parallel with the revival of the temple cult and led to the building of synagogues. He finds evidence for synagogues in Palestine in the pre-exilic period in Ps 74. 8, although in fact this psalm comes from the Maccabean period or even later.3 Then, astonishingly and without any attempt to explain, he asserts that the complete absence of allusions to synagogue in 1 or 2 Maccabees is the result of the author's primary concern for the purity of the temple ritual.
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