Archaeology of the Postexilic Period and the Writings

2018 ◽  
pp. 48-64
Author(s):  
Benjamin D. Gordon
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
Second Temple ◽  
Local Economy ◽  
Background Information ◽  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
Local Identity ◽  
Domestic Sphere ◽  
Second Temple Period ◽  
Local Literatures ◽  
International Status

This chapter provides an overview of archaeological discoveries relevant to ancient Judean life in the postexilic or Second Temple period (late sixth century bce–70 ce). It seeks to provide background information on the main cultural developments that would have impacted the authors and audience of the Writings, both in Judea and Samaria. One such development is Persian provincialization, which had only modest impact on the local economy and culture. Another consists of processes of acculturation to foreign customs in the Hellenistic period, which would remain slow and largely limited to elite circles. Jerusalem’s rise to international status as a Jewish pilgrimage center under Herodian auspices likely impacted the dissemination of local literatures and sacred texts, the Writings among them. Contemporaneous architecture and artifacts from the domestic sphere can speak to religious diversity and local identity politics as the region began to shift its orientation to the West and the economy grew.

scholarly journals The Praise of God and His Name as the Core of the Second Temple Liturgy

2015 ◽  
Vol 127 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mika S. Pajunen
Keyword(s):  
Second Temple ◽  
Second Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
Second Temple Period ◽  
Early Judaism ◽  
Primary Element ◽  
Liturgical Texts ◽  
Liturgical Practice

Das Lob Gottes wurde schon immer als wichtigstes Element des liturgischen Lebens am 2. Tempel verstanden. Formkritiker haben dieses Moment der liturgischen Praxis vor allem durch die Analyse der Psalmen nachgezeichnet. Demgegenüber erscheint die Rolle der Klage zumindest in der späten Phase des 2. Temepls randständig. Allerdings fehlt ein Bindeglied zwischen der hellenistischen Phase der Liturgie und dem Lob in den Qumran Texten des 1 Jh. v. Chr. Der Blick auf das Motiv der Schöpfung erschließt dieses Bindeglied und erklärt zugleich, warum das Lob als Verpflichtung Gott gegenüber verstanden wurde.Praise of God has always been understood by scholars as a primary element of the liturgical life of the Second Temple period. Form-critics have situated the praises of God in the liturgical practice of the period most of all by analyzing the Psalms now in the MT Psalter. However, at least in the late Second Temple period the role of laments seems to be marginal. Thus far a link has been missing in scholarship between this centrality of praise perceivable in the liturgical practice of the Hellenistic period and the all-encompassing nature of praise in the texts of the Qumran movement from the first century BCE. This is a link that may in part explain why prayer, or during this time more properly praise, came to be seen in early Judaism as an obligation towards God. This question is explored by investigating how the Second Temple liturgy is in many texts from the second century BCE given an explicit basis in the creation, and how such traditions in turn served an important function in the composition of new liturgical texts.La louange de Dieu a toujours été comprise par les exégètes comme un élément essentiel de la vie liturgique de la période du Second Temple. A l’aide de la critique des formes, certains exégètes ont situé les louanges de Dieu dans la pratique liturgique de cette période, en analysant surtout les Psaumes actuellement présents dans le psautier du TM. Le rôle des lamentations, en revanche, semble marginal, au moins dans la période tardive du Second Temple. Jusqu’à présent la recherche n’a pas établi de lien entre la centralité de la louange perceptible dans la pratique liturgique de la période hellénistique et l’importancede la louange dans les textes qumrâniens du premier siècle av. J.-C. Ce lien pourrait expliquer, en partie, pourquoi la prière, ou à plus proprement parler la louange, a été de plus en plus perçue, durant cette période, comme une obligation envers Dieu dans le judaïsme primitif. Cette question est explorée à travers l’analyse de nombreux textes du deuxième siècle av. J.-C. qui montrent comment la liturgie du Second Temple a été basée explicitement sur la Création et comment de telles traditions ont occupé en retour une place importante dans la composition de nouveaux textes liturgiques.

