Book Review: From Scholars Press: Men and Women in the Fourth Gospel: Gender and Johannlne Characterization, into the Temple Courts: The Place of the Synagogues in the Second Temple Period, Women and Womanhood in the Talmud, Rhetorical Argumentation in Philo of AJmuedria, the Studia Philonica Annual: Studin in Hellenistic Judaism, the Dead Sea Scrolls at Fifty, Theology, History, and Archaeology in the Chronicler's Account of Hezekiah, Hittite Diplomatic Texts, the Times and Life of Edward Robinson: Connecticut Yankee in King Solomon's Court

2000 ◽  
Vol 111 (7) ◽  
pp. 241-241
Author(s):  
Stefan C. Reif

Although some of the inspiration for later Jewish prayers undoubtedly came from the ancient Near East and the early books of the Hebrew Bible, there was at that early period of development little connection between the formal liturgy, as represented by the Temple cult, and the spontaneous entreaties of the individual. During the Second Temple period, the two methods of expression began to coalesce, and the literature included among the Dead Sea Scrolls testifies to the recitation of regular prayers at fixed times. The Talmudic rabbis laid down instructions for some statutory prayers, such as the shema‘ and the ‘amidah, and these gradually formed the basis of what became the synagogal liturgy.


Author(s):  
John J. Collins

Strictly speaking, the Second Temple period extends from the construction of the temple at the end of the sixth century bce to its destruction by the Romans in 70 ce. Some scholars would now argue that the entire biblical corpus belongs in this period. Even if one accepts the more traditional dating of biblical sources, the final edition of the Torah must be placed after the Exile. This article deals with this literature. The literature may be divided into three categories, based on provenance more than on literary genre, although each category has its own characteristics. These are the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha; the Dead Sea scrolls; and the literature of the Greek-speaking diaspora. The first and third categories were preserved by Christians, the second was only recently recovered from the caves by the Dead Sea.


2016 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 280-303
Author(s):  
Cecilia Wassen

In order to understand Jesus’s violent outburst in the temple, scholars frequently turn to Jewish texts from the late Second Temple Period, including the Dead Sea Scrolls. The same texts are used to support contrasting explanations of the event. This paper evaluates these interpretations and offers an analysis of the key texts on the Jerusalem temple in the Scrolls. It concludes that the negative attitudes towards the temple that are reflected in Jesus’s action and some of the sectarian writings from Qumran share an expectation that the temple would become defiled in the end time. From such an apocalyptic perspective, it did not matter how the temple priests actually ran their business, since they were bound to be criticized by those Jews, such as Jesus and the Qumran sectarians, for whom the final age had arrived.


2013 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
David N. Herda ◽  
Stephen A. Reed ◽  
William F. Bowlin

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.


Author(s):  
Timothy H. Lim

The Dead Sea Scrolls have shed light on the canonization of the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible in the Second Temple period. They provide us with exemplars of their biblical texts and how they used them in an authoritative manner. ‘The canon, authoritative scriptures, and the scrolls’ explains that the sectarian concept of authoritative scriptures seemed to reflect a dual pattern of authority by which the traditional biblical texts served as the source of the sectarian interpretation that in turn was defined by it. The authority was graded, beginning with the biblical books and extending to other books that were not eventually included in the canon.


2017 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-181
Author(s):  
Charlotte Hempel

This article begins by noting the paucity of engagement between scholarship on the Dead Sea Scrolls (dss) and a number of significant studies on the relationship of wisdom and law in the Hebrew Bible. A substantial case study on Proverbs 1-9 and the Community Rule from Qumran is put in conversation with the seminal work of, especially, Moshe Weinfeld on Deuteronomy and its refinement by subsequent research to trace a dynamic interaction between wisdom and law in the Second Temple period. The article ends with critical reflections on the wide-spread model of segmenting ancient Jewish literature and those responsible for it into neat categories such as wisdom and law. It is argued that such a model presupposes a degree of specialization that is not borne out by the range of literature that found its way into the Hebrew Bible or the caves in the vicinity of Khirbet Qumran.


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