Description
Book SynopsisAncient Jewish sacrifice has long been misunderstood. Some find in sacrifice the key to the mysterious and violent origins of human culture. Others see these cultic rituals as merely the fossilized vestiges of primitive superstition. Some believe that ancient Jewish sacrifice was doomed from the start, destined to be replaced by the Christian eucharist. Others think that the temple was fated to be superseded by the synagogue. In Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple Jonathan Klawans demonstrates that these supersessionist ideologies have prevented scholars from recognizing the Jerusalem temple as a powerful source of meaning and symbolism to the ancient Jews who worshiped there. Klawans exposes and counters such ideologies by reviewing the theoretical literature on sacrifice and taking a fresh look at a broad range of evidence concerning ancient Jewish attitudes toward the temple and its sacrificial cult. The first step toward reaching a more balanced view is to integrate the study of sac
Trade ReviewDrawing on the fields of anthropology and ritual studies, Klawans unearths the powerful symbolism of the ancient Jewish sacrificial cult. He shows that sacrifice was a spiritually rich and meaningful activity illuminated by two 'organizing principles' central to the priestly traditions of the Bible: the desire to imitate God and the concern to attract and maintain God's presence within the community. In so doing, Klawans disables all previous evolutionist (and more or less hostile) accounts of ancient Jewish sacrifice as a primitive and spiritually empty behavior that was rejected and superseded by the eucharist in Christianity or prayer in rabbinic Judaism. His fresh readings of central New Testament and rabbinic texts challenge foundational assumptions and long-cherished prejudices. * Christine E. Hayes, author of Gentile Impurities and Jewish Identities: Intermarriage and Conversion from the Bible to the Talmud *
Table of ContentsPART I: PURITY AND SACRIFICE IN BIBLICAL ISRAEL ; PART II: THE SECOND TEMPLE, SYMBOLISM, AND SUPERSESSIONISM ; SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
