What are our Sources of Information about Second Temple Synagogues?
In order to guard against anachronism (attributing later practices and customs to an earlier era), recent researchers have been careful to study only literary, epigraphic and architectural sources contemporaneous with the Second Temple period. This excludes the bulk of the Rabbinic writings (e.g., the Mishnah, the Tosefta, the Talmuds), which were compiled from one-and-a-half to five centuries later. It also excludes the majority of excavated synagogue remains, which date from the third to sixth centuries CE. Fortunately, even with this conservative approach there remains a sizable body of data.
