From feasts into mourning: The violence of early Jewish festivals

Journal of Religion

Volumn 79, Issue 4, 1999, Pages 545-565

  Weitzman, Steven ^a  

^a INDIANA UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 67449118923     PISSN: 00224189     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/490500     Document Type: Review

References (85)

1. S. Lukes, "Political Ritual and Social Integration," Sociology 9 (1975): 289-308, esp. 300
2. Even outside Jerusalem, the festivals apparently inspired assemblies as, e.g., in Cyranea where, judging from one inscription, some sort of Jewish civic council appears to have met on Sukkot. See G. Lüderitz, Corpus jüdischer Zeugnisse aus der Cyrenaika (Weisbaden: Dr. Ludwig Riechert, 1872), p. 71
3. All citations of Josephus are from the Loeb edition (trans. H. St. J. Thackeray [London: Heinemann, 1930]). I have occasionally adapted this translation when my argument requires it and the original text justifies it. For another example within early Jewish literature where protestors use citrons to express their discontent, see Mishnah (m.) Sukkot 4.9, Tosefta (t.) Sukkot 3.16, and Babylonian Talmud (b.) Sukkot 48b, which refer to an incident or incidents in which the people throw citrons at a priest when he failed to perform a Sukkot ritual properly. It is unclear whether these texts refer to the same event or different incidents. See J. Rubenstein, "The Sadducees and the Water Libation "Jewish Quarterly Review 84 (1994): 417-444
4. For the notion of "ritualized aggression" - violence that is highly stylized, limited in its intensity, and symbolically laden - see P. Marsh, E. Rosser, and R. Harré, The Rules of Disorder (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978), pp. 28, 125-28
5. See J. Macdonald, ed., The Samaritan Chronicle II (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1969), containing both Hebrew text and English translation; p. 125 in the English translation, p. 48 in the Hebrew text. Compare the destruction of the Samaritan Temple by the Hasmonean ruler John Hyrcanus described in Ant. 13.255-56, perhaps the inspiration for this tradition
6. What it is about the Temple cult that angers Jesus is difficult to reconstruct from the Gospel accounts (see Matt. 21:10-17; Luke 19:45-46; Mark 11:15-19), and scholarship has reached no consensus on the motive or meaning for his rampage. For four recent studies of the incident, none of which is likely to be the last word, see E. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), pp. 61-76
7. B. Chilton, The Temple of Jesus (University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 1992), pp. 97-136
8. H. D. Betz, "Jesus and the Purity of the Temple (Mark 11:15-18): A Comparative Religion Study," Journal of Biblical Literature 116 (1997): 455-72
9. C. Evans, "Jesus' Action in the Temple: Cleansing or Portent of Destruction?" Jesus in Context: Temple, Purity and Restoration, ed. B. Chilton and C. Evans (Leiden: Brill; New York: Köln, 1997), pp. 395-439
10. R. Girard, Violence and the Sacred (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), esp. pp. 119-126
11. In JW 2.280 and other places, Josephus implies that the crowd gathered in Jerusalem for Passover could reach three million, but this number clearly seems exaggerated, exceeding the estimated population of all Palestine in the first century C.E. M. Broshi ("The Population of Western Palestine in the Roman-Byzantine Period," Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 226 [1979]: 1-10) believes the population was less than 1,000,000
12. For the higher estimate of ca. 2,000,000, see A. Byatt, "Josephus and Population Numbers in First Century Palestine," Palestine Exploration Quarterly 105 (1973): 51-60. Both figures fall below Josephus's claim that three million flocked to Jerusalem for Passover
13. See Z. Maoz, "On the Hasmonean and Herodian Town Plan of Jerusalem," Eretz Israel 18 (1983): 46-57 (in Hebrew)
