“We may, as we did when we were children, wish a beloved tale were true, but as we got older we had to accept that we must be guided by the evidence alone.”
How can we know if John the Baptist in the gospels was a real historical figure? (This is not the same question as: How can we know if there was a real John the Baptist in history — as indicated by record in the writings of Josephus and the memories of the Mandaeans?)
The question came to mind when I read the article that Tim Widowfield introduced in the previous post:
Joynes, Christine E. 2005. “The Returned Elijah? John the Baptist’s Angelic Identity in the Gospel of Mark.” Scottish Journal of Theology 58 (4): 455–67. https://doi.org/10.1017/S003693060500150X
Joynes considers the way John the Baptist is portrayed through Elijah associations in the Gospel of Mark — his hairy clothing and leather belt, his time in the wilderness, his calling people back to God — and how at least one scholar has interpreted this as an indicator of a fictional scenario:
Goulder’s conclusion that the presence of typology indicates lack of historicity is not entirely convincing, since other criteria are required to determine issues of historicity . . .
[I]t is equally possible that John the Baptist really did dress in this way because of his ‘Elijah consciousness’ and that this fact was accurately reported by Mark. This illustrates that the presence of typology is not an adequate basis for determining historicity. Typology is possible within a fictional composition, but its presence does not constitute a fictional composition. (pp. 458, 460)
Three safeguards, then, we have proposed against the abuse of the typological method: the need to supply catenas, and not single instances, of correspondences; the need for the coincidence of actual Greek words between type and antitype, and the rarer the better; and the need for a convincing motive for the evangelist to have composed his work in the way claimed. (Goulder, M. D. 1964. Type and History in Acts. SPCK. p. 10)
I believe there is a missing detail in Joynes’ argument. True, it is “possible” that John the Baptist really did consciously dress up like Elijah. But is it “equally possible” in this context?
The evidence we have before us clearly leads us to understand that the author had the Old Testament Elijah in mind as he drew his picture of John the Baptist. As Goulder indicates, the multiplicity and the distinctiveness or specificity of the parallels along with an evident motive for creating John the Baptist as an Elijah figure, lead the reader to suspect that the account is a literary invention, not genuine history.
That is one side of the ledger.
On the other, we have no details in the Gospel of Mark that take the reader’s vision away from the Elijah typology. Mark’s Baptist functions solely in the way the Old Testament leads us to expect: he arrives on the scene to call people to repentance before the advent of the divine presence, he is the victim of a spiteful royal woman who bends her husband to her will, and so on. There is no other career history for John the Baptist. He is entirely a foil to point to the divine supremacy and presence of Jesus. He has no role independent of Elijah.
So I don’t think we can say that it is “equally possible” that the Gospel of Mark’s John was a historical figure pretending to be Elijah — if we rely entirely on the evidence, which is nothing other than the portrayal of John the Baptist as the expected Elijah. The Gospel offers no evidence that John was anything but a typological figure.
Until recently, I had never noticed that in some iconographic images of John the Baptist, he is depicted with wings. Often, the icon will show him either holding his own head or standing next to it.
The common explanation within Orthodox Christianity for these unusual features is somewhat reasonable, I suppose. First, the wings simply refer to the Baptist’s angelic life. He is the forerunner not only of the Christ, but of all Christian ascetics who would follow on long after he passed from the scene. But what about the extra head? Well, icons represent the eternal world. The resurrected, transfigured, immortal John is contemplating his own mortal, severed head.
However, we could posit another explanation (at least for the wings), namely that the text of Mark’s Gospel implies that he is indeed an angel of the Lord. Something else I didn’t know until recently was that older Catholic translations like the Douay-Rheims explicitly translate τὸν ἄγγελόν μου as “my angel,” wherein the speaker is clearly God himself.
Of course, more recent careful English translations use the word “messenger” instead of “angel.” This dedication for making scripture say the right thing extends to interlinear translations, where the student of Greek is prudently led to the correct translation without the slightest hint that τὸν ἄγγελόν μου could mean anything but my messenger in this case.
