Interpretation of the Inscription ‘Song of Ascents’ (Psalms 120-134) in the Jewish Tradition

2020 ◽  
pp. 17-41
Author(s):  
Ириней Пиковский
Keyword(s):  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Second Temple ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
The Real ◽  
Historical Origin ◽  
Songs Of Ascents ◽  
Exegetical Tradition ◽  
The Temple

«Песни восхождения» (Пс. 119-133) представляют собой сборник из пятнадцати псалмов Псалтири. Популярное толкование данного заголовка во многих «Толковых Псалтирях» связывает происхождение этой группы священных текстов с возвращением евреев из Вавилонского плена и последующим паломничеством в Иерусалимский храм на религиозные праздники. Автор настоящего исследования ставит цель проверить обоснованность данной точки в наиболее авторитетных источниках иудейской религиозной традиции II-XIII вв.: Мишна, Тосефта, Иерусалимская и Вавилонская Гемара, Таргум на Псалмы, некоторые мидраши, сочинения Саадии Гаона, Раши, Авраама ибн Эзры и Давида Кимхи. Для достижения поставленной цели был проанализирован контекст употребления словосочетания תולעמה ריש («песнь восхождений») в упомянутых источниках. Как показало исследование выражение «песнь восхождений» не имело одинаковой интерпретации в источниках одно и того же периода. Поздние источники показывают зависимость от более ранних, но на основании их невозможно сделать вывод, что в еврейской традиции было единодушие в отношении происхождения заголовка данный группы псалмов Книги Хвалений. Отсюда можно сделать вывод, что сведения об исторических причинах появления данного заголовка были утрачены до начала письменной фиксации иудейских преданий. Следовательно, последующие ассоциации надписания исследуемой группы псалмов с возвращением из плена или паломничеством в Иерусалим рождались интуитивно и были более связаны с литургическими целями употребления псалмов в ту или иную эпоху после разрушения Второго храма, чем с проникновением в реальные первоосновы происхождения заголовка. «Songs of Ascents» (Psalm 120-134) is a collection of fifteen Psalms. An interpretation of this title in popular Psalter commentaries relates the origin of this group of Psalms to the return from Exile and the subsequent pilgrimage to the Temple for major religious feasts. The author of the article aims to verify the validity of this popular interpretation in such authoritative sources of Jewish religious tradition as Mishnah, Tosefta, Jerusalem and Babylonian Gemara, Targum on the Psalms, Midrashim, works of Saadiya Gaon, Rashi, Abraham ibn Ezra and David Kimchi. To achieve the goal of the research, the context of the phrase תולעמה ריש («song of ascents») in the mentioned sources was analyzed. The study showed the expression «song of ascents» did not have the same interpretation in the sources of the same period. Later sources show dependence on earlier ones, but it is impossible to conclude that there was unanimity in Jewish tradition regarding the origin of this superscription. So, it’s possible to conclude that the historical causes for this superscription were forgotten before the written fixation of Jewish exegetical tradition had begun. Consequently, the subsequent associations of the inscription «song of ascents» with the return from captivity or pilgrimage to Jerusalem were born intuitively and were more connected with the liturgical goals of using the psalms after the destruction of the Second Temple, than with the penetration into the real historical origin of the title.

When was the Second Temple Destroyed? Chronology and Ideology in Josephus and in Rabbinic Literature

2015 ◽  
Vol 46 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 547-573
Author(s):  
Meir Ben Shahar
Keyword(s):  
Second Temple ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
Rabbinic Literature ◽  
The Temple

Jewish tradition holds that both the first and second Jerusalem temples were destroyed on the 9th of Av (m. Taʿan. 4:6). According to Josephus both temples were destroyed on the 10th of Av (J.W. 6.250). Although Josephus proffers an elaborately detailed chronology of the temple’s final days, an attentive reading reveals that he in fact delayed the destruction of the temple by one day. Ideological motives impelled Josephus to defer the date of the destruction of the Second Temple to the date he had for the destruction of the First Temple (the 10th of Av). He proposes an analogy between the two in support of his position that God was punishing the rebels for their sins. Finally, the article suggests that the Jewish tradition that establishes the 9th of Av as the date for the destruction of both temples, derives from a mythical conception of history.

