New Testament and Second Temple Judaism

Current scholarship typically treats the wilderness temptation account as a visionary experience, symbolic description, or dramatization, identifying it as haggadic midrash rather than historical narrative.  Absence of Old and New Testament analogs for the temptation prompts a search for parallels in literature of the Second Temple Period and Apostolic Age, and a direct affinity with the psychological dualism within some of these texts is demonstrated. Early Tannaitic descriptions of disputation with a personified ‘evil inclination’ (yetzer ha ra), are shown to be more relevant analogs than later Talmudic accounts of rabbis tempted by Satan. The combination of this socio-historical evidence provides strong support for a reading of the wilderness temptation as an account of Jesus’ internal struggle with his own desires, rather than a battle of will against a supernatural evil being.

Galilee has received attention far disproportionate to its  size, because both the ministry of Jesus began in Galilee, and post-135 CE Judaism was centered there. This study maps the distribution of bronze coins found at some 250 sites in Galilee in the Hellenistic and Roman periods (c. 300 BCE–260 CE) and uses the pattern as an independent tool in evaluating historical processes in that region. Learning which coins were used as ‘small change’ by the Galilean
population provides insight into the dynamics of its ethnic composition during this time span. Employing spatial analysis of coin finds, related numismatic understandings, and archaeological and historical evidence when available, the boundaries of Jewish Galilee are traced from the
Hasmonean period onward. Drawing on the new ‘archaeology of ethnicity’ and the ‘archaeology of difference’ approaches, this study offers new insights and common sense answers to some of the controversial issues about
first-century Galilee.

Earlier this year Discovery Channel aired the programme "The Lost Tomb Of Jesus" directed by James Cameron and largely based on some investigation made by the Israeli-born, Canadian-based film maker Simcha Jacobovici. In conjunction with the film came the companion book The Jesus Family Tomb. The Discovery, the Investigation and the Evidence That Could Change History written by Jacobovici and the paleobiologist Charles Pellegrino. What was claimed was astounding: a tomb discovered during some construction work in the Jerusalem suburb of East Talpiot in 1980 contained the ossuaries of Jesus and his family because they had inscriptions saying: Some of the ossuaries were found broken. Of those found intact five had inscriptions in Hebrew or Aramaic, one in Greek, and the last one was plain. The names in Hebrew and Aramaic were extremely common in Israel during the Second Temple period and the controversy swirled about the inscription in Greek saying 'Mariamene e Mara'. In his report A Tomb with Inscribed Ossuaries in East Talpiyot, Jerusalem Prof. Amos Kloner, then Jerusalem's District Archaeologist, explained that the Greek inscription 'Mariamene e Mara' referred to a Mariamene, a variant of the name Mariam, Maryam and Marya, while 'Mara' was a contraction of Martha, this name also being "common in the Jewish feminine onomasticon." The name 'Mariamene' was central to the programme because it was interpreted as referring to Mary Magdalene. "That's the ringo, that's what sets the whole film in motion", the producer said. The claim that the Talpiot tomb was the "Jesus family Tomb", and particularly that "Mariamene e Mara" meant "Mary Magdalene, the Master" provoked bitter contestation and indignant criticism. Overnight a number of people appeared on the scene proferring interpretations of the controversial inscription in Greek. The Jesuit scripture scholar Father Joseph A. Fitzmyer, who edited the Aramaic Tobit texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls found in Qumran, cave 4 and whose impeccable critical credentials are widely known, provided the best interpretation.

A lo largo de su historia el Imperio romano tuvo que hacer frente a numerosas revueltas, debido al enorme territorio que controlaba. De entre los pueblos que las protagonizaron, los hebreos se contaban entre los que con mayor insistencia lucharon por recuperar su independencia. En cuanto a los diversos conflictos que enfrentaron a judíos y romanos, la que, a la postre, seria recordada como la Primera Guerra Judeo-romana (66-73 d.C.) pasó a la historia como el más importante de todos. Ello se debe tanto a que requirió de la participación de dos futuros emperadores al mando de las tropas romanas que debían restablecer la paz en la provincia de Judea, Vespasiano y su hijo Tito, como al hecho de que la ciudad de Jerusalén y el Gran Templo que albergaba acabaron completamente destruidos.

