Judaism Transforms in the Diaspora During the Second Temple Period

For a fuller treatment, see: Michael Tuval, From Jerusalem Priest to Roman Jew: On Josephus and the Paradigms of Ancient Judaism WUNT 357 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 29–89, where, in addition to the texts discussed here, I also deal with the Fragments of Hellenistic Jewish authors, Joseph and Aseneth, the Prayer of Joseph, 2 Enoch, Hellenistic synagogal prayers, the Wisdom of Solomon, 3 Maccabees, the Testament of Job, the Testament of Abraham, the Sentences of Pseudo–Phocylides, 1, 2, 3, 5 Sibylline Oracles, “Stephen’s Speech” (Acts 7), Pseudo–Aristeas and numerous texts in Josephus.

Guy G. Stroumsa, The End of Sacrifice: Religious Transformations of Late Antiquity, trans. Susan Emanuel (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2009).

See: Daniel R. Schwartz, “Temple or City: What did Hellenistic Jews See in Jerusalem?” in The Centrality of Jerusalem, ed. Marcel Poorthuis and Chana Safrai (Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1996), 114–127. Editor’s note: See also Malka Z. Simkovich, “Jewish Attitudes Towards the Land of Israel during the Time of the Second Temple,” TheTorah (2015).

On the ancient Jewish Diaspora, see: Jack N. Lightstone, The Commerce of the Sacred: Mediation of the Divine among the Jews in the Graeco-Roman Diaspora, 2^nd ed. (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2006); idem, “Roman Diaspora Judaism,” in A Companion to Roman Religion, ed. Jörg Rüpke, Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2007), 345–377; Erwin R. Goodenough, By Light, Light: The Mystic Gospel of Hellenistic Judaism (New Haven, CN: Yale University Press, 1935), a controversial, but thought-provoking study on Diaspora Jewish theology; Gregory E. Sterling, Historiography and Self-Definition: Josephus, Luke-Acts and Apologetic Historiography, (Leiden: Brill, 1992), has discussed several Diaspora authors in the context of Greco-Roman and early Christian “apologetic” historiography; John J. Collins, Between Athens and Jerusalem; Jewish Identity in the Hellenistic Diaspora (2nd ed.; Grand Rapids, 2000), on various Diaspora identity paradigms; John M. G. Barclay, Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora from Alexander to Trajan (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996), on Diaspora cultural convergence and antagonism vis-à-vis Greco-Roman environment; Erich S. Gruen, Heritage and Hellenism: The Reinvention of Jewish Tradition (Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 1998); idem, Diaspora: Jews amidst Greeks and Romans (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University,, 2002), on robust Diaspora identities; Tessa Rajak, Translation and Survival: The Greek Bible of the Ancient Jewish Diaspora (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), on Diaspora identities as reflected by the main document of Alexandrian Judaism, the Septuagint.

For translation and commentary, see Daniel R. Schwartz, 2 Maccabees, Commentaries on Early Jewish Literature [CEJL] (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2008). 1 Maccabees, a Judean composition, also covers this period, but continues much further in time, into the wars of Jonathan and Simon and finally the accession of John Hyrcanus to the high priesthood. Editor’s note: For a comparison of the two works, see Daniel R. Schwartz, “Judea versus Judaism: Between 1 and 2 Maccabees,” TheTorah (2021); Katell Berthelot, “The Maccabean Victory Explained: Between 1 and 2 Maccabees,” TheTorah (2022).

Editor’s note: See discussion in Zev Farber, “The Ancient Judean Holiday: Yom Nicanor - 13th of Adar,” TheTorah (2014); idem, “Chanukah: Not Judah Maccabee’s Holiday,” TheTorah (2022).

Robert Doran, Temple Propaganda: The Purpose and Character of 2 Maccabees (Washington, D.C.: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1981). On the centrality of the Temple and its cult in 1 Maccabees, Tuval, From Jerusalem Priest, 194–201.

Translations of 2 Maccabees follow Schwartz, 2 Maccabees.

This last is one of the major differences in the outlook between 1 and 2 Maccabees. Editor’s note: For more on the development of martyrdom in Judaism, see Martin Lockshin, “Chanukah: The Greek Influence of Martyrdom,” TheTorah (2017).

