Program / Course 7: New Testament Theology and History / Lesson 1.1
What you will learn
- Explain what the Second Temple period is and roughly when it lasted.
- Describe the shared practices that held Jewish life together: Temple, Torah, synagogue, festivals and covenant identity.
- Name the languages and regions of Jewish life, including Galilee, Judea and the Diaspora.
- Recognize how Jewish hopes shaped the way people heard Jesus and the first apostles.
The big idea
Jesus and the first Christians were Jews, living in a Jewish world with its own Scriptures, worship, laws and hopes. The Second Temple period runs from the rebuilding of the Jerusalem Temple after the exile until Rome destroyed it in 70 AD. In that world, Jews shared a common center in the Temple and the Torah, yet disagreed sharply about how to be faithful. Reading the New Testament well begins with knowing this setting, because most of its questions are Jewish questions.
Key terms
- Second Temple
- The Temple in Jerusalem rebuilt after the Babylonian exile, completed around 516 BC and greatly enlarged by Herod the Great, until its destruction in 70 AD.
- Torah
- The Hebrew word for teaching or law. It names the first five books of the Bible and, more broadly, God’s instruction to Israel.
- Synagogue
- A Greek word meaning gathering. It names the local meeting place where Jews read and discussed Scripture and prayed, as well as the community that met there.
- Diaspora
- A Greek word meaning scattering. It names the Jewish communities that lived outside the land of Israel, in cities across the Mediterranean world and in Babylonia.
- Covenant
- A binding relationship that God establishes with a people. Jews understood themselves as bound to God by the covenant made with Abraham and renewed at Sinai.
- Septuagint
- The Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, begun in Egypt in the third century BC, widely used by Greek-speaking Jews and later by the church.
- Messiah
- A Hebrew word meaning anointed one. Its Greek form is Christos. In this period it named a hoped-for king or agent of God, though Jews held varied expectations about what such a figure would do.
Background
The Babylonian army destroyed Solomon’s Temple in 586 BC and carried many Judeans into exile. When Persia conquered Babylon, some exiles returned and rebuilt the Temple. Its dedication is traditionally dated to about 516 BC. Historians call the long age that followed the Second Temple period. It ends in 70 AD, when Roman soldiers burned the Temple during a Jewish revolt. Jesus lived and taught in the middle of this age, in the first third of the first century AD.
During those centuries the land passed from Persian to Greek to Roman control. After Alexander the Great, Greek language and culture spread through the region, a process called Hellenization. Some Jews welcomed parts of it, and others resisted. A crisis came in the 160s BC, when the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes tried to suppress Jewish practice and defiled the Temple. A revolt led by the family of the Maccabees followed, and its leaders eventually founded the Hasmonean dynasty, which ruled an independent Jewish state until Rome took control in 63 BC. This memory of persecution and resistance was alive in Jesus’ day.
The main written sources are the Hebrew Bible and the Greek Septuagint, the books of the Apocrypha (which Catholic and Orthodox churches treat as Scripture, in whole or in part, and Protestants do not), the Dead Sea Scrolls, the writings of Philo of Alexandria, the histories of Josephus, and later rabbinic literature. The rabbinic writings were put in final form after the New Testament, so historians use them with care when describing the first century.
Step-by-step explanation
Step 1: The Temple at the center
The Temple in Jerusalem was the one place where sacrifice was offered. Priests of the tribe of Levi served there, and the high priest held the highest office. Pilgrims traveled to Jerusalem for the three great festivals: Passover, Weeks (called Pentecost in Greek) and Tabernacles. The Gospels place Jesus in Jerusalem at several of these festivals, and Acts opens its story at Pentecost.
The Temple also carried an economic and political weight. Offerings, taxