The Jews of the Lebanese town of Sidon (Ar. Ṣaydā) believed that their community dated back to the first arrival of Israelites in the area in 1000 B.C.E. and their synagogue to the period of the Second Temple. By the beginning of the common era there were many Jews living in Sidon, and the city had been beautified by Herod (Josephus, Jewish Wars 1:422; see also Acts 12:20). Their numbers were so considerable that the local pagans were afraid to attack them in 66, when the Jews in other Greco-Syrian towns were massacred (Jewish Wars 2:479).

Although there is little information in the source…