This zealotry for accuracy extends back to the quotation from the book of Malachi. In other cases, when the translators see the term “my angel/messenger,” either in Greek or in Hebrew, they (correctly) presume God is talking about one of his angels. But the prophecy in Malachi is a special case.
Thomas Brodie deserves to be well and long remembered, not only for his scholarship but also for his personal experiences as a scholar of integrity in a field where faith hangs like a fog over all its practitioners—believers, agnostics, and even the few atheists alike.
Of particular interest to readers here is Michael Commane’s note:
[Thomas Brodie] was the first director of the Dominican Biblical Institute in Limerick, which opened in 2001. Tom remained as director until 2012. The institute closed in 2016.
The Irish Catholic of January 21, 2013 wrote the following about Tom: “This[Tom’s retirement as director] coincided with his publication of Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus, in which he claimed Jesus Christ did not exist as an historical person and led the Irish Dominican province to direct him to withdraw from ministry and cease teaching and writing.”
Tom did not accept the findings of the Dominicans. He argued that he was entering into the ongoing debate about the historical person of Christ.
I covered in depth that publication, Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus. See
Published in 1956, Jesus Came Again only quietly explained it was a parable. The only hints were the last paragraph on the back cover and a small-print, dislocated sub-title on the title page. There was nothing on the front cover to alert the reader of the nature of Vardis Fisher’s retelling.
Brodie was never “anti-Christian”. He even argued that a non-historical Jesus made the Christian message potentially more personally meaningful. Compare Mythicism Making Christianity More Meaningful. Beyond the Quest is a phenomenological journey that allows readers to understand why and how he came to see Jesus as a spiritual metaphor with the power to edify the believer — but this could only be accomplished by acknowledging the New Testament’s Jesus was never a historical figure. (Another work I am reminded of, though this one was authored by an atheist: Jesus Came Again; a parable.)
But Brodie’s most in-depth scholarly output was probably his 33 + 653 page tome, in effect a collation of many years of his research and publications: The Birthing of the New Testament: The Intertextual Development of the New Testament Writings.
If you have been intrigued by works (not only by Brodie, but also Winn, MacDonald, Charbonnel and others) identifying the Greco-Roman as well as Old Testament sources of the gospel narratives, you will appreciate The Birthing as a priceless treasure indeed. The same volume contains an overwhelming (in my view) demolition of the need to assume oral traditions lie behind the gospels. Brodie even argues that the “raw emotion” of Paul’s epistle to the Galatians is a literary artifice drawn from the Old Testament.
Vridar posts addressing Thomas Brodie’s work (including this post) are collated here. There are about 50 or so of them.
Remembering Thomas Brodie with fondness and sadness and deep respect, I like to leave my little collection of hard copies of his works:
& jointly edited with Thomas Brodie:
Brodie, Thomas L., Dennis R. MacDonald, and Stanley E. Porter, eds. 2006. The Intertextuality of the Epistles: Explorations of Theory and Practice. Sheffield Phoenix Press.
Paul Cheffers made it possible to update Bauer’s Philo citations to their modern references. (Bauer was relying on a 1691 text). Paul’s page: https://www.securecottage.com/BauerProto/
Contents of Philo, Strauss and Renan and Christian Origins
I. Philo as guide from Hellenism to Christianity.
II. Strauss and his new faith.
III. Renan’s position with respect to French imperialism.
IV. Strauss’s place in the world.
V. The Roman Caesars and the forerunners of Christianity.
VI. Philo’s spiritual world-religion.
VII. Philo in the New Testament.
VIII. Renan’s Life of Jesus.
IX. Philo’s writings.
While we were living in Berlin, many years ago, during the Cold War, I recall being confused by a rather common question:
How long are you in Berlin?