Torah as Narrative and Wisdom

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John J. Collins
Keyword(s):  
Second Temple ◽  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
Second Temple Period ◽  
Ben Sira

The Torah in the Second Temple period included narratives as well as laws. Several compositions Aramaic compositions of the early Hellenistic period retell the stories to convey ethical messages. Some psalms, and also Ben Sira, treat the Torah as a source of wisdom

The Role of Law in the Formation of the Pentateuch and the Canon

2019 ◽  
pp. 256-274
Author(s):  
Thomas Kazen
Keyword(s):  
Continuous Process ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Second Temple ◽  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
Legal Interpretation ◽  
Distinct Entity ◽  
Holiness Code ◽  
Second Temple Period

Legal material is crucial for the Pentateuch’s formation. After an overview of pentateuchal research and documentary hypotheses, the legal collections and their interrelationship are discussed. Although a pre-exilic deuteronomic core, rewriting the Covenant Code, is likely, its final editing is a post-exilic development, with priestly laws and the Holiness Code following. The evolving Pentateuch becomes a distinct entity in the fourth century bce, but the text remains in a certain flux through the Hellenistic period. As a foundational document, consolidating the Judean and Samaritan communities alike, it reflects concerns with the revived temple cult(s) and Persian influence on Israelite practice. The Pentateuch receives special status earlier than the Prophets and the Writings. The transition from descriptive instruction to prescriptive law, from formative ideal to normative legislation, is a continuous process through the Hellenistic and Roman periods, with bearing on tensions around legal interpretation during the late Second Temple period.

When History Repeats Itself: The Theological Significance of the Abrahamic Covenant in Early Jewish Writings

2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-142
Author(s):  
Ari Mermelstein
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
Second Temple ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Second Temple Period ◽  
The Past ◽  
Damascus Document ◽  
Abrahamic Covenant

Alongside ‘Mosaic discourse’, Second Temple period authors increasingly looked to Abraham as a source of instruction and authority. This article focuses on the growing importance of the Abrahamic covenant through the lens of five re-tellings of Israel's history that link the past with the present: the Damascus Document, the Apocalypse of Weeks, 4 Ezra, Nehemiah 9, and Galatians. This article argues that various authors placed themselves within a historical narrative that spotlighted the Abrahamic covenant in order to identify themselves as the elect and demarcate the boundaries separating them from the non-elect. The ideological orientation of each text can account for why the Abrahamic covenant, rather than the later Mosaic pact, became the basis for identity politics.

A Destruction Layer from the Hellenistic Period at Tel Shiloh

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-71
Author(s):  
Reut Livyatan Ben-Arie
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Second Temple ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Second Temple Period ◽  
The Third

Excavations at Tel Shiloh revealed a building from the end of the third century BCE. The building was destroyed violently in the middle of the second century BCE. Based on the archaeological context, its relationship with later buildings and other finds from the period in its vicinity, it can be determined that its occupants were gentiles. Shiloh is located between Judea and Samaria, in an area included in different administrative districts at different times during the Second Temple period. In the Persian and Early Hellenistic periods, this area was outside the Land of Judea, but at the end of the Second Temple period it was within the Province of Judea. Historical sources indicate that the population on the eve of the Hasmonean Revolt was heterogeneous; during the revolt there were conflicts between the various ethnic groups. Edomites are mentioned by several sources as being in the area, and Jewish localities are also implied. Discharged Seleucid soldiers may have settled in the area as well, as they did in western Samaria. In any case, it is clear that the foreign settlement in Shiloh was destroyed in a violent confrontation. Based on its dating, the destruction must be attributed to the conquests of Jonathan and Simeon as part of the expansion of the borders of the Hasmonean state.

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.

