What is
Second Temple Judaism?
Jesus, Mary, Paul,
Mary Magdalene and Peter were all Jews. This course will help us understand how
Judaism shaped their understandings of God, the Scriptures and the way they
should live. We will examine the political (the exiles occupations and
revolts), social (the influence of Hellenistic thought on Jewish thinking and
Judaism in the Diaspora), religious (groups like the Pharisees, Sadducees,
Zealots and Essenes) and theological (understandings of exile and Messiah) contours
which shaped the Judaism that Jesus knew. Finally, we will look at an
understanding of First Century Judaism sheds light on the life and teachings of
Jesus and some of the controversies in the letters of the Apostle Paul.
The period of time
that we are looking at in this course begins at 569BCE (the sacking of
Jerusalem and Israel being taken into Exile in Babylon) to 70CE
(the destruction of the Temple).
Why spend time studying Judaism
at the time of Jesus?
The fact that
Jesus was Jewish can come as a gigantic bombshell to many Gentile Christians. Geza
Vermes is correct, in one sense, ‘Jesus was a Jew and not a Christian’.
In another, to dismiss the connections between Jesus and Christianity is
disingenuous and does not do justice to years of Christians who have wrestled
to make sense of Judaism in the light of Jesus.
A particularly
important reason for looking at Judaism at the time of Jesus is that to do so,
takes the whole drama of God’s salvation history seriously. N T Wright has
argued that for Christians, the scheme of salvation is split into different
acts: Creation, Fall, Israel, Jesus and the Church.
Thus, as Wright would argue in order to understand Jesus we need to understand
the culture (including the language and histories) from which he came.
At the same time,
there has been a tendency for Jews to see the Judaism of this period as merely
a forerunner for rabbinic Judaism that has become dominant.
- Why are you
studying this particular course?
- What three
things do you hope to learn/understand more fully as a result of
spending time engaging with this course?
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What sort of faith was Judaism?
Second Temple
Judaism, Early Judaism and Common Judaism have all been terms to describe
Judaism of the period under discussion. All can be used to a certain extent
interchangeably.
Up until the early
1970s, biblical scholarship seemed to concur that Judaism at the time of Jesus
was a legalistic religion, with its emphasis on the law. This meant that it was
something that stood against the faith exemplified by Jesus as one of grace.
Such interpretations of Judaism are rooted in a particular understanding of the
Early Church Fathers, and perhaps even of the Gospels.
In 1977, Ed
Sanders produced what is now regarded as a seminal work, although with critique
and caveats, which argued that Judaism, like Christianity, is predominantly a
religion of grace.
Sanders argued that for Judaism: “obedience
maintains one’s position in the covenant, but it does not earn God’s grace as
such. It simply keeps an individual in the group which is the recipient of
God’s grace.” (p420) In other words: “obedience is universally held to be the
behaviour appropriate to being in the covenant, not the means of earning God’s
grace.” (421). ‘Israel’s situation in the covenant required the law to be
obeyed as fully and completely as possible … as the only proper response to the
God who chose Israel and gave them commandments’ (p. 81). Sanders approach has
become known as covenantal nominism. This is summarised as follows:
“(1) God has chosen Israel and (2) given the law.
The law implies both (3) God’s promise to maintain election and (4) the
requirement to obey. (5) God rewards obedience and punishes transgression. (6)
The law provides for means of atonement, and atonement results in (7)
maintenance or re-establishment of the covenantal relationship. (8) All those
who are maintained in the covenant by obedience, atonement and God’s mercy
belong to the group which will be saved. An important interpretation of the
first and last points is that election and ultimately salvation are considered
to be by God’s mercy rather than human achievement.” (p422)
Do
you normally think of Judaism as a religion of law or grace? How is Judaism
portrayed within your local Church setting?
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Judaism during
this period was ‘diverse and dynamic’.
There are examples of this in the New Testament; the Acts of the Apostles
records the differences between Pharisees and Sadducees.