This is the first occurrence of the term “Judaism” in history. It is not a broadly attested word in Second Temple Jewish literature. The first occurrences in Greek are in 2 Macc 2:21; 8:1; 14:38, then in 4 Macc 4:26, and in Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians 1:13–14. In Hebrew it is first attested in the eleventh century C.E.; see J. Pasto, “The Origin, Expansion and Impact of the Hasmoneans in Light of Comparative Ethnographic Studies (and Outside of its Nineteenth-Century Context),” in Second Temple Studies II: Studies in Politics, Class and Material Culture, ed., Philip R. Davies and J. M. Halligan (Sheffield: Sheffield University Press, 2002), 172, n. 2; James D. G. Dunn, “Judaism in the Land of Israel in the First Century,” in Judaism in Late Antiquity, Part 2: Historical Syntheses, ed. Jacob Neusner (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 232–236.

The martyrdom section is the turning point in the story. The last of the seven martyred brothers says before his death:

^{2 Macc 7:37} As for me, just as my brothers I give up both body and soul for the ancestral laws, calling upon God that He speedily become merciful to the people; and that you, after afflictions and scourging, will therefore admit that He alone is God, ^7:38 and that, with me and my brothers, shall be stayed the anger of the All-Ruler which was justly loosed against our entire nation.

Several verses later the author brings Judas Maccabaeus onto the scene with the following introduction: “As soon as Maccabaeus got his corps together, he could not be withstood by the Gentiles, the Lord’s anger having turned into mercy” (2 Macc 8:5). Contrast this with the attitude of the Judean author of 1 Maccabees, who believes that the faithful martyrs, who die in the wilderness because of their unwillingness to fight on the Sabbath, are misled, and that their example of noble death in the face of persecution is not to be followed (1 Macc 2:39–40). The heroes of the story, the Hasmonean clan—“that family of men to whom it had been granted to be agents of Israel’s deliverance” (1 Macc 5:62)—did not wait passively for divine assistance, but fought and won religious and political freedom for their people. These topics are discussed in Schwartz, 2 Maccabees, 45–48.

The exact provenance and date of this Diaspora work are debatable. Several scholars tend to locate it in Syrian Antioch in the third century C.E., where a Synagogue of the Maccabean Martyrs was found in which their cult flourished. Nothing in the book requires a date later than the first century, see: C.E. Anderson, “4 Maccabees,” in J. H. Charlesworth, Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Volume 2: Expansions of the “Old Testament” and Legends, Wisdom and Philosophical Literature, Prayers, Psalms, and Odes, Fragments of Lost Judeo-Hellenistic Works (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1985), 533–535. On the tradition locating the Maccabean martyrs’ grave in Antioch, see Elias J. Bickerman, Studies in Jewish and Christian History: A New Edition in English, Including the God of The Maccabees. 2 Vols. (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 1:465–82. For Lightstone’s integration of these data into his bold conception of the roles of saints’ tombs, martyrs’ bones, and other relics in Diaspora Judaism, see The Commerce of the Sacred, 84.

On 4 Maccabees, David A. DeSilva, 4 Maccabees (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2006); idem, 4 Maccabees: Introduction and Commentary on the Greek Text in Codex Sinaiticus, Septuagint Commentary Series (Leiden: Brill, 2006).

Translations of 4 Maccabees follow H. Anderson, “4 Maccabees,” 531–564. The author states this unequivocally here as well:

^{4 Macc 17:8} It would be in fact appropriate to inscribe upon their tomb itself, as a memorial to those members of our nation, the following words: ^17:9 “Here lie buried an aged priest, an old woman, and her seven sons through the violence of the tyrant bent on destroying the polity of the Hebrews. ^17:10 They vindicated their race, looking unto God and enduring torments even unto death.”

For the full treatment of the role of martyrdom in 2 and 4 Maccabees, see J. W. van Henten, The Maccabean Martyrs as Saviours of the Jewish People: A Study of 2 and 4 Maccabees (Leiden: Brill, 1997).

Because Philo was a very complex thinker, his person invited numerous interpretations – some claimed he was primarily a philosopher, others saw him as an exegete, and still others as a mystic. I tend to accept to a certain degree the picture of Philo the mystic, presented in Erwin R. Goodenough, An Introduction to Philo Judaeus (2nd ed.; Oxford, 1962).

For Philo’s description of how he and several other Jews from Alexandria were confronted with Emperor Caligula's decision to place a statue of himself in the Jerusalem Temple, see, see Philonis Alexandrini, Legatio Ad Gaium. Edited With an Introduction, Translation And Commentary By E. Mary Smallwood (Leiden: Brill, 1961).

