Gary Gilbert
Claremont McKenna College
A story is told about Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai. When, during
the First Revolt, the Roman
general Vespasian had surrounded Jerusalem, Rabban Yohanan attempted
to convince the men of
Jerusalem to negotiate for peace. The men of Jerusalem refused.
Sensing imminent defeat,
Rabban Yohanan called upon two of his disciples, Rabbi Eliezer and
Rabbi Joshua, to carry him
out of the city concealed inside a coffin. After having successfully
made it past the
gatekeepers, the disciples carried the supposed corpse to Vespasian's
camp. At this point,
the versions of the story offer differing accounts on the meeting that
took place between
Vespasian and Rabban Yohanan /1/. All versions,
however, converge in having Vespasian grant
Yohanan permission to establish an academy in Yavneh where he could
teach his disciples.
As is the case with much of rabbinic story
telling, the historicity of the events described
is dubious and ultimately of lesser importance than the meanings one
might discern from the
telling. In the story, Rabban Yohanan departs Jerusalem in a
coffin and emerges from it outside
the city where he establishes the first rabbinic yeshiva or academy.
The coffin, I believe,
presents a powerful image related to the transformation of Judaism
after 70 CE. The feigned
death of Rabban Yohanan takes place in Jerusalem, a city which experiences
its own form of death
when the Roman army devastates the inhabitants and destroys the Temple.
In short time, however,
Rabban Yohanan emerges from the coffin. His apparent rebirth
coincides with the rebirth of
Judaism and its new center, no longer Jerusalem, but among the sages
who gather for study and
prayer. The story of Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai can be understood
to represent the
transformation of Judaism from a religion once centered in Jerusalem
and around the city's most
sacred site, the Temple, to a religion whose central features can be
experienced among the
community of sages and their activities.
This paper explores one way by which the tannaitic
rabbis, up through the compilation of
the Mishnah, sought to transform Judaism from a religion focused on
the sacrificial worship in
Jerusalem to a religion centered on temporal rituals. I hope
to show how the rabbis were able to
reconfigure traditional understandings of sacred space, particularly
those related to the Temple in
Jerusalem, into practices expressive of sacred time. While the
early rabbis evince an important
stage in reshaping the primary sacred element in Judaism from space
to time, the desire or need
to encounter sacred space persisted in Judaism.
The Jerusalem Temple was the most important
institution in Judaism during the Second
Temple period. This point is generally acknowledged, but allow
me to make a few observations
to underscore the magnitude of its influence. The Second Temple
was constructed toward the
end of the sixth century BCE and preserved the functions established
during the time of the First
Temple /2/. Like its predecessor, the Temple
served as the primary venue for worshiping God.
Through the elaborate and carefully prescribed sacrificial system,
members of Israel sought
atonement for their sins, offered thanks to God, and marked important
events. During the three
pilgrimage festivals (Passover, Sukkot, and Shavuot), thousands of
Jews journeyed to Jerusalem
to make offerings to God at the Temple /3/.
Whatever the actual numbers, the writings of Philo
and Josephus make clear that Jews took seriously the biblical injunction
to go up to Jerusalem
/4/.
Respect for the Temple was not limited to
Jews living in the Land of Israel. Jews
throughout the diaspora, most of whom probably never set foot in Jerusalem,
expressed their
loyalty and reverence toward the Temple in both word and deed.
The author of the Letter of
Aristeas, who presumably wrote while living in the Diaspora, possibly
Egypt, describes in
glowing terms the Temple, its activities, and the priests who officiated
over them /5/. The
author concludes his description as follows: "I am certain that everyone
who comes near to the
sight of the things described above will come to astonishment and indescribable
wonder, and will
be stirred in mind by the holy quality which pertains to each detail."