When Paul noticed that some were Sadducees and others
were Pharisees, he called out in the council, ‘Brothers, I am a Pharisee, a son
of Pharisees. I am on trial concerning the hope of the resurrection of the
dead.’ 7 When he said this, a dissension began between the Pharisees
and the Sadducees, and the assembly was divided. 8 (The Sadducees
say that there is no resurrection, or angel, or spirit; but the Pharisees
acknowledge all three.) (Acts 23:6-8).
The diversity within
Judaism has led some scholars to refer to Judaisms rather than Judaism.
Even within such diversity, there were the contours of what might be described
as ‘Common Judaism’.
The temple, the torah, the one God who
was worshipped in the temple
and obeyed in the following of the
torah, election as his covenant people to
whom he had given temple and torah –
this common Judaism gave Jews
common identity in very concrete ways.
Conclusions: Judaism was diverse, but there
were discernible contours which gave flexible parameters in which Jews lived
and practiced their faith.
What
contours do you think are important for Judaism today?
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Contours of Second
Temple Judaism
The
Temple: one
of the best known sayings in rabbinic literature is attributed to Simon the
Righteous who noted that the world stood on three things: the torah, the Temple
service and deeds of loving kindness’ (m. Abot 1.2). For such a statement to
make sense, the Temple and worship offered there would not only have to been
highly regarded, but viewed to have had a profound significance.
Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum (mid-1st
Century CE) holds that the Temple service is connected with the continued
stability of the cosmos. The historian Josephus and the philosopher Philo of
Alexandria both talk of the Temple as having cosmic significance, without
seeing need to give any specific evidence. The Book of Jubilees argues that
worship on earth (in the temple) is the exact mirror image of the worship
offered in heaven. Second Temple Jewish literature make key figures of Jewish
history to be priests, whether Abel, Noah or Moses. The Jerusalem Temple was
for many the only legitimate Temple, although there is evidence of a cult on
Mount Gezirim, which followed the commandments given to Moses, and one in
mid-second century BCE in Leontopolis, in Egypt. However neither rivalled
Jerusalem as the focal point of Temple worship. The Covenanters at Qumran
believed the Temple to be corrupt and in need of renewal. As a community they
believed they themselves embodied the Temple. This is particularly seen in
texts like 4QFlorilegium.
The focal point of worship at the Temple was
sacrificial. Sacrifices were made when worshippers wished to ask forgiveness
for a particular wrong-doing or to offer thanks for a particular blessing. Thus
the Temple, particularly for Palestinian Jews, would have played a vital role
in ‘everyday life’, the three annual pilgrimage feats, which were Passover, the
Festival of Weeks and the Feast of Tabernacles being particularly important. Evidence
suggests that most male Jews attended Temple worship at least once per year. In
addition, a Temple tax was levied. This has its roots in the time of Nehemiah,
but continued; so much so that after the destruction of the Temple; Caesar
decreed that the tax be transferred to the Temple of Jupiter in Rome. Worship
at the Temple was a community-family affair. The sacrifices were shared
together by those who had offered them.
During the third century BCE, alternative
places of worship, synagogues began to develop, first in the Diaspora, and
perhaps only in the first century BCE in Palestine. These were not places of
sacrifice, but of learning. They were not seen as replacement gates of heaven,
nor necessarily were they rival power bases to the Temple in Jerusalem.
Synagogues were places where Jews gathered to be taught the Law.
Torah
(The Law):
‘At the heart of the Jewish religion there lies the Torah. That collection of
history, legend and Law gives the reason for Israel’s existence and sets out
the means by which that existence can be continued under God’.
Within the Second Temple period, there were a number of different
interpretations of the Torah; indeed the Pharisaic movement had the schools of
Hillel and Shammai. The Qumran Community, under the Teacher of Righteousness
interpreted the Law differently from those in Jerusalem. The Samaritans held
only the first five books were the Law or Torah; as interestingly enough did
the Sadducees.
Within Palestine of the Second Temple period,
it was the priests who first and foremostly interpreted the Law, and they
primarily had a cultic role.
What
do you think Jesus’ attitude to the Torah was?
