Category Archives: Second Temple Judaism

The hallucinogenic ritual culture of the Philistines?

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Israeli-town-of-Yavneh

This article appeared yesterday in the online magazine Ancient Origins. Archaeologists have discovered chemical compounds in a pit associated with the local Philistine temple in Yavneh (Israel). While this is evidence related to a culture that existed centuries before the Second Temple period, I have often wondered about ekstatic experiences described in Second Temple period apocalyptic texts. What were the actual mechanisms? Mystical receptions of other worldly revelations (which is what they wanted their readers to think)? Vitamin depletion during long periods of fasting? Ingestions of hallucinogenic chemical compounds extracted from local flora? Were Enochic apocalyptic visions chemically induced in ritual settings? I kind of like the thought of this explanation. They would not have used the chemicals to “escape” reality or self-medicate in ways that happen in today’s complicated and sometimes sophisticated drug culture. They probably would have used the chemicals as a sort of access to “heavenly” visions which they then interpreted in terms of their own peculiar socio-political contexts.

My justification lies with God

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“As for me, my justification lies with God. In his hand are the perfection of my walk and the virtue of my heart. By his righteousness is my transgression blotted out. For from the fount of his knowledge has my light shot forth; upon his wonders has my eye gazed — the light of my heart upon the mystery of what shall be.”
– 1QS 11 2-4

Simon Joseph on the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit in L.A.

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Simon Joseph provides an interesting review of the recent Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit in Los Angeles. About ten years ago a Scrolls exhibit passed through Grand Rapids, Michigan, incorporating as part of its narrative Gabriele Boccaccini’s perspective on the Enochic/Essene nature of the documents and the yachad community. It looks like the naysayers are having their turn. About the same time the exhibit was held in Grand Rapids, Lawrence Schiffman was our guest speaker for the Judaism and Christianity in the Greco-Roman World series sponsored by the Frankel Center for Judaic Studies and the Michigan Center for Early Christian Studies. Over lunch Larry argued that the inhabitants of Qumran were Sadducees. I simply pointed out that the eschatology of the Qumran scribes alone would rule out any possibility of a Sadducean character of the yachad. Larry’s argument was based in part on Mishnaic descriptions of Sadducean halakhah compared to halakhah in the Dead Sea Scrolls. The problem with that kind of comparison is that various Jewish groups from this period shared halakhic practices, and it was only the very small, minute details of halakhic observance that actually defined sectarian difference — a case of losing the forest for the trees. At any rate, Simon provides a nice review and, I think, an accurate criticism.

Paul and Jewish Identity

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Adam&EveI am teaching Introduction to the New Testament this summer and I find myself appreciating that many of my students are engaged and interested in the subject. This is especially gratifying since most of them are upper class students seeking a (any) humanities credit in order to graduate. Regardless, the discussions (and questions) have ranged from non-existent to average to very good to excellent.

I like to incorporate my current research when I teach. As we studied the undisputed letters of Paul, we focused about an hour of our time on Paul’s Adam material (1 Corinthians 15, Romans 5, and Philippians 2). Of course anyone who has read Paul knows that Paul presents Christ as the “second Adam” and virtually relegates Adam to a role of infecting humankind with the terminal disease of sin. (It’s interesting that this is not a medieval metaphor, but Jewish literature from roughly the time of Paul also discusses sickness and death as consequences of Adam’s sin.)

Jewish identity from this period was heavily invested in terms of the individual’s relationship with God. Jewish identity was invested in many ways (Sabbath, circumcision, Torah, etc.) and it was a very complicated issue to negotiate in the first century C.E. But the individual’s relationship with God seems to encompass all of these.

One particular Jewish perspective on the individual’s relationship with God (in view of being affected by Adam’s sin) entailed identifying Adam as the prototypical human being who received God’s mercy and was given access to paradise. How did Adam achieve this? According to the Greek Life of Adam and Eve (GLAE), a midrash on Genesis 3, Adam attained God’s mercy and gained access to paradise on the basis of two things: 1) he was the image of God, and 2) he had a repentant disposition toward God.

Comparing these concepts in GLAE with the Adam texts in Paul suggests that Paul was engaged in an internal Jewish soteriological debate in the first century. Paul claimed that the approach presented in GLAE was not enough. (Whether Paul actually knew the text of GLAE is beside the point; he apparently was aware of the traditions imbedded in GLAE.) In contrast to GLAE, Paul argued that Adam’s only contribution was a negative one. “Therefore as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned” (Romans 5.12).

For Paul it was not Torah observance that made one a Jew (Romans 2.28-29; 3.21). Neither was it enough to be the image of God by virtue of being a child of Adam. Neither was it enough to have a repentant disposition toward God. It was one’s orientation in relation to the Messiah; it was necessary to be “in Christ.” In this way Paul was contesting Jewish identity in the first century C.E. He was redefining in his own way what it means to be a Jew, just as he was redefining Israel in his own way (Romans 9.6).