Ritual

The worship of gods was one of the basic and indispensable elements of human experience in the ancient world. The period under discussion here witnessed a total revision of the ritual system in the Jewish world, one of the most significant revolutions that any religion has ever undergone. At their core, Israelite and subsequent Second Temple Judaism were cultic religions, which means that they encompassed two basic ingredients:

1  the existence of a Temple(s);

2  the worship of God through offerings - mainly animal sacrifices but also vegetarian offerings (called ‘‘meal offerings,’’ especially all kinds of grain breads) and liquids (like oil and wine, called ‘‘libations’’).

In this respect, Judaism resembled all other religious systems in the ancient Near East and the Graeco-Roman world, which respectively formed the cultural environments for the Israelite tradition and Judaism. While sacrifices and offerings may well seem fetishistic, not to say primitive and absurd, to the modern observer, to ignore them is to overlook a fundamental aspect of ancient Jewish experience. To put it bluntly: on a daily basis, on the grounds of the Temple, up to a hundred animals a week (rising to thousands during the major holidays) were butchered, skinned, and finally burned on a huge altar. Try to imagine, for example, the odor - of flowing blood, of quantities of meat left out for too long without refrigeration, and the smell ofthousands ofpounds of scorched livestock. This is what ancient religious procedures entailed. For people of the past, these smells were sweeter than the finest perfume. In fact, a Jewish tradition configured the spatial layout of the Temple as ‘‘Mount Moriah,’’ from the Hebrew ‘‘mor’’ - myrrh, a kind of perfume. Ancient texts tell us that the appearance of the smoke coiling up from the altar prompted the highest joy to the populace (Sir. 50:16-19 [Ziegler 359-40]). After all, it meant that God had received their sacrifice. This seemingly simple act embodied no small achievement in a world that had not yet witnessed the modern age's dramatic advances in the natural sciences, technological-industrial revolution, and its replacement of devout belief by secularism, all of which have radically transformed the religious landscape. In the ancient Mediterranean, gods supplied the necessary safety nets in an environment replete with agony and insecurity. They helped people interpret, understand, and control their fate. Everyone strived to be on their good side.

Ancient people in general and Israelites and then Jews in particular conceived a temple as the house of a god, any god. Within this domestic conception of sacred space, sacrifices functioned as the ‘‘communication lines’’ through which the public, standing outside the house (a gap representing the cosmological breach between the human and the divine), could connect with the godly entity who resided inside (GenR 68:12 [Theodor and Albeck 784-6] is one Rabbinic articulation of this idea). Conceptualized as doctor, lawyer, financial advisor, and psychiatrist all in one,

God existed beyond immediate reach, but remained accessible nevertheless. Accordingly, the common belief in those days held that God must dwell among his people. Judaism differed from the other religions throughout the Roman Mediterranean in that the latter viewed their gods as human or semi-human figures and therefore placed their images in the temples. The Torah insisted on the non-anthropomorphic nature of God, and thus prohibited its depiction. So the Temple in Jerusalem stood naked, devoid of statues. Instead, ancient Israelite thinkers formulated the elusive concept of Shekhina (‘‘presence’’), meaning that only the intangible essence of God inhabited the sanctuary (this notion finds an intriguing parallel in the GraecoRoman conceptualization of the divine presence in statues; see Eliav 2003). Beyond this difference, however, all ancient religions shared common practices in regard to the spatial organization of worship. The Jewish Temple resembled a huge house, consisting of two main chambers: the Holy of Holies, where the Ark of the Covenant stood and God’s presence resided, and the outer chamber called kodesh or heikhal, containing the sacred vessels (furniture) - the menorah (a seven-branched candelabrum lit with oil), a golden table holding a dozen loaves of bread, and a small bronze altar for incense (analogous in the domestic metaphor to electricity, a pantry with food, and a ventilation system; the smell was, after all, quite potent). The huge altar for sacrifice stood just outside the entrance to the building (Busink 1970-80).

Another important aspect of the cultic religion involved the location of the masses while conducting worship. They were neither permitted to enter the Temple, which was considered ‘‘sacred’’ (i. e. extra-territorial, off limits), nor were they allowed to participate in the sacrifice of their own offerings. These privileges were exclusively granted to the priests (Hebrew: kohanim), who were seen as God’s servants and were in charge of maintaining the house (Temple) and taking care of the entire sacrificial process. The populace would gather in the courts and the huge compound that surrounded the Temple and bring their offerings to a certain point only to hand them over to the priests and watch the procedures from a distance. Such measures resulted in the separation of the individual from the core of religious activity, the encounter with God remaining indirect through a sacrifice that was handled by someone else.