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The
Land:
That the Land of Israel had been given to his people by God was a deeply
embedded belief within Early Judaism (Deut. 6:20-25, 26:5-10). Israel was to be
a people separated, and devoted only to their God, Yahweh.
This was why the various exiles to and conquests of Israel by pagan nations
caused not just national angst but theological soul-searching. Indeed, some
significant developments in the understanding of God were caused by the
experience of Israel, for example the ‘promotion’ of Yahweh, the God of Israel
as the sole creator of the universe (Isaiah 41:8-9 cf. 44:1). Furthermore, N T
Wright has demonstrated that the many Jews at the time of Jesus appear to have
thought of themselves in exile whilst still in Israel.
He chose Israel to be His
people. And He sanctified it, and gathered it from amongst all the children of
men; for there are many nations and many peoples, and all are His, and over all
hath He placed spirits in authority to lead them astray from Him. 32 But over
Israel He did not appoint any angel or spirit, for He alone is their ruler, and
He will preserve them and require them at the hand of His angels and His
spirits, and at the hand of all His powers in order that He may preserve them
and bless them, and that they may be His and He 33 may be theirs from
henceforth for ever. (Jubilees 15)
Belief in one God: ‘Theology as an abstract speculative exercise did
not form a significant part of the religious reflection for most Jews... the
God whom the Jews worshipped was the God of the covenant’.
All the contours of Judaism make sense only if the God of Israel is the one
true God. Such a position is classically stated in the Shema (Deut. 6:4) and
Isaiah 40-42.
A Brief Aside: the Importance
of Story
‘A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he
went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there
he became a great nation, mighty and populous. 6 When the
Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labour on
us, 7 we cried to the Lord,
the God of our ancestors; the Lord
heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. 8
The Lord
brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a
terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; 9 and
he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with
milk and honey. Deuteronomy 26:5-9
What does this story do for Jewish
People?
Do Christians have a similar story?
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Second Temple Jewish
Groups
Pharisees: Much of what most
of us know about the Pharisees comes from the Gospels, and the Evangelists by
and large portray this group as legalistic and hypocritical opponents of Jesus.
There is however some coalescence between the Gospels and later rabbinic
literature about the Pharisees. Both sources would agree that they are
concerned with the traditions of the fathers and about what appears to be the
legal minutiae of obedience to the Torah (e.g. hand washing, tithing and
Sabbath observance).
The Pharisees though were in a real sense the people’s party.
Josephus,
the ancient historian, writes: Now, for the Pharisees, they live meanly,
and despise delicacies in diet; and they follow the conduct of reason; and what
that prescribes to them as good for them they do; and they think they ought
earnestly to strive to observe reason's dictates for practice. They also pay a
respect to such as are in years; nor are they so bold as to contradict them in
anything which they have introduced; and when they determine that all things
are done by fate, they do not take away the freedom from men of acting as they
think fit; since their notion is, that it hath pleased God to make a
temperament, whereby what he wills is done, but so that the will of man can act
virtuously or viciously. They also believe that souls have an immortal rigor in
them, and that under the earth there will be rewards or punishments, according
as they have lived virtuously or viciously in this life; and the latter are to
be detained in an everlasting prison, but that the former shall have power to
revive and live again; on account of which doctrines they are able greatly to
persuade the body of the people; and whatsoever they do about Divine worship,
prayers, and sacrifices, they perform them according to their direction;
insomuch that the cities give great attestations to them on account of their
entire virtuous conduct, both in the actions of their lives and their
discourses also.
Sadducees: We actually have
very little information about the Sadducees. From both the NT and rabbinic
sources, we know that they formed a large proportion of the Sanhedrin and the
Jerusalem priestly families were drawn from their circles.
Josephus writes: That souls die with the
bodies; nor do they regard the observation of anything besides what the law
enjoins them; for they think it an instance of virtue to dispute with those
teachers of philosophy whom they frequent: but this doctrine is received but by
a few, yet by those still of the greatest dignity. But they are able to do
almost nothing of themselves; for when they become magistrates, as they are unwillingly
and by force sometimes obliged to be, they addict themselves to the notions of
the Pharisees, because the multitude would not otherwise bear them.
