The Hasmonean period (167–63 BCE) is increasingly seen in current scholarship as formative for Samaritan identity and, in particular, as the moment when the Samaritans emerged as a self-contained group separate from the Jews. The first aim of this paper is to give an overview of the condition of the Samaritans during this period. In largely chronological order, the first part of the article discusses the situation of the Samaritans on the eve of the Hasmonean revolt, at the outbreak of the uprising, and under the rule of the first Hasmoneans. The second aim is to review the commonly held causes of the emergence, at this time, of the Samaritans as a discrete community, such as, for instance, the destruction of the Samaritan temple, the production of the Samaritan Pentateuch and the appearance of anti-Samaritan polemics in Jewish literature. The paper concludes that the Hasmoneans’ attitude toward the Samaritans cannot simply be seen as one of hatred and rejection as is generally assumed. Besides; although some of the historical processes beginning in the Hasmonean period had far-reaching implications for the parting of the ways between Jews and Samaritans; their immediate effects should not be overstated.
This article attempts to demonstrate that the synoptic narratives of the Passion contain a stratum composed in Judea on the eve of the Great Revolt. This proposition may provide a common solution to several controversial issues such as the identity of those who arrest Jesus, the latter's trial before the Sanhedrin and Barabbas’ liberation. There is reason to think that the author(s) of this narrative layer sought to enhance the high priests’ guilt in Jesus’ death, at a time when the members of the high-priesthood were hated by their Jewish brethren on account of their exactions.
Flavius Josephus reports that Herod the Great erected a golden eagle over the great gate of the Jerusalem Temple (
JW
1:648–55;
Ant
17:149–63). Sometime before his death, two doctors of the law convinced their disciples to pull the eagle down, for it ‘had been erected in defiance of their fathers’ laws’. Eventually, they were arrested and sentenced to be burned alive by Herod. This account is often taken to reflect Herod’s impious attitudes towards Jewish law, on the one hand, and his unfailing loyalty to the Romans, on the other, the golden eagle supposedly being a symbol of Roman power. However, a careful reading of this account does raise questions serious enough to reconsider its historicity. The present article proposes that the episode of the golden eagle is a martyrdom narrative conveying a legend.
This article discusses two characteristics of the Jewish-Christian source in Recognitions 1.27–71, namely its fierce opposition to sacrifices and its emphasis on the historical ties between the Jews and the land of Judea. There is reason to think that this document expresses the reaction of Jewish-Christians of Judaea to the disaster of the Bar-Kokhba uprising. On the one hand, they considered the military defeat and its consequences as a divine punishment for the rebels’ attempt to renew the sacrificial cult; and, on the other hand, they fought the paganisation of Judea by defending the historical right of the Jews to possess this land.
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