En el año 66 d.C. numerosos factores se unieron al odio que sectores radicales hebreos sentían hacia sus conquistadores romanos, provocando la caída del procurador de Judea, Gesio Floro, y la derrota del Legado de Siria, Cestio Galo, en Beth Horón, quien acudió con sus tropas a pacificar la región sin conseguirlo. El movimiento fue cobrando fuerza tras estos éxitos, y Jerusalén se convirtió en el epicentro del independentismo judío. Roma no podía permanecer pasiva ante estos acontecimientos y Nerón envió allí a Vespasiano, un general experimentado, para acabar de una vez por todas con el problema. La resistencia implacable que demostraron los rebeldes y los problemas políticos que, durante ese tiempo, se produjeron en Roma, provocaron que la conquista final quedara en manos de su capaz hijo Tito quien, a la postre, consiguió conquistar Jerusalén y acabar con la revuelta. El gran triunfo que se celebró en Roma para conmemorar la victoria era lo que la nueva dinastía Flavia necesitaba para afianzar su poder. Sin embargo, la campaña no finalizó hasta el año 73 d.C., tras la toma de la fortaleza de Masada, donde los últimos insurrectos prefirieron suicidarse antes de ser derrotados. El enfrentamiento se saldaría con una enorme pérdida de vidas, tanto entre los soldados romanos como entre los insurrectos judíos y la población civil. Gracias a la obra de Flavio Josefo, podemos reconstruir lo sucedido para poder así conocer con detalle uno de los grandes episodios de la Historia Antigua.

This paper deals with the underlying characterizations of Jonah in the synoptic accounts of Jesus' stilling the storm. I claim that since Jesus is diametrically opposed to Jonah in this story, his respective characterizations in the synoptic accounts may serve as an indication ab opposito of three diverse ways of characterization of Jonah, which in turn may be set in a broader context of Jonah's images in the contemporary literature. Also, the possibility and the criteria of the interpretative move applied in this paper, as well as the possibility of its further application to other storm-stilling stories, are discussed in detail.

No fir st -century Jewish death and burial is more famous than that f J 0 esus of Nazareth (d. ca. 34 ce). Accounts of Jesus' burial, which appear in each of the canonical Gospels, reflect funerary practices that are generally known from ancient Jewish literary and archaeological sources.

The Pharisee Yoḥanan b. Zakkai (aka Ribaz) was present in Galilee for the first eighteen years of his career, in the city of 'Arav, which is about twenty miles from Bethsaida. His time in Galilee overlaps the years traditionally ascribed to the historical Jesus. Ribaz's career in the Galilee is ridiculously truncated by many to three decisions recorded in Shabbat 16:7. From passages vetted by Jacob Neusner, much about Ribaz can be surmised. 1) He was consistently concerned with capital punishment. 2) He defeated opponents with artifice and calculation. 3) On several occasions Ribaz employed Talmudic reasoning to extend the parameters of punishment for sexual transgression. 4) In an especially significant passage, Ribaz is recorded as explaining a double execution to a prince significantly misnamed as "Antigonus the Hegemon", who is probably Philip the Tetrarch, whose territory included Bethsaida. 4) Ribaz explains the demand to destroy everything and every person connected with the sexual transgression of "high places." 5) He also explains the execution of a woman and the "cow" she approached for sex.
As noted, the official record of Yoḥanan b. Zakkai’s tenure in the Galilee is curiously truncated, and often reduced to three Shabbat provisions regarding covering threats with a dish. Using Talmudic reasoning, it is possible to extrapolate an overarching doctrine of how the Torah may be applied to a virtually unlimited range of transgressions and crimes. The only concept specifically attributed to Ribaz in Shabbat 16:7 regards the inevitability of transgression in law enforcement, and because of the curious phrasing of the passage, the case Ribaz commented on may have been his own.
Despite their disjointed appearance in Talmud, all the elements of Yoḥanan b. Zakkai's attempted prosecution of gay and lesbian gentiles before Philip the Tetrarch are present. Rabbi Yoḥanan justifies a double execution to Philip the Tetrarch (who had jurisdiction over Bethsaida), with the tetrarch’s Talmudic misidentification as "Antigonus the Hegemon". He also justifies the execution of a woman and the "cow" she approached for sex, which supports the prosecution case argued before Philip. Ribaz’s lifelong concern with capital crime is congruent with this case. His use of Talmudic reasoning to explain the grounds for extending Torah to additional varieties of sexual transgression is relevant to such a prosecution. Among these extensions is the justification for destroying everything and every person connected with the sexual transgression. Yohanan’s record of deception is congruent with the standard use of entrapment by law enforcement.

