Reading Acts

In a previous post I included rabbinic literature as a possible source for the study of the Second Temple period. I hesitated to include this on my list and placed it last intentionally. I was asked on twitter by @woofboy to expand on this point. (Sorry, I do not actually know a real name!)

Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Bava Batra, printed by Daniel Bomberg, Venice, 1522.

By rabbinic literature, I primarily mean the Mishnah, a collection of legal commentaries on the Torah. The Mishnah as we know it today was not written until about A.D. 250, but there are oral traditions which likely go back to a generation or two before Jesus. The rulings of Hillel and Shammai are often discussed in the Mishnah; Hillel died about A.D. 10 and Shammai died about A.D. 30.  Before the Mishnah, the Tannaim (“the repeaters”) passed these traditional rulings along orally. After these oral traditions were written in the Mishnah, they were discussed and interpreted (the Amoraim and Savoraim), a process which eventually resulted in the Talmud. (This is a very simplified history!)

The rabbinic literature presents special problems as a source for studying the practice of the first century. First, what really goes back to the first century? In the Mishnah we read debates which occurred in the second century which sometimes cite rabbis who are from the pre-70 period. The evidence more solid when a debated topic also occurs in the Dead Sea Scrolls since we know they dated before the first century. But it is increasingly difficult to accept a tradition appearing only in the Talmud as reflecting first century practice.

A second and perhaps more perplexing problem is the issue of authority. The Mishnah and other traditions record debates between rabbis and there eventual rulings. So these debates accurately reflect the practice of the first century?  If the rabbi Hillel decided that a particular practice was lawful, does that mean that the average Jews of the first century accepted his teachings and followed his decision? The classic (and often reprinted) studies of Jewish practice by Jeremias and Schürer would likely answer both of these questions in the positive

E. P. Sanders disagrees with this in his Judaism: Practice and Belief 63 BCE – 66 CE. He argued it is not possible to know if the rabbinical decisions ever governed practice. These are only arguments, not civil law. A rabbi might state that a certain practice is not to be done, but it is quite possible the opinion never quite made it into the practice of the common people.

It is also possible rabbinical decisions in the Mishnah were ideal, perhaps the “way things ought to be” and not necessarily the way things were. The Pharisees did not have power to impose their decisions on the people in the first century. This is the biggest difference between Sanders and other scholars – the Pharisees did not control Palestine and the Mishnah does not describe actual practice in the first century.

Here is an example of what I mean. A Second Temple example of tithing multiple times a year is Tobit. He is described as giving a tenth to the Levites, spending a tenth in Jerusalem, a tenth to “those to whom it is his duty” (Tobit 1:7f). Jubilees 32:10-14 refers to a second tithe, and 32:15 mentions a tithe on cattle. Josephus also seems to say Moses required two tithes every year except the third and sixth, when three per year were required. This would be a total of fourteen tithes per seven years (Antiq. 4.69, 205, 240). The Mishnah developed the twelve-tithe system (see Ma’aser and Ma’aser Sheni), two tithes per year except the Sabbath year, and less tithe needs to be spent in Jerusalem than Josephus. An individual may have had a hard time convincing a Temple tithe collector he had already paid his share!

But did anyone actually give the tithes as described by a fictional righteous Diaspora Jew (Tobit) or the idealistic writer of Jubilees? Perhaps the Mishnah preserves a tradition which was practiced by some, or the opinion of the later rabbis about how tithes were supposed to be paid (whether they were or not).

The lesson here is to use caution when reading the rabbinic literature as “background” to the Second Temple period.

Christians have often called the Second Temple Period is sometimes called the “400 silent years” since there are no authoritative writers from the end of the Old Testament until Paul begins to write in the early 50s A.D. But this period is anything but silent! Jewish writers produced a considerable amount of literature during the Second Temple period, especially if we include Josephus and Philo. Aside from the New Testament, these are the main collections of texts a student needs to read in order to understand the Second Temple period

The Septuagint (LXX). The Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. The translation took place over a long time, although the prologue to the Greek translation of Sirach indicates all three parts were known by the end of the second century B.C. Jerome knew three different versions in the fourth century A.D. and Origin used two different in the creation of his Hexapla.

Histories. The main source is Josephus, who wrote twenty volumes on the History of The Jews and another six on the Jewish War against Rome. His autobiography was probably intended as an appendix to Jewish War. He also wrote an apology for Judaism, Against Apion. I will have a great deal more to say about Josephus later in this series.

