Between Temple and Torah: Essays on Priests, Scribes, and Visionaries in the Second Temple Period and Beyond. By Martha Himmelfarb. Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism/Texte und Studien zum Antiken Judentum, 151. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013. Pp. xii + 3

2016 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-122
Author(s):  
Jonathon Lookadoo
Keyword(s):  
Second Temple ◽  
Second Temple Period ◽  
Ancient Judaism

Was there science in ancient Judaism? Historical and cross-cultural reflections on "religion" and "science"

2007 ◽  
Vol 36 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 461-495
Author(s):  
Annette Yoshiko Reed
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Second Temple ◽  
Science And Religion ◽  
Religion And Science ◽  
Second Temple Period ◽  
Rabbinic Judaism ◽  
Ancient Judaism ◽  
Jewish Intellectual ◽  
And Mathematics

This article considers the place of scientific inquiry in ancient Judaism with a focus on astronomy and cosmology. It explores how ancient Jews used biblical interpretation to situate "scientific" knowledge in relation to "religious" concerns. In the Second Temple period (538 B.C.E.-70 C.E.) biblical interpretation is often used to integrate insights from Mesopotamian and Greek scientific traditions. In classical rabbinic Judaism (70-600 C.E.) astronomy became marked as an esoteric discipline, and cosmology is understood in terms of Ma'aseh Bereshit, a category that blurs the boundaries between "science" and "religion." Whereas modern thinkers often see Judaism and "science" as incompatible, medieval Jewish thinkers built on these ancient traditions; some even viewed themselves as heirs to a Jewish intellectual tradition that included astronomy, cosmology, medicine and mathematics.

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.

3 Baruch Revisited: Jewish or Christian Composition, and Why It Matters

2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Martha Himmelfarb
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Second Temple ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Full Account ◽  
Second Temple Period ◽  
Ancient Judaism ◽  
Recent Scholarship

AbstractIn his important 1976 paper, “The Pseudepigrapha in Christianity,” Robert A. Kraft insists that scholars of ancient Judaism and Christianity need to take full account of the Christian contexts in which so-called Old Testament pseudpigrapha have come down to us before attempting to make the case that a text preserved only in late manuscripts in languages used primarily or exclusively by Christians reflects a Jewish original of the Second Temple period. The end result, Kraft admitted, is likely to be a smaller library of Jewish works from the turn of the era. This paper discusses 3 Baruch, an apocalypse that most scholars have treated as originally Jewish despite, in addition to its preservation by Christians, certain features quite unusual in Jewish works, as a test case. It argues that recent scholarship has failed to give adequate weight to Kraft’s crucial insights and suggests that scholarly accounts of diaspora Judaism in the Second Temple period would look rather different if those insights were taken more seriously. Finally it offers some tentative suggestions about a Christian setting in which 3 Baruch might have been composed.

scholarly journals Just an ordinary Jew

2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-16
Author(s):  
Stefan Larsson
Keyword(s):  
Second Temple ◽  
Jewish Studies ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Apostle Paul ◽  
Second Temple Period ◽  
Ancient Judaism ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

The apostle Paul, author of many letters in the New Testament, is often considered to be the father of Christian antisemitism and a staunch opponent of keeping the Torah. This perspective has been shared both by Jews and Christians throughout the centuries, until the late twentieth century. For the last forty years or so, a new paradigm on Paul has taken shape, one where Jewish scholarship and research on ancient Judaism is making a significant difference. The picture of a Second Temple-period Pharisee is emerging, possibly with connections to early forms of Merkabah mysticism. There are no longer any reasons but ‘tradition’ that Paul should not be a part of Jewish studies, and this article gives some of the arguments for this timely re-appropriation of one of the best-known Jews in history.

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.

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.

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