Читать книгу Judaism I - Группа авторов - Страница 59

The rebuilding of the Temple of Jerusalem after the return of the exiles in the years 520 (Hag 1:14f.) and 515 BCE (Ezra 6:15) placed the Temple and its cult to the center of religious life in Judea. That Jewish military settlers had a YHWH-temple in Elephantine in Upper Egypt in the fifth century BCE is not mentioned in any biblical account, as a female deity, Anath-Bethel or Anat-Yahu, was also worshiped there. The temple was destroyed at the instigation of Egyptian priests in 410 BCE, whereupon those affected appealed to the governor in Judah and were given permission to rebuild it, although animal sacrifices and burnt offerings were prohibited.⁷⁸ The existence of this temple was a blatant violation of the claim to the exclusivity of Jerusalem in Deut 12, but it was consented to by Judea.

While the first Temple, the temple of Solomon (10th cent. BCE), was a royal temple, the Second Temple was the temple of the Judean priestly aristocracy and of the Judean people. It was attended and provided with sacrifices by the people of Jerusalem and Jews from all over the country and increasingly from the Diaspora flocked there for the pilgrimage festivals: Passover, the Feast of Weeks, and the Tabernacles. It became a symbol of Judaism under Persian, Seleucid, and Roman rule. In the year 167 BCE, in the interplay of the High priest and Jerusalem temple aristocracy with the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175–164 BCE) and the temple’s transformation into a temple to Zeus Olympios was deemed very serious. It led to the Maccabean Revolt, with the restoration of the cult of the God of Israel in 164 BCE. The preceding years saw the founding of the YHWH-temple in Leontopolis in Lower Egypt by Onias IV, who had been exiled to Egypt. At the same time as the Second Temple, there was the temple of the Samaritans on Mount Gerizim.⁷⁹

So it is all the more astonishing that before the destruction of the temple in the year 70 CE there were Jews without a temple.⁸⁰