All translations of Philo’s works are quoted according to F. H. Colson et al. (trans.), Philo with an English Translation, 10 vols., Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1929–1962).

Editor’s note: For more on the Persian Period polemics against the Temple, see Isaac S.D. Sassoon, “The Tabernacle: A Post-Exilic Polemic Against Rebuilding the Temple,” TheTorah (2018).

“For there are, as evident, two temples of God: one of them this universe, in which there is also as High Priest His First-born, the divine Word, and the other the rational soul, where Priest is the real Man” (On the Dreams 1:215).

Not only God’s Temple, but even the earthly city of Jerusalem is equally and identically allegorized by Philo:

For God’s city is the name in one sense for the world which has received the whole bowl, wherein the divine draught is mixed, and feasted thereon and exultingly taken for its possession the gladness which remains for all time never to be removed or quenched. In another sense he uses the name for the soul of the Sage, in which God is said to walk as in a city. For “I will walk in you,” He says, “and will be your God” (Lev. xxvi. 12) ... Now the city of God is called in the Hebrew Jerusalem and its name when translated is “vision of peace.” Therefore do not seek for the city of the Existent among the regions of the earth, since it is not wrought of wood or stone, but in a soul, in which there is no warring, whose sight is keen, which has set before it as its aim to live in contemplation and peace. For what grander or holier house could we find for God in the whole range of existence than the vision-seeking mind, the mind which is eager to see all things and never even in its dreams has a wish for faction or turmoil? (On the Dreams 2:248–251)

Philo describes the Therapeutae in his tractate On the Contemplative Life. Editor’s note: See also the discussion of the Therapeutae in Martin Goodman, “Forgotten Shavuot History: The 4 B.C.E Rebellion and the Therapeutae,” TheTorah (2023).

Martin, The School of Virtue and the Tent of Zion.

No consensus has been reached as to its exact place of origin.

It competes for this status only with “the speech of Stephen” in Acts of the Apostles 7, which most scholars consider a sermon from a Diaspora synagogue adopted almost wholesale by Luke. Unlike most of the other Jewish Sibyllines, it was not edited or interpolated by Christians. See John J. Collins, “The Place of the Fourth Sibylline Oracle in the Development of the Jewish Sibyllina,” Journal of Jewish Studies 25 (1974), 365–80; idem, “Sibylline Oracles,” in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. Volume 1: Apocalyptic Literature and Testaments, ed. James H. Charlesworth (Garden City, NY, 1983), 381–89. On Sibylline Oracle 4 in general, see H. C. O. Lanchester, “The Sibylline Oracles,” in The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, Vol. 2: Pseudepigrapha, ed. R. H. Charles (Oxford, 1913), 368–406; Valentin Nikiprowezky, “Reflexions sur quelques problemes du quatrième et du cinquième livre des Oracles Sibyllins,” Hebrew Union College Annual 43 (1972), 29–76.

Line 8, according to manuscript group ψ.

Translations of Sibylline Oracle 4 are from Collins, “Sibylline Oracles,” in Charlesworth, Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 1:384–9. See Andrew Chester, “The Sibyl and the Temple,” in Templum Amicitiae: Essays on the Second Temple Presented to Ernst Bammel, ed. William Horbury (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991), 66: “On balance, therefore, although the main thrust of both 4–11 and 27–30 is polemic against idolatry, they allow no positive place for the form and practice of the Jerusalem Temple either.” Collins, “Sibylline Oracles,” in Charlesworth, OTP 1:383 writes “While these passages are not specifically an attack on the Jewish Temple (which no longer existed), they undermine the very idea of temple worship and make no allowance for the possibility of an acceptable temple.”

These findings correspond, broadly, with Jack Lightstone’s view that “Judaism of the Graeco-Roman Diaspora reflects a different configuration in appropriating and mediating the sacred ... [from] Judaic universe that centered in the Jerusalem Temple of the Second Commonwealth.” Lightstone, The Commerce of the Sacred, 5.

Josephus, who was an eye–witness of the burning of the Temple, writes that it happened on the 10th of Av (Judean War VI 250). See Michael Avioz, “The Date of the Destruction of the First Temple in Ancient Versions and in Early Biblical Interpretation,” Textus 22 (2005), 91–93. Editor’s note: For an alternative view, see Zev Farber, “Tisha B’Av: On What Day Were the Jerusalem Temples Destroyed?” TheTorah (2018).