/6/ Jews lavished not only
their praise but also their wealth upon the Temple. From all
around the diaspora, Jews, most if
not all of them adult and male, contributed a half-shekel annually
to support the Temple's
operation. The practice began during the time of Nehemiah and
was modified in the middle
second century /7/. While we have no specific
data on the number of Jews who made
contributions, references found in Josephus and the Roman writers Cicero
and Tacitus suggest
that the percentage was substantial /8/.
As another sign of reverence for the Temple,
Jews adhered almost completely to the
prohibition against offering sacrifices to God outside Jerusalem /9/.
Fewer than a handful of
such sites existed and even those had limited influence /10/.
Philo, for example, a resident of
Alexandria lived in proximity to the most famous non-Jerusalem temple.
Nevertheless, the
temple at Leontopolis appears to have made little if any contribution
to his thinking or sense of
Jewish identity. When Philo wishes to offer sacrifices to God,
he travels to Jerusalem and not
Leontopolis /11/. Worshiping God through a
single sanctuary was a remarkable feature of
Judaism, particularly given the contemporary religious context in which
numerous temples to a
given deity could be found spread throughout the lands of Mediterranean
basin.
These expressions of reverence, awe, and pride
help us to understand the tremendous
sense of loss that Jews felt in the wake of its destruction.
In 4 Ezra, one of the few contemporary
Jewish sources to reflect upon the events of 70 CE, we can begin to
observe how Jews reacted to
the devastation in Jerusalem and the razing of the Temple.
For you see that our sanctuary has been laid
waste, our altar thrown down, our
temple destroyed; our harp has been laid low,
our song has been silenced, and our
rejoicing has been ended; the light of our
lampstand has been put out, the ark of
our covenant has been plundered, our holy
things have been polluted, and the
name by which we are called has been profaned;
our free men have suffered
abuse, our priests have been burned to death,
our Levites have gone into captivity,
our virgins have been defiled, and our wives
have been ravished; our righteous
men have been carried off, our little ones
have been cast out, our young men have
been enslave and our strong men made powerless.
And, what is more than all, the
seal of Zion--for it has now lost the seal
of glory, and has been given over into the
hands of those that hate us. /12/
While Jews living through 70 CE did not know it, the events Israel suffered
in that year became
the first of a two-stage catastrophe. In 132 Simon bar Kosiba,
better known to history as Bar
Kokhba, organized a small army and launched a second revolt against
Rome. Despite some
initial military success, Bar Kokhba's army never realized its goal
of recapturing Jerusalem and
rebuilding the Temple /13/. In the aftermath
of the defeat, the Roman Emperor Hadrian had the
city of Jerusalem officially transformed into the Roman colony of Aelia
Capitolina /14/, forbade
Jews on penalty of death to enter the city /15/,
and erected a temple to Jupiter the site of the
destroyed Temple /16/. Bar Kokhba had raised
the hopes of many Jews, whether for the
inauguration of the messianic period or for a more mundane restoration
of Jewish political and
religious sovereignty /17/. In the aftermath
of Bether and Bar Kokhba's death, however, hope
mutated into resignation and despair. The hope for building a
third Temple was, however, not
entirely extinguished. Nevertheless, the devastation left by
the two revolts forced the majority
of Jews, and here I include the majority of the rabbinic community,
to rethink the practices of
Judaism by creating new rituals and seeking new understandings for
old traditions.
It should be noted that the Temple and its
sacrificial rituals were not the only venues in
which Jews worshiped God. By the end of the Second Temple period,
Jews gathered in
synagogues, studied Torah, and prayed to God, all outside the purview
of the Temple /18/.
Despite the existence of non-sacrificial forms of worship, the Temple
retained its central and
preeminent position. I believe it is not overly dramatic, therefore,
to suggest that with the
destruction of the Temple the future of Judaism hung in the balance.
How could a religion that
for centuries had centered around a sacrificial system continue?
