ABSTRACT
The seventh-century ad magical bowls of Nippur, a town just east of Sura, where the rabbinical school founded by Rav was located, contain a number of references to a rabbi also mentioned in rabbinic traditions, Joshua b. Perahiah. The interest of Talmudic historians, to begin with, focused upon what happened in the rabbinical schools and among the sages. The archaeological investigations of Professor Nelson Glueck, his disciples and colleagues, into the history of Israelite religion before 450 bc and of Judaism afterward, have no parallel across the Euphrates. The appreciation of archaeological data was limited by almost exclusive concentration on texts as the source of all information, and upon the explication of texts—after they were critically edited—as the sole legitimate, authentic, scholarly task. The disputed interpretation of the synagogue murals at Dura-Europos provides an excellent example of the dubious use of literary sources as a court of higher appeal for the interpretation of archaeological data.