14. For the techniques of policing, crowd management, and riot control used in Rome and its colonies, see W. Nippel, Public Order in Ancient Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995)
15. Festival crowds encouraged violence in other ways as well. For one thing, they provided an audience for violence. According to Josephus again, the Sicarii, a violent sect whose members would later die defending Masada, were especially adept at transforming festivals into theaters of violence. They often chose to murder their enemies before throngs of festival pilgrims, presumably so as to shock as many people as possible with their violence. Festival crowds could also provide the violent with the shield of anonymity, something which the Sicarii evidently also recognized since they are said to have escaped being caught after their crime by joining in the crowd's cries of alarm. For further discussion of crowds in antiquity, see J. McClelland, The Crowd and the Mob (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989), pp. 34-59
16. D. Nirenberg, Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996), pp. 200-230
17. See E. Le Roy Ladurie, Carnival in Romans: A People's Uprising at Romans, 1579-1580, trans. M. Feeney (New York: George Braziller, 1979)
18. See also E. Horowitz, "The Rite to be Reckless: On the Perpetration and Interpretation of Purim Violence," Poetics Today ("Special Issue: Purim and the Cultural Poetics of Judaism," ed. D. Boyarin [Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University]) 15 (1994): 9-54
19. J. Comaroff, Body of Power, Spirit of Resistance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985)
20. In recent years, some ritual theorists have grown wary of the "ritual as definition of reality" thesis, pointing out that not all communities relate to their rituals as code-bearing messages. See C. Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 175-76
21. T. Asad, Genealogies of Religion (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), pp. 55-79. As we will see below, however, whatever the limitations of the "ritual as definition of reality" thesis, one enduring benefit is that it has opened up new ways of thinking about ritual violence
22. For important studies of festival pilgrimages in the Second Temple period, see S. Safrai, Pilgrimage at the Time of the Second Temple (Jerusalem: Akedemon, 1965) (in Hebrew)
23. J. Jeremias, Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus: An Investigation into Economic and Social Conditions in the time of Jesus, trans. F. H. Cross and C. H. Cave (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1969), pp. 62-71
24. Y. Amir, "Philo's Version of the Pilgrimages to Jerusalem," in Jerusalem in the Second Temple Period: Abraham Schallt Memorial Volume, ed. A. Oppenheimer, U. Rappaport, and M. Stern (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben Zvi/Ministry of Defense, 1980), pp. 154-65
25. A. Robello, "L'observance des fetes juives dans l'Empire romaine," Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt 21, no. 2 (1984): 1288-1312
26. J. Licht, Time and Holy Days in the Biblical and Second Commonwealth Periods (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1988) (in Hebrew)
27. I. Knohl, "Participation of the People in the Temple Worship - Second Temple Sectarian Conflict and the Biblical Tradition," Tarbiz 60 (1991): 139-46 (in Hebrew)
28. "Post-biblical Sectarianism and the Priestly Schools of the Pentateuch: The Issue of Popular Participation in the Temple Cult on Festivals," in The Madrid Qumran Congress, ed. J. T. Barrera and L. Vegas Montaner, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 2:601-609
29. For recent studies of individual festivals, see B. Bokser, The Origins of the Seder (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984)
30. J. Potin, La Fête juive de la Pantecôte, 2 vols. (Paris: Cerf, 1971)
31. J. Rubenstein, The History of Sukkot in the Second Temple and Rabbinic Periods (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995)
32. and the studies in Boyarin, ed., "Special Issue: Purim and the Cultural Poetics of Judaism."
