Bibliography
| Title: An Introduction to First Century Judaism. Jewish Religion and History in the Second-Temple Period Type: Book Year: 1996 Abstract: "It has been suggested that if modern Judaism may be compared to a tree with many branches, then first-century Judaism is analogous to a jungle in its complexity. Those daunted by that jungle should welcome as a trusty guide Lester Grabbe's accessible introduction to some of the important movements within Judaism in the period of the Second Temple, with a focus on the first centuries B.C.E.- C.E. Grabbe's book has many admirable qualities likely to commend it to beginning students (and others), not least clarity of expression and organisation, reliability, and brevity. An opening chapter provides a review of the political history of Judaea from the Exile to the Bar Kokhba Revolt, and guides the reader through some of the more important historical issues of the period. This section also includes a useful introduction to the literary sources and related methodological problems, sensitive to recent scholarship, and offering an attractive, open-ended approach to questions raised. Brevity inevitably demands sacrifices and strict selectivity from this vast subject area (and in many cases Grabbe makes good what cannot be included by frequent cross-reference to his much larger work Judaism from Cyrus to Hadrian). The focus on Judaean history, however, to the exclusion of information about the Diaspora, together with relatively little discussion elsewhere of indisputably Diaspora evidence such as the work of Philo of Alexandria, is limiting in a book about early Judaism, as is the fact that his discussion of sources does not deal with material evidence. Key to Grabbe's approach to Jewish religious practice and ideology in this period is the now widespread view (of which he has long been a notable proponent) that reconstructions of early Judaism should avoid models which suggest the existence of an "orthodox" or "monolithic" form of Judaism against which other forms were judged as deviant or heretical. Instead he proposes to discuss early Judaism in terms of certain overlapping "currents" which he identifies as significant in early Judaism. Here Grabbe's introduction to Judaism differs from many in that it does not seek to present a series of practices and beliefs which might be regarded as common to most forms of Judaism. The body of the book illustrates instead a number of these currents - distinguished as "textual Judaism", "revolutionary Judaism", "eschatological Judaism", and "inverted Judaism", though without any implication that they should be seen as strictly separate from each other. Grabbe's discussion of "textual Judaism" deals with those forms of Judaism which were particulary concerned with the transmission, interpretation and creation of sacred written traditions: he rightly reminds us that is was above all the priests, more than any other group, who were likely to have been engaged in these activities (though Philo is a notable example to the contrary). In view of Grabbe's emphasis on the centrality of the priesthood and Temple, however, it is surprising that this introduction does not address the significance of the cult in any detail. The question of the interpretation of tradition also provides the opportunity for a cautious evaluation of Josephus "Jewish philosophies": Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes. Grabbe's review of "revolutionary Judaism" shows the existance of a "strong core of resistance thought" (to foreign rule) in the later Second Temple Period and beyond. This, together with a immediate and distant future. Unusually for an introduction to early Judaism, Grabbe provides a final, more speculative discussion of "inverted Judaism" - that is, Gnostic texts which reinterpretated Jewish tradition in such a way as to lead to an anti-Jewish outlook - suggesting that a Gnostic current can be detected in Jewish writings before C.E. 70. Readers should find in all this persuasive evidence of Grabbe's final conclusion: "The complexity of the religious phenomenon we call Second Temple Judaism forces itself more and more upon us" (119)". Keywords: Cultural and Religious History of Ancient Judaism |