Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§9.5 The Historical Context
spective. Or 'foundational Judaism', on which these more specific superstructures
were erected. What matters is that there was a recognisable genus, 'Judaism',
of which there were different species. It is this generic Judaism behind,
below, within all these particular Judaisms with which we also need to be concerned.
In an earlier study I spoke of 'the four pillars of Second Temple Judaism',
139 and this categorisation still seems to me to provide a useful mode of description.
It begins from the well-recognized fact that historically Judaism has always
involved a combination of three principal factors — 'belief in God, God's
revelation of the Torah to Israel, and Israel as the people who lives by the Torah
in obedience to God'. 140 The only difference for first-century Judaism is that we
could hardly fail to add a fourth factor — the Temple.
a. Temple
There can be no doubt that the Temple was the central focus of Israel's national
and religious life prior to its destruction in 70 CE. Judea was a temple state. The
Temple, its platform brilliantly designed and engineered by Herod's architects,
141 was the hub of political and economic power, the reason for Jerusalem's
existence in the out-of-the-way Judean highlands. The power of the high priesthood
was a major factor in Hasmoneans and Romans keeping it firmly under
their control. The income generated through the sacrificial cult, the Temple tax
and the pilgrim traffic must have been immense. 142 Above all, the Temple was
the place where God had chosen to put his name, the focal point for the divinehuman
encounter and the sacrificial cult on which human well-being and salvation
depended, a primary identity marker of Israel the covenant people. 143 In the
139. Dunn, Partings ch. 2.
140. EncJud 10.387. Cf. Schwartz's discussion of 'Who is a Jew?' — people, land, and
law as the three defining elements in Jewish identity during the Second Temple period (Studies
5-15).
141. See, e.g., D. Bahat, 'The Herodian Temple', in Horbury, et al., eds., Judaism 3.38-
58; Crossan and Reed, Excavating Jesus 191-99.
142. See also Jeremias, Jerusalem, particularly 21-30, 73-84 and 126-38; D. Mendels,
The Rise and Fall of Jewish Nationalism (New York; Doubleday, 1992) ch. 10; E. Gabba, 'The
Social, Economic and Political History of Palestine, 63 BCE-CE 70', in Horbury, et al., eds., Judaism
3.94-167 (here 123-25).
143. Holmen, Jesus 275-86. See also C. T. R. Hayward, The Jewish Temple (London:
Routledge, 1996). Note the comments of A. Momigliano, 'Religion in Athens, Rome and Jerusalem
in the First Century BC', in W. S. Green, ed., Approaches to Ancient Judaism. Vol. 5:
Studies in Judaism and Its Greco-Roman Context (Atlanta: Scholars, 1985) 1-18: 'Jerusalem
was also different from any other place because its Temple had long been the symbol of the
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