The Idea of Israel in Second Temple Judaism

Abstract

In this book, Jason A. Staples proposes a new paradigm for how the biblical concept of Israel developed in Early Judaism and how that concept impacted Jewish apocalyptic hopes for restoration after the Babylonian Exile. Challenging conventional assumptions about Israelite identity in antiquity, his argument is based on a close analysis of a vast corpus of biblical and other early Jewish literature and material evidence. Staples demonstrates that continued aspirations for Israel's restoration in the context of diaspora and imperial domination remained central to Jewish conceptions of Israelite identity throughout the final centuries before Christianity and even into the early part of the Common Era. He also shows that Israelite identity was more diverse in antiquity than is typically appreciated in modern scholarship. His book lays the groundwork for a better understanding of the so-called 'parting of the ways' between Judaism and Christianity and how earliest Christianity itself grew out of hopes for Israel's restoration.

Melchizedek, the Son of Man, and Eschatological Jubilee: The Sin-Forgiving Messiahs in 11QMelchizedek and Mark

“…I take those to whom they are returned as the 'sons of light'. I assume the parsing between Jews and Israel argued in Staples (2021). This reading of 'he will return them to them' aligns with the widespread view that Israel's restoration would at least include the removal of disobedience from all Israel as well as the reunification of the lost Israelites with the southern tribes in the promised land, a hope which we find (inter alia) in the scrolls (see Staples 2021: 259-89;Bergsma 2008;Thiessen 2008).…”

“…76. For discussions on jubilee in Luke, see Blosser (1979); Galbraith (2020: 163-68); Kim (2011);Luthy (2019;2021); Sanders (1992b;; Sloan (1977); Smith (2018); Sri (2011).…”

‘Ex-Pagan Pagans’? Paul, Philo, and Gentile Ethnic Reconfiguration

“… 3. Although scholars often employ the identities ‘Jew’ and ‘Israel’ interchangeably, some Second Temple Jews understood the former as a subset group of the latter (cf. Staples 2021). …”