Talk:Second Temple Judaism

Relevance and verification
removed:
 * During this period (in which Jesus lived), the Oral Tradition of legal interpretation assumed increasing importance. William Nicholls, Christian antisemitism, Aronson Pub, 1993. p 50''

How is this relevant? and does the source p50 say this? In ictu oculi (talk) 06:37, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Merge with Intertestamental period?
It's not clear to me why there are two articles on what seems the same topic. Should they be merged? (See Intertestamental period). PiCo (talk) 06:41, 11 September 2015 (UTC)


 * I have no problem with that. Editor2020, Talk 18:36, 11 September 2015 (UTC)


 * What would you call the article? The Jewish name is Second Temple Period, the Protestant name is Intertestamental Period, the Catholic/Orthodox name is Deuterocanonical Period. 75.0.1.219 (talk) 20:57, 11 September 2015 (UTC) Presumably, Second Temple Judaism, this article, is about Judaism of the Second Temple Period.  75.0.1.219 (talk) 21:09, 11 September 2015 (UTC)


 * I'm not fussed about the name. But I just found another article: Second Temple period. Doesn't this seem a bit too much?PiCo (talk) 22:40, 11 September 2015 (UTC)


 * I would suggest that the main article should be Second Temple Period, which is an obvious title covering the history of the Second Temple. Second Temple Judaism could be just a subsection or a sub article, again, obviously covering the Judaism of the Second Temple Period. Intertestamental Period, the Protestant name, and Deuterocanonical Period, the Catholic/Orthodox name, should be mentioned in the main article Second Temple Period since there are reasons this period is referred to by these groups. 75.0.7.155 (talk) 07:29, 12 September 2015 (UTC)


 * I see sense in that suggestion. I'll try revising this article along those lines, drawing on the other two articles, and then it can be seen whether there should be any redirects/renamings.PiCo (talk) 05:09, 13 September 2015 (UTC)


 * It would certainly be appropriate, I would.

Keeping people up to date with what I'm doing, I'm slowly revising the History section so that it concentrates on political history - it will be much shorter eventually. The slowness is because I'm looking for sources for everything I write, and not many sources are terribly concise. After the history section is done then there will be other sections on religion (there are many aspects to that, including ways of worship and the development of the canon), on trends such as apocalypticism, non-biblical literature, etc. PiCo (talk) 22:46, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Update 2: I've finsihed the History section and done a Literature section. Neither is final of course, just an overview of where it might go. The hard part with the Literature section is that there's so much - the biblical books of course but a great deal more - who could resist a name like Ezekiel the Tragedian? (he was a Jew who wrote Greek-style tragedies, but with Biblical heroes). PiCo (talk)

Update 3: I keep forgetting to update everyone on what I'm doing. If you want to query anything I do, or make suggestions, go ahead. PiCo (talk) 11:01, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

=theology gripe=

"The origins of the authority of scripture, of the centrality of law and morality in religion, of the synagogue and of apocalyptic expectations for the future all developed in the Judaism of this period."

While a certain noticeable shift came to the religion, according to Jewish scriptures this is more akin to a neo-orthodoxy rather than any sort of religious "development". This article is decidedly more historical than theological. I would recommend adding content to the beliefs of judaism on the return from babylon and its relation to religious orthodoxy as compared to the past, and add a theological perspective to this article, perhaps in a section all on its own.

=Clunky & badly sourced: "Textual Judaism" section =

Popped on this article to find a date, and read this really badly worded section. To me parts of it are barely understandable, this line just appears in the middle for no reason: "Synagogues, in the diaspora, where Jews did not have access to the Temple.". And the only source is at the end of the whole paragraph. My area of academic expertise is first temple, so I'm not going to just re-write it, but I'll crack out my books to see if I can supply something to fix it. Noxiyu (talk) 18:02, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

"pre-exilic Israel was polytheistic and Asherah was probably worshipped in the Temple as Yahweh's consort"
Is this true? Or rather, is it the generally accepted standard scholarly view? --Richardson mcphillips (talk) 19:04, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

= The claim that 'the suffering messiah' predates Jesus, is at most a minority position =

At "The emergence of Christianity" section, the article states:

"The idea of two messiahs — one suffering and the second fulfilling the traditional messianic role— was normal in ancient Judaism, and in fact predated Jesus.[43][44][45][46]"

As far as I can tell, the only one of the sources that claims not simply that Judaism evolved after the emergence of Christianity, but that it also had a concept of a suffering messiah beforehand, is [44]: Israel Knohl (2000). The Messiah Before Jesus: The Suffering Servant of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

However, this claim of the book is considered at most a minority position, if not fringe among the academic community, as is described in this NYT article and this critical review.

I suggest the phrase to be rewritten to reflect these issues.

AnKo96X (talk) 17:20, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

This criticism is legit. The Hebrew Bible has no concept of any suffering messiah. There is a suffering servant story in Isiah that is entirely separate if read honestly. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.26.232.71 (talk) 21:53, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

Temple sacrifice
What kind of temple sacrifice, if any, was done outside of Jerusalem during the second temple period? Would there have been smaller temples in other cities? Or would people have performed animal sacrifice outside of a temple setting in those cities? - Le Coupable (talk) 09:54, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Nothing on canonisation, esp. of ritual purity
It's only in this period, around 100 BCE, that the mikveh and stone vessels are introduced as means of observing the newly canonised ritual purity laws. This major effort at creating an unified canon is a HUGE revolution, not mentioned at all in the article. Central role of Land of Israel and the High Priest are important, but when left alone, they smell of Zionist agenda. Not worse than other agendas, but here we need none of them. Arminden (talk) 17:49, 11 December 2023 (UTC)