Secret Groups in Ancient Judaism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael E. Stone
Keyword(s):  
Second Temple ◽  
Interesting Case ◽  
Georg Simmel ◽  
Secret Societies ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Ancient Judaism ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Jewish Society ◽  
Secret Knowledge ◽  
Working Out

The thesis advanced in this work is that the model of a secret or esoteric group is fruitful for studying various movements and groups in the Greco–Roman world. This is worked out in the extremely interesting case of the Essenes and the Qumran covenanters, for which we have available not only outsider descriptions but also the very documents that embody at least part of their secret teachings. This approach to analysis is not intended to supplant the sect/normative pattern for describing Ancient Judaism, but to supplement it, adding a very fruitful unexplored dimension to the analysis of ancient Jewish society. By attributing, in the footsteps of Georg Simmel, and more recently L. Hazelrigg, the organization and dynamic of secret societies to the need to guard the secret knowledge, it provides ways of understanding the organization and practice of the Qumran covenanters Essene sect, which were previously unperceived. Having established the theoretical framework, having shown that such groups existed in both non-Jewish and Jewish society in the Greco–Roman world, the book then proceeds to analyze in detail the working out of this dynamic in the cases of the Therapeutae and the Essenes, supplementing this with investigation of whether there is evidence for this same dynamic elsewhere in Second Temple Jewish society. Moreover, this analysis bears on the overall “fit” of these groups in the society of the period, so richly endowed with names of and evidence for different groups in that society.

Secret Societies in Ancient Judaism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael E. Stone
Keyword(s):  
Hierarchical Organization ◽  
Secret Society ◽  
Secret Societies ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Ancient Judaism ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Special Knowledge ◽  
Different Levels

This chapter deals with the sources available for knowledge of Jewish esoteric groups, distinguishing between “insider” and “outsider” sources. The Essenes and the Qumran covenanters as a secret society are introduced. The keeping of secrets in the Greco–Roman world and the consequent importance of archaeology in discovering these secrets are briefly discussed. Typical features of secret societies are given: gradual initiation and limitation of membership, hierarchical organization with different levels, and stages of admission to the special knowledge. The main categories are “secret–open,” not “sectarian–normative,” as in previous studies. Analogous secret cults in the Greco–Roman world are also listed.

The Vow-Curse in Ancient Jewish Texts

2019 ◽  
Vol 112 (3) ◽  
pp. 340-357
Author(s):  
Avigail Manekin-Bamberger
Keyword(s):  
Religious Practice ◽  
Second Temple ◽  
Binding Mechanism ◽  
Second Temple Period ◽  
Biblical Literature ◽  
Ancient Judaism ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Pauline Epistles ◽  
Semantic Expansion ◽  
Interpersonal Situations

AbstractUttering a vow was an important and popular religious practice in ancient Judaism. It is mentioned frequently in biblical literature, and an entire rabbinic tractate, Nedarim, is devoted to this subject. In this article, I argue that starting from the Second Temple period, alongside the regular use of the vow, vows were also used as an aggressive binding mechanism in interpersonal situations. This practice became so popular that in certain contexts the vow became synonymous with the curse, as in a number of ossuaries in Jerusalem and in the later Aramaic incantation bowls. Moreover, this semantic expansion was not an isolated Jewish phenomenon but echoed both the use of the anathema in the Pauline epistles and contemporary Greco-Roman and Babylonian magical practices.

The Social Organization of Secrecy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael E. Stone
Keyword(s):  
Social Organization ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Secret Societies ◽  
Ancient Judaism ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
The Social ◽  
Role Of Women ◽  
Roman Antiquity

In this chapter we study the mysteries and secrecy in Greco–Roman antiquity. The cults of Mithras and Isis as mysteries and revelations to their initiates, as well as the “Mithras Liturgy” and magical elements of the ascent, are examined. Secret groups have tripartite social structures. There is evidence for secret societies in Ancient Judaism other than Essenes and Therapeutae. The identification of the Qumran covenanters and of the Essenes is explored. We look at cryptic writing and secrecy within groups. The role of women in some groups is discussed. Past discoveries of Dead Sea manuscripts and documents are outlined.

