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Second Temple Judaism




(Note: dates and periods are in many cases approximate and/or conventional)

Jerusalem and YehudEdit


The end of the Persian period is conventionally dated from Alexander the Great's conquest of the Mediterranean coast in 333/332 BCE. His empire disintegrated after his death, and Judea, including Jerusalem, fell to the Ptolemies, the descendants of one of Alexander's generals who ruled Egypt. In 200 BCE Israel and Judea were captured by the Seleucids, the descendants of another Greek general ruling Syria. Around 167 BCE, for reasons that remain obscure, the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes attempted to suppress Jewish worship; this provoked a Jewish revolt (the Maccabean Revolt) that eventually led to the effective end of Greek control over Jerusalem.[5]

Hasmonean Judea was a client kingdom of the Romans,[6] and in the 1st century BCE the Romans first replaced them with their protege Herod the Great, and, on Herod's death in 6 CE, made Judea a province under Rome's direct rule.[7] Heavy taxes under the Romans and insensitivity towards the Jewish religion led to revolt (the First Jewish–Roman War, 66–73 CE), and in 70 CE the Roman general (and later emperor) Titus captured Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple, bringing an end to the Second Temple period.[8]

The diasporaEdit


The SamaritansEdit



In recent decades it has become increasingly common among scholars to assume that much of the Hebrew Bible was assembled, revised and edited in the 5th century BCE to reflect the realities and challenges of the Persian era.[22][10] The returnees had a particular interest in the history of Israel: the written Torah (the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy), for example, may have existed in various forms during the Monarchy (the period of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah), but according to the documentary hypothesis, it was in the Second Temple that it was edited and revised into something like its current form, and the Chronicles, a new history written at this time, reflects the concerns of the Persian Yehud in its almost exclusive focus on Judah and the Temple.[22]



The documentary hypothesis is disputed by some Christians.[25]

Worship and the Hebrew communityEdit

Israel as a holy communityEdit

The Hebrew Bible represents the beliefs of only a small portion of the Israelite community, the members of a tradition that insisted on the exclusive worship of Yahweh, who collected, edited and transmitted the biblical texts, and who saw their mission in a return to Jerusalem where they could impose their vision of genealogical purity, orthodox worship, and codified law on the local population.[26][27] In the earliest stages of the Persian period the returnees insisted on strict separation between themselves ("Israel") and the Judeans who had never gone into exile ("Canaanites"), to the extent of prohibiting intermarriage; this was presented in terms of religious purity, but there may have been a practical concern for land ownership.[28] The concept of the Jewish people as a people chosen by God gave rise to innumerable break-away movements, each declaring that it alone represented Jewish holiness; the most extreme example was the Qumran sect (the Essenes), but Christianity too began as a Jewish sect that saw itself as the "true Israel".[29]

Textual Judaism: priests and scribesEdit

Second Temple Judaism was centered not on synagogues, which began to appear only in the 3rd century BCE, but the reading and study of scripture, the Temple itself, and a cycle of continual animal sacrifice. Torah, or ritual law, was also important, and the Temple priests were responsible for teaching it, but the concept of scripture developed only slowly. While the written Torah (the Pentateuch) and the Prophets were accepted as authoritative by the 1st century CE, beyond this core the different Jewish groups continued to accept different groups of books as authoritative.[30]

The priesthood and the autonomy of YehudEdit

The priesthood underwent profound changes with the Second Temple.[31] Under the First Temple the priesthood had been subordinate to the kings, but in the Second Temple, with the monarchy and even the state no longer available, they became independent.[32] The priesthood under the High Priest (a position largely unknown in earlier times) became the governing authority, making the province of Yehud in a sense a theocracy, although it seems unlikely that it had any more autonomy than was typical of the empire as a whole.[31] In the Hellenistic period the High Priest continued to play a vital role with both cultic and civic obligations, and the office reached its height under the Hasmoneans, who made themselves priest-kings.[33] Both Herod and the Romans severely reduced the importance of the office, appointing and deposing High Priests to suit their purposes.[34]

Intellectual currentsEdit


There was a sharp break between ancient Israelite religion and the Judaism of the Second Temple.[35] Pre-exilic Israel was polytheistic;[36] Asherah was probably worshiped as Yahweh's consort, within his temples in Jerusalem, Bethel, and Samaria, and a goddess called the Queen of Heaven, probably a fusion of Astarte and the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar, was also worshiped.[37] Baal and Yahweh coexisted in the early period, but were considered irreconcilable after the 9th century.[38] The worship of Yahweh alone, the concern of a small party in the monarchic period, only gained ascendancy in the exilic and early post-exilic period,[36] and it was only then that the very existence of other gods was denied.[39]