33. Some scholars believe that Josephus may have actually fulfilled his promise to explain Jewish customs in his extant compositions. See D. Altshuler, "The Treatise ΠΕΡΙ ΕΘΩΝ ΚΑΙ ΑΙΤΙΩΝ 'On Customs and Causes' by Flavius Josephus," Jewish Quarterly Review 69 (1978-1979): 226-232
34. K. Clark, "Worship in the Jerusalem Temple after A.D. 70," New Testament Studies 6 (1960): 269-80
35. A. Guttmann, "The End of the Jewish Sacrificial Cult," Hebrew Union College Annual 38 (1967): 137-148
36. Clark and Guttman differ over the scope of the post-70 cult, whether it was private or public, minor or large-scale. For the evidence suggesting continued festival pilgrimage to Jerusalem through the Byzantine period, see S. Safrai, "Pilgrimage to Jerusalem after the Destruction of the Second Temple," in Oppenheimer et al., eds., pp. 376-393 (in Hebrew)
37. S. Schwartz, Josephus and Judaean Politics (Lieden: Brill, 1990), pp. 58-109. Compare Chilton (n. 6 above), pp. 69-87, who suggests that Josephus may himself have been angling for appointment as high priest
38. See, e.g., T. Rajak, Josephus the Historian and His Society (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983), pp. 91-96
39. For further discussion of Jubilees' view of the festivals and their pre-Sinaitic origins, see M. Testuz, Les idées religieuses du Livre des Jubilés (Geneva: Libraire E. Droz, 1960), pp. 121-64
40. J. Schultz, "Two Views of the Patriarchs: Noahides and Pre-Sinai Israelites," in Texts and Responses: Studies Presented to Nahum Glatzer, ed. M. Fishbane and P. Flohr (Leiden: Brill, 1975), pp. 43-59
41. J. Endres, Biblical Interpretation in the Book of Jubilees (Washington D.C.: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1987), pp. 234-35
42. G. Anderson, "The Status of the Torah before Sinai," Dead Sea Discoveries 1 (1994): 1-29
43. J. VanderKam, "The Temple Scroll and the Book of Jubilees," in Temple Scroll Studies, ed. G. Brooke (Sheffield: JSOT, 1989), pp. 211-236
44. J. VanderKam, "Biblical Interpretation in 1 Enoch and Jubilees," in The Pseudepigrapha and Early Biblical Interpretation, ed. J. Charlesworth and C. Evans (Sheffield: JSOT, 1993), pp. 96-125, esp. pp. 121-22; cf. Anderson, pp. 2-3
45. Citations of Jubilees are according to the translation of O. Wintermute, "Jubilees: A New Translation and Introduction," in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed. J. Charlesworth (New York: Doubleday, 1985), 2:35-142
46. For a critical edition of the Ethiopian version, see J. C. VanderKam, The Book of Jubilees, Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum (Louvain: E. Peeters, 1989)
47. For the recently published Hebrew fragments of Jubilees found at Qumran, see H. Attridge et al., Qumran Cave 4. VIII: Parabiblical Texts, Discoveries in the Judaean Desert, no. 13 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), pp. 1-175, plates I-XII
48. See Testuz, pp. 117-18; D. Dimant, "The Sons of Heaven: The Theory of the Angels in the Book of Jubilees in Light of the Writings of the Qumran Community," in Tribute to Sara: Studies in Jewish Philosophy and Kabbala, ed. M. Idel, D. Dimant, and S. Rosenberg (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1994), pp. 97-118, esp. pp. 103-4 (in Hebrew). Not every Israelite ritual as described by Jubilees has a heavenly counterpart. In its depiction of Yom Kippur (Jub. 34:18-19), e.g., Jubilees does not mention that this day was also observed by the angels. It may be significant, however, that according to Jubilees the Day of Atonement was decreed so that Israel could purify itself from its sins, a rite that was probably unnecessary for the angels
49. For the relation between the ideology of Jubilees and that of the Qumran sect, see J. VanderKam, Textual and Historical Studies in the Book of Jubilees (Missoula: Scholars, 1977), pp. 255-283, and "The Temple Scroll and the Book of Jubilees"
50. L. Shiffman, "The Sacrificial System of the Temple Scroll and the Book of Jubilees," in Society of Biblical Literature 1985 Seminar Papers, ed. K. Richards (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 1985), pp. 217-33
51. and Dimant, "Sons of Heaven." The ideology of Jubilees, though clearly related to that implicit in the sectarian Dead Sea Scrolls, is by no means identical to the latter in every respect, however