Going Through Hell; ΤΑΡΤΑΡΟΣ in Greco-Roman Culture, Second Temple Judaism, and Philo of Alexandria

2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 352-378
Author(s):  
Clint Burnett
Keyword(s):  
Second Temple ◽  
Second Temple Judaism ◽  
Jewish Literature ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Philo Of Alexandria ◽  
Second Temple Period ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Roman Culture ◽  
Greek Myths

This article questions the longstanding supposition that the eschatology of the Second Temple period was solely influenced by Persian or Iranian eschatology, arguing instead that the literature of this period reflects awareness of several key Greco-Roman mythological concepts. In particular, the concepts of Tartarus and the Greek myths of Titans and Giants underlie much of the treatment of eschatology in the Jewish literature of the period. A thorough treatment of Tartarus and related concepts in literary and non-literary sources from ancient Greek and Greco-Roman culture provides a backdrop for a discussion of these themes in the Second Temple period and especially in the writings of Philo of Alexandria.

A Short History of the People Israel from the Patriarchs to the Messiah

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-207
Author(s):  
Beth A. Berkowitz
Keyword(s):  
Early Period ◽  
Second Temple ◽  
Sexual Practice ◽  
Short History ◽  
Second Temple Period ◽  
Rich Variety ◽  
Political Status ◽  
Leviticus Rabbah ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of

This article addresses recent arguments that question whether “Judaism,” as such, existed in antiquity or whether the Jewishness of the Second Temple period should be characterized in primarily ethnic terms. At stake is the question of whether it is appropriate to speak of Judaism as an abstract system or religion in this early period. An appeal to the under-used collections of Midrash Aggadah provides the context for new insights, focused around a pericope in Leviticus Rabbah that is preoccupied with this very question. This parashah goes well beyond the ethnicity/ religion binary, producing instead a rich variety of paradigms of Jewish identity that include moral probity, physical appearance, relationship to God, ritual life, political status, economics, demographics, and sexual practice.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN RELIGIOUS BELIEFS AND THE ACCOUNTING AND ECONOMIC PRACTICES OF A SOCIETY: EVIDENCE FROM THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS

2013 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
David N. Herda ◽  
Stephen A. Reed ◽  
William F. Bowlin
Keyword(s):  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Dead Sea Scrolls ◽  
Second Temple ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
First Century ◽  
Second Temple Period ◽  
Economic Practices ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Primary Focus ◽  
The Relationship

This study explores the Dead Sea Scrolls to demonstrate how Essene socio-religious values shaped their accounting and economic practices during the late Second Temple period (ca. first century BCE to 70 CE). Our primary focus is on the accounting and commercial responsibilities of a leader within their community – the Examiner. We contend that certain sectarian accounting practices may be understood as ritual/religious ceremony and address the performative roles of the Essenes' accounting and business procedures in light of their purity laws and eschatological beliefs. Far from being antithetical to religious beliefs, we find that accounting actually enabled the better practice and monitoring of religious behavior. We add to the literature on the interaction of religion with the structures and practices of accounting and regulation within a society.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jill Hicks-Keeton
Keyword(s):  
Jewish History ◽  
Jewish People ◽  
Second Temple ◽  
Second Temple Period ◽  
A Minor ◽  
Joseph And Aseneth ◽  
Literary Phenomenon ◽  
Minor Character

The Introduction claims that the ancient romance Joseph and Aseneth moves a minor character in Genesis from obscurity to renown, weaving a new story whose main purpose was to intervene in ancient Jewish debates surrounding gentile access to Israel’s God. Aseneth’s story is a tale of the heroine’s transformation from exclusion to inclusion. It is simultaneously a transformative tale. For Second Temple-period thinkers, the epic of the Jewish people recounted in scriptural texts was a story that invited interpretation, interruption, and even intervention. Joseph and Aseneth participates in a broader literary phenomenon in Jewish antiquity wherein authors took up figures from Israel’s mythic past and crafted new stories as a means of explaining their own present and of envisioning collective futures. By incorporating a gentile woman and magnifying Aseneth’s role in Jewish history, Joseph and Aseneth changes the story. Aseneth’s ultimate inclusion makes possible the inclusion of others originally excluded.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document