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Finally, an unmistakable component of modern anti-Semitism is its theological justification developed by Christianity. But the polytheists of antiquity had no reason to believe that the Jews were cursed by the gods or were in league with the devil.
Even those Greeks and Romans who despised Judaism respected its exclusiveness as an ancestral usage that the Jews themselves were not free to change. The Christians, too, were accused of atheism, and since they could not defend their refusal by appeal to ancestral custom, they were persecuted.
In sum, anti-Semitism did not exist in antiquity, but anti-Judaism did.
The Hebrew Bible is not familiar with either a general prohibition of intermarriage or the conversion of gentiles to Judaism.
The opponents of Herod the Great called him “half-Jew” because he was a descendant of the Idumeans, who had joined the Judean state under the Maccabees. Does this sneer prove disdain for all converts and their descendants, or is it merely a statement of opposition to Herod? Probably the latter.
A Jew might, say, be quite accommodating in the political sphere, wholeheartedly supporting the ruling power but quite unyielding in the cultural or social sphere. Ezra, for example, enjoyed the protection of the Persian king and supported the Persian Empire in return but opposed intermarriage. The Maccabees, by contrast, rebelled against the Seleucid Empire but did not divorce themselves from Hellenistic culture.
Both Jews and gentiles recognized that the Jews denied the gods of the nations and claimed that their God alone was the true God, the Lord of the universe. Yet for both Jews and gentiles, the boundary line between Judaism and polytheism was determined more by Jewish observances than by Jewish theology. Josephus defines an apostate as a Jew who “hates the customs of the Jews” or “does not abide by the ancestral customs.” He defines a convert to Judaism as a gentile who, through circumcision, “adopts the ancestral customs of the Jews.” These definitions omit the theological tenets of Judaism.
In the Middle Ages, in response to the challenge presented by Christianity and Islam, Maimonides (1138–1204) formulated a creed for Judaism as well. Those Jews who subscribed to his thirteen principles of belief were, Maimonides said, loyal Jews; those who rejected any one of them were sinners and heretics, hardly deserving the name Jew at all.
None of these texts implies that prayer was part of the temple cult; lay Jews prayed at and toward the temple, but the temple liturgy consisted of sacrifices, not prayer. Neither Leviticus nor Numbers nor Deuteronomy nor Ezekiel mentions prayer as an integral part of the sacrificial cult.
While there is much other evidence confirming the importance of the Shema in Second Temple Judaism, no prerabbinic evidence confirms the existence of the lay divisions paralleling those of the priests. Still, I think it plausible that, at some point in the Maccabean or Herodian period, prayer became a part of the daily temple liturgy. The temple did indeed become a “house of prayer” (Isa. 56:7).
By the third century BCE, Diaspora Jews began to build special proseuchai, which literally means “prayers” but probably should be translated “prayerhouses.” Instead of prayerhouses, the Jews of the land of Israel had synagōgai, which literally means “gatherings” but probably should be translated “meetinghouses.”
Although the rabbis did not say so, the regulation of the content and structure of the prayers was another step in assimilating prayer to sacrifice. Worship of God had to have a fixed form. Some rabbis were upset and warned that the overregulation of the liturgy would render the prayers perfunctory and devoid of meaning, just as centuries earlier the prophets had criticized the sacrificial cult, but they were the clear minority.
The Qumran prayers are sectarian: they were composed, preserved, and recited by members of the Qumran group and no one else. Many of them exhibit the “us-them” contrast so characteristic of a sect’s view of the world. In contrast, the rabbinic statutory prayers have no sectarian features; their “we” is not the “we” of a separatist group but of the entire community of Israel.
I shall survey the major elements of the statutory liturgy as outlined in the Mishnah: (a) the recitation of the Ten Commandments and the Shema; (b) praise of God; and (c) petitions to God. Finally I shall describe (d) the public study of Scripture.
Petitions. The main petitionary prayer of the rabbis of the second century is the Shemoneh esreh, literally, “The Eighteen,” a series of eighteen petitions, each in the form of a benediction.
First, humanity prays for knowledge of God; the knowledge of God leads to a cognizance of sin and the desire for repentance; the desire for repentance in turn leads to the plea for forgiveness.
This practice is based on the idea that God can be worshiped through the study of his revealed Word.
The goal of these innovations was threefold: (a) to ensure that every moment of a Jew’s life was spent in service to God; (b) to bring the Jew into contact with the sacred; and (c) to democratize religion. The first goal is shared by the piety of the Torah and the piety of the Second Temple period, but the second is a development, and the third is a radical transformation of the legacy of the Torah.
Philo is not clear whether the Logos is merely an “aspect” (or attribute) of God, or whether Logos is a “being” in its own right (cf. John 1:1). Whereas angels, says Philo, are our intermediaries with God, the Logos is God’s intermediary with us.
The third and second centuries BCE, however, witnessed the emergence of Satan as a clearly defined being. Sometimes called Mastema or Belial or other names, he was the supernatural leader of the forces of evil. He was an enemy both of God and of the righteous and was blamed for most of the maladies that befall humanity. Protection from these malevolent forces could be obtained through prayer and piety or through amulets and spells (cf. Tobit).