The phrasing of this query, at first, sounded to me as if the person wanted to know how long I would be staying in Berlin, not how long I had been living there. What does this odd concatenation of English words mean? It’s actually a word-for-word translation of the original German question, and it reveals a difference in German versus English when it comes to the expression of verbal tense and aspect.
In German, the following sentence is completely normal:
Ich bin seit einem Jahr in Berlin.
Literally, that says: “I am since a year in Berlin.” But that translation doesn’t just sound wrong; it is wrong. A native English speaker would express the durative (i.e., progressive) aspect with a different construction, namely:
I have been in Berlin for a year.
A brain thinking in German does not hear the strangeness of the present indicative in this situation. Similarly, a brain thinking in English has a great deal of difficulty hearing “ich bin” as correct in this context.
Tense and sensibilities
It turns out Greek has a similar sort of construction. In his Greek Grammar, Herbert Smyth explains it succinctly:
The present, when accompanied by a definite or indefinite expression of past time, is used to express an action begun in the past and continued in the present. The ‘progressive perfect’ is often used in translation. (Smyth 1956, p. 422)
Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? (NIV)
Jesus saith unto him, Jesus said to him, “Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? (KJV)
Jesus said to him, “Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? (NASB)
The Greek uses the present tense, but the English does not. A word-for-word translation in this case wouldn’t be merely stilted or awkward — it would be wrong.
We can find examples in the Septuagint as well. For example:
In a recent comment on an old post of mine concerning the overblown claims about the attestation of NT works, Robyn Goss wrote (among other things):
There is an ignored massive network of early non-biblical writings (Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Rome, Polycarp, Ignatious [sic] of Antioch, Papias), translations (Vetus Latina, Syriac Peshitta, Coptic Bohariic [sic], Codex Sinaiticus), and historical catalogs that document (Muratorian Fragment), and quote from the New Testament texts.
First off, I’m not sure why she listed the Codex Sinaiticus as part of the “ignored massive network,” since I mentioned it in the post and since it isn’t a translation. Perhaps we should chalk it up to the thrill of sprinting through a Gish Gallop. In fact, the translations listed do indeed “witness” to the Greek manuscripts they were translated from. But again, we know precious little about how they came to be. The who, the when, the where, and the why are all inferred.
Second, I will remind readers that my post compared the quality of attestation versus the quantity of attestation. Given a choice between the two, I’ll choose quality over quantity every time. To argue against my thesis by re-asserting the quantity of NT attestation misses the point entirely, I would think. I’ll admit that I have sometimes argued, in the Marxian tradition, that quantity can be a quality of its own, but not here.
Papias of Hierapolis
While we’re on the subject of good, reliable attestation, let’s talk about Papias. He can hardly be part of the “ignored massive network,” since every commentary of Mark I’ve ever read (and that’s a lot) mentions him. Those writers who lean toward the apologetic (possible, ergo must be true) side of the spectrum tell us that Mark was Peter’s translator, and that he wrote down what he remembered, but not necessarily in the right order. More skeptical commentators have written similar things, but with all sorts of caveats. They acknowledge we have many unanswered questions about what Papias actually meant. Continue reading “Is Papias a Reliable Witness to the Gospels of Mark and Matthew?”
Up until now I have only shared thoughts of others and sometimes added my own commentary. Now I think I am in a position where I can put my years of reading together and propose how it appears to me that “Christianity began”.
What we recognize as “Christianity” — embrace of the gospels and letters of Paul, Jesus as the saving Christ and fulfillment of Jewish Scriptures, organized assemblies — emerged on the scene after the second great Jewish revolt, the Bar Kokhba war of 132-135 CE. Before that time, though there were beliefs associated with “Christ”, and with Jesus, we have to conclude that they knew nothing of the Jesus of the gospel narratives. Among Judeans themselves there were various ideas about the Messiah or Christ, but after 135 we can say, generally speaking, that “Judaism” divided: rabbinic Judaism appeared on the one hand and “Christianity” on the other.