Nevertheless, in the ancient world almost everyone seemed happy with this arrangement. Jews everywhere revered the Temple of God, even if some - like Jesus, who according to the Gospel writers overturned the tables in the Temple’s court (Mk 11:15-19 and parallels) - criticized the priests who controlled it or disapproved of the corruption that developed around it (C. A. Evans 1992; Larsson 1993). Notwithstanding these occasionally dissonant voices, the Temple had, by the last centuries of the First Temple period (seventh and sixth centuries BCE), become the most beloved institution of the people of Israel. This popularity reached an unprecedented peak during the days of the Second Temple. Hundreds of thousands flocked to its compound during the Jewish holidays to be in the vicinity of God. From all over the world Jews voluntarily raised a special annual levy, called the ‘‘half-shekel,’’ for the maintenance of the Temple (Schurer 1973-87: 2: 270-2). On the conceptual level, the Temple served as a fundamental and, in their minds, irreplaceable element of the encounter with God, the hub of the religious experience. Prayers were directed towards the Temple, sins were absolved through the offering of sacrifice, and in general the practice of Judaism was dependent on its existence. It is no surprise, therefore, that the Temple exceeded its practical religious status and became the best-known emblem of the nation of Israel (Horbury 1991).

All this changed, though not instantly, after the destruction of the Temple. Beyond the horrendous physical blow - tens if not hundreds of thousands of dead (a number that was doubled and tripled by later rebellions), the loss of property and land - the Jews remained without the institution that in their mind made life possible. It is no wonder, then, that many of them (although surely not all) concluded that Judaism had reached its end. In their mind, with the eradication of the mechanism that had linked them with God, Israel’s connection with its protector had been cut off and the way of life that had been nourished by that union had terminated (e. g. 2 Bar 10 [Charles 3941], 44 [Charles 60-1]; tSotah 15:10-15 [Lieberman 4.242-4]). The paucity of sources from this period does not allow us to fully measure the circulation of such beliefs. I surmise that it is no coincidence that it is in this period that Jewish groups that believed in Jesus formulated their first comprehensive narratives about his teaching. These accounts should be seen, in my view, at least in part, as responses to the vacuum created by the destruction. The gospel accounts offer a formula of redemption in place of the security that the Temple had provided. The halakhic framework of the sages also sought, in a fundamental way, to redeem the loss ofthe Temple by providing an answer to the question of what constituted a Jewish way of life in its absence.

In time, the synagogue filled the spatial void left by the Temple’s destruction (much of the following is loosely based, although not without disagreement, on L. I. Levine 2000; S. Cohen 1984b; Fine 1997; Rajak 2002: 301-499). The origins of this institution stretch back to the centuries prior to the Temple’s destruction, which explains the stories about Jesus that are set in synagogues. At that time, the synagogue was a gathering place for a local community, mainly for the sake of reading the Torah pubiicly on the Sabbath. But after 70 CE the synagogue’s appearance and role changed dramatically. Although we cannot firmly date the stages of its development, it is safe to say that the synagogue gradually became, as it remains today, the prime locus for the Jewish worship of God, and unquestionably the most important institution in Jewish life. This role, grafted on to its original function, makes the synagogue a fascinating combination of apparent contradictions.

On one level, the synagogue seems to reverse the attributes of the Temple. Whereas the Temple occupied an exclusive and remote location that required worshipers to make a special effort to reach it, synagogues can be found in every Jewish community. A standard city averaged more than a few. In the Temple, a priestly caste served as mediators between the common people and God, while synagogue worship allowed each devotee to approach the divine equally and directly. The institution’s name, combining the Greek syn (‘‘together’’) and agoge (‘‘bringing in’’), iiteraliy meaning a coming together of people, or the place in which this occurred, reflects this egalitarian tendency. The congregation as a whole invokes God within the building and plays an equal part in his worship. This probably amounts to one of the most significant changes in the history of religions, and signals an important departure from the ancient hierarchical cultic world to the new, although not yet modern, anthrocentric religious system. Finally the liturgical routine and its agents also changed dramatically. The destruction of the Temple marks the termination of the sacrificial system, and eventually prayer replaced animal offerings. This change embodies a second, no less radical transformation, inasmuch as it replaces a physical means of worship with a spiritual one. Finally, without sacrifices, the priestly class lost its unique status as well as its base of social power and wealth.