How would the basic religious
activities of atonement and thanksgiving take place? This essay
focuses on one way the
emerging rabbinic community, particularly as articulated in the Mishnah,
responded to this
situation. I will argue that in reconstructing Judaism, tannaitic
rabbis looked to the Temple as
a model from which to shape and justify new rituals. In so doing,
the rabbis transformed the
sacredness of space associated with the Temple into a sacredness of
time associated with prayer
and festivals.
The dialectical method I see occurring in
the tannaitic period represents only part of the
rabbinic response to the destruction of the Temple. This tendency
appears to shift in the amoraic
period as the rabbis displace the use of dialectic for metaphor and
in the process propose various
actions, namely prayer, study, and charity, as actual replacements
for the Temple and its lost
powers. In addition to this shift within the rabbinic community, other
Jews, and possibly some
rabbis among them, persisted in their attempt to recreate venues of
sacred space.
Many scholars examining responses to
the destruction of the Temple have observed that
the Mishnah and much of tannaitic literature is remarkably silent on
the subject. Were the early
rabbis incapable to expressing their grief? Did the rabbis persevere
through their tears, excising
the memory of the catastrophe from their thoughts /19/?
The silence becomes even more
remarkable when compared to the more frequent reactions found in the
Talmuds and other
amoraic literature. While the Mishnah is largely silent about
the destruction, it has little problem
portraying the Temple as a viable, functioning institution, including
ample material related to the
physical dimensions of the Temple, its operations, and regulatory practices.
Indeed, the sheer
magnitude of material has proven to be something of a puzzle.
Why did the rabbis devote
considerable attention to a defunct institution /20/?
The answer, according to Jacob Neusner,
involves the Temple's role in the Mishnah as a device to "reorder world
off course and
adrift...The Mishnah is a document of imagination and fantasy, describing
how things are' out of
the shreds and remnants of reality, but in larger measure, building
social being social being out of
beams of hope." /21/ In this paper I
wish to build on the idea of the remnant of reality by
examining two instances in which the rabbis cite Temple practices as
the model for the
construction of new rituals. The two examples I discuss relate
to the recitation of the Shema
prayer and the observance of the festival of Sukkot.
The Mishnah begins by discussing the recitation
of the Shema.
Mishnah, Berakhot, 1.1:
A. From what time in the evening
may the Shema be recited?
B1. From
the time when the priests eat of their heave-offering...
B2. ...until
the end of the first watch. So Rabbi Eliezer.
C. But the Sages say: until midnight.
D1. Rabban
Gamaliel says: until the rise of dawn. His sons once returned [after
midnight] from a wedding feast. They said to him, "We have not recited
the
Shema." He said to them, "If the dawn has not risen you are [still]
bound to recite
it.
D2. Moreover, wheresoever the Sages
prescribe until midnight,' the duty of
fulfilment lasts
until the rise of dawn."
E.
The duty of burning the fat pieces and the members [of the animal offerings]
lasts
until the rise of dawn; and for all [offerings] that must be consumed "the
same
day," the duty lasts until the rise of dawn.
F. They then have the Sages said:
until midnight? To keep a man far from
transgression.
The Mishnah opens with a question. When is the recitation of the
evening Shema to take place
(A)? Three answers are proposed. The first response, offered
by Rabbi Eliezer, identifies the
terminus a quo (B1) as the time when the priests eat their heave-offering
and the terminus ad
quem (B2) as the first watch. The Sages and Rabban Gamaliel (C
and D1), the two other
respondents, offer no alternative to the terminus a quo, but suggest
new possibilities for the
terminus ad quem. The Sages argue that the duration for reciting
the Shema may last until
midnight. Rabban Gamaliel extends the period to dawn.
Three matters are relevant to our discussion.
First, all parties identify a particular
sacrificial ritual, eating from the tamid sacrifice, for determining
the appropriate period to
recite the Shema. The connection made between eating performing a ritual
act in the Temple and the
appropriate time to pray appears to be novel. Prayer was an important
element in the religious
life of many Jews in the Second Temple period /22/.