The gospels were part of a wider literary effort to make a former “Judaism” after the genocidal catastrophe of the Bar Kokhba Revolt respectable to the Roman world. Ever since the time of Augustus, Judeans had established themselves with favour in the imperial court. Just as back in the days of Antiochus Epiphanes there were pro-Hellenists and anti-Hellenists, so a similar division appears again with Roman rule. That favour was savagely lost with Trajan’s and Hadrian’s wars against the Judeans. An academic in personal correspondence with me suggested that what the “Christians” were doing after 135 was seeking to reestablish the favour Judeans had long held up until the days of Trajan and Hadrian. (The war of Vespasian and Titus that resulted in the destruction of the temple in 70 CE did not have the same overriding consequences for Judeans.)
I need to explain my approach to sources that has given rise to the above picture. I treat the gospels as products of the second century because, firstly, it is then that we have the first independent witness to their existence. Secondly, a comparative analysis of their literary and ideological content matches the conditions and ideas widely prevalent in second century culture and is in many respects a mismatch with the previous century. The historical background (political, social, cultural) throughout Palestine in the first century (both around the 30s, the time setting of Jesus, and the 70s, the time of the first war) can be demonstrated to lack the explanatory power of the contents of the gospels that is provided by the historical background of the early and mid second century.
The non-Christian sources likewise must be addressed, of course. The first secure record we have of “Christians” is Pliny’s letter to Trajan, written about a decade into the second century from Asia Minor. The practices described there raise questions when compared with what we learn from early Christian sources. The writings of Tacitus and Suetonius will require discussion with respect to what they reveal and do not reveal about early “Christianity”. As for Josephus, I don’t think the reasoned rejection of his testimony by some of the great scholarly luminaries of the past (Walter Bauer, Albert Schweitzer, Charles Guignebert) has ever been overturned. That can also be addressed in detail up ahead.
As for the early debates among Jewish teachers themselves, these, too, must be dug out as much as possible, and compared with the early ideas we find in the Christian literature. That’s another dataset up for discussion.
Along the way we will encounter a number of common arguments that attempt to cement the gospels and Pauline letters prior to the fall of the temple in 70 CE. One of these is the assertion that no-one would write failed prophecies after they could be clearly seen to have failed. I hope to show that in some cases this argument arises from widespread assumptions read into the prophecies, and in other cases the argument nullifies its corollary, that redactors regularly rewrote or omitted what they found embarrassing. The gospels and epistles will be interpreted through other literature and historical circumstances of the times.
Dates of other Christian writings will be determined primarily through the earliest external evidence for their existence and from that point assessing where their contents most closely match social or political circumstances. The self-testimony of documents will always need to prove itself against the above method. Self-claims of writings can never be assumed factual. That does not mean they are “guilty of fraud” by default, but it means we must suspend judgment until we have independent confirmation one way or the other.
So much for the methods. The conclusion being argued is that Christianity as we recognize it, the narratives of the gospels, the epistles as we have them in our canonical form, with Jesus the Christ and fulfilment of the Old Testament, appeared on the scene as a response to the conditions arising from the total devastation of the wars against Judeans/Jews in the first decades of the second century.
This is not a new thesis. Others have arrived at the same general idea independently, each with somewhat varying explanations. What follows will be mine.
Rene Salm has posted responses to Nazareth-related arguments in Ken Dark’s last three publications. Richard Carrier relies heavily on Ken Dark for the site of first century Nazareth and has recommended others read Dark’s work carefully. My first recommended reading for Carrier is Salm’s detailed analysis of Dark’s claims.
Compare the difference:
illus 3
Carrier’s response to Dark‘s argument that the “large” stone before the tomb is evidence of a date before 100 CE
Salm’s response (pages 18-20) to the same point by Dark
Reference:
Smaller rolling stone diameter size: 0.8–1.0 m. (2.6–3.3 ft.)
Average rolling stone diameter size: 1.0–1.2 m. (3.3–4.0 ft.)
Larger rolling stone diameter size: 1.2–1.8 m. (4–6 ft.)
