The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years serves as a kind of handbook for the study of the synagogue in antiquity. It discusses every major site, every major text and most major issues and secondary sources. It is indeed a worthy successor to Samuel Krauss' Synagogale Altertümer (Berlin and Vienna), published in 1922. Comparison of this volume with that of Krauss shows the intention of each author to be inclusive of all that was known about the synagogue in an encyclopedic fashion. This comparison also shows how much more we know of the ancient synagogue than Krauss did. This is crudely expressed by sheer number of pages in each volume. While Krauss produced a book of 470 pages in length, Levine's magnum opus is a whopping 748 pages. Archaeological discoveries in Israel and the Mediterranean basin, as well as texts discovered or published (most significantly from the Cairo Genizah) have greatly increased our sources for the history of the synagogue. In addition, new methods for the study of ancient Judaism, its literature, and its material culture have facilitated a complete rethinking of the history of the synagogue.