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.

Jewish Literature of the Second Temple Period

2019 ◽  
pp. 277-293
Author(s):  
Karina Martin Hogan
Keyword(s):  
Human Person ◽  
Second Temple ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Second Temple Judaism ◽  
Jewish Literature ◽  
Second Temple Period ◽  
Ben Sira ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Literary Environment ◽  
Book Of The Watchers

This essay showcases a sample of the diverse approaches to gender and sexuality that can be found in the literature of Second Temple Judaism. Within four of the major genres of Jewish literature during this period, it analyzes one example that makes particularly striking claims with respect to gender and sexuality: The Book of the Watchers, the Wisdom of Ben Sira, Jubilees, and Judith. Although all of the texts surveyed here come out of a culture with strong patriarchal tendencies, they do not all uphold patriarchal assumptions in equal measure or in the same ways. Taken together in their diversity, the texts demonstrate that the Jewish literary environment out of which the New Testament emerged was one in which sexuality was not a taboo subject but often provided an opportunity to reflect on the nature of the human person in relation to the divine.

Judaism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Wheeler-Reed
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Dead Sea Scrolls ◽  
Second Temple ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
Second Temple Judaism ◽  
Sexual Ethics ◽  
Jewish Literature ◽  
Second Temple Period ◽  
Sexual Ideology ◽  
The Dead

This chapter establishes that most of the sexual ethics of Second Temple Judaism are similar to the ideological sexual codes of the Roman Empire. It examines works as diverse as Tobit, the writings of Philo and Josephus, and the Dead Sea Scrolls. It contends that the dominant sexual ideology among Second Temple Jews is “Procreationism,” which maintains that sex is for reproduction and not for pleasure. Furthermore, it suggests that most of the Jewish literature of the Second Temple period upholds the same hegemonic ideology of the Augustan marriage legislation, except for the writings of the Essenes.

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.

scholarly journals The Influence of the Lists of Virtues and Vices in the Jewish Literature of the First Century

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. p8
Author(s):  
José David Padilla
Keyword(s):  
Second Temple ◽  
First Century ◽  
Jewish Literature ◽  
Second Temple Period ◽  
Attitudes And Behaviors ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Literary Context ◽  
Roman Literature ◽  
The People ◽  
Intertestamental Literature

Biblical texts were part of a broader literary context. Indeed, the Greco-Roman literature influenced of the first century the intertestamental literature and other Jewish Apocryphal books. One of these influences was the lists of virtues and vices from the popular philosophical schools of the time. These lists presented a group of attitudes and behaviors that should be applied or rejected for the proper functioning of society. Different Jewish groups of the Second Temple Period adapted such lists to their teachings, presenting, in a concise manner, those attitudes that did not correspond to their vocation, as well as confirming the morality proper of the “people of the covenant.”

scholarly journals The Phenomenon of Rewriting Scripture in Late Second Temple Judaism: Some Methodological Reflections on the So-Called “Rewritten Bible” Category

Verbum Vitae ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 1311-1334
Author(s):  
Marcin Majewski
Keyword(s):  
Second Temple ◽  
Second Temple Judaism ◽  
Jewish Literature ◽  
Specific Context ◽  
Second Temple Period ◽  
Rewritten Bible

The term “Rewritten Bible” was introduced by Géza Vermes in 1961 to describe works from late Second Temple period that “retell” or “rewrite” Scriptures with characteristic changes. Since then, much has been written about this category of texts. Today some researchers are tired of discussing this concept, suggesting even a move away from the notion. Others, on the contrary, apply it to an increasing number of texts, including even works lying outside the specific context of late Second Temple Jewish literature. This article discusses the phenomenon of the “Rewritten Bible” (RewB) and takes up a polemic with certain approaches to the category, concerning terminology, scope, and character, as well as indication of the purposes of rewriting activity. The article shows that the category remains useful and important, within certain methodological clarifications.

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.

Slavonic

2019 ◽  
pp. 49-72
Author(s):  
Alexander Kulik
Keyword(s):  
Second Temple ◽  
Present Form ◽  
Jewish Literature ◽  
Second Temple Period

The corpus of Jewish literature of the Second Temple period is represented in the Slavonic tradition by biblical pseudepigrapha (especially of apocalyptic genre) and Josephus. The extant Slavonic manuscripts containing these documents belong to the period spanning the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries. However, in some cases their language enables us to date the earliest of their proto-texts reliably to the tenth to eleventh centuries. Like the majority of early Slavonic writings, all the texts in the corpus under discussion have been translated from Greek, and most of these translations were produced in South Slavia. Some of these texts have been preserved uniquely in Slavonic, while others have parallel versions in non-Slavonic languages. Some texts must be faithful rendering of ancient originals. Other texts in their present form are products of medieval Byzantine or Slavonic reworking. The differentiation between ancient and medieval materials is not always easy to make.

