New Research

Archaeologists Thought This Ancient Site in Spain Was a Church. Was It Actually a Synagogue?

A new study examines artifacts and features of the site that may be associated with Judaism, though researchers caution that more work is needed

Sonja Anderson | Daily Correspondent

August 7, 2025

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In the center of Cástulo, an ancient city located in southern Spain, lies a ruined house of worship dating back more than 1,600 years. Historians have long thought the building was a Christian church. But according to a new study published in the journal Vegueta, it may have been a synagogue.

“When we looked at the interior of the building a little more closely, there were some strange things for a church,” lead author Bautista Ceprián, an archaeologist at the University of Jaén in Spain, tells the Guardian’s Sam Jones. “There was something that could have been the hole for a big menorah. It’s also strange that this building doesn’t have any tombs.”

Located near the town of Linares in Spain’s Andalusian region, Cástulo was settled by Indigenous Iberians in the seventh century B.C.E. Due to its silver and lead mining operations, the city became “an important ally for Carthage against Rome in the Second Punic War,” wrote Chapman University archaeologist Justin Walsh, who worked on the site, in 2014. But the Romans ultimately captured the city, which they would control until the fall of the Roman Empire.

Archaeologists began excavating the site in the 1960s. Since then, they have uncovered many structures from the city’s Roman period, including a bath complex and a large, intricate mosaic floor. Between 1985 and 1991, researchers also excavated a building in Cástulo’s center that they assumed was a Christian church dating to the fourth century C.E. But new research may challenge that assumption.

In recent decades, researchers working at the site have uncovered artifacts that appear to be associated with Judaism, according to Ceprián and his co-authors, David Expósito Mangas and José Carlos Ortega Díez.

These items include three fragments of oil lamps decorated with seven-branched menorahs, as well as a roof tile adorned with a five-branch menorah, according to the Times of Israel’s Rossella Tercatin. The team also found part of a jar lid marked with a Hebrew inscription that’s been interpreted as “of forgiveness,” “light of forgiveness” or “song to David.”

No artifacts with obvious links to Christianity were discovered near the building, though such evidence was discovered at a different site nearby, Ceprián tells CNN’s Jack Guy. The building in question is also square-shaped, while Christian churches were often rectangular.

“Synagogues of that time could be more square in shape than Christian basilicas because in Jewish worship, there’s usually a central bimah,” a raised platform where the Torah is read, Ceprián tells the Guardian. “In a church, the priest performs the rituals in the apse, which means things are more rectangular.”

The building is located near Cástulo’s Roman bathhouse, which would have been considered a pagan site by the fourth century, when Christianity became the official Roman religion. As such, Christians may have avoided the area. Additionally, while researchers may expect to find Christian burials near a church, none have been discovered near the site.

“It’s a hidden, discreet and isolated spot that would not have been visited often by the Christian majority,” says Ceprián to CNN. “The reinterpretation of the building from a church to possibly a synagogue followed a process of logical reasoning based on the historical and archaeological data in our possession.”

Still, no official records describe a Jewish community in Cástulo, and speculating about the lives of such a community would be “a very dangerous exercise,” Ceprián explains to CNN. If such a community did inhabit the area, it likely disappeared before the seventh century, when the Visigoth king Sisebut ruled. The king named specific Jewish communities in nearby towns when he passed laws persecuting Jews, but he didn’t name a community in Cástulo.

Looking ahead, the researchers plan to continue studying the religious building’s ruins. They hope to unearth additional evidence during future excavations. But in the meantime, they are urging caution.

“Our understanding of the Jewish settlement [in Cástulo] is far from complete,” Ceprián tells the Times of Israel. “For example, no work has yet been done to determine the full extent of the Jewish quarter within the city. And beyond the Jewish presence, many other important questions remain to be explored throughout the broader archaeological site of Cástulo.”

Sonja Anderson | Read More

Sonja Anderson is a writer and reporter based in Chicago.