Similarly, critics might “skip over” the fact that Dark makes a distinction between “large” (far more expensive) rollstones (which are all pre-100) and small ones (which were abundant in later periods but nowhere found at Nazareth). Indeed, the tomb in question may have been cut for one of the priests resettled there after the first war.
And again, statistically, to have such a tomb there entails decades, probably at least a generation (about half a century), of prior town flourishing. So even if against the odds this was the last such tomb built, in exactly the year 100, that still makes it more likely than not that Nazareth had been there since at least 50 AD.
And once you are admitting Nazareth predates the War, insisting it only “just” got established “right” after Jesus is supposed to have lived there is playing a high-wire act of coincidences—and on no evidence, just a desire for the result. It can’t be argued that there is no evidence of Herodian occupation “except” for all the evidence of Herodian occupation, simply because you “desire” all that evidence to be post-Herodian.
We turn to another invention of Prof. Dark: that the rolling stone at the SoN [Sisters of Nazareth] convent site is of the “large” variety. In fact, the stone is 1.09 m (3.6 ft.) in diameter (Dark 2021:121). Despite the imposing impression given by photographs in general circulation (Illus. 3 above), this diameter is typical and places it in the “intermediate” category.
However, Dark describes the rolling stone at the SoN site as “large” and then uses that false characterization to date it before 100 CE:
(11a) Although smaller rolling stones continued in use into the Byzantine period, stones of the size attested here [i.e. at the SoN convent site] were no longer used after c. AD 100… (Dark 2021:121)
(11b) A key chronological indicator is the use of a large rolling stone (0.8 m or over in diameter) to seal the entrance of the tomb [at the SoN site]. (Dark 2021:121)
Dark’s confusion regarding rolling stone sizes is underlined by the foregoing citation 12b, in which he considers that a rolling stone of diameter 0.8 m (2.6 ft.) is “large.” It is no typo, for he confirms the error in the following passage:
(12) In Galilee, where they apparently have no associations with tombs of exceptional status at all, tombs sealed by large (0.8 m or over) circular rolling stones seem to have been especially common. (Dark 2020:97)
However, an 0.8 m diameter stone is at the small end of the rolling stone scale. Virtually all rolling stones (and round leaning stones — see below) were larger than 0.8 m in diameter! Yet with this error Dark dates the Nazareth rolling stone (and thus the associated SoN tomb complex) to I CE:
(13) Hachlili (2005) and Kloner and Zissu (2007) also agree that although rolling stones were used after c. AD 100, the stones were much smaller than those before that date. Consequently, a tomb sealed by a rolling stone of c. 0.8 m or more in diameter can confidently be assigned to between the late first BC and the late first century AD, and probably more specifically to the mid- to late first century AD. (Dark 2020:97)
This is another case of misrepresentation, for Hachlili, as well as Kloner and Zissu, wrote nothing of tomb blocking stones in II CE and beyond — both of the cited books deal specifically with Second Temple–period tombs (2nd c. BCE–1st c. CE).
In my opinion, it is probable that Dark did not properly understand a certain passage in Kloner’s 1999 BAR article (below). Indeed, I too misunderstood the passage on first reading it, for Kloner makes a fine distinction (one that only a tomb specialist would make) between a “round blocking stone” and a “rolling stone.” In fact, Kloner avoids the designation “rolling stone,” even at the risk of rendering his English (which is not his native language) quite cumbersome. For him, the “blocking stone” that closed a tomb could come in a variety of forms — some unknown to the average lay reader. In the first instance, the blocking stone could be square (the vast majority) or round in shape. In the second instance (and this is what escaped me at first, and what escapes most readers — including Dark) is that the round blocking stone could (a) “lean against the rock facade” (BAR p. 28) or (b) be “set on one end between two parallel walls and thus moved on a sort of track” so that they “could easily be rolled away” (p. 25). It is the latter that we casually call “rolling stone,” but we must bear in mind that all round blocking stones are not automatically “rolling stones.” There also existed the category of round blocking stones that simply leaned against the entrance to the tomb. These “leaning stones,” if you will, came to preponderate in Late Roman and Byzantine times — and they were much smaller than the earlier round stone that rolled away (what we call the “rolling stone”). A leaning stone was a smaller round stone simply propped against the tomb entrance, without a carved track. The critical takeaway from this abstruse discussion on tomb blocking stones is this: when Kloner writes of “later round stones” that “were much smaller” (in the citation below) he is not writing about rolling stones at all — he is writing about round “leaning stones,” which constitute an entirely different mechanism of tomb closure than the stone that rolls away.
