Download Free The Jerusalem Temple In Diaspora Jewish Practice And Thought During The Second Temple Period Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online The Jerusalem Temple In Diaspora Jewish Practice And Thought During The Second Temple Period and write the review.

In The Jerusalem Temple in Diaspora, Jonathan Trotter shows how different diaspora Jews’ perspectives on the distant city of Jerusalem and the temple took shape while living in the diaspora, an experience which often is characterized by complicated senses of alienation from and belonging to an ancestral homeland and one’s current home. This book investigates not only the perspectives of the individual diaspora Jews whose writings mention the Jerusalem temple (Letter of Aristeas, Philo of Alexandria, 2 Maccabees, and 3 Maccabees) but also the customs of diaspora Jewish communities linking them to the temple, such as their financial contributions and pilgrimages there.
For those unfamiliar with the many divisions within Judaism at that time or with Jewish life in other parts of the Roman Empire, this book offers an excellent introduction to a little-studied time period. Readers of Jewish history will definitely want to add this work to their shelves.--Rabbi Rachel Esserman, Reporter Exploring the world of the Second Temple period (539 BCE-70 CE), in particular the vastly diverse stories, commentaries, and other documents written by Jews during the last three centuries of this period, Malka Z. Simkovich takes us to Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch, to the Jewish sectarians and the Roman-Jewish historian Josephus, to the Cairo genizah, and to the ancient caves that kept the secrets of the Dead Sea Scrolls. As she recounts Jewish history during this vibrant, formative era, Simkovich analyzes some of the period's most important works for both familiar and possible meanings. This volume interweaves past and present in four parts. Part 1 tells modern stories of discovery of Second Temple literature. Part 2 describes the Jewish communities that flourished both in the land of Israel and in the Diaspora. Part 3 explores the lives, worldviews, and significant writings of Second Temple authors. Part 4 examines how authors of the time introduced novel, rewritten, and expanded versions of Bible stories in hopes of imparting messages to the people. Simkovich's popular style will engage readers in understanding the sometimes surprisingly creative ways Jews at this time chose to practice their religion and interpret its scriptures in light of a cultural setting so unlike that of their Israelite forefathers. Like many modern Jews today, they made an ancient religion meaningful in an ever-changing world.
"At the end of exile, the boundaries of sacred geography were open for renegotiation: YHWH could once again dwell in Jerusalem in a rebuilt temple, and temple centrality could be renewed. Yet how were such abstract theological and geographical commitments enacted? To what extent was the influence of the city felt and practiced in Yehud or far-away Egypt and Babylon? To answer such questions, this volume examines 'centrality' through the practices of animal sacrifice, pilgrimage, tithing, and the use of incense and figurines. Unique in its appraisal of centrality via religious practice and in its integration of the biblical text and archaeological record, [this study] offers a compelling portrait of the variegated centralities of the Jerusalem temple in the Persian period." -- Back cover
The developments in Judaism during the Second Temple period remain important to contemporary Jewish religion. This volume provides a much needed encyclopedic study of the period. Includes bibliographies, cross-references and summaries.
This book represents the fruit of a long process of study and reflection, a powerful but subtle synthesis, by one of the most eminent scholars of Second-Temple Judaism. Far from a conventional narrative history, it is organized around themes and seeks to uncover the essence of Hebraic/Jewish religious thinking while confronting the phenomenon of its division into several 'parties' and traditions. Drawing also on recent studies of Christianity as a 'Judaism', Sacchi provides a stimulating perspective on the nature of ancient Oriental and Occidental thought and the intellectual and spiritual heritage of European civilization.
The Temple of Jerusalem: From Moses to the Messiah brings together an interdisciplinary and broad-ranging international community of scholars to discuss aspects of the history and continued life of the Jerusalem Temple in Western culture, from biblical times to the present. This volume is the fruit of the inaugural conference of the Yeshiva University Center for Israel Studies, which convened in New York City on May 11-12, 2008 and honors Professor Louis H. Feldman, Abraham Wouk Family Professor of Classics and Literature at Yeshiva University. Feldman is the doyen of modern scholarship on Judaism in the Greco-Roman period, focusing on the writings of Flavius Josephus. A beloved mentor to generations of Yeshiva University students and of scholars across the globe, Professor Feldman has taught at YU since 1955. "The articles are consistently of high quality. This book is highly recommended for any academic collection in Jewish studies." Jim Rosenbloom, Judaica Librarian, Brandeis University; President, Association of Jewish Libraries
The unique duality of Jewish existence, wherein a major Jewish centre in the Land of Israel flourished alongside a large and prosperous diaspora, was one of the outstanding features of Second Temple and post-Temple Jewish life. As in modern times, ongoing Jewish dispersion raised questions that went to the heart of Jewish self-identity, and declarations of allegiance to the ancestral homeland were frequently accompanied by seemingly contrary expressions of 'local-patriotism' on the part of Jewish diaspora communities. The destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple in 70 CE, and the subsequent failure under Bar-Kokhba to revive political independence (135 CE) forced Jews in Judaea as well as in the diaspora to re-evaluate the nature of the bonds that linked Jews throughout the world to 'The Land', and at the same time effected a re-examination of the authority structure that claimed priority for the communal leaders still functioning in Jewish Palestine. The chapters of this book, first delivered in Oxford as the Third Jacobs Lectures in Rabbinic Thought in January 1994, address a broad spectrum of questions relating to the centre-diaspora reality of Jewish life in Late Antiquity.
Beyond the political elites and the scribes, among the anonymous and unranked, the Jerusalem Temple provided the necessary social cohesion for Judaism and the Jewish people. It acted not only as edifice but also as system of thought, with its categories of pure and impure, of sacred and profane, extending beyond the sanctuary to the Land of Israel, from the sacrificial altar to the daily tables. The Temple was already an idea more than a reality in the Dead Sea Scrollls, and it came to an end in 70 CE. Yet even beyond this end, when Rabbinic Judaism takes shape, there remains the 'Thinking of the Temple'.
In Hebrews and the Temple Philip Church argues that the silence of Hebrews concerning the temple does not mean that the author is not interested in the temple. He writes to encourage his readers to abandon their preoccupation with it and to follow Jesus to their eschatological goal. Following extensive discussions of attitudes to the temple in the literature of Second Temple Judaism, Church turns to Hebrews and argues that the temple is presented there as a symbolic foreshadowing of the eschatological dwelling of God with his people. Now that the eschatological moment has arrived with the exaltation of Christ to the right hand of God, preoccupation with the temple and its rituals must cease.