GREAT SYNAGOGUE. Reference is made in the Jewish Mishnah, Gemaras and Midrash to a body of persons designated " the Men of the Great Synagogue." The Talmud represents that they consisted of one hundred and twenty (or eighty-five) persons learned in the Scriptures, that the body was founded or presided over by Ezra, and that after the exile they stood at the head of the state. One of the works they were sup posed by the mediaeval Jews to have accomplished was the fixing of the whole Canon of the Old Testament. As to this the statements on which the idea was based are found in the traetate of the Mishnah called AbOth (i. 1, 2) and in a Baraitha (q.v.) of the Talmud (Baba Bathrci, fol. 15a). In Ab5th we read that " Moses received the Torah from Sinai and delivered it to Joshua, and Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the prophets, and the prophets to the men of the Great Synagogue. They said three things: Be deliberate in judgment, and raise up many disciples, and make a fence to the Torah. Simon the Just was of the rem nants of the Great Synagogue." In the Baraitha we are told that : " The men of the Great Synagogue wrote Ezekiel and the Twelve, Daniel and the Roll of Esther, whose sign is rep." These statements in themselves, however, do not imply more than that the men of the Great Synagogue were one of the means of transmitting the Torah and that they edited certain of the books of the Old Testament. But in any case the story of the work of the men of the Great Synagogue bears traces of being unhistorical (e.g., Simon the Just belonged to the time of Alexander the Great), and the very existence of the Great Synagogue has been shown to be very doubtful. The statements about it are conflicting. It
appears at one time as a permanent institution, at another time as lasting a hundred years. According to mediaeval Jewish scholars, it exercised a very great influence in religious matters. As G. Wildeboer says: " Jewish scholars after the fall of Jerusalem had an entirely false idea of the older times. Israel was not ruled by the Scribes before the year 70 A.D. What are we to imagine under the name Great Synagogue? A senate? Certainly not; it is supposed to have been a religious body." A. Kuenen argues powerfully for the view that the story is a legend based upon the narrative iu Nehemiah viii.-x. " If now it be assumed that the historical basis of the legend is the assembly in Nehe miah viii.-x., then we cannot attribute to it the role ascribed to it by tradition. For this assembly did not legislate, but adopted a legislation." So A. Kuenen says that " the Talmudic Great Synagogue is an unhistorical conception, a transformation of the assembly which under Ezra and Nehemiah adopted the complete Mosaic law book." Subsequently the Sopherim antedated the domination of their predecessors, and ascribed a pro longed existence to the assembly. In place of the men of the Great Synagogue we have to put " the older scribes." " The latter really accomplished what is ascribed to the former. They constituted no governing assembly, but were some of them priests, others not: some members of the Sanhedrin, others outside of that body " (Wildeboer). See G. Wildeboer, Canon; C. A. Briggs, Intr.