Judaism Transforms in the Diaspora During the Second Temple Period

The Jerusalem Temple, its rituals and personnel, were central to Judean religious and political life, and feature prominently in Second Temple Judean literature. Not long after its destruction in 70 C.E., the nascent rabbinic movement transformed the Judaism of Temple, sacrifices, and priests, into the Judaism of beth-midrash, Torah-study, and lay Sages.^[1] This transformation is now considered to be part of the major paradigm shift in the religious landscape of Late Antique Mediterranean world, in the course of which, to quote Guy Stroumsa, “the religions of sacrifice” gave way to “the religions of community.”^[2]

Without minimizing this great historical achievement, the metamorphosis of ancient Judaism from Temple-and-sacrifice religion into the religion of prayer-house and Torah-study began, and, to a great extent, was accomplished in the Diaspora before the Temple was destroyed, since, for all practical purposes, the Temple was geographically distant and therefore inaccessible and functionally irrelevant for them. Moreover, for generations they needed to maintain a vibrant Jewish identity and belief in themselves as a covenantal people in the midst of the engulfing sea of competing cults, worldviews, and philosophies.^[3]

As a consequence, the Jews of the Greco-Roman Diaspora gradually developed religious systems of belief and practice that did not require a focus on the Temple and its sacrificial cult.^[4] Instead, Diasporic Jewish writers of the time illustrate the development of various alternative paradigms, as compared with Jewish authors from the Land of Israel.

God Is Wherever the Holy Jewish People Are

2 Maccabees, a condensed version of a longer work of the Jewish author Jason of Cyrene (Libya), composed in the second century B.C.E., narrates the events immediately preceding the Hasmonean revolt and during the wars of Judah Maccabee.^[5] Its narrative begins when Simon the priest who feels he’s been slighted by the high priest Onias, reports to the Seleucids that the Temple has a stash of money. General Heliodorus is sent to plunder it but is struck dumb by angels (ch. 3). The narrative culminates in Judah Maccabee’s defeat of another general, Nicanor, and the reestablishment of Judean control over the Temple, celebrated yearly on Nicanor day (ch. 15).^[6]

Consequently, some scholars have described the purpose and character of the book as “Temple propaganda.”^[7] Yet, 2 Maccabees does not express very much interest in sacrifices or cultic vessels, or in Judean-Samaritan temple polemics. Indeed, the author sees the Holy Place as subordinate to the Holy People and their conduct. Thus, when explaining how Antiochus IV wasn’t stopped from plundering the Temple by divine intervention like General Heliodorus (in ch. 3), it states:

^{2 Macc 5:18} Had it not happened that they had been caught up in many sins, he too – just as Heliodorus, who had been sent by King Seleucus to audit the treasury – immediately upon moving forward (into the Temple) would have been flogged and overturned from his insolence. ^5:19 But God did not choose the people on account of the Place; rather, He chose the Place on account of the people. ^[8]

This, 2 Maccabees argues, is why the Temple is eventually restored, once the people have acted righteously enough to deserve it:

^5:20 Therefore the Place itself, having shared in the disasters which befell the people, later shared also in the benefactions and that which had been abandoned in the anger of the All-Ruler was again reestablished with full honor when the great Sovereign was reconciled.

This passage realigns the role of the Temple in Jewish life. According to this author, it is not inherently holy; instead, the holiness of the place stems from the holiness of the people. Such an outlook allows for Jews in the Diaspora to be fully part of the covenant, and to experience a providential relationship with their heavenly God of equal value to that of their Judean brethren.

In contrast to sacrifices and ritual purity, 2 Maccabees repeatedly emphasizes the power of prayer and—most prominently—the redemptive value of the martyrs,^[9] tortured for their faithfulness to Judaism (Ioudaismos, 2:21).^[10] It is their blood that expiates sins and moves God to forgive the Jews, have mercy on them, and make Judas Maccabaeus invincible.^[11]

Loyalty to Jewish Practice and Philosophy in the Face of Adversity

4 Maccabees, a 1^st century C.E. Jewish philosophical work that builds upon 2 Maccabees,^[12] cuts out the Hasmoneans altogether and speaks only of the martyrs.^[13] Their steadfastness in the face of torture is used to exemplify the main thesis of the author, that the “reason is absolute master over the passions” (1:13), which is presented as a key tenet of Jewish philosophy.

It is thus the dedication of the martyrs and not the Hasmonean freedom-fighters, who saved the Jews. It is not Temple service that is necessary for piety, but rather the philosophical self-mastery of the martyrs, and their loyalty to tradition against all odds. The author makes this clear in the following passage about the atoning and purifying value of their sacrificial deaths:

^{4 Macc 17:20} These then, having consecrated themselves for the sake of God, are now honored not only with this distinction but also by the fact that through them our enemies did not prevail against our nation, ^17:21 and the tyrant was punished and our land purified, since they became, as it were, a ransom for the sin of our nation. ^17:22 Through the blood of these righteous ones and through the propitiation of their death the divine providence rescued Israel, which had been shamefully treated....^[14]

This becomes a lesson for the readers to stay true to their religious obligations, even in the face of persecution:

^{4 Macc 18:1} O offspring of the seed of Abraham, children of Israel, obey this Law and be altogether true to your religion, ^18:2 knowing that devout reason is master over the passions, and not only over pains from within, but also from outside ourselves.

