page_title: Bema
section_title: Ancient Greece
hierarchical_section_title: Bema / Ancient Greece
caption_attribution_description: Collection: A. D. White Architectural Photographs, Cornell University Library Accession Number: 15/5/3090.00024 Title: Pnyx Photograph date: ca. 1865-ca. 1895 6th BC-4th BC Location: Europe: Greece; Athens Materials: albumen print Image: 8 x 10 in.; 20.32 x 25.4 cm Style: Greek Provenance: Transfer from the College of Architecture, Art and Planning Persistent URI: &lt;a href="http://library24.library.cornell.edu/collections/adw/74184-10130003.html" rel="nofollow"&gt;http://library24.library.cornell.edu/collections/adw/74184-10130003.html&lt;/a&gt; There are no known U.S. copyright restrictions on this image. The digital file is owned by the Cornell University Library which is making it freely available with the request that, when possible, the Library be credited as its source. We had some help with the geocoding from &lt;a href="http://developer.yahoo.com/" rel="nofollow"&gt;Web Services by Yahoo!&lt;/a&gt;
context_page_description: The bema, or bima, is an elevated platform used as an orator's podium in ancient Athens. In Jewish synagogues, it is also known as a bimah and is for Torah reading during services. In an Orthodox Jewish synagogue, a bema is the raised area around the aron kodesh, or the sanctuary. In antiquity it was made of stone, but in modern times it is usually a rectangular wooden platform approached by steps.
context_section_description: The Ancient Greek bēma (βῆμα) means both 'platform' and 'step', being derived from bainein (βαίνειν, 'to go'). The original use of the bema in Athens was as a tribunal from which orators addressed the citizens as well as the courts of law, for instance, in the Pnyx. In Greek law courts the two parties to a dispute presented their arguments each from separate bemas.
  By metonymy, bema was also a place of judgement, being the extension of the raised seat of the judge, as described in the New Testament, in Matthew 27:19 and John 19:13, and further, as the seat of the Roman emperor, in Acts 25:10, and of God, in Romans 14:10, when speaking in judgment.
caption: The bema, or speaker's platform, at the Pnyx in Athens
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