Grabbe Lester L. - An Introduction to Second Temple Judaism: History and Religion of the Jews in the Time of Nehemiah, the Maccabees, Hillel, and Jesus

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First published in 2010 by the Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd

Reprinted by Bloomsbury Academic 2012

Lester L. Grabbe, 2010

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To my students of early Judaism

CONTENTS

This book is an introduction to Judaism of the Second Temple period. That is, it covers the time beginning in the Persian period and ending with the fall of the temple (539 BCE70 CE), though I find it helpful to go as late as the Bar Kokhba revolt (13235 CE). I have already given a detailed history of the Judaism of the period in Judaism from Cyrus to Hadrian (1992) and the four-volume work, History of the Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple Period (vol. 1 [2004], vol. 2 [2008], and vols 34 [in preparation]), so what I am doing in this much briefer study is to try to introduce the beginner the student, the educated lay person, the non-specialist to the subject. As the title of the present book indicates, I focus on the first century BCE and CE. (It is the convention now among scholars of early Judaism to use the abbreviations CE and BCE when giving dates. They stand for Common Era [CE] and Before the Common Era [BCE], being equivalent to AD and BC.) However, I do not limit myself to those two centuries since a complete understanding of them requires a general knowledge of the preceding several centuries.

). Together they encompass most facets of Judaism of the time.

What will soon become clear to the reader is that the idea of orthodoxy or a state church is not a good way of looking at Judaism before 70. British readers need to put the model of the Church of England out of mind. There was a centre to the religion: worship at the Jerusalem temple. Most Jews accepted the sacredness of the temple and the general teachings of the Torah. But there was no official orthodoxy (in the Christian sense), for it is clear that there were many interpretations of the Torah and many different views about how to apply the law outside the temple (within the temple, the priests were in control). Thus, each of the tells us about one aspect of Judaism, but as will soon be apparent the various currents are not isolated entities. On the contrary, a single individual may have been a part of more than one current. A study of one particular current helps us to understand one aspect of Judaism, while the study of all four discussed here provides a quite comprehensive picture of Judaism albeit, a complex picture, like a mosaic with many different parts.

I quote widely from the original sources at different points, both to illustrate my points and to help the reader to become more aware of the source of our knowledge. I usually use the New Jewish Publication Society translation for quotations from the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). Quotations from the New Testament and the Apocrypha are taken from the New Revised Standard Version. For Philo, Josephus, and the Greek and Roman writers I generally use the Loeb Classical Library. The Dead Sea Scrolls are usually quoted from the translation of Geza Vermes (see the end of are quoted from The Nag Hammadi Library in English.

This book originated in the Frankland and West Weekend School Lectures given at Birkbeck College on 2526 March 1995, and were originally published as An Introduction to First Century Judaism (1996). I thank Mr Michael Combermere and Dr Gwen Griffith Dickson for inviting and hosting me, and Professor Michael Knibb of Kings College, London, for suggesting my name and chairing the first two lectures. The present version has had a number of revisions, especially in from the point of view of the educated lay person. This book is very much the product of teaching early Judaism for many years, especially at the University of Hull but also in America and in various lectures in the UK. To those many students, who have been my willing (for the most part) guinea pigs, I dedicate this book.

L.L.G.

Kingston upon Hull

6 September 2009