Furthermore, the leaning stone (as I call it for simplicity) does not require a hewn recess into which it is rolled. Nor does it require the thickness of a stone that, while being rolled, must stay upright — lest it fall over. For these reasons leaning stones were much smaller and lighter than “rolling stones.” They were generally less than 0.9 m (3 ft.) in diameter — small enough for one or two people to move (or roll) aside — while not requiring either a hewn track or a hewn recess to one side.
With the foregoing discussion in mind, here is Kloner’s description of later “leaning stones” (not to be confused with “rolling stones”):
(14) So far we have been talking about blocking stones from the Second Temple period, which ended with the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. In later periods the situation changed, and round blocking stones [read: “leaning stones”] became much more common. Dozens of them have been found from the late Roman to Byzantine periods (second to seventh century C.E.). These later round stones were much smaller than the Second Temple period stones (less than 3 feet in diameter), and they did not move on a track but simply leaned against the rock facade, making them even simpler to move. (A. Kloner, BAR 1999.5:25, 28.)
I suspect that Dark read the foregoing passage and simply assumed that “rolling stones” diminished in size after ca. 100 CE. That conclusion is, after all, what he writes (above, citations 10, 11, 13). However, what actually happened was that the preferred mechanism of closure changed from a round rolling stone to a round leaning stone, with the concomitant reduction of stone weight. Nevertheless, a few rolling stones of the larger variety continued to be used after 70 CE — including the one at the SoN site at Nazareth.16
Unfortunately, the foregoing nuances have apparently escaped Dark. He proposes a change in rolling stone size ca. 100 CE and calls a small rolling stone of 0.8 m “large.” Heaping error upon error, he then dates the tombs at the SoN convent site before 100 CE, simply because Tomb 1 was closed by a rolling stone of very average size. On the basis of these several errors, the archaeologist then proposes that the (alleged) dwelling predated the tombs and thus the alleged dwelling must date to early I CE. This entirely wayward concatenation is, however, only in Dark’s mind. Armed as he is with a fertile imagination, neither the physical evidence at the SoN site, nor tomb typology, nor the published scholarly literature prevent him from reaching one overriding goal: the discovery of a dwelling at the SoN site “in the time of Jesus.”
16 Excavated and published sites include (a) Khirbet Midras (Judean Shephelah), Bar Kochba period, rolling stone diameter ~1.5 m; (b) Horvat ‘Ethri (Judean Hills), Bar Kochba period, rolling stone diameter ~1.4 m; (c) Khirbet Shema (Upper Galilee), II–III CE, rolling stone diameter ~1.45 m. In comparison, the rolling stone at the SoN site is 1.09 m in diameter.
Carrier speaks of lazy/lazily and apologetic dating and presents himself as the “PhD brain” against the “amateur” Salm. I suggest the above comparison shows Carrier as the lazy reader and it is Salm who is the genuine scholar with his genuinely critical reading. Read the full response by Salm for a full appreciation of the apologetics and confusion throughout Dark’s attempts to establish an early first century Nazareth.
Moving on to another reading recommendation for Richard.
In my previous post I offered a series of works arguing that Jerusalem was not an “uninhabited ruin” from 70 CE to 132 CE in the sense that it had no practical place in the religious life of the Jews. Evidence tells us that it continued to be visited by Jews (or Judeans) in their regular pilgrimages and even informal sacrifices were offered there. There were hopes that the temple would be rebuilt.