52. For a comparison of the festival legislation in the Temple Scroll and Jubilees that stresses differences, see M. Delcor, "La Fête des Huttes dans Ie Rouleau du Temple et dans le Livre des Jubilés," Revuede Qumran 15 (1991): 181-198
53. For the evidence placingjubilees in the early- to mid-second century B.C.E. (ca. 170-140 B.C.E.), see VanderKam, Textual and Historical Studies, pp. 207-285. This evidence includes the paleography of the Qumran fragments of Jubilees that indicates that it was composed before 100 B.C.E. (the approximate date of the earliest extant manuscript fragment), along with several possible allusions within Jubilees to the Maccabean wars
54. For the Hebrew fragment of Jubilees found at Masada, see S. Talmon, "Hebrew Written Fragments from Masada," Dead Sea Discoveries 3 (1996): 168-177
55. The passage in Jubilees referred to here makes it clear that one reason its author rejected the festival practices of other Israelites had to do with the calendar they used: the author of Jubilees followed a solar ritual calendar, whereas his opponents employed a lunar calendar and thus (from the perspective of Jubilees) observed the festivals on the wrong days. This issue is thought to have played a central role in the formation of the Qumran sect. See J. VanderKam, "Calendrical Texts and the Origins of the Dead Sea Scroll Community," in Methods of Investigation of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Khirbet Qumran Site, ed. M. Wise et al. (New York: New York Academy of the Sciences, 1994), pp. 371-388. Although it remains unclear what exactly triggered the calendrical dispute, when it began, and why it was so important to those involved, I suspect that from Jubilees' perspective the issue is ultimately rooted in the same quest for normative status that triggered identification with the angelic cult - an argument I intend to develop in a future study
56. The exact relationship of the Qumran sect to the Jerusalem Temple cult has inspired much debate, with scholars disagreeing over whether the sect completely rejected the Jerusalem Temple cult and developed its own alternative forms of worship or was simply critical of the Temple cult. For a sampling of the debate, see P. Davies, "The Ideology of the Temple in the Damascus Covenant," Journal of Jewish Studies 33 (1982): 287-301
57. A. Steudel, "The Houses of Prostration CD XI, 21-XIII, I - Duplicates of the Temple," Revue de Qumran 16 (1983): 49-63
58. D. Falk, Daily, Sabbath and Festival Prayers in the Dead Sea Scrolls (Leiden: Brill, 1998), pp. 239-247
59. For 4Q 390 and its relation to Jubilees, see D. Dimant, "New Light from Qumran on the Jewish Pseudepigrapha - 4Q 390," in Barrera and Vegas Montaner, eds. (n. 16 above), 1:405-448 Dimant does not believe that this document originated within the Qumran community, but she nevertheless concludes that it reflects a closely related community with similar ideas about the festivals
60. See C. Newsom, "He has Established for Himself Priests: Human and Angelic Priesthood in the Qumran Sabbath Shirot," in Archaeology and History in the Dead Sea Scrolls: The New York University Conference in Memory of Yigael Yadin, ed. L. Shiffman (Sheffield: JSOT, 1990), pp. 101-20
61. Dimant, "Sons of Heaven," and "Men as Angels: The Self-image of the Qumran Community," in Religion and Politics in the Ancient Near East, ed. A Berlin (Bethesda: University of Maryland Press, 1996), pp. 93-103. Note that other Qumran documents, 4Q Berakot, e.g., also correlate the ritual behavior of the Qumran community with that of the angels
62. See B. Nitzan, "4Q Berakhot (4Q 286-290): A Preliminary Report," in New Qumran Texts and Studies, ed. G. Brooke and F. Garcia Martínez (Leiden: Brill, 1994), pp. 53-71
63. For other aspects of Philo's understanding of the festivals and Temple cult not covered in the following analysis, see Amir (n. 16 above); V. Nikiprowetzky, "La spiritualisation des sacrifices et le culte sacrificiel au Temple de Jérusalem chez Philon d'Alexandrie," Semitica 17 (1967): 97-116
64. and R. Hecht, "Patterns of Exegesis in Philo's Interpretation of Leviticus," Studia Philonica 6 (1979-1980): 77-155