Like 2 Maccabees, 4 Maccabees ascribes winning the war to the piety and sacrifice of these martyrs:

^{4 Macc 18:3} Those men who surrendered their bodies to suffering for piety’s sake were in return not only admired by mankind but were also deemed worthy of the divine portion. ^18:4 And it was because of them that our nation enjoyed peace – they revived the observance of the Law in their land and repulsed their enemies’ siege.

The author of this work was concerned neither with the military exploits of the Hasmoneans, nor with their political-religious achievements, including the rededication of the Temple and the reinstitution of sacrifices. For him, it was the martyrs who, through their sacrificial death for the Torah, had brought vindication and deliverance to the Jewish people.

The Temple of the Soul and the Temple of the Cosmos

Philo (ca. 25 B.C.E.–ca. 50 C.E.) stemmed from an upper-class Jewish family of Roman Alexandria. He received an excellent education and had much leisure, and his writings are witness to his sophisticated worldview.^[15] Philo’s repeated emphasis on the spiritual life of the soul and its mystical union with God, as well as his mystical terminology, reinvents Jewish religious life in the realm of soul and mind, not in Jerusalem or its Temple.

As a communal leader and—at times—a political activist, Philo did see the physical Temple as playing an important role in the political fortunes of the contemporary Jewry; it symbolized the Roman recognition and protection of the Jewish communities. Indeed, Philo criticizes the Jews who neglect the Temple-related commandments, and is willing to defend the Temple even to the point of sacrificing his own life.^[16]

At the same time, the physical Temple and its ritual do not play a serious role in his thinking about Jewish practice and philosophy. For instance, in describing what Jews do on Yom Kippur, Philo makes no mention of the Temple rituals prescribed by the Torah which undoubtedly were carried out in his time in Jerusalem, but rather just prayer and fasting:

^{On the Life of Moses 2:24} ...in our fast men may not put food and drink to their lips, in order that with pure hearts, untroubled and untrammeled by any bodily passion such as is the common outcome of repletion, they may keep the holy-day, propitiating the Father of All with fitting prayers, in which they are wont to ask that their old sins maybe forgiven and new blessings gained and enjoyed.^[17]

On a spiritual plain, the real meaning of the Torah and its commandments for Philo was not to be found in the Jerusalem Temple cult, but rather in the invisible realities of the cosmos and the soul of the sage. This is made especially clear when Philo discusses the “real Temple,” which for him is either the sage’s soul or the whole cosmos. For example, Philo asks what sense it makes for the Supreme God to have a house:

^{On the Cherubim 99–100} What house shall be prepared for God the King of Kings, the Lord of all, who in His tender mercy and loving-kindness has deigned to visit created being and come down from the boundaries of heaven to the utmost ends of earth, to show His goodness to our race? Shall it be of stone or timber?

Away with the thought, the very words are blasphemy. For though the whole earth should suddenly turn into gold, or something more precious than gold, though all that wealth should be expended by the builder’s skill on porches and porticos, on chambers, vestibules, and shrines, yet there would be no place where His feet could tread. One worthy house there is – the soul that is fitted to receive Him.

Here, as some other contemporary Jewish authors from the Diaspora, Philo builds upon Trito-Isaiah and his critique of Judeans’ exaggerated focus on the Temple in the Persian period:

^{ישעיה סו:א} כֹּה אָמַר יְ־הוָה הַשָּׁמַיִם כִּסְאִי וְהָאָרֶץ הֲדֹם רַגְלָי אֵי זֶה בַיִת אֲשֶׁר תִּבְנוּ לִי וְאֵי זֶה מָקוֹם מְנוּחָתִי.

^{Isa 66:1} Thus said YHWH: “The heaven is My throne and the earth is My footstool: Where could you build a house for Me, what place could serve as My abode?”^[18]

In another passage, Philo discusses God’s two Temples—the universe and the soul of the intellegent human being, neither of which is the Jerusalem Temple.^[19] Although Philo goes on to say that the earthly high priest is the “outward and visible image” of this “real man,” the striking implication of the passage is that he could speak of God’s Temple without even mentioning the physical one in Jerusalem. In another passage, he makes the hierarchy of God’s Temples clear:

^{On the Special Laws 1:66–67} The highest, and in the truest sense the holy, temple of God is, as we must believe, the whole universe, having for its sanctuary the most sacred part of all existence, even heaven, for its votive ornaments the stars, for its priests the angels who are servitors to His powers, unbodied souls, not compounds of rational and irrational nature, as ours are, but with the irrational eliminated, all mind through and through, pure intelligences, in the likeness of the monad.

There is also the temple made by hands; for it was right that no check should be given to the forwardness of those who pay tribute to piety and desire by means of sacrifices either to give thanks for the blessings that befall them or ask for pardon and forgiveness for their sins.

