scholarly journals Mythological Motifs in the Apocrypha of the Second Temple Period and Revelation of St. John

2015 ◽  
pp. 118-125
Author(s):  
Katerina G. Kudryavtseva
Keyword(s):  
Second Temple ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Book Of Revelation ◽  
Second Temple Period ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Joseph And Aseneth ◽  
Fourth Book

Deals with interpretation of the early Christian texts and Jewish apocrypha which are a mystery still. The author addresses two themes, those of the shine and the opposition of light and dark powers in pursuit of the light which are of “folk” character (birth of a solar hero, capture of light, pursuit of the sun parallels). The research is based on the texts of the Second Temple period including apocryphal “Joseph and Aseneth,” the “Fourth Book of Ezda”, and the Book of Revelation in particular.

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.

Josephus’ Account of John the Baptist: A Christian Interpolation?

2012 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-62
Author(s):  
Rivka Nir
Keyword(s):  
Second Temple ◽  
Second Temple Period ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
John The Baptist ◽  
Fresh Insight ◽  
Insight Into

This essay provides fresh insight into the possibility that the passage in Josephus about John the Baptist (Jewish Antiquities, 18.116-119) was not written by Josephus himself. In making the case for its interpolation or adaptation by the hand of a writer representing an early Christian or Jewish-Christian sect, the essay focuses on how the text describes John's baptism and its distinguishing characteristics as well as the similarities it shares with immersions common amid early Christian or Jewish-Christian sects. Of particular importance to uncovering the theological identity of this baptism is its description as an external physical purification, whose efficacy is preconditioned by inner spiritual purification. This essay shows that baptism of this nature did not exist amid mainstream Jewish circles of the Second Temple period. Such baptism appeared and developed within sectarian groups on the margins of Judaism, as at Qumran. It was then carried on and practised by early Christian or Jewish-Christian groups in the first centuries ce.

The Sacrifice of the Souls of the Righteous upon the Heavenly Altar: Transformations of Apocalyptic Traditions in Medieval Ashkenaz

2018 ◽  
pp. 49-72
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Second Temple ◽  
Rabbinic Literature ◽  
Babylonian Talmud ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Second Temple Period ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The Common ◽  
Common Era ◽  
The Sacrifice

This chapter describes the surprising motif found in early medieval rabbinic traditions that appears in some manuscripts of the Babylonian Talmud and concerns the sacrifice of 'the souls of the righteous' upon the heavenly altar. It compares the motif, background, and transmission of medieval rabbinic traditions with other traditions concerning the 'souls of the righteous' in rabbinic literature and with precedents in texts of the Second Temple period. The chapter outlines early Enochic traditions, apocalyptic texts of the Second Temple period, and early Christian cultural traditions and beliefs. It indicates the nexus between Christian and Byzantine Jewish traditions, which became manifest in the development of motifs and textual sources during the first centuries of the Common Era and later expressed in medieval Ashkenazi texts. It also provides evidence on cultural transmission between Byzantine works, traditions of the East, and the cultural milieu of medieval Ashkenaz.

Review of: «The Woman clothed in the Sun»: an origin of the image. Moscow: Russian State University for the Humanities, 2015. 334 p. ISBN 978-5-7281-1765-0

2020 ◽  
pp. 268-274
Author(s):  
Илья Сергеевич Вевюрко
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Second Temple ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
The Sun ◽  
State University ◽  
Second Temple Period ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Literary Context ◽  
Russian State ◽  
Theological Perspective

В работе Катерины Кудрявцевой перспектива рассмотрения загадочного образа из Апокалипсиса иная — не богословская, а, скорее, религиоведческая. Но религиоведческая точка зрения не может не включать в себя богословскую, иначе она рискует исказить свой предмет — религию, обойдя вниманием её вероучительную сторону. К. Г. Кудрявцевой удалось прийти к богословскому рассмотрению образа религиоведческим путём, а именно путём расшифровки его семантики. В этом смысле её исследование подобно работе с красками, восстанавливающими цвета фрески до первоначальной яркости (пусть виртуально, чтобы не вмешаться с новой кистью в исторически сохранившиеся слои), в то время как схема рисунка и его сюжет остаются теми же самыми. К. Г. Кудрявцева берёт за основу нарратив видения св. апостола Иоанна, который она разделяет на четыре аспекта и даёт им довольно поэтические названия: «Застигнутая жизнью и смертью»; «Свечение»; «Противостояние как погоня»; «Город». По этим четырём ключевым темам распределена на параграфы каждая из пяти глав работы, которые охватывают мировой фольклор, корпус канонических книг Ветхого Завета, письменность эпохи Второго Храма, литературный контекст Откровения св. Иоанна Богослова (то есть тоже произведения периода Второго Храма, но наиболее близкие по развитию своей образности к Апокалипсису) и, наконец, сам текст Откровения. In Katerina Kudryavtseva's work, the perspective of the enigmatic image from the Apocalypse is different - not theological but, rather, religious studies. But a theological perspective could not avoid incorporating a theological perspective, otherwise it would risk distorting its subject, religion, by neglecting its doctrinal side. K.G. Kudryavtseva was able to reach a theological consideration of the image in a theological way, namely by deciphering its semantics. In this sense, her research is like working with paints, restoring the colours of a fresco to their original brightness (albeit virtually, so as not to intervene with a new brush in the historically preserved layers), while the scheme of the drawing and its subject remain the same. K.G. Kudryavtseva takes as a basis the narrative of St. John's vision, which she divides into four aspects and gives them rather poetic titles: "Caught in Life and Death"; "Illumination"; "Confrontation as Chase"; "City". Each of the five chapters is divided into paragraphs according to these four key themes, covering world folklore, the corpus of canonical books of the Old Testament, the writing of the Second Temple period, the literary context of the Revelation of Saint John the Evangelist (that is, also works from the Second Temple period, but closest in their development of imagery to the Apocalypse) and, finally, the text of Revelation itself.

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.

Sexual Defilement in Early Christian Texts

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moshe Blidstein
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Second Temple ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Sexual Ethics ◽  
Christian Community ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
The Family ◽  
Main Target ◽  
Christian Society

Chapter 7 demonstrates that sexual sin became the main target for purity discourse in early Christian texts, and attempts to explain why. Christian imagery of sexual defilement drew from a number of traditions—Greco-Roman sexual ethics, imagery of sexual sin from the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple texts, and both Jewish and pagan purity laws, all seen through the lens of Paul’s imagery of sexuality and sexual sin. Two broad currents characterized Christian sexual ethics in the second century: one upheld marriage and the family as the basis for a holy Christian society and church, while the second rejected all sexuality, including in marriage. Writers of both currents made heavy use of defilement imagery. For the first, sexual sin was a dangerous defilement, contaminating the Christian community and severing it from God. For the second, more radical current, sexuality itself was the defilement; virginity or continence alone were pure.

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