Some Jews even offered prayers at
specific times during the day /23/. Nothing
in the admittedly meager sources we posses,
however, indicates that Jews in the Second Temple made the connection
presented here. The
rabbis, therefore, should be credited with developing the identification
between a sacrificial
ritual required to take place within the sacred confines of the Temple
and prayer which could take
place anywhere but had to be recited within a set period of time /24/.
Secondly, we should note that the choice to
associate the recitation of the Shema with the
tamid offering was neither necessary nor obvious. The gemara
of the Babylonian Talmud raises
alternatives to sacrificial practices, including natural phenomenon
(the appearance of stars) /25/
and social events (when a poor man eats his evening meal), as the appropriate
measure for when
to recite the evening Shema /26/. In the Mishnah
itself, Rabban Gamaliel justifies his proposal
that the period of recitation last until dawn by citing the example
of his sons who returned from
a celebration after midnight without having recited the Shema.
The editor of the Mishnah,
apparently troubled by Rabban Gamaliel's idiosyncratic explanation,
offers an alternative
position with which to justify dawn as the terminus ad quem (E).
The Mishnah notes that dawn
can be considered a legitimate model for determining the issue of the
Shema because it marks the
termination of certain sacrificial practices, such as the burning the
fat pieces and the consumption
of meat required to be eaten on the same day the animal is sacrificed.
The Mishnah, in other
words, reinforces Rabban Gamaliel's position with reference to sacrificial
practices. This
passage ends with the observation that although it might appear that
Rabban Gamaliel and the
Sages disagree, in actuality they do not since wherever the Sages speak
about midnight they have
dawn in mind.
Thirdly, the Mishnah offers no suggestion
that the recitation of the Shema is to be
understood as a replacement for the tamid sacrifice or sacrificial
rituals in general. The Shema
does not replace sacrifice acts; rather sacrificial acts become the
model and justification for the
development of new liturgical practices.
The second example also comes from the Mishnah,
from tractate Sukkot. The festival of
Sukkot was the most important of the three pilgrimage festivals celebrated
in Israel during the
First and Second Temple periods. For seven days, Jews made offerings
to God, feasted, and
dwelt in booths /27/. Some modifications
and additional ceremonies were introduced during
the Second Temple period /28/. In addition
to the sacrifices, a second major ritual associated
with Sukkot was the carrying of the four species--the fruit of the
hadar tree, later identified as an
ethrog, and branches from three different trees, later identified as
palm, myrtle, and willow, and
collectively referred to as the lulav. Worshipers carried these
objects in processions conducted
within the walls of the Temple. Carrying the lulav, therefore,
was an act inseparable from the
Temple. The destruction of the Temple left uncertain the future
of this practice. As we read in
tractate Sukkot, Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai issued an ordinance that
essentially freed the
carrying of lulav of its spatial constraints.
Sukkah 3.12 (also Rosh Hashanah 4.3):
A. Beforetime the lulav was carried
seven days in the Temple,
B. but in the provinces one day
only.
C. After the Temple was destroyed,
Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai ordained that in the
provinces it
should be carried seven days,
D. in memory of the Temple;
E. Also, he ordained that on the
whole of the Day of Waving it should be forbidden
to eat of new
produce.
I would point to three features about this passage that are most relevant
to our discussion.
First, Sukkot was a festival with clear and close connections with
the Temple. The sacrificial
offerings, carrying the lulav, and other rituals, such as the water
drawing ritual described in
early rabbinic texts, were all performed within the Temple's precinct.
Second, Rabban Yohanan ben
Zakkai ruled that following the destruction of the Temple the celebration
of Sukkot should
change. Jews in the Diaspora should now carry the lulav for seven
days (C), just as Jews had
done in the Temple (A). We know little about how Jews celebrated
Sukkot outside of Jerusalem.