Messianism and the end timesEdit


Wisdom and the WordEdit

Wisdom, or hokmah, implied the learning acquired by study and formal education: "those who can read and write, those who have engaged in study, and who know literature, are the wise par excellence" (Grabbe, 2010, p.48).[41] The literature associated with this tradition includes the books of Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Sirach and the Wisdom of Solomon, the so-called Sapiential books.[41]

The emergence of ChristianityEdit

Christianity emerged within Judaism, the key difference being the Christian belief that Jesus was the resurrected Messiah.[42] Judaism is known to allow for multiple messiahs, the two most relevant being Messiah ben Joseph and the Messiah ben David. The idea of two messiahs — one suffering and the second fulfilling the traditional messianic role— was normal in ancient Judaism, and in fact predated Jesus.[43][44][45][46] Alan Segal has written that "one can speak of a 'twin birth' of two new Judaisms, both markedly different from the religious systems that preceded them. Not only were rabbinic Judaism and Christianity religious twins, but, like Jacob and Esau, the twin sons of Isaac and Rebecca, they fought in the womb, setting the stage for life after the womb."[47]




See alsoEdit



  1. ^ Grabbe 2010, p. 2.
  2. ^ a b Coogan, Brettler & Newsom 2007, p. xxii.
  3. ^ Grabbe 2010, p. 2–3.
  4. ^ Davies 2005, p. 89.
  5. ^ Grabbe 2010, p. 5–17.
  6. ^ Nelson 2010, p. 256–257.
  7. ^ Malamat & Ben-Sasson 2010, p. 245–246.
  8. ^ Malamat & Ben-Sasson 2010, p. 299–303.
  9. ^ Albertz 2003, p. 101.
  10. ^ a b Berquist 2007, p. 3-4.
  11. ^ Coogan, Brettler & Newsom 2007, p. xxv.
  12. ^ Hegermann 1990, p. 146.
  13. ^ Collins 2000, p. 5.
  14. ^ Hegermann 1990, p. 131.
  15. ^ Strayer, Joseph R. ed. (1986). "Jerusalem" Dictionary of the Middle Ages. 7 New York:Charles Scribner's Sons. p.59.
  16. ^ Cohen 2014, p. 169.
  17. ^ Knoppers 2013, p. 1-3.
  18. ^ Cohen 2014, p. 168.
  19. ^ Knoppers 2013, p. 1–3.
  20. ^ Cohen 2014, p. 168-169.
  22. ^ a b c Coogan, Brettler & Newsom 2007, p. xxiii.
  23. ^ Coogan, Brettler & Newsom 2007, p. xxvi.
  24. ^ Coogan, Brettler & Newsom 2007, p. xxvxxvi.
  25. ^ "THE 'DOCUMENTARY SOURCE HYPOTHESIS' Does Anyone Still Believe the 'Documentary Hypothesis'?". UK APOLOGETICS. Retrieved 28 July 2019.
  26. ^ Wright 1999, p. 52.
  27. ^ Nelson 2014, p. 185.
  28. ^ Moore & Kelle 2011, p. 443-447.
  29. ^ Flusser 2009, p. 8.
  30. ^ Grabbe 2010, p. 40-42.
  31. ^ a b Moore & Kelle 2011, p. 448.
  32. ^ a b Albertz 2003, p. 130.
  33. ^ Grabbe 2010, p. 47.
  34. ^ Grabbe 2010, p. 47-48.
  35. ^ Moore & Kelle 2011, p. 449.
  36. ^ a b Albertz 1994a, p. 61.
  37. ^ Ackerman 2003, p. 395.
  38. ^ Smith 2002, p. 47.
  39. ^ Betz 2000, p. 917.
  40. ^ Wanke 1984, p. 182-183.
  41. ^ a b Grabbe 2010, p. 48.
  42. ^ Cohen 2014, p. 165-166.
  50. ^ Fredricksen 2000, p. 133-134.
  51. ^ Fredricksen 2000, p. 136-142.
  52. ^ Edward Kessler (18 February 2010). An Introduction to Jewish-Christian Relations. Cambridge University Press. pp. 45–. ISBN 978-1-139-48730-6.