7 - The destruction of the Jerusalem Temple: its meaning and its consequences

Summary

INTRODUCTORY COMMENT

Any investigation of ancient Judaism is bound to rely heavily on the vast corpus of early rabbinic literature. No other body of ancient Jewish writing matches those materials with respect to their scope, their volume, or their subsequent influence on Jewish life. However, this reliance, compounded by the early Rabbis’ own insistence that they were merely handing down an ancient tradition unchanged, creates a pair of dangers.

For one thing, it is tempting to assume that the situations and arrangements reflected in rabbinic documents must already have existed in earlier periods. More particularly, it is tempting to assume that descriptions of the Jerusalem Temple and Jewish attitudes toward its cult that are found in rabbinic documents must shed light on the reality that prevailed when the Temple once stood. This assumption is unwarranted, however, and has been avoided in the preparation of this chapter. When rabbinic materials are cited, they will be used with due consideration of the likely time and place of their origin (when these two can be determined).

Second, it must be kept in mind that non-rabbinic forms of Judaism survived throughout antiquity: no reliable evidence exists of rabbinic leadership in Europe or North Africa before the Middle Ages, yet these areas contained substantial Jewish communities that antedated the Common Era. Rabbinic materials, despite their volume and their importance, present only a partial image of ancient Jewish responses to the loss of the Jerusalem Temple. Unfortunately, non-rabbinic Jewish writings from later antiquity (if any existed) have disappeared: the rest of the picture must remain a blank.