Philo mentions the construction of booths in Egypt and the passage
before us suggests that Jews
in the Diaspora carried the lulav for one day during the festival.
Rabban Yohanan's decision
introduced a new practice into the celebration of Sukkot. Third,
the new ritual should be
conducted in memory of the Temple (D). By reformulating the practice
of carrying the lulav
from one day to seven, Rabban Yohanan created a new ritual for Jews
living outside the land of
Israel. They would now celebrate Sukkot by carrying the lulav for seven
days. Temple rituals
once again served as the model and justification for this new practice.
Jews would now gather
during the time of Sukkot and celebrate the festival with rituals once
performed in the Temple.
In actuality, the concept of sacred time was nothing new to the ritual
of carrying the lulav.
Biblical commands identified not only the location where the act was
to be performed, but also
the date on which it was to begin and its duration. Nevertheless,
Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai's
decision transformed the celebration of Sukkot so that it was divorced
from any spatial
attachment. The new tradition focused exclusively on the performance
of the ritual at the time
of Sukkot without consideration for the location of the act.
The rabbinic discussion reviewed here legitimized
new rituals for a temple-bereft
Judaism by invoking the defunct Temple. The tremendous sanctity
attached to the Temple lent a
similar aura to the new temporal occasions, in our examination prayer
and festival observance.
The shift from spatial to temporal perspectives of the sacred is not
absolute, but rather a
noticeable migration from one side to the other on a spectrum whose
termini are space and time.
The Temple rituals invoked by the rabbis, the offering of the tamid
and the festival of Sukkot,
also possessed temporal dimensions. The tamid was performed at
certain times of the day,
evening and morning; Sukkot was celebrated for eight days beginning
on the 15th of Tishri.
Despite such associations, the sacredness of these events rested more
on the location where they
were performed. The Temple and the space it occupied, more than any
aspect of time, imparted a
sacred quality to sacrifices offered on the altar and carrying the
lulav. Based on actions
inextricably linked with the Temple in Jerusalem, early rabbis developed
their new rituals. The
Shema will be recited in the evening, during the time period when the
tamid and other sacrifices
had been offered at the Temple; the lulav will be carried during the
days of Sukkot just as had
been done at, and in memory of, the Temple.
I would characterize the transformation of
sacredness as having occurred through a
dialectical process. The term itself has a long and complex history.
I use it here to mark "the
development of reason through a process of self-contradiction and the
overcoming of that
contradiction." /29/ The progression of argument,
counter-argument, and resolution, typical of
dialectic, is commonplace in rabbinic writing, particularly in halakhic
discussions /30/.
Talmudic arguments are often structured in a dialectical format.
Rabbi X will propose the
justification for a given position to which Rabbi Y will raise objections.
Rather than an explicit
opposition between two rabbis, the cases examined here utilize dialectic
in a inferred, but
nonetheless real, fashion. The binary structure presumes
the importance of sacred space and its
contradiction, the absence of that space. As noted earlier in
the paper, the Temple was the most
important religious institution in the Second Temple period.
It exhibited increasing levels of
sanctity as one progressed from outer courtyard to inner courtyard
to altar to sanctuary to the
most sacred of all, the inner sanctum or holy of holies. The
rabbis, however, lived in a time
when this space of unparalleled sanctity no longer existed. How
would the rabbis respond? How
would they work through this contradiction? One response, and
I am not suggesting the only
response, was to create new time-bound rituals out of the remnants
once belonging to the Temple
and the physical space it once occupied.
The dialectical process employed in these
instances evinces a reciprocal relationship
between the Temple of the past and the rituals of the present.
In this structure, each side of the
binary opposition responds to and influences the other /31/.