Although Philo mentions the physical Temple in this passage, and elaborates on its relative importance, this text also reflects Philo the communal leader. He sympathizes with the Lawgiver Moses, who has provided in his constitution for the physical shrine, since he realized that not all Jews were sophisticated enough to worship in the invisible Temples of the cosmos and the soul. In condescension to these simple-minded Jews, Moses granted them the physical Temple as a kind of spiritual crutches.^[20]

Philo considers the Jewish sect of the Therapeutae as exemplifying the life of Judaism at its best. This sect lived near Alexandria, with no Temple, and its members are described as devoted to the study of Sacred Scripture and the life of ascetic devotion.^[21] They themselves take the place of the Temple priests, and their prayers, liturgical singing, and Torah study replace its sacrificial cult.

This is very reminiscent to how rabbinic Judaism develops after the destruction of the Temple.

An Anti-Temple Diaspora Radical

The Sibylline Oracles is a collection of oracular prophecies in which a sibyl—a legendary Greek prophetess—confirms Jewish (and later Christian) principles or eschatological visions. The fourth oracle—a short Jewish missionary manifesto, dated to around 80 C.E.^[23]—is arguably the most anti-Temple-and-cult Jewish composition written in the Diaspora.^[24]

The author admonishes pagans to renounce idolatry and various sins, repent, and praise God, assuring them that the Jewish God is different from false gods because “He does not have a house, a stone set up as a temple.”^[25] His temple is “one which it is not possible to see from earth nor to measure with mortal eyes, since it was not fashioned by mortal hand” (10–11). The author’s vision of piety is irreconcilable with any kind of sacrificial worship:

^{Sib Or 4:24–34} Happy will be those of mankind on earth who will love the great God, blessing him before drinking and eating, putting their trust in piety. They will reject all temples when they see them, altars, too, useless foundations of dumb stones defiled with blood of animate creatures, and sacrifices of four-footed animals.

They will look to the great glory of the one God and commit no wicked murder, nor deal in dishonest gain, which are most horrible things. Neither have they disgraceful desire for another’s spouse or for hateful and repulsive abuse of a male.^[26]

In the climax of the composition, the author exhorts the pagans to abandon their sins, repent, and turn to God. No sacrifices are needed to propitiate God; words of praise will atone for “bitter impiety”:

^{Sib Or 4:162–170} Ah, wretched mortals, change these things, and do not lead the great God to all sorts of anger, but abandon daggers and groanings, murders and outrages, and wash your whole bodies in perennial rivers. Stretch out your hands to heaven and ask forgiveness for your previous deeds and make propitiation for bitter impiety with words of praise; God will grant repentance and will not destroy. He will stop His wrath if you all practice honorable piety in your hearts.

It is rather striking to find such an attitude to the Temple and its cult in a Jewish text from a mere decade after its demise. And it is, of course, even more striking when compared with the attitude of contemporary Jewish authors from the Land of Israel, such as those of 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch, who lament the destruction of the Second Temple as a catastrophe of universal proportions for Jewish religious—indeed mental—life, and struggle to come to terms with it.

Did Judaism Change in the Diaspora When the Temple Was Destroyed?

The Jews of the Diaspora, who spent most of their lives without the possibility of access to the Jerusalem Temple, had to develop alternatives to Temple-centered views of Jewish worship, as well as, more generally, different means of access to the divine. Most Diaspora authors evinced little, if any, interest in the Temple and its cult, and in place of it offer alternative coherent Judaic worldviews, focusing on matters such as worship, ethics, atonement for sin, mediation of the divine powers, God’s presence, salvation, conversion, eschatology and life after death.

In 2 and 4 Maccabees, we witnessed the emphasis on martyrdom for the Law as the ultimate act of piety, indeed, as the ultimate sacrifice, which atoned for the sins of the entire Jewish nation and earned their salvation. In 2 Maccabees, this supported the notion that the Holy People are more important than the Holy Place, and in 4 Maccabees that loyalty to Jewish practice and philosophy are the key elements of covenant and Jewish piety.

In Philo, we saw respect for the physical Temple which was still standing, but an incalculably greater focus on “the real temple” of the universe and the soul, and in the fourth Sibylline Oracle, composed in the decade after the Temple’s destruction, we find a total dismissal of the very possibility of a house for the deity.^[27]

In other words, even before the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E. and the cessation of its sacrificial cult, the Jews of the Greco-Roman Diaspora had successfully created alternative Judaic systems in which the Temple did not play a crucial role. These systems provided them with meaning and order as they looked at the world around them, and with a coherent sense of identity and purpose as far as they looked at themselves – both individually and communally. They also provided Diaspora Jews with alternative media for accessing the divine, apart from the Temple rituals and away from Jerusalem.

Although it is reasonable to assume that the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple caused a certain amount of anxiety on the part of the Diaspora Jews, especially as events in Judea gave rise to uncertainty concerning the status of Jewish communities elsewhere in the Roman Empire, it might not be too bold to suppose that for the religious life of the average Diaspora Jew, nothing much changed on the morning of the eleventh of Av in 70 C.E.^[28]