More on this book
Kindle Notes & Highlights
The history of Christianity’s beginnings is part of the history of Judaism in antiquity, and both are part of the history of Greco-Roman culture.
Such astonishing new discoveries as the Dead Sea Scrolls, the existence of a vast body of Jewish art from antiquity, and the deciphering of Jewish mystical texts have been the most dramatic occasions for revising our picture of ancient Judaism.
Partings: How Judaism and Christianity Became Two, edited by Hershel Shanks
But the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), oblivious to all this, criticizes Israel alone for its faults. Protestations of fairness and justice ring hollow when Israel is held to a standard that no other country in the region is held to and when so much evil and suffering in the region are ignored. With this vote the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has chosen to align itself with Israel’s enemies.
According to rabbinic lore (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 31a), when a person comes before the heavenly tribunal after his death he is asked, “Did you conduct your trade honestly? Did you set aside time for the study of Torah? Did you raise a family?”
Jeremiah and Ezekiel were active at the beginning of the exilic period; Second Isaiah and his school (the anonymous authors of Isa. 40–66), Haggai, and Zechariah (the author of Zech. 1–8) were active at its end.
The generation of Ezra and Nehemiah is the last to be treated by the biblical historians.
Ezra and Nehemiah mark the end of “the Bible” and “biblical Israel”
In the sphere of cultural history, the Hellenistic period endured for centuries, perhaps until the Arab conquests of the seventh century
In 164 BCE the Maccabees reconquered and purified the temple; the end of Seleucid rule followed twenty years later (142 BCE).
the fourth and third centuries BCE emerge as an important transition period in the history of Judaism.
the gradual transformation of prophecy into apocalypse;
The Maccabean period lasted a century, from the victory of 164 BCE to the entrance of the Romans into Jerusalem in 63 BCE.
The founder of the dynasty was Herod the Great (37–4 BCE).
The Bar Kokhba war resulted in the paganization of the city of Jerusalem (now rebuilt under the name Aelia Capitolina) and the changing of the country’s name from Judea to Palaestina (Palestine).
By the first century CE, the title was normally used by students when addressing their teacher (John 1:38).
In this book “the rabbis” and “the rabbinic period” refer to the society and religion of the second to sixth centuries CE.
The Judaism created by the rabbis of antiquity gradually became the dominant form of Judaism, and it remained the dominant form until the nineteenth century.
If we accept the claims of the rabbis themselves, the rabbinic period begins much earlier than the second century CE.
For the historian, however, “the rabbis” and “the rabbinic period” become meaningful entities only after 70 CE.
Daniel, that was written in the Hasmonean period.
The practices, ideas, and institutions that were elaborated during the Second Temple period formed and still form the basis of the religion known as Judaism.
a common belief in the one supreme God, who created the world, chose the Israelites/Jews to be his people, and entered into a covenantal relationship with them;
Preexilic Israel was a tribal society living on its ancestral land. Membership in a tribe, and consequently the rights of citizenship (e.g., the right to own land), depended exclusively on birth. There was no established process by which a foreigner could be absorbed into the Israelite polity.
Second Temple Judaism, in contrast, was not a tribal society. When the Jews returned from Babylonia, they returned not as tribes but as clans.
Judaism gradually defined itself more as a religion than as a nationality. It created the institution of conversion, which allowed foreigners to be admitted into “citizenship.”
Prayer was not a standard part of worship, either in the temple or anywhere else
Judaism maintained the sacrificial cult, but it also elaborated new liturgies consisting of prayer as well as the recitation and study of Scripture. This mode of worship even influenced the temple cult, but it acquired for itself a special home in a new institution, the synagogue.
Second Temple Judaism also developed a regimen of private worship unknown to preexilic Israel. The word of God was to be the object of constant study and meditation, not only because this activity would teach the conduct that God expected, but also because the very act of study was deemed to be an act of worship.
The piety of preexilic Israel centered on the group (the people of Israel or the family), while the piety of Second Temple Judaism centered on both the group and the individual.
Relative to modern culture, ancient Judaism is not individualistic at all, but relative to preexilic Israel it is.)
Second Temple Judaism therefore elaborated complex schemes of reward and punishment after death or at the end time.
All of these eschatological doctrines (that is, doctrines concerning the end time or ultimate future) are innovations of Second Temple Judaism.
Preexilic Israel was ruled by kings and guided by prophets; Second Temple Judaism was not.
the Davidic monarchy disappears from society, although it exercised a powerful hold on the eschatological imagination.
in Second Temple Judaism the priests wielded temporal power.
Prophets no longer enjoyed the prestige and authority that had been theirs in preexilic times. In Second Temple Judaism, prophets became apocalyptic seers, mystics, healers, and holy men.
A new type of authority figure emerged to replace the classical prophet: the scribe,
from his erudition in the sacred Scriptures and traditions.
Synagogues and schools were built throughout the land of Israel and the Diaspora. After the destruction of the temple, these institutions became the focal points of Jewish worship and piety
Second Temple Judaism is a “book religion.”
it was Second Temple Judaism that created the Bible,
The Jews of the Second Temple period realized that they lived in a postclassical age. They studied the books of the ancients and did not try to compete with them. They turned instead to new literary genres and new modes of expression. This development is at the heart of the shift from Israelite religion to Judaism
Judaism changed dramatically during the Persian, Hellenistic, Maccabean, Roman, and rabbinic periods. Generalizations that may be true for one period may not be true for another.
They instructed the Jews of the Diaspora through a series of epistles to observe the newly introduced festival of Hanukkah,
where they would translate the Torah into Greek.
Didn’t this happen in 300 BCE?
reinterpreted Exodus 30:11–16 to mean that every male Jew was obligated to contribute a half shekel to the temple in Jerusalem every year. Herod the Great continued this policy.
by Herodian times at the latest, streamed in the thousands to Jerusalem to witness and participate in the festival rituals of the temple.
ancient Jews were united by a common set of practices and beliefs that characterized virtually all segments of Jewry
This common Judaism was the unity within the diversity; both the unity and the diversity are the subjects of this book.