Jewish Society in the Land of Israel and the Challenge of Music in the Roman Period

2012 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emmanuel Friedheim
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Influences ◽  
Second Temple ◽  
Ritual Music ◽  
Second Temple Period ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Musical Tradition ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
Jewish Society ◽  
Roman Culture ◽  
The Temple

Abstract During the Second Temple period, music had an important role in Jewish society. Alongside it was Greek music, which at times made inroads into Jewish cultural life. However, the Jewish institutions of the time managed to filter out the religious and cultural influences of this foreign musical tradition. After the destruction of the Temple, by contrast, Hebrew sources point to pagan ritual music that had significant, damaging influence on Jewish society. The sages tried to counter this influence through sermons, but, surprisingly, not by absolute prohibition. The influences of pagan music increased in the Talmudic period, even as the halakhic prohibitions waned. This paradox requires an explanation. This article suggests that the way the sages treated pagan music was an aspect of their complex attitude toward the Greco-Roman culture, one that alongside prohibitions increasingly tended toward leniency once it became clear that prohibitions did not provide a defense against pagan cultural influences.

The Apocrypha in the Context of Early Judaism

2021 ◽  
pp. 2-13
Author(s):  
Gerbern S. Oegema
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Second Temple ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Ancient Judaism ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Early Judaism ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Many

The Apocrypha are an intrinsic part of Early Judaism, which as a field has undergone some dramatic changes. Starting as the Jewish background of the New Testament, it has developed from Ancient Judaism to Second Temple or Early Judaism, through and integrating the discoveries of the Qumran Scrolls and the re-emergence of the importance of the Pseudepigrapha. The Apocrypha have been part of this change and should therefore also be understood within the context of the many Judaisms during the Greco-Roman period.

The Play’s the Thing: Toys in Ancient Jewish Society—Visualizing through the Words of the Rabbis

Images ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-19
Author(s):  
Joshua Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
Rabbinic Literature ◽  
Archaeological Remains ◽  
Literary Traditions ◽  
Ideal World ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Jewish Society ◽  
The Law

Abstract Everyone plays and that, of course, includes children. In an ideal world, there would be literary traditions, archaeological remains and artistic renditions, which would enable the reconstruction of toys. Unfortunately, the situation does not exist for ancient Jewish society. For the most part, there are depictions in rabbinic literature and it is those toy traditions which I examine. The study begins with those toys explicitly connected to halakhic issues, firstly with those traditions in which the toy is essential to the law and afterwards to those in which the toy is tangential to the law. The study then deals with those toys mentioned in a nonlegal rabbinic framework. Finally, I discuss toys that were popular in the Greco-Roman world but not mentioned in rabbinic literature. I seek to determine whether descriptions of toys in rabbinic literature and set within the broader Greco-Roman world are sufficient for visualization.

What's Divine about Divine Law?

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Hayes
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Dissonance ◽  
Second Temple ◽  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
Philo Of Alexandria ◽  
Rabbinic Judaism ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Western Idea ◽  
Jewish Writers ◽  
Divine Law

In the thousand years before the rise of Islam, two radically diverse conceptions of what it means to say that a law is divine confronted one another with a force that reverberates to the present. This book untangles the classical and biblical roots of the Western idea of divine law and shows how early adherents to biblical tradition—Hellenistic Jewish writers such as Philo, the community at Qumran, Paul, and the talmudic rabbis—struggled to make sense of this conflicting legacy. This book shows that for the ancient Greeks, divine law was divine by virtue of its inherent qualities of intrinsic rationality, truth, universality, and immutability, while for the biblical authors, divine law was divine because it was grounded in revelation with no presumption of rationality, conformity to truth, universality, or immutability. The book describes the collision of these opposing conceptions in the Hellenistic period, and details competing attempts to resolve the resulting cognitive dissonance. It shows how Second Temple and Hellenistic Jewish writers, from the author of 1 Enoch to Philo of Alexandria, were engaged in a common project of bridging the gulf between classical and biblical notions of divine law, while Paul, in his letters to the early Christian church, sought to widen it. The book then delves into the literature of classical rabbinic Judaism to reveal how the talmudic rabbis took a third and scandalous path, insisting on a construction of divine law intentionally at odds with the Greco-Roman and Pauline conceptions that would come to dominate the Christianized West. This book sheds critical light on an ancient debate that would shape foundational Western thought, and that continues to inform contemporary views about the nature and purpose of law and the nature and authority of Scripture.

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