The Fratricidal Hasmonean Conflict and the Murder of Onias

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vered Noam
Keyword(s):  
Dead Sea Scrolls ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
Original Version ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
The Political ◽  
Babylonian Talmud ◽  
Political Stance ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Temple

This chapter examines the story of the internecine struggle between the two Hasmonean brothers, Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II, which brought the Hasmonean commonwealth to its end. Only in Josephus is the story of the murder of a righteous man, Onias, juxtaposed to the central tradition regarding the siege of the temple during this war, although this too was clearly an early Jewish tradition. In the rabbinic sources, the story of the siege and the sacrificial animals underwent multiple reworkings, and it is the Babylonian Talmud that reflects the more original version and message of the story. If in Chapter 2, we saw the “rabbinization” of the figure of John Hyrcanus, here the story itself underwent this process and its original moral message was replaced by multiple halakhic implications. In both corpora, this dissension between brothers is seen as the leading cause of the downfall of the Hasmonean dynasty. This was in contradistinction to the political stance represented in the Dead Sea Scrolls, which interpreted the Roman occupation as proof of the sinfulness of the Hasmonean state from its very inception.

HERODOTUS BECOMES INTERESTED IN HISTORY

2014 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
David Harvey
Keyword(s):  
Major Part ◽  
The Real ◽  
Final Draft ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Temple ◽  
Greek World ◽  
The Way

At 3.60 Herodotus tells us that he has dwelt at length on the Samians because ‘they are responsible for three of the greatest buildings in the Greek world’: the tunnel of Eupalinos, the great temple, and the breakwater that protects their harbour. As successive commentators have pointed out, that is not the real reason for the length of his account. We hear about the tunnel for the first time in this chapter (60.1–3); Maiandrios escapes down a secret channel at 146.2, which may or may not be Eupalinos' tunnel; we hear about the temple of Artemis, not of Hera, at Samos in 48; dedications in the temple of Hera are mentioned in passing at 1.70.3, 3.123.1, 4.88.1, and 4.152.4, but the temple itself cannot be said to play a major part in Herodotus' narrative; naval expeditions sail from Samos (e.g. 44.2, 59.4) but there is no emphasis on the harbour or its breakwater. What Herodotus should have said is ‘I have dwelt at length on Samos, because I am interested in the island's history; and, by the way, they are responsible for three…’; but it is not our job to tell him what he ‘should’ have said. As David Asheri remarks, ‘We can explain it [the length of the Samian logos] most simply by supposing that the logos already existed before the final draft of the book’.

Jewish Identity and the Intercommunal Links between Diaspora Jewish Communities in the Second Temple Period

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Jonathan R. Trotter
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Second Temple ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
Second Temple Period ◽  
Jerusalem Temple ◽  
Shared Identity ◽  
The City ◽  
The Temple

Abstract Many diaspora communities identify not only with a distant homeland but also with others distant from the homeland. How exactly do these intercommunal connections take place and contribute toward a shared identity? What specific aspects of diasporan identity are created or strengthened? What practices are involved? This study will begin to answer these questions through investigating two practices which were widespread among diaspora Jewish communities during the last two centuries of the Second Temple period (1st cent. B.C.E.–1st cent. C.E.). First, we will show how sending offerings and making pilgrimages to the Jerusalem temple from these communities enabled regular intercommunal contact. Then, we will suggest some ways in which these voluntary practices reinforced a cohesive Jewish identity and the importance of the homeland, especially the city of Jerusalem and the temple, for many diaspora Jews, whether they lived in Alexandria, Rome, Asia Minor, or Babylonia.