By constructing new meaning for
the rituals in light of Temple practices, not only has the current
practice of Judaism undergone a
significant change, but so too has the understanding of the past been
altered. The Temple
contributes to the formation of new liturgical and festival structures,
while at the same time these
very structures provide a vehicle by which the Temple may persist as
a meaningful category in
Jewish thought. This point is stated explicitly in the passage
from Sukkot where Rabban
Yohanan urges that carrying of the lulav for seven days should be performed
in memory of the
Temple. Not only does the Temple and its practices shape the
formation of new rituals, but these
same rituals perpetuate the memory and the sacredness of the Temple.
By associating the
Temple with the new rituals, the rabbis created a hermeneutical structure
that permitted the
understanding of older traditions, particularly those focused on the
Temple, to inform the
transformation of religious practices and retained the Temple as an
active and meaningful
concept in Judaism.
In later generations, rabbis appear to have
moved away from the dialectical process
described here and developed a different response to the catastrophe
of the Temple's destruction.
Rather than harkening back to the Temple for guidance on how to construct
new rituals, the
rabbis affirmed that certain activities should be considered as legitimate
replacements for the
Temple. By the time of the Babylonian Talmud, for instance, one
who studies of the biblical
passages detailing the sacrificial worship was thought to be acting
as if he were actually making
the sacrifice itself /32/. In Avot de Rabbi
Natan, Rabbi Joshua upon seeing the Temple in ruins
laments to Rabban Yohanan, "Woe unto us! that this , the place where
the iniquities of Israel
were atoned for, is laid waste!" Rabban Yohanan replied, "My
son, be not grieved; we have
another atonement as effective as this. And what is it?
It is acts of loving-kindness, as it is
said, For I desire mercy and not sacrifice (Hos 6.6).'" /33/
The notion that study, charity, and
prayer can function as legitimate substitutes for the lost Temple becomes
commonplace beginning at
this time. Post-talmudic thought develops this idea further,
understanding that the Temple was
meant to exist for a limited period, and the switch from Temple to
prayer, study, and charity was
part of a divine plan.
Despite a movement within the rabbinic community
emphasizing the temporal over the
spatial dimension of the sacred, many Jews remained deeply wedded to
the notion of sacred
space. Within 70 years of the destruction of the first Temple,
Bar Kokhba led an revolt against
Rome with the goal of regaining control of Jerusalem and rebuilding
the Temple. He announced
his intentions on his silver tetradrachms/34/, the
largest and most valuable of the coins he
minded. In each year of the war, these coins displayed the facade
of a temple on the obverse and
the lulav and ethrog on the reverse /35/.
Another example of the value Jews continued to place
on sacred space can be observed in the synagogues of the fourth through
sixth centuries. Floor
mosaics from two famous synagogues of this period, those at Hammath
Tiberius and at Beth
Alpha, included a panel displaying various Temple objects, including
an ark, menorot, lulavs,
ethrogs, shofars, and shovels. Interestingly, the Temple is not
pictured, and, I believe, for good
reason. Just as the synagogue exhibits the sacred implements
once used to conduct the Temple's
rituals, the space it now inhabits possesses the sanctity once belonging
to the now absent Temple.
The most dramatic example of the continuing importance of sacred space
for many Jews came in
the fourth century. In 363 Jews gathered in Jerusalem to rebuild
the Temple, permission having
been granted by the Roman Emperor Julian. Jews greeted the prospect
of a third Temple with
tremendous joy. While some objected, many Jews embraced the possibility
that the traditional
sacred space of Judaism would once more exist /36/.
Natural and political events, a possible
earthquake and the death of Julian, however, put an end to the endeavor.
The attempts to reintroduce sacred space failed
or were left incomplete: Bar Kokhba was
defeated, Julian's plan was aborted, the synagogue failed to achieve
the Temple's level of
sanctity. While an interest in rebuilding or reinscribing sacred
space endured, the rabbis
gradually reoriented Judaism toward a worship of God based primarily
in time rather than in
space. Jacob Neusner has noted a shift in rabbinic Judaism from
space to timelessness. My
observations here suggest that the rabbis were interested not only
in creating a timeless realm,
but in constructing new understandings of time itself which could be
calculated by invoking the
practices once associated with sacred space.