Early Jewish Interpretation

2020 ◽  
pp. 103-158
Author(s):  
Michael E. Pregill
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Community ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Jewish Literature ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Greek Translation ◽  
Golden Calf ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Rapid Changes ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Religious Landscape

This chapter examines the earliest traditions of interpretation of the Golden Calf narrative, found in Jewish literature of the Greco-Roman period; these early retellings of the narrative are deeply colored by apologetic concerns. Major shifts in interpretation can be charted over the course of a few short centuries during this era due to rapid changes in the cultural and religious landscape. While the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, is frank regarding the Israelites’ sin of idolatry, the versions of the Golden Calf episode found in Philo, Pseudo-Philo, and Josephus are concerned to minimize the impact of attacks on the Jewish community and its traditions from gentile outsiders, and so represent the story in ways intended to mitigate the impression of Israel’s idolatry. Early rabbinic exegetes, in contrast, are relatively candid about Israel’s sin with the Calf. However, the emergence of the Christian movement, which entailed the revision of numerous biblical stories, including new understandings of the Calf narrative, induced rabbinic exegetes to approach the Calf narrative with a new sense of circumspection and caution in order to counter rival interpretations that were potentially harmful to the reputation and self-conception of the Jewish community.

Clement of Alexandria

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piotr Ashwin-Siejkowski
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Literature ◽  
Philo Of Alexandria ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Greek Drama ◽  
Cultural Legacy ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Clement Of Alexandria ◽  
Jewish Scriptures ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Christian Thought

Clement of Alexandria (Titus Flavius Clemens) was one of the most erudite Christian writers of the 2nd century. As little is known of Clement’s life, the dates of his birth and death are approximate. Among scholars, they are usually appointed as 150–215 ce. His place of birth is unknown; some ancient sources suggest Athens, while others propose Alexandria (Epiphanius, Refutation, 32.6.1). Equally unknown is the place of his death after he left Alexandria during the persecution under Septimius Severus in 202. However, in the light of the epistle written by Alexander, Bishop of Jerusalem around 215 (Eusebius, HE, 6.11.6), we may conclude that by that time Clement was dead. Clement’s intellectual interests were open to the whole spectrum of the Greco-Roman cultural legacy. As an intellectual he was well acquainted with Greek drama and poetry. Apart from literature, his reflection was in an open dialogue with the richness of Greco-Roman philosophies; some doctrines such as Stoicism and Middle Platonism were closer to his own stance. As Alexandria was a lively center for different trends in Jewish literature, Clement was also familiar with the Jewish Scriptures, and he valued particularly highly the exegetical legacy of Philo of Alexandria (c. 15 bce–after 41 ce). In addition, Clement was an intelligent apologist of his tradition (school) of Christianity. Thanks to his discussion with Basilides, Valentinus, Marcion, Carpocrates, and Epiphanes, we have some exclusive insights into the affluence of Christian thought of his time. Eusebius of Caesarea provides us with the list of Clement’s works (HE. 6.13.1–3). Clement’s main extant writings are usually introduced as his “trilogy”: 1: The Exhortation to the Greeks (Protrepticus); 2: The Instructor (Paedagogus), and 3: The Miscellanies (Stromateis). We have access to his homily “Who Is the Rich Man That Is Being Saved” (under its Latin title Quis Dives Salvetur); fragments with commentaries on the teaching of a Valentinian disciple, Theodotus (Excerpta ex Theodoto); and a selection from the Prophetic Sayings (Eclogae Propheticae). Eusebius’s note adds “Outlines” (Hypotyposeis). The work is lost except for some passages found in later authors (e.g., Photius’s Bibliotheca). Other lost works are On the Pascha, On Fasting, On Slander, and the Ecclesiastical Canon. The enormous spectrum of Clement’s legacy is explored in this article through the specific lens of his valuable contributions (a) to the biblical interpretation and (b) in the context of Early Christian history. This focus omits other important aspects of Clement’s legacy such as his Logos theology, ecclesiology, dealing with various philosophical ideas, and his polemic against other Christian doctrines. Nonetheless, even within this prism we can recognize Clement’s unique place among his contemporary thinkers and exegetes.

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