Backgrounds of Early Christianity

Everett Ferguson

• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9781467422390
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Having long served as a standard introduction to the world of the early church, Everett Ferguson's Backgrounds of Early Christianity has been expanded and updated in this third edition. The book explores and unpacks the Roman, Greek, and Jewish political, social, religious, and philosophical backgrounds necessary for a good historical understanding of the New Testament and the early church. New to this edition are revisions of Ferguson's original material, updated bibliographies, and fresh discussions of first-century social life, of Gnosticism, and of the Dead Sea Scrolls and other Jewish literature.

5. JUDAISM

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Collections of Sources

Alexander, P., ed. Judaism. Textual Sources for the Study of Religion Series. Manchester, 1984.

Nickelsburg, George W. E., and Michael E. Stone. Faith and Piety in Early Judaism: Texts and Documents. Philadelphia, 1991.

Feldman, L., and M. Reinhold. Jewish Life and Thought among Greeks and Romans: Primary Readings. Minneapolis, 1996. (With rich bibliographies.)

Schiffman, Lawrence H. Texts and Traditions: A Source Reader for the Study of Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism. Hoboken, 1998.

(See further the section on Jewish Literature.)

Reference Works

The Jewish Encyclopedia. 12 vols. New York, 1901–1910.

Encyclopedia Judaica. 16 vols. Jerusalem, 1971–1972.

Cambridge History of Judaism. Vol. 1: Introduction: The Persian Period, W. D. Davies and L. Finkelstein. Vol. 2: The Hellenistic Age, ed. W. D. Davies and L. Finkelstein. Vol. 3: The Early Roman Period, ed. William Horbury, W. D. Davies, and John Sturdy. Cambridge, 1984, 1989, 1999.

Dictionary of Judaism in the Biblical Period, 450 B.C.E. to 600 C.E. Ed. Jacob Neusner and William Scott Green. 2 vols. New York, 1996. 1 vol. Peabody, 2000.

Basic Secondary Works

Schalit, A., ed. World History of the Jewish People. Vols. 6-8. New Brunswick, N.J., 1972–.

Schürer, Emil. The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (175 B.C.–A.D. 135). Revised and edited by Geza Vermes and Fergus Millar. 3 vols. Edinburgh, 1973–1987.

De Jonge, M., and S. Safrai, eds. Compendia Rerum Iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum. Section One, The Jewish People in the First Century. 2 vols. Edited by S. Safrai and M. Stern. Assen, 1974, 1976.

Hengel, Martin. Judaism and Hellenism. 2 vols. Philadelphia, 1974. See review by L. Feldman in JBL 96 (1977):371-82.

Kraft, Robert, and George Nickelsburg. Early Judaism and Its Modern Interpreters. Philadelphia, 1986.

Sanders, E. P. Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63 B.C.E.–66 C.E. Philadelphia, 1992.

Neusner, Jacob, ed. Judaism in Late Antiquity. Leiden, 1995–.

Supplementary Works

Davies, W. D. Paul and Rabbinic Judaism. London, 1955.

Schoeps, H. J. Paul, the Theology of the Apostle in the Light of Jewish Religious History. Philadelphia, 1961.

Neusner, J. A History of the Jews in Babylonia. 5 vols. Leiden, 1965–1970.

Alon, G. Jews, Judaism, and the Classical World. Jerusalem, 1977.

Sanders, E. P. Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion. Philadelphia, 1977.

Oppenheimer, A. The ‘Am Ha-aretz, A Study in the Social History of the Jewish People in the Hellenistic-Roman Period. Leiden, 1977.

Green, Wm. S., ed. Approaches to Ancient Judaism: Theory and Practice. Missoula, Mont., 1978.

Sandmel, S. Judaism and Christian Beginnings. New York, 1978.

Stone, M. Scriptures, Sects, and Visions: A Profile of Judaism from Ezra to the Jewish Revolts. Philadelphia, 1980.

Sanders, E. P., ed. Jewish and Christian Self-Definition. Vol. 2, Aspects of Judaism in the Greco-Roman Period. Philadelphia, 1981.

Cohen, Shaye J. D. From the Maccabees to the Mishnah. Philadelphia, 1987.

Neusner, Jacob and William Scott Green, eds. The Origins of Judaism: Religion, History and Literature in Late Antiquity: A 20-Volume Collection of Essays and Articles. Hamden, Conn., 1990.

Otzen, Benedikt. Judaism in Antiquity: Political Development and Religious Currents from Alexander to Hadrian. Sheffield, 1990.

Riches, John. The World of Jesus: First-Century Judaism in Crisis. Cambridge, 1990.

Talmon, S., ed. Jewish Civilization in the Hellenistic-Roman Period. Philadelphia, 1991.

Grabbe, L. L. Judaism from Cyrus to Hadrian. Vol. 1: The Persian and Greek Periods. Vol. 2: The Roman Period. Minneapolis, 1991.

Schiffman, Lawrence H. From Text to Tradition: A History of Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism. Hoboken, 1991.

Schwartz, D. R. Studies in the Jewish Background of Christianity. Tübingen, 1992.

Stern, Sacha. Jewish Identity in Early Rabbinic Writings. Leiden, 1994.

Chilton, Bruce, and Jacob Neusner. Judaism in the New Testament: Practices and Beliefs. London, 1995.

Rousseau, J. J., Ravi Arav, and C. Meyers. Jesus and His World: An Archaeological and Cultural Dictionary. Minneapolis, 1995.

Scott, J. Julius, Jr. Jewish Backgrounds of the New Testament. Grand Rapids, 1995.

Winter, Bruce W., ed. The Book of Acts in Its First Century Setting. Vol. 4. The Book of Acts in Its Palestinian Setting, ed. Richard Bauckham. Grand Rapids, 1995.