scholarly journals Die hermeneutiese proses onderliggend aan Paulus se eksegese van Eksodus 17:6 en Numeri 20:7–11 in 1 Korintiërs 10:1–4

2021 ◽  
Vol 77 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacobus D.W. De Koning
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Second Temple ◽  
Second Temple Judaism ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
Original Text ◽  
1 Corinthians ◽  
Dialogical Relationship ◽  
The World ◽  
The Church

The hermeneutical process underlying Paul’s exegesis of Exodus 17:6 and Numbers 20:7–11 in 1 Corinthians 10:1–4. In this article, Paul’s use of the Old Testament in 1 Corinthians 10:1–4 comes under scrutiny. In contrast with the theory of some modern scholars that Paul uses, ‘fanciful analogies’, ‘startling figurative claims’ and metaphors that ‘should not he pressed’, in reaching his conclusion that ‘the rock was Christ’, in 1 Corinthians 10:4c, it is indicated that Paul is indeed taking the original text, the Old Testament’s interpretation of the text, and the Jewish tradition of the interpretation of the text, seriously, in the light of the Christ-event. To prove this claim, research of the text (Exodus 17:6 Numbers 20:7–11), that Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 10:1–4, is followed by research of the ‘world in front of that text’ (Deuteronomy 32, the Psalms and Second Temple Judaism).Contribution: The conclusion that is reached indicates that Paul established within the context of contemporary Jewish practices, a true dialogical relationship between an intertextual handling of the text, and his interpretation thereof in the light of the relevance of the Christ-event for the conflict in the Church of Corinth.

The sisyphean task of biblical transformation

1977 ◽  
Vol 30 (6) ◽  
pp. 501-521
Author(s):  
R. P. Carroll
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Alternative Form ◽  
Intellectual Activity ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Bible ◽  
European Culture ◽  
Independent Entity ◽  
The Given

The task of interpreting the Bible has two main phases— the understanding of the text and the transformation or making relevant of its meaning for modern readers. The steady decline of monolithic religious structures and the growth of pluralism in modern society have produced multivariant forms of intellectual activity embracing the Bible as part of their subject matter. Thus the Bible is embedded in the given of European culture and functions as part of the hermeneutical processes of Jewish, Christian, Muslim and secular traditions. The quest for understanding may be common to all the traditions but the task of transformation can take one of two forms. From within the religious tradition transformation is the attempt to reinterpret the text so as to make it meaningful in contemporary terms but always controlled by the tradition. This form may simply be termed transformation from within or controlled transformation. The alternative form is transformation without limits or control. In this form fidelity to a tradition is not paramount and the real concern is to see how far the material may be transformed so as to constitute an independent entity itself.

Sacrifice in Jewish Tradition

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David L. Weddle
Keyword(s):  
Jewish People ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
God's Will ◽  
Redemptive Suffering ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Tikkun Olam ◽  
The World ◽  
The One ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Temple

After Roman destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70CE, Jewish tradition reimagined animal sacrifices as devotional acts, such as prayer, fasting, and study of Torah, as well as giving up individual desires to fulfil God’s will. Rabbis interpreted the story of Abraham’s binding Isaac for sacrifice (the Akedah) as the model of absolute obedience to divine commands (mitzvoth) and as the basis for the election of the Jewish people to bear witness to the one God. Their commentary, however, included the horrified reaction of Sarah’s scream to the news of Abraham’s act, ending in her death, indicating dissent from sacrifice as religious ideal. Rabbinic tradition transferred the site of sacrifice from temple to synagogue in rituals of High Holy Days, to the family table in Passover and Sabbath rituals, and to the individual will in submission to Torah. In the mystical teaching of Kabbalah, God sacrifices to create the world and Jews are called to sacrifice to redeem the world (tikkun olam). Such vocation of redemptive suffering was called into question by the Holocaust, and some contemporary Israeli poets refer to the Akedah in expressing misgivings about calls to sacrifice in defense of Israel.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document