In the same post RC makes his point about Jerusalem being “by law” an “uninhabited ruin” suggesting it was bereft of any cultic relevance. Two sentences later he cites Matthew Grey’s dissertation:
The debate is discussed in Matthew Grey’s 2011 dissertation for UNC Chapel Hill (“Jewish Priests and the Social History of Post-70 Palestine”).
So this is my next recommended reading for Richard. (He evidently did not critically read it himself when he made his point in the same paragraph about the condition of post 70 CE Jerusalem.)
Grey, Matthew J. “Jewish Priests and the Social History of Post-70 Palestine.” Ph.D., The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2011.
The city was occupied by the 10th legion. Yet priests continued to live nearby, hoping for a new temple, and as we have seen, still able to offer personal sacrifices at the temple site, still partaking in festival pilgrimages to the city.
Families of the priestly aristocracy also seem to have settled in northern Judea and just outside of Jerusalem, likely to await the rebuilding of the temple. . . . It appears that many Jews of the post-70 generation fully expected that the Romans would rebuild the temple in their lifetime. (p. 156)
Note Grey’s added detail:
Some scholars have even suggested that aspects of the sacrificial cult continued in Jerusalem in the period between the revolts. Kenneth W. Clark, “Worship in the Jerusalem Temple after A.D. 70,” NTS 6 (1959-1960): 269-280 made the following observations:
1) No sources explicitly declare the cessation of a sacrificial cult in 70.
2) The exilic and post-exilic Jews maintained a sacrificial cult for some time before the rebuilding of the Jerusalem temple in the fifth century B.C.E.
3) The Romans issued no decree prohibiting worship at the temple site until 135.
4) Hints exist in the literature of some ongoing pilgrimage activity for several years after 70.
These are intriguing arguments. However, Clark‟s lack of conclusive evidence has left many scholars skeptical of the continuation of cultic sacrifices in Jerusalem between 70 and 135. See Barclay, Apion, 279 n.769. Cohen, Three Crowns, 160 points out that if there was some form of post-70 sacrificial cult, priests undoubtedly would have retained much of their involvement in it and still would have been seen as being able to facilitate contact with the divine. (p. 156)
One can see extracts of Clark’s article along with more details of more recent publications arguing the same point in the previous post. Note that Grey appears to be more open to the argument for an ongoing, though subdued, active Jewish cultic engagement with Jerusalem than Carrier would want to admit.
But I was curious after reading Grey’s remark that “many scholars” are sceptical so I consulted his two supporting references.
The first support, Barclay, is as follows:
Pace Clark 1959-60, there is no firm evidence that the temple sacrifices continued after 70 CE in a reduced form (see Smallwood 1981: 347-48): the Romans would hardly shut down the relatively harmless temple in Leontopolis (War 7.420-21) but allow the symbolic focus of the Revolt in Jerusalem to remain (on their policy, see Rives 2005). So Josephus is writing at a time when there is no temple of the one God.
Barclay appears to have misread Clark. Clark does not argue that there was a standing temple where sacrifices were offered. He says nothing more than that private persons offered their own sacrifices at the site of the temple. There was no national cult or national sacrifice, of course. Barclay is also pitting what he imagines would have been in the minds of the Romans with respect to those sacrifices against the evidence cited in the previous post. As for Barclay’s appeal to Smallwood, again see the previous post where I have quoted Smallwood’s words.
But the second reference was most interesting. Here is what Cohen writes in The Three Crowns, page 160 (my bolding etc):
Whether – and if so, for how long some Jews continued to offer sacrifices on the Temple mount after 70 C.E. has long been debated. That many continued to observe the custom of three annual pilgrimages to the site seems beyond doubt.39
I will take his word for it that sacrifices at the temple post 70 has “long been debated”, but from what I have seen so far there is more incredulous disbelief (and mind-reading) on the side of the doubters than any engagement with the evidence that has been cited to argue the “for” side of the case. But by no means does Cohen represent post 70 Jerusalem as a place lost from all relevance to Jews: Jews continued visiting and engaging in cultic practices related to the city and held fast to hopes for its Temple’s restoration.