Essenes: The Essenes are usually associated
with the community that produced the Dead Sea Scrolls. This connection was
first made by the Roman writer, Pliny the Elder (Natural History 5:73).
Josephus writes: That all things are best
ascribed to God. They teach the immortality of souls, and esteem that the
rewards of righteousness are to be earnestly striven for; and when they send
what they have dedicated to God into the temple, they do not offer sacrifices (3)
because they have more pure lustrations of their own; on which account they are
excluded from the common court of the temple, but offer their sacrifices
themselves; yet is their course of life better than that of other men; and they
entirely addict themselves to husbandry. It also deserves our admiration, how
much they exceed all other men that addict themselves to virtue, and this in
righteousness; and indeed to such a degree, that as it hath never appeared
among any other men, neither Greeks nor barbarians, no, not for a little time,
so hath it endured a long while among them. This is demonstrated by that
institution of theirs, which will not suffer any thing to hinder them from
having all things in common; so that a rich man enjoys no more of his own
wealth than he who hath nothing at all. There are about four thousand men that
live in this way, and neither marry wives, nor are desirous to keep servants;
as thinking the latter tempts men to be unjust, and the former gives the handle
to domestic quarrels; but as they live by themselves, they minister one to another.
They also appoint certain stewards to receive the incomes of their revenues,
and of the fruits of the ground; such as are good men and priests, who are to
get their corn and their food ready for them. They none of them differ from
others of the Essenes in their way of living, but do the most resemble those who
dwell in cities.
The two major documents of the Community are
the Community Rule and the Damascus Document. It is clear that the Community
saw themselves as the true Israel; a righteous remnant set apart from a corrupt
system based in Jerusalem.
Josephus adds a fourth philosophy, which have
become linked with the Zealots, which he briefly passes over.
There were however not large numbers of Jews
in any of these parties: 4000 Essenes, 6000 Pharisees and a handful of
Sadducees.
What are our sources?
Vanderkam is correct that classifying the
different types of Jewish literature of our period is difficult. Some of our
canonical texts like parts of Genesis and Isaiah find their completed form in
the early part of the period. Josephus and Philo of Alexandria were both
voluminous in their output and their literature is using considered by itself.
Other significant literature is classified under ‘apocrypha’ or
‘pseudepigrapha’, which in themselves could be taken to be theologically loaded
terms.
The main sources for studying Second Temple
Judaism can be taken to include:
Josephus: a Jewish historian chronicling the
history of the Jewish people for a Roman audience.
Philo of Alexandria; a philosopher
History: 1, 2 and 3 Maccabees
Rewritten Scripture: Jubilees and 1 Enoch
(Book of Watchers (1 Enoch 1-36) and Astronomical Book (1 Enoch 72-82)
Apocalyptic: Sibylline Oracles and
Similitudes of Enoch (1 Enoch 37-71)
Wisdom Literature: Wisdom of Ben Sira and
Baruch
Poetic Works: Prayer of Manasseh and Psalms
of Solomon
The New Testament
Rabbinic Literature
We also need to note that many Palestinian
Jews would not have been literate, and their access to their sacred texts,
canonical or otherwise, would have been mediated by priests or scribes. Many
Jews, while longing for the redemption of Israel would have been equally as, if
not more so, just to make ends meet in a world of famine, war and
ever-increasing taxation.
Conclusions
(1)
Judaism was diverse and should not be described as
legalistic
(2)
Judaism was based on belief in the one covenant God of
Israel
(3)
The God of Israel had given his people the Law
a. There were different
interpretations of the Law
b. Jesus, for the most
part, seems to have interpreted the Law in a very Jewish way
(4)
God met with the people most specifically in the Temple
(5)
There were groups of Jews who thought that the Jerusalem
power base was corrupt
(6)
Jesus and the followers of the way were one stream
amongst many other Jewish groups seeking to make sense of what it meant to keep
the covenant under the occupation of Imperial Rome.
Why
is it important to remember that Jesus was Jewish? Come prepared either to
argue that it was or was not important.
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