NOTES
1. Vespasian either rewards R. Yohanan for correctly
prophesying his impending elevation to
Emperor (b. Gitt 56b, ARNB 6; Lam.R. 1.31; Midr. Mishle 15) or grants
Rabban Yohanan,
whom Vespasian already knew as his friend, a wish (ARNA 4).
2. Sarah Japhet, "The Temple in the Restoration
Period: Reality and Ideology," USQR 44 (1991)
195-251.
3. On the number of people who attended the festivals,
see the estimations made by Joachim
Jeremias, Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus (Philadelphia: Fortress,
1966) 77-84.
4. On the crowds who gathered for Sukkot, see
Philo, Spec. Leg. 1.69; Josephus, BJ 2.515; AJ
17.254; for Passover, see Josephus, BJ 6.422-26; AJ 20.106.
5. Letter of Aristeas 83-99. On the question
of dating and provenance of the text, see Emil
Schrer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ
(revised edition)
(Edinburgh, 1986) 3.678-84.
7. Nehemiah imposed an annual one-third shekel
tax (Neh 10.32); By the time of Josephus, the
contribution had been raised to a half-shekel (AJ 18.312; cf. Matt
17.24), possibly in keeping
with the tax recorded in Exod. 30.13.
8. Cicero reports that it was customary for Jews
to send gold to Jerusalem and cites substantial
amounts seized in the cities of Asia Minor by the Roman magistrate
Flaccus (Pro Flacco, 28.66-69).
See also Tacitus, Histories, 5.5.1. Josephus notes that Jews
throughout the world and also
sebomenoi send contributions to the Temple (AJ 14.10).
9. Israelite religion during the First Temple
period included numerous sanctuaries in both the
northern and southern kingdoms. The temple at Elephantine in
Egypt existed in the fifth century
and dates perhaps to the First Temple period. Beginning
with the reign of Josiah, the biblical
commands to build the sanctuary "in this place" were understood as
a reference to Jerusalem.
10. The most noticeable exception was the Temple
at Leontopolis in Egypt founded by Onias IV
in the second century BCE. See Josephus, BJ 1.33; 7.427; AJ 20.236.
Josephus presents an
inconsistent picture of the temple, at one point identifying it as
like the Temple in Jerusalem and
later as unlike the Temple. A second possible site is Sardis.
Josephus (JA 14. 259-61) records a
document containing a decree of the council and people of Sardis that
a place be given to the
Jews where they may gather together and offer their ancestral prayers
and sacrifices (thusias).
Marcus in the Loeb edition suggests that "thusias" "must here be used
in the larger sense of
"offerings." In an alternative explanation, Michael Stone takes
the term thusias in its normal
sense as sacrificial offering (Michael Stone, Scriptures, Sects, and
Visions [Philadelphia, 1980]
80).
13. In favor of the position that Bar Kokhba
did not occupy Jerusalem, see Leo Mildenberg,
"Bar Kokhba Coins and Documents," HSCP 84 (1980) 320-25.
14. The founding of the Roman colony was a process
that began before the revolt broke out and
was completed not long after the final battle at Bether.
15. Justin Martyr, Apology 1.47; Dialogue with Trypho 16; Tertullian, Against the Jews 13.
17. Bar Kokhba appears not to have considered
himself to be the messiah, despite what some of
his supporters may have thought. See Mildenberg, 313-15.
18. On prayer: 2 Enoch 51.4-52.3; Philo, Spec.
Leg. 1.272; Plant. 126 (who values prayer over
sacrifice); on Torah study see Philo, Vita Mosis 2.215-16; Spec. Leg.
2.61-62; Acts 15.21 (the
author may have exaggerated the claim made by James, but I find it
difficult to imagine that the
connection between Torah and synagogue was made up completely).
