It is estimated that the former synagogue was completed in the 3rd century, during the Roman period, likely by c. 220 CE,[1] and was located in the medieval Jewish village of Kfar Bar'am.

[2] It was first identified as a synagogue in modern times in 1852 – along with other similar remains in Galilee – by Edward Robinson in his Biblical Researches in Palestine.

[8] Along with other such structures in the Galilee, the ruins were first identified as a synagogue in modern times in 1852 by Edward Robinson in his Biblical Researches in Palestine.

[3] Robinson wrote of his visit to Kafr Bir'im: As these remains were the first of the kind that we had yet seen; and were of a style of architecture utterly unknown to us; we were at a loss for some time what to make of them.

We were, however, not satisfied on this point, until we found at Meirôn the same species of architecture, in the acknowledged remains of an ancient Jewish synagogue.

We afterwards found the ruins of like structures at Irbid, Tell Hum, Kedes, and perhaps other places in Galilee; all marked with the same architectural peculiarities.

The size, the elaborate sculptured ornament, and the splendour of these edifices, do not belong to a scattered and down-trodden people; such as the Jews have been in these regions ever since the fourth century.

These costly synagogues, therefore, can be referred only to the earlier centuries of the Christian era; when Galilee was the chief seat of the Jews; and Jewish learning and schools flourished at Tiberias.

In 1522, Rabbi Moses Basula wrote that the synagogue belonged to Simeon bar Yochai, who survived the Second Jewish War in 132–135 CE (the Bar-Kochba revolt).