On another level, however, despite these contrasts, many traits of the synagogue deliberately recall the Temple, and are meant to sharpen the sense of its loss. In doing so they necessarily fuel the expectation of the Temple’s return. Despite their diversity in structure, art, and probably, although less documented, in content, almost every level of synagogue experience patently exhibits Temple-oriented elements, from the organization of the synagogue’s spatial layout to the substance of its rituals. Many, although admittedly not all, synagogue buildings face Jerusalem, fixing the attention of the attendants on that distant ruin that they all expect to be rebuilt ‘‘soon, in our own days,’’ as the closing pericope of the popular ‘amidah prayer states. Prayer procedures in the synagogue (preserved only in Rabbinic compilations and thus to be treated with caution) were modeled on, and thus propagate the memory of, the Temple’s daily sacrificial liturgy. The services borrowed their names from the two main daily offerings of the Temple worship - shalharit (morning) and minlhah (afternoon) sacrifices. Sabbaths and festivals included an additional service, musaf, named for the extra sacrifice offered on those days. Even more significantly, the content of the prayers evoked the Temple sacrifice and fostered an emotional longing for its return (Fine 1997: 79-94). Finally, the synagogue’s furnishings duplicated the Temple’s in many, although not uniform, ways. At the front of the hall, placed on a platform (and usually enclosed by a chancel screen: Fine 1998) separating it from the congregation, stood the ark of the Torah, reminiscent of the Ark of the Covenant that resided, also removed from the public, in the Temple’s Holy of Holies. A freestanding Menorah, a replica of the Temple’s, decorated many synagogues in the past and to this day. Even more significantly, synagogue art in the shape of numerous mosaic floors, the most common ornamentation of these buildings, regularly depicted sacred objects associated with the Temple, as well as motifs from its liturgy (such as the binding of Isaac, with its strong connotations of sacrifice).

Was the synagogue meant to be a definitive replacement for the Temple, or was it intended to be a temporary substitute that kept the memory of the real, beloved institution fresh in the minds of the Jews? The answer is probably both. Rabbinic literature, the sole literary evidence from this period, reflects this complexity and sophistication. (It should be noted that we have no clear evidence to support the traditional claim that the rabbis shaped the institution of the synagogue; many of the available sources actually seem to contradict this notion: L. I. Levine 2000: 440-70). The rabbis simultaneously embraced two opposite tendencies. They praised and exalted the past eminence and glory of the Temple, yet at the same time created a new future without it. Such an approach proved essential for people who felt they had lost everything with the destruction, and even more for a religious system that lacked its most prominent institution. Thus the synagogue embodies two utterly contrasting claims. On the one hand, the Temple is not lost, it is here in miniature (and indeed a Rabbinic tradition labels the synagogue ‘‘a little/lesser temple,’’ bMegilah 29a). On the other hand, refashioning the Temple as the synagogue actually presupposes and institutionalizes its absence forever. But there was more to it. The rabbis read the historical map correctly and understood the huge changes of their time. The Jewish people who were scattered all over the world lacked a strong center to look to. Other religious systems, like Christianity, were eschewing animal sacrifice and creating spiritualized forms of worship. In this context, the rabbis felt that an existential mode consisting of two conflicting registers - longing for the past and strong assurance about the present - epitomized the formula that could keep Judaism going.

Stepping back from Rabbinic sensibilities, the ancient synagogue emerges as a multi-functional cultic and communal establishment, diversified in its appearance and substance. Alongside the worship of God through prayer and the housing of the Torah scroll in a special ark, some communities in the Bosporan kingdom, for example, practiced and documented the manumission of slaves in this institution (E. L. Gibson 1999). Other synagogues housed the public archives of the people associated with it (non-Jews included?) and other functions of community life such as schools for the youth. Most of all, the building embodied the spatial layout so central for ancient identity - its iconography, most of which, but not all, is later than the period discussed here, brought to life and perpetuated the memories of the shared past as communicated by the scriptures, and its space provided for the various Jewish celebrations such as the Sabbath, annual holidays, marriages, and other local festivities, as well as for the enactment of local hierarchy and power (who sat where, whose honor was inscribed on stone or mosaic, etc.).