65. All citations of Philo are according to the translation in the Loeb edition (trans. F. H. Colson and G. Whitaker [London: Heinemann, 1937]). The Special Laws has received much attention from scholars who differ in their reconstructions of why and for whom it was written. For a brief overview of the most influential modern interpretations, see R. Hecht, "Philo's Interpretation of Circumcision," in Nourished with Peace: Studies in Hellenistic Judaism in Memory of Samuel Sandmel, ed. F. Greenspahn et al. (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1984), pp. 51-79. Hecht himself concludes that The Special Laws was intended to serve as apologetic, countering non-Jewish misrepresentations of laws like circumcision by seeking to show the "reasonableness" of such laws
66. See Safrai, Pilgrimage at the Time of the Second Temple (n. 16 above), pp. 92-95; Jeremias (n. 16 above), p. 77
67. E. Shürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ, rev. G. Vermes, F. Miller, and M. Black (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1979), 2:209-13
68. and D. Schwartz, Studies in the Jewish Background of Christianity (Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1992), pp. 102-116
69. For the capacity of rituals to address "outsiders," see G. Baumann, "Ritual Implicates 'Others': Rereading Durkheim in a Plural Society," in Understanding Rituah, ed. D. de Coppet (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 97-116
70. See E. Bickerman, "The Warning Inscriptions of Herod's Temple," in his Studies in Jewish and Christian History (Leiden: Brill, 1980), 2:210-24; D. Schwartz, pp. 102-116. Nevertheless, some non-Jews apparently even tried to participate in those Jewish festival rites from which they were strictly excluded. See Babylonian Talmud (b.) Pesahim 3b for a story about an uncircumcised gentile who went to Jerusalem to eat the Passover sacrifice, was eventually tricked by a rabbi into revealing himself to be a non-Jew, and was put to death
71. The issue here seems to have been whether the Jerusalem cult would serve as an extension of the imperial cult connecting the Jews to Rome. For the role of civic festivals in mediating Roman power, see S. R. F. Price, Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 101-107 For the role of sacrifices, see pp. 207-33
72. Note that for Philo the Sabbath and circumcision play similar roles in connecting Jews and non-Jews. See H. Weiss, "Philo on the Sabbath," Studia Philonica Annual 3 (1991): 83-105, esp. 99-100
73. and Hecht, "Philo's Interpretation of Circumcision," p. 78
74. D. Dawson, Allegorical Readers and Cultural Revision in Ancient Alexandria (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992), pp. 73-126
75. See also P. Borgen, "Philo and the Jews in Alexandria," in Ethnicity in Hellenistic Egypt, ed. P. Bilde et al. (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 1992), pp. 122-38
76. J. Barclay, Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1996), pp. 170-176
77. See the conflict over Passover observance among early Christians, a conflict that reflected the clash between different conceptions of Christian collective self-identity in relation to Judaism. See S. G. Wilson, "Passover, Easter, and Anti-Judaism: Melito of Sardis and Others," in To See Ourselves as Others See Us: Christians, Jews, "Others" in Late Antiquity, ed. J. Neusner and E. Frerichs (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1985), pp. 337-355
78. E. Goodenough, Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period (New York: Pantheon, 1953-1968), 4:145-55, 12:86-88
79. L. Kadmon, The Coins of the Jewish War of 66-73 C.E. (Tel Aviv: Schocken, 1960), pp. 93-94
80. Y. Meshorer, Ancient Jewish Coinage (Dix Hills, N.Y.: Amphora, 1982), 2:116-122, 138-41
81. H. Ulfgard, Feast and Future: Revelations 7:9-17 and the Feast of Tabernacles (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1989), pp. 131-39
82. Rubenstein, History of Sukkot (n. 16 above), pp. 97-99
83. For evidence suggesting a central role for the Temple and priests in the Bar Kochba Revolt, see D. Goodblatt, "The Title 'Nasi' and the Ideological Background of the Second Revolt," in The Bar Kochba Revolt: A New Approach, ed. A. Oppenheimer and U. Rappaport (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben Zvi, 1984), pp. 113-132 (in Hebrew)
84. See R. Gordon, "The Veil of Power: Emperors, Sacrificers and Benefactors," in Pagan Priests: Religion and Power in the Ancient World, ed. M. Beard and J. North (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990), pp. 201-231
85. See J. Price, Jerusalem under Siege (Leiden: Brill, 1992), pp. 112-113