SYNAGOGUE, TILE GREAT (keneseth haggedolah), an assembly or synod, supposed to have been founded and presided over by Ezra, consisting of 120 men, said to have been engaged in remodeling the national and religious institutions of the Jews after the return froth Babylon. The palpable chronological discrepancies that occur in the early accounts about this synod, together with other doubtful points, have led modern schol ars to deny its existence completely. But the fact of Josephus not mentioning it avails very little against the positive assertions of the Talmud, and what is still more impor tant, of the Karaites, the professed adversaries of all tradition. True, Ezra, the con temporary of Artaxerxes, can never have taken his place in it together with Zerubbabel and Joshua, who left Babylon under Cyrus, or with Simeon the Just, who lived at the time of Alexander the Great. These, however, are but apparent anachronisms. The tradition never meant anything else than that the institution founded by Ezra, and which lasted up to the time of Alexander, comprised 120 men, of whom Simeon was one of the last. Anyhow, there is absolutely no reason to doubt that Ezra and Nehemiah did a certain amount of work which they could not have done without. being assisted by
eminent collaborators. It was to this body to which certain vital ameliorations in the administration ofjustice are ascribed. They developed public instruction, and fixed and enlarged the Mosaic laws by certain rules of interpretation. "Be circumspect in judgment; make many disciples; and erect a fence around the law;" are some of the principal sayings ascribed to them. Above all, it seems to have been the office of Ezra and his coadjutors—the men of the Great Synagogue—to collect, purify, and redact the sacred books as much as in them lay. Whether, however, they really introduced the vowel-points, which have been handed down to us by the Masoretes, instituted the Feast of Purim, sanctioned the Eighteen Benedictions (see LITURGY, JEWISH), etc., is more than doubtful. They certainly disappeared before the Sanhedrim (q.v.) were insti tuted, but it may be that their legislative functions were no longer needed at that advanced period.