Our modern understanding, especially among Protestant
scholars, of Paul’s concept of freedom in Jesus Christ in Galatians
is based primarily on assumptions inherited from the Reformation,
chiefly the theology of Martin Luther. Luther approaches Galatian freedom from the standpoint of late medieval theology and soteriology,
filtered through the doctrine of justification. From Luther’s perspective,
freedom in Christ means to be free, in the Spirit, from the dominance
of the law and anything or anyone else except God. This essay reexamines and reinterprets the concept of freedom in Christ from the point of view of sociocultural dynamics in first-century Roman Empire, focusing particularly on the question of identity and its importance and role in Graeco-Roman society of that time.

Archaeology is indispensable for understanding the genesis and development of halakhah, Jewish ritual law, and the impact of its observance on the functioning of ancient Jewish societies. Using examples from my own work over the past few years, this paper seeks to illustrate the kinds of data archaeology can provide on how ancient halakhah was practiced, information which is simply not to be found in texts. The topics to be surveyed include mikva’ot (ritual baths), chalkstone vessels and tefillin (phylacteries). The unique contribution of archaeology to the study of each of these halakhic phenomena is explored with special focus on what archaeology has to teach us about these rituals which we would not have known from the texts alone. Some of the potential hazards and pitfalls of using archaeology together with texts of a halakhic nature are discussed as well, including the anachronistic use of written sources in interpreting earlier remains and the mistaken privileging of rabbinic halakhah over alternative possibilities. Archaeology and texts tend to provide very different kinds of information, and if brought together prudently, hold the potential to afford a much more comprehensive and accurate understanding of how halakhah was observed in the ancient past.

In this essay, I provide a succinct chapter-by-chapter review of Yoram Hazony's book, The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture. I begin by introducing the problem that is purported in the book, followed by a glimpse of the framework utilized for the book's methodology, as illustrated in part one of his work. Following that, I point out a number of interesting and useful philosophical observations from part two of his publication. Afterward, in an attempt to build upon Hazony's portrayal of the philosophy of Hebrew Scripture, I offer some feedback in the form of three specific critiques or "flaws" that I noticed as I was studying his important and worthwhile contribution to the topic.

With this essay, I intend to analyze some practices of self-definition well
attested in several documents of Second Temple Judaism, wherein a concept less or more coincident with our definition of minority assumes a pivotal role (Dead Sea Scrolls and 1 Enoch). My principal focus is to underline how a practice of self-definition, in terms of an actual or of a perceived minority
as regard a broader context (or a context culturally constructed as a macro context), proves the interactions between neighbouring groups that share
actual and symbolic spaces.

It is not possible today to prove beyond doubt that at least some of the Dead Sea Scrolls had Pharisaic origins. On the other hand, it is likewise not possible to prove beyond doubt that they were written by the Essenes, the Sadducees, etc. The arguments presented in this paper show that (a) the distinctive use of the key phrase מעשי התורה / ἔργα νόμου (“works of the law”) in both 4QMMT C 27 and the letters of the Pharisee Paul (Rom 3:20.28; Gal 2:16; 3:2.5.10), (b) the attribution of the halachic ideas contained in the so-called Damascus Document to the Pharisees in the Gospel of Mark (CD X, 22–23 in Mk 2:23–24) and in the Gospel of Luke (CD XI, 13–14a.16–17a in Lk 14:1–6), as well as (c) the use of the key verb פרש in the Damascus Document (CD IV, 8; VI, 14; 4Q266 XI, 18 = 4Q270 7 II, 12) and 4QMMT C 7 as possible linguistic backgrounds to the coining of the name of the Pharisees point to a connection of at least 4QMMT and the Damascus Document to the ideas and terminology of the Pharisees.
From the methodological point of view, the New Testament writings should be regarded not only as evidence of the impact of the Dead Sea Scrolls on later religious ideas, but also as important sources for the understanding of the Dead Sea Scrolls themselves. Since they are significantly earlier than the mishnaic writings, their witnesses to distinctively Pharisaic ideas and terminology, and consequently, to possible links between the Dead Sea Scrolls and the ideas and terminology of the Pharisees, should be taken into serious consideration.

