Enslaved People Manumitted in the Early Synagogue

These inscriptions from the first century CE record the freeing of enslaved people, a ceremony that seems to have taken place in the synagogue. A number of Jewish manumission records are known from Bosporus, in Asia Minor; the invocation of Zeus at the end of the Bosporus inscription here reflects local legal norms and is not evidence of Jewish worship of Greek gods. In the second inscription, from Panticapaeum in Crimea, the synagogue is seemingly an involved party in the manumission.