Just as the Temple was destroyed, Israel did not cease from making pilgrimage three times a year. (382) . . . Indeed, they go up to Jerusalem, but with melancholy and gloom. . . A Roman citizen used to go up and visit Jerusalem every year. . . then before us is testimony concerning a merchant from the Galilee who had the means to make pilgrimage to Jerusalem from time to time. (383) . . . . The earliest accounts of sages going up to visit Jerusalem are already from the generation of Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai . . . “Once Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai was leaving Jerusalem, and Rabbi Joshua was walking behind him and saw the Temple destroyed. Rabbi Joshua said: Woe to us that this is destroyed!” From the next generation, the tradition is known about the visit of the head of the Sanhedrin. . . they were going up to Jerusalem. When they reached the watchtowers, they tore their garments. When they reached the Temple Mount and saw a fox emerging from the Holy of Holies, they began to weep. (385) . . . . From the sources we have brought, not only did they visit, but they also entered the Temple Mount. (391) . . . . Pilgrimage to Jerusalem after the destruction was accompanied by a number of legal regulations. As we have seen, one who saw the destruction of Israel was obligated to rend his garments. (384) . . . . There is no doubt that pilgrims came not only from the circles of the sages and their disciples, but from much broader circles, as emerges from the general descriptions we have brought and even from some of the detailed testimonies we will bring below. (385) . . . . From all the numerous testimonies we have brought, it follows that they made pilgrimages on the three pilgrimage festivals and on all the days of the year. No Jewish source connects specifically to the day of the Temple’s destruction. These testimonies cast doubt upon the testimonies of the Church Fathers and its writers that the Jews were permitted to visit Jerusalem only once a year on the Ninth of Av.86 (393)
86. The first to mention this custom is the Bordeaux Pilgrim in his itinerary (*Itinerarium Burdigalense*, ed. Geyer, p. 12, written around 333). See also Jerome’s commentary on Zephaniah 1:15 (*In Sophoniam P.L.*, ed. Migne, t. 22, col. 1355) and the words of Gregory of Nazianzus (*Orat. V 4 P.G.*, t. 35, col. 668).
Extracts from the footnote 39 are found in the side box here.
The text is by S. Safrai, translated from Hebrew: —>
Safrai, Shmuel. “Pilgrimage to Jerusalem after the Destruction of the Second Temple.” In Jerusalem in the Second Temple Period Memorial Volume for Abraham Schalit, edited by Aharōn Oppenheimer, Uriel Rappaport, and Menaḥēm Šṭern. Jād Jiṣḥāq Ben-Ṣeḇī, 1981. — That’s a translation. The original citation = S. Safrai, ‘Ha-‘Aliyah la-Regel Lirushalayim la-‘Ahar Hurban Bayit Sheini’, Peraqim be-Toledot Yerushalayim Bimei Bayit Sheini (eds. A. Oppenheimer, et al.; Jerusalem, 1981), pp.376-93.
All of this means that the ideal of Jerusalem as a centre of worship and hopes for a rebuilt temple were still alive in the minds of Judeans in the time of Hadrian. Physical practices sustained these hopes. Other works (I hope to discuss at least one major one soon) point to the actual place — the site of the Holy of Holies in the old Temple — where Hadrian set up his statue. That was the Abomination of Desolation of which the synoptic gospels speak. Hadrian was not doing something that had by his time lost any relevance for the Judeans.
Reading Grey’s thesis, critically, is a good place to start one’s journey into other literature that witnesses to the ongoing practical, day to day relevance of Jerusalem and its temple centre as a cultic focus for Judeans right up to the Bar Kokhba revolt.