This is the advertisement and schedule for the Historical Jesus forum we are hosting. Open to all who are interested, the forum looks at the Historical Jesus from an academic perspective. It employs the tools that scholarship has refined over the last century or more in order to generate in-depth discussion and cultivate a fresh understanding of Jesus in his own world. While the forum cannot cover every event, saying or activity in the life of Jesus, it establishes a framework - creates a set of lenses - through which one might be able to analyse various episodes in his life.

In the Pauline discussion regarding the nature of the resurrection body in 1 Cor 15:35-49, he employs the metaphor of the sowing of the natural (or earthly) body and the raising of the spiritual (or heavenly) body. Both kinds of bodies differ in glory and are fit for different habitats. In order to demonstrate this, in 1 Cor 15:39-42 Paul enumerates a list of the creatures who inhabit the earth followed by those who inhabit the heavens, the resurrection body being likened to the later. Scholars have generally understood the background of this list to be found in the creatures from Genesis 1, even though they do not follow the same order (as recognized by Fitzmyer, Ciampa, Rosner, etc.). Other scholars have put forth reasons for this discrepancy by suggesting that the list evokes the cosmology of popular Greek philosophy (i.e. Martin). This paper seeks to propose an alternate answer to this problem. The list of earthly and heavenly creatures here in 1 Cor 15:39-42 follows the same order of creatures as enumerated in the aniconic discourse of Deut 4:15-19. If this is in fact the text Paul is alluding to, he is more than likely participating in an exegetical tradition in the Second Temple period which reads Deut 4:15-19 as part of a wider Deuteronomic scriptural matrix employed to describe the nature of the cosmos as constructed and administered by God, appointing the celestial bodies as the gods or angels in his cosmic polis as attested in Philo, Spec. Laws 1.13-19. Reading the present text within this scriptural matrix not only supplies a strong argument for this particular enumeration of creatures, but also provides a more robust reading of the passage in its wider context, connecting the language of the abolishing of the principalities and powers in 1 Cor 15:24 with the earlier discussion in 1 Cor 6:2-3 regarding the judgment of the cosmos and the angels.

The heavenly and the earthly Jerusalem correspond to each other: the heavenly Jerusalem is a city that can be described by earthly topographical categories;  the earthly Jerusalem is a city that has heavenly traits.  The realms and qualities of both “Jerusalems” penetrate each other. Thus there is an imaginative vertical axis connecting these two cities and adding a third dimension to the respective horizontal dimensions. A fourth dimension, namely that of time, is provoked by meditating the history of Jerusalem, longing to be in Jerusalem, or expecting an eschatological Jerusalem and regaining paradise. In this contribution, the functions of the concept of the heavenly Jerusalem will be exemplified by means of Galatians 4:21-31 and 2 Baruch 4:1-7.

Since the work of E. P. Sanders in 1977 theologians have wrestled with the "New Perspective on Paul." Yet, Paul's work seems to still be interpreted through the lens of Luther and Calvin. Is it time that Paul should be interpreted back into his first century context?

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Although scholars such as Bornkam, Kummel, Mason and Dibelius, Kraabel and Wilckens, on the basis of their methodological presuppositions, maintain that the speeches are purely the literary creation of Luke, we hold that this position does not explain the evidence satisfactorily . For example the evidence that Luke was an eyewitness of some of Paul's ministry and speeches does not come only from Paul's three references to him in his letters but from the first person plural passages in Acts. These two evidences together with the undesigned and coincidental agreement between the letters of Paul and the Lukan narrative in most places on the activities of Paul  would take away the need for Luke to create from scratch his own literary speech it would be unnecessary and he implies no such procedure in his preface.  He is trusted by Theophilus to write something which would give him certainty as to the things he had already been instructed in, so to begin to write things which never did happen would not be consistent with his purpose. No doubt Theophilus would be in a position to check details through conversation with believers.
    We argue with Ramsay, Rackham, Gasque, Marshall and Bruce that the speeches are summaries of actual historical events and that Luke when writing about what Paul said had good opportunity through being a close companion of Paul to check with Paul what he had said in the speeches where he was not present and to take notes in the speeches where he was present.  Bruce summarizes the perspective very succinctly in the conclusion of his study on the speeches:
"Taken, all in all, each speech suits the speaker, the audience, and the circumstances of delivery…gives good ground in my judgment, for believing these speeches to be, not inventions of the historian, but condensed accounts of speeches actually made and therefore valuable and independent sources for the history and theology of the primitive church".