The Apocrypha. The Apocrypha represents books popular in the Second Temple period but were not accepted as authoritative by the Jews. The earliest post-biblical writers use the Apocrypha in their own writings and worship and some early Church Fathers used some of these books as Scripture. The Apocrypha provides valuable insights into the development of the Jewish community in the period from the end of the Old Testament to the beginning of the New Testament. The origins of the sects and divisions of New Testament Judaism are seen in the Apocrypha as well as the influence of external forces like the Greeks and Romans.

The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. James Davila called the Pseudepigrapha “a motley collection of some scores of quasi-biblical books.” The name “pseudepigrapha” means “false writings.”  These are books which most believed were not inspired or authoritative.  There is no canon of the pseudepigrapha and early publications of this literature included some apocryphal books and one rabbinic text. Some texts are only available to us in translations dated centuries later than the Second Temple Period. For example, 2 Enoch (The Slavonic Apocalypse of Enoch) may date to the late first century A.D., but there are no manuscripts which date earlier than the fourteenth century and any “supposed Greek composition need not have been produced before A.D. 1000.”

An additional measure of popularity is the amount additional pseudepigraphal material created based an earlier text. 1 Enoch and 4 Ezra seem to have sparked a whole series of books which are based on the earlier versions (i.e. 2 Enoch, 3 Enoch the various other books of Ezra). That Enoch was being read and re-created to reflect a later historical context is a witness to the influence the book may have had in the first century. The main collection for this literature is James Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (2 vols; Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1983–85).

The Dead Sea Scrolls. The DSS is a collection of manuscripts dating from as early as 200 B.C. to as late as A.D. 70.  They appear to be the sacred library of a sect of Judaism known as the Essenes.  Prior to the Roman destruction of their community in Qumran, they hid the scrolls in caves. The scrolls were placed in sealed ceramic jars and hidden in caves near the Dead Sea. This collection includes copies of biblical books and literature collected by the community. It is difficult to know why a particular book appeared in the library. A given book in the library may or may not reflect the thinking of the Qumran community. Many of the documents are fragmentary so it is difficult to use them in reconstructing the thinking of the Qumran community in the first place.

Philo of Alexandria.  Philo was a Hellenistic Jew who wrote a philosophical apology for Judaism.  In doing so, he wrote 39 books of commentary on biblical books, historical-apologetic works (Against Flaccus, Embassy to Gaius), and philosophical works. He sought a philosophical interpretation of the rituals of Judaism by using Hellenistic allegorical interpretation to find ethical teachings in the rituals.

Rabbinic Literature. The Mishnah is a commentary on the Jewish Law reflecting the oral tradition of the teachers of the Law up to about AD 250. The rabbinic literature presents special problems as a source for studying the practice of the first century: what really goes back to the first century?

For most Christians the sources are an unknown territory, and perhaps intimidating. But there is nothing shocking in any of this literature. There are no hidden dark secrets which undermine Christianity and if anything in this literature shakes a Christian’s faith, that faith was fairly weak to begin with.

How should we use these sources? What cautions would you recommend before wading into this vast literature? Are there some of the limitations which will prevent full understanding of this literature?

Bibliography: James Davila, “The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha as Background to the New Testament,” The Expository Times 117.2 (2005): 53-57.

Why would someone interested in the New Testament study the history of the Greco-Roman world?  This history is important because the key to understanding the New Testament is context….If we do not try to put ourselves into the context of the original readers of the Scriptures, we can very easily read our own culture into a passage and reach wrong conclusions about what it meant to the author and therefore what it should mean to us. James S. Jeffers, The Greco-Roman World of the New Testament: Exploring the Background of Early Christianity (Downers Grove:  InterVarsity, 1999), 293.

The years between the two Testaments are critically important for understanding the New Testament. Let me offer two easy examples. First, the conflicts between Jesus and the Pharisees are often based on-going discussions in the Second Temple Period over Jewish practice. The Pharisees have a rich history prior to their role in the Gospels. Most Christians think of the Pharisees as the evil, works-for-salvation religious leaders who hated Jesus and were constantly trying to trick him into saying something worthy of death. But this is far from the case! Anyone who thinks this mischaracterization of the Pharisees is accurate is reading their own culture back into the New Testament (As Jeffers says in the quote above).

A second example is Paul’s struggle against what he calls Judaizers in Galatians. This group of Jewish Christians insisted Gentile converts submit to circumcision in order to fully convert to Judaism. There are a number of factors here, but these Pauline opponents should be understood in the light of circumcision as a boundary marker during the Maccabean Revolt. What define a person as “Jewish” 200 years before Paul’s day was the ritual of circumcision and to reject that practice struck at the heart of what it meant to be Jewish at that particular time.

The main struggle of the Jews during this 400 year period was how to integrate into a world which was decidedly not Jewish. As Greek and Roman culture came to pervade the post-exilic world, how could a Jewish person live out their lives in faithfulness to God’s Law yet also live in a pagan world?

