Dura-Europos synagogue in the context of Dura-Europos church

The Hebrews (Hebrew: עִבְרִיִּים / עִבְרִים, Modern: ʿĪvrīm / ʿĪvrīyyīm, Tiberian: ʿĪḇrīm / ʿĪḇrīyyīm; ISO 259-3: ʕibrim / ʕibriyim) were an ancient Semitic-speaking people. Historians mostly consider the Hebrews as synonymous with the Israelites, with the term "Hebrew" denoting an Israelite from the nomadic era, which preceded the establishment of the Kingdom of Israel and Judah in the 11th century BCE. However, in some instances, the designation "Hebrew" may also be used historically in a wider sense, referring to the Phoenicians or other ancient Semitic-speaking civilizations, such as the Shasu on the eve of the Late Bronze Age collapse. It appears 34 times within 32 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Some scholars regard "Hebrews" as an ethnonym, while others do not, and others still hold that the multiple modern connotations of ethnicity may not all map well onto the sociology of ancient Near Eastern groups.

By the time of the Roman Empire, the term Hebraios (Greek: Ἑβραῖος) could refer to any member of the Jewish people in general (as Strong's Hebrew Dictionary puts it: "any of the Jewish nation") or, at other times, specifically to those Jews who lived in Judea, which was a Roman province from 6 CE to 135 CE. However, at the time of early Christianity, the term instead referred to Jewish Christians, as opposed to the Judaizers and to the gentile Christians.

The Ark of the Covenant, also known as the Ark of the Testimony or the Ark of God, was a religious storage chest and relic held to be the most sacred object by the Israelites.

Religious tradition describes it as a wooden storage chest decorated in solid gold accompanied by an ornamental lid known as the Seat of Mercy. According to the Book of Exodus and First Book of Kings in the Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament, the Ark contained the Tablets of the Law, by which God delivered the Ten Commandments to Moses at Mount Sinai. According to the Book of Exodus, the Book of Numbers, and the Epistle to the Hebrews in the New Testament, it also contained Aaron's rod and a pot of manna. The biblical account relates that approximately one year after the Israelites' exodus from Egypt, the Ark was created according to the pattern that God gave to Moses when the Israelites were encamped at the foot of Mount Sinai. Thereafter, the gold-plated acacia chest's staves were lifted and carried by the Levites approximately 2,000 cubits (800 meters or 2,600 feet) in advance of the people while they marched. God spoke with Moses "from between the two cherubim" on the Ark's cover.

The Hand of God, or Manus Dei in Latin, also known as Dextera domini/dei (the "right hand of God"), is a motif in Jewish and Christian art, especially of the Late Antique and Early Medieval periods, when depiction of Yahweh or God the Father as a full human figure was considered unacceptable. The hand, sometimes including a portion of an arm, or ending about the wrist, is used to indicate the intervention in or approval of affairs on Earth by God, and sometimes as a subject in itself. It is an artistic metaphor that is generally not intended to indicate that a hand was physically present or seen at any subject depicted. The Hand is seen appearing from above in a fairly restricted number of narrative contexts, often in a blessing gesture (in Christian examples), but sometimes performing an action. In later Christian works it tends to be replaced by a fully realized figure of God the Father, whose depiction had become acceptable in Western Christianity, although not in Eastern Orthodox or Jewish art. Though the hand of God has traditionally been understood as a symbol for God's intervention or approval of human affairs, it is also possible that the hand of God reflects the anthropomorphic conceptions of the deity that may have persisted in late antiquity.

The largest group of Jewish imagery from the ancient world, the 3rd century synagogue at Dura-Europos, has the hand of God in five different scenes, including the Sacrifice of Isaac, and no doubt this was one of the many iconographic features taken over by Christian art from what seems to have been a vigorous tradition of Jewish narrative art. Here and elsewhere it often represents the bath Kol (literally "daughter of a voice") or voice of God, a use also taken over into Christian art.

The Finding of Moses, sometimes called "Moses in the Bulrushes", "Moses Saved from the Waters", or other variants, is the story in chapter 2 of the Book of Exodus in the Hebrew Bible of the finding in the River Nile of Moses as a baby by the daughter of Pharaoh. The story became a common subject in art, especially from the Renaissance onwards.

Depictions in Jewish and Islamic art are much less frequent, but some Christian depictions show details derived from extra-biblical Jewish texts. The earliest surviving depiction in art is a fresco in the Dura-Europos synagogue, dating to around 244. The motif of a "naked princess" bathing in the river has been related to much later art. A contrasting tradition, beginning in the Renaissance, gave great attention to the rich costumes of the princess and her entourage.

The Philistine captivity of the Ark was an episode described in the biblical history of the Israelites, in which the Ark of the Covenant was in the possession of the Philistines, who had captured it after defeating the Israelites in a battle at a location between Eben-ezer, where the Israelites encamped, and Aphek (probably Antipatris), where the Philistines encamped.

The ark narrative does not include any mention of Samuel; Bill T. Arnold suggests that it is "in order to celebrate the power of Yahweh's ark." Many scholars put 1 Samuel 4 - 6 together with 2 Samuel 6 and believe that it reflects an old source that was eventually incorporated into the History of David's Rise or into the later Deuteronomistic History.

The National Museum of Damascus (Arabic: الْمَتْحَفُ الْوَطَنِيُّ بِدِمَشْقَ) is a museum in the heart of Damascus, Syria. As the country's national museum as well as its largest, this museum covers the entire range of Syrian history over a span of over 11 millennia. It displays various important artifacts, relics and major finds most notably from Mari, Ebla and Ugarit, three of Syria's most important ancient archaeological sites. Established in 1919, during King Faisal's short-lived Arab Kingdom of Syria, the museum is the oldest cultural heritage institution in Syria.

Among the museum's highlights are, the Dura-Europos synagogue, a reconstructed synagogue dated to 245 AD, which was moved piece by piece to Damascus in the 1930s, and is noted for its vibrant and well preserved wall paintings and frescoes, as well as sculptures and textiles from central Palmyra, and statues of the Greek goddess of victory from southern Syria. The museum houses over 5000 cuneiform tablets, among them the first known alphabet in history, written down on a clay tablet, the Ugaritic alphabet. The museum is further adorned by 2nd-century murals, elaborate tombs, and the recently restored Lion of al-Lat, which originally stood guard at the National Museum of Palmyra, but was moved to Damascus for safeguarding.