Grabbe, L. L. An Introduction to First Century Judaism: Jewish Religion and History in the Second Temple Period. Edinburgh, 1996.

Trebolle Barrera, Julio. The Jewish Bible and the Christian Bible: An Introduction to the History of the Bible. Grand Rapids, 1998.

Levine, Lee I. Judaism and Hellenism: Conflict or Confluence? Peabody, Mass., 1999.

VanderKam, James C. An Introduction to Early Judaism. Grand Rapids, 2000.

Murphy, Frederick J. Early Judaism: The Exile to the Time of Jesus. Peabody, Mass., 2002.

Nickelsburg, George W. E. Ancient Judaism and Christian Origins. Minneapolis, 2003.

Tomasino, Anthony J. Judaism Before Jesus: The Events and Ideas That Shaped the New Testament World. Downers Grove, 2003.

Marcus, R. “A Selected Bibliography of the Jews in the Hellenistic-Roman Period.” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 16 (1946–47):97-181.

Neusner, J., ed. The Study of Judaism: Bibliographical Essays. New York, 1972.

Bokser, Baruch M. “Recent Developments in the Study of Judaism, 70–200 C.E.” The Second Century 3 (1983):1-68.

Bourquin, D. R. First Century Palestinian Judaism: A Bibliography of Works in English. San Bernardino, Calif., 1990.

Boccaccini, G. Portraits of Middle Judaism in Scholarship and Arts: A Multimedia Catalog from Flavius Josephus to 1991. Turin, Italy, 1993.

Jewish Quarterly Review

Journal of Jewish Studies

Journal for the Study of Judaism

JUDAISM was hardly a single entity in the first century, any more than was Greek philosophy. The variety of expression goes beyond the traditional distinction between Palestinian Judaism and Diaspora Judaism. In fact, this distinction is often only a geographical one, not a language or religious description, for there were Diaspora Jews who maintained the Hebrew language and, like Paul, received a strict Pharisaic upbringing, and there were strong Hellenistic influences in Palestine, even in conservative rabbinic circles. The Jewish matrix of early Christianity was itself already Hellenized. In giving special, and more extensive, treatment to Judaism, we are moving to the study of one particular people that was a part of the larger Greco-Roman world. The varied nature of Hellenistic influence on the Jews, and the variety of their reactions to Hellenism (pp. 428–29), provided only part of the variety in first-century Judaism. There were, moreover, many strands of thought in Judaism—the Wisdom tradition, apocalypticism, messianism, legalism, Hellenism—that frequently overlapped and intermingled. We will make an effort to present this variety by introducing the available sources. We will also make an effort to identify the entity of Judaism by noting its common (if not universal) characteristics. As a very broad generalization, subject to many qualifications, one can say that Palestinian Judaism is the most important background for the ministry of Jesus and the Gospels,¹ and the Judaism of the Greek Diaspora is the most important background for the ministry of Paul and his Epistles and the Book of Acts.

The concern of this chapter is Judaism in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Various other designations have been given to Judaism in this time span. Christians have often used the designation “intertestamental,” terminology obviously unacceptable to Jews. The description “post-Biblical” fails to give a terminus ad quem. Jewish scholars prefer “Second Temple Judaism,” and the period after 70 does begin a new era of Jewish history, but for our purposes the rabbinic literature (all post-70) needs to be included, so a strict definition of this title is inadequate.

We begin by sketching the history of the Jews, especially in Palestine, within the framework of the general history outlined in Chapter 1.

JEWISH HISTORY, 538 B.C. TO A.D. 200

The Persian Period (538–332 B.C.)²

Cyrus and the Dispersion. The Persian period is one of the more obscure periods of Palestinian Jewish history because of the paucity of extrabiblical source material. Nevertheless, the importance of this period is undoubted, for the foundations of postbiblical Judaism were laid during this time. This was the achievement of those Jews who returned to Palestine from their exile in Babylonia under the auspices of their new Persian rulers. The very name “Jews” (derived from Judah) attests the importance of the survivors of the southern kingdom for the continued existence of the chosen people. Cyrus reversed the policies of the Assyrians (cf. 2 Kings 17) and Babylonians (cf. 2 Kings 24–25) by encouraging peoples to return to their homelands and by supporting local institutions under the oversight of the royal administration. Since the Hebrew order of the Old Testament books places Chronicles last, the Jewish Bible closes with Cyrus’s proclamation of 538/537 allowing the Jews to go up to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple (2 Chron. 36:22-23; cf. Ezra 1:1-4). Although the decree has no extrabiblical attestation, it accords with Cyrus’s general claim to be the servant of the gods of his conquered peoples.³

Many Jews, however, chose to remain in Babylonia. They had followed the advice of Jeremiah (chap. 29, which became something of a charter to dispersion Judaism) and settled down and sought “the welfare of the city” to such an extent that they prospered, some even becoming high goverment officials (as were Daniel, Mordecai, and Nehemiah). The Babylonian Jewish community grew in influence over the centuries. The Babylonian Talmud (c. A.D. 500) shows the great prestige later attained by the rabbinic scholars there.

Some Jews at the time of the Babylonian conquest had fled to Egypt, where there continued to be sizable Jewish settlements. Aramaic papyri from 495 to 399 contain the correspondence of a Jewish military colony at Elephantine (which dates back to 594–589) with Persian and Jewish officials in Palestine.⁴ There was a Jewish temple at Elephantine, which the Jerusalem priesthood could not have looked on with much favor. An anti-Jewish riot in 410 B.C. destroyed the Elephantine temple; after considerable correspondence the Persian authorities granted permission for its rebuilding. When Egypt secured its independence from Persia for a time in 400, this shrin...