One option is it withdraw entirely, as the Essenes will in the mid-second century. I do not think the Essenes were a monastic community who lived completely separate from other people (this is a misreading of the evidence and imposes a later Christian view of asceticism on the Essenes). But they certainly separated themselves from the mainstream of Judaism as we know it in the first century. For the group at Qumran, it appears they sought to live in a state of ceremonial cleanliness required for priests in the Temple as the waited for the messiah (or messiahs) to come to their community and lead them into battle against the “sons of darkness,” the Jews who were in charge of the Temple!

A second option is to become wholly integrated into the culture, as many Jews did. Philo of Alexandria’s brother is a chief example of this, since he rejected Judaism entirely. Although Herod the Great kept some Jewish practices, for the most part he intentionally lived as a Roman and he certainly ran his kingdom as a Roman. Throughout the Second Temple period there were Jewish people who completely Hellenized and walked away from their ancient Jewish practices.

Pharisees, Sadducees, and Christians fall in-between these two extremes since they found ways to remain loyal to God’s Word, yet also found a way to interact with the pagan world. In the case of Christianity, the motivation was to reach the lost world with the Gospel of Jesus.

This is exactly the same struggle American Christians face today as our culture becomes increasingly post-Christian. It is the same struggle Christians face in countries where Christian was never the majority religion. It is impossible to completely withdraw from the world, although some Christian communities have tried to be as separate as possible. It is also the case many Christians have become so integrated into their culture they have ceased to be Christian by any objective definition of the word.

Can the struggle of the Jewish people in the Second Temple period be a model for contemporary Christians as they struggle with similar issues?

Over the next few months I will be posting on the history and literature of the Second Temple period. I had an opportunity to teach an eight-week series in my church on the “Time between the Testaments.” This began with the Persian period and ran through the Jewish War in A.D. 70, and I included on session on Herod the Great so I could show pictures of Masada and the Western Wall from a recent trip to Israel. The series was well received and I had the chance to develop the material in more detail for a semester long undergrad class.

In teaching the class two things were clear to me. First, Most Christians have little or no knowledge of the history or literature of this period. There is some general knowledge of the Maccabean revolt and the Apocrypha as literature produced during this time, but most people attending an Evangelical church have not spent any significant time learning about this period. However, in general I think most people are hungry for this kind of study because the recognize the importance of knowing what went on before the New Testament for the purpose of understanding the New Testament. Whether or not this is a good motivation is beside the point, there is a hunger for a study like this in Christian churches.

Second, as I worked through the material in order to present it to a generally conservative, Evangelical congregation, I was struck by how applicable the struggle of the Jewish people could be to western Christians today. For the most part the Jewish people find themselves a small minority within the larger Greek or Roman world. They struggle to define what elements of their ancestral faith is important and what can be adjusted to the culture in which they finds themselves. This struggle speaks to western Christians who find themselves marginalized in a post-Christian culture. To what practices and beliefs should Christians tenaciously cling, and what should they leave behind?

Two questions before I begin. First, what do we call this kind of study? Is this “New Testament backgrounds”? Or is this an afterward to the Old Testament? By calling this period intertestamental, am I prejudicing myself to a Christian worldview?

Everett Ferguson begins his introduction to New Testament Backgrounds with a brief discussion of the misleading nature of the title of his book, “Backgrounds.” In many cases the material covered in a course like this is critically important for understanding a text properly; calling it “background” seems to make this study somewhat secondary. A few other options have been suggested, such as environment, milieu, context, culture, but the term “background” has become as accepted description for what we do in this sort of a course, or Ferguson in the textbook, however misleading it may be.

One additional problem is what to call this period of history. Traditionally the “time between the Testaments” is called the Intertestamental Period, This is a cumbersome title and not always accurate since these sorts of studies focus on the Pharisees or Samaritans for the purpose of understanding the Gospels, or go a little beyond the New Testament era by including the Jewish War.

Others have called this period “middle Judaism” to distinguish it from ancient Judaism and later rabbinic Judaism. I am attracted to this as a designation for the period from exile to the destruction of the temple, but the title also implies a three-part history of Judaism (early, middle and late). There is far more complexity in the development after the events of A.D. 70 and 135, but calling this period “late-early Judaism” is really too much.

Often this history and literature will be called the “Second Temple Period,” indicating the time from the rebuilding of the temple until A.D. 70. There is some protest to this designation because Herod’s temple is sometimes considered a third temple. Of the several suggested titles for the period, I will use Second Temple (period, history, literature) while recognizing it is not perfect.

I hope you find this series as exciting as I do, I look forward to your comments as I work through this important section of history and literature.