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Sightseeing and Spectacle at the Jewish Temple

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 November 2019

Benjamin D. Gordon*
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh
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Abstract

Jerusalem in the late Second Temple period (second century BCE–70 CE) was transformed into the largest pilgrimage city of the Hellenized East and the sole locus of sacrificial worship of the Jewish God in greater Judea. As argued in this paper, it also became a place for sightseeing and spectacle. By the early Roman era, movement to the city for pilgrimage was a significant component of Mediterranean and Near Eastern travel. The Jewish festival experience may have evolved to cater to the tastes of foreigners now regularly visiting the city from the Jewish Diaspora. The architecture of Herod's Temple complex and the distinctive religious customs practiced within its walls intrigued visitors, whether Jewish or non-Jewish. For those unable to witness the Temple or participate in one of its festivals firsthand, a virtual visit through a “walking-tour” description would have to suffice. Such descriptions, which are attested from the earliest days of the Second Temple, can charter in imaginative invention in order to foster a sense of awe and wonder for the audience.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Jewish Studies 2019 

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References

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52. There are elements of the Song of Songs, for example, suggesting that it was once performed or dramatized in some way, perhaps in a symposium setting; see Bloch, Ariel and Bloch, Chana, The Song of Songs: The World's First Great Love Poem (New York: Modern Library, 2006), 2021Google Scholar. Eli Kozin has argued that the book of Job was composed initially as a dramatic work inspired by the Greek theatrical arts; see Jewish Drama & Theatre: From Rabbinical Intolerance to Secular Liberalism (Chicago, IL: Sussex Academic Press, 2013), 3954Google Scholar. Choral troupes drawn from the Levites appear to have been a fixture too (see below).

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59. See Josephus, Against Apion 1.32–33, for evidence of Jewish priests settling in the Diaspora.

60. A baraita in the Babylonian Talmud (Yoma 12a) notes that pilgrims to Jerusalem would leave their hosts hides of consecrated animals in exchange for lodgings, as the charging of a fee was not permissible.

61. The Theodotos synagogue inscription notes that Theodotos, son of Vettenus, built the synagogue, among other things, as a “guest house with its rooms and water installations as lodging for the needy from the Diaspora”; see Cotton et al., CII/P I:1, 53–56; Gitlitz and Davidson, Pilgrimage and the Jews, 28–29.

62. See, e.g., Safrai, Pilgrimage, 200–203; Gitlitz and Davidson, Pilgrimage and the Jews, 31–32.

63. Sanders, Judaism, 63 BCE–66 CE, 179–81.

64. The bells on the tunic signaled to those outside that the high priest was at work in the Temple (Ben Sira 45:9). The high priest appears to have worn the more ornate vestments on Yom Kippur alone; see Schwartz, Daniel R., Reading the First Century: On Reading Josephus and Studying Jewish History of the First Century, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 300 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 3536CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Weissenrieder, Annette, “A Roadmap to Heaven: High-Priestly Vestments and the Jerusalem Temple in Flavius Josephus,” in Beyond Priesthood: Religious Entrepreneurs and Innovators in the Roman Empire, ed. Gordon, Richard L., Petridou, Georgia and Rüpke, Jörg, Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und Vorbarbeiten 66 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2017), 157–83Google Scholar.

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67. Lee Levine explains discrepancies in Josephus as reflecting the fact that the War version is how Josephus saw the Temple, while the Ant. version was meant to describe the Temple after it was built in 20 BCE; “Josephus’ Description,” 233–46. For Josephus's description of the monumental royal portico south of the sanctuary and the archaeological remains of the portico, see Peleg-Barkat, Temple Mount Excavations V, 91–120.

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70. A similar sense of awe upon leaving the complex is portrayed in Mark 13:1, which puts words of wonder into the mouth of a disciple of Jesus as he leaves the Temple area. Looking back at the marvelous structure, he exclaims, “Look, teacher, what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!”; cf. Luke 21:5–6.

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72. G. W. Bowersock, “Foreign Elites at Rome,” in Edmondson, Mason, and Rives, Flavius Josephus and Flavian Rome, 53–62; Mason, Steve, “Of Audience and Meaning: Reading Josephus’ Bellum Judaicum in the Context of a Flavian Audience,” in Josephus and Jewish History in Flavian Rome and Beyond, ed. Sievers, Joseph and Lembi, Gaia, Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism 104 (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 71100Google Scholar. Yet, somewhat in tension with these reconstructions of Josephus's milieu and audience, Cotton and Eck have argued that Josephus remained largely in isolation in Rome, having enjoyed no real links to the senatorial and equestrian elite; see Hannah M. Cotton and Werner Eck, “Josephus’ Roman Audience: Josephus and the Roman Elites,” in Edmondson, Mason, and Rives, Flavius Josephus and Flavian Rome, 37–52.

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74. A baraita in the Babylonian Talmud (Berakhot 54a) appears to list a set of stops on a sightseeing route by pilgrims through the region; Bar-Ilan, Meir, “Fabulous Places in the Land of Israel in Antiquity” [in Hebrew], Judea and Samaria Research Studies 5 (1996): 229–39Google Scholar. The baraita reads: “He who beholds the fords of the [Red] Sea, or the fords of the Jordan, or the fords of the valleys of Arnon, or the hail-stones in the descent of Bet Horon, or the stone which Og, king of Bashan, sought to cast upon Israel, or the stone upon which Moses sat when Joshua fought against Amalek, or [the pillar of salt of] Lot's wife, or the wall of Jericho which was swallowed up in its place—over all these one must give thanks and praise before the All-present.” As for the tombs of the prophets, the undated work Lives of the Prophets includes among its biographies of the prophets of Israel specific directions on how to find burial spots of some of them, suggesting that these tombs were Jewish pilgrimage destinations; see Satran, David, Biblical Prophets in Byzantine Palestine: Reassessing the Lives of the Prophets, Studia in Veteris Testamenti Pseudepigrapha 11 (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 105–10Google Scholar; Gitlitz and Davidson, Pilgrimage and the Jews, 41–42.

75. See Cohn, Naftali S., The Memory of the Temple and the Making of the Rabbis, Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

76. The language is based on an interpretation of a biblical idiom in Exodus 23:17; see Neis, Rachel, The Sense of Sight in Rabbinic Culture: Jewish Ways of Seeing in Late Antiquity, Greek Culture in the Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 4581CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Safrai, Pilgrimage, 146.

77. Casson, Travel in the Ancient World, 300–329.

78. Wilkinson, John, Jerusalem Pilgrims before the Crusades (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1977), 3–4, 117–21Google Scholar. And see there for other pilgrim accounts and sources.

79. Cohen, “Art, Myth, and Travel,” 115–17.

80. Such is a central argument in Fuller, Robert C., Wonder: From Emotion to Spirituality (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), esp. 137–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar, with its discussion of aesthetic spirituality. On the culturally conditioned nature of seeing and visuality, see Neis, Sense of Sight, 1–10. On topophilia and placemaking, see Tuan, Yi-Fu, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1977)Google Scholar.

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82. For examples of polemicizing against the Temple institution among the Qumran sectarians, see the Damascus Document (CD) V, 15–17; among the Jesus movement, see Mark 11:15–19, Matthew 21:12–17, and John 2:13–16.