See also, Lee I Levine,
"The Second Temple synagogue: The Formative Years," The Synagogue in
Late Antiquity, ed.
Lee I. Levine (Philadelphia: ASOR, 1987) 7-31.
19. Important literature on the subject includes,
Alan J. Avery-Peck "Judaism without the
Temple" The Mishnah," Eusebius, Christianity, and Judaism, eds. Harold
W. Attridge and Gohei
Hata (Detroit: Wayne State University, 1992) 409-31; Baruch Bokser,
"Rabbinic Responses to
Catastrophe: From Continuity to Discontinuity," PAAJR 50 (1983); Shaye
S. D. Cohen, "The
Destruction: From Scripture to Midrash, Proofexts 2 (1982) 18-39; Robert
Goldenberg, "The
Broken Axis: Rabbinic Judaism and the Fall of Jerusalem," JAAR 45,
supp. (1977) 869-82; and,
"Early Rabbinic Explanations of the Destruction of Jerusalem," JJS
33 (1982) 518-25; Alan
Mintz, Hurban: Responses to Catastrophe in Hebrew Literature (New York:
Columbia
University, 1984); David Nelson, "Response to the Destruction of the
Second Temple in the
Tannaitic Midrashim," (dissertation, New York University, 1991); and,
Jacob Neusner, in
various places but especially, "Map Without Territory: Mishnah's System
of Sacrifice and
Sanctuary," Method and Meaning in Ancient Judaism (Missoula: Scholars
Press, 1979) 133-53;
and, Ancient Israel After Catastrophe: The Religious World View of
the Mishnah
(Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1983).
20. Neusner's discussions on this topic appear
in many of his books, including Judaism: The
Evidence from the Mishnah (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1981).
21. Jacob Neusner, Rabbinic Judaism, The Documentary
History of its Formative Age, 70-660
CE (Bethesda, MD: CDL Press, 1994) 111.
23. Dan. 6.10, 13; 2 Enoch 51.4; Acts 3.1.
24. While I believe this to be the case, my
argument is ultimately no dependent on its validity.
Even had earlier Jewish groups, the Pharisees perhaps, made the same
connection, the rabbis
count it as their own.
28. Literature from the Second Temple
period suggests the practice of circumambulation
around the altar (Jubilees 16), the recitation of prayers (Jubilees
16), and the building of sukkot
in the Diaspora (Philo, Flaccus 116-24). Rabbinic literature
also identifies the willow
procession, water libation, and a ritual known as simhat beit hasho'eva
(rejoicing at the place of
water drawing). See the discussion in Jeffrey L. Rubenstein,
The History of Sukkot in the
Second Temple and Rabbinic Periods, BJS 302 (Atlanta: Scholars Press,
1995) 31-161.
29. Stephen N. Dunning, Dialectical Readings: Three
Types of Interpretation (University Park,
PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997) 11.
30. Among other treatments, see, Jacob Neusner, Talmudic
Dialectics: Tractate Berakhot and the
Divisions of Appointed Times and Women (South Florida Studies in the
History of Judaism, No
127; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996).
34. Rubenstein remarks that the meaning of the
frequent presence of the lulav in Jewish
iconography is difficult to determine ("Sukkot," 99). It is true
that symbols are often multivalent
and thus can carry several meanings some of which are difficult to
interpret. Given that the type
is used on a silver coin of large denomination and that it is consistently
paired with a temple
facade on the obverse, the lulav in this instance appears to bear a
connection with the Temple.
35. Ya'akov Meshorer, Ancient Jewish Coinage
(Dix Hills, NJ: Amphora, 1982) pl. 20, coin 1;
pl. 21, coins 12, 13, pl. 22, coins 14, pl. 25, coins 53, 54.
36. On Jewish reactions to Julian's
decision, see Michael Avi-Yonah, The Jews Under Roman
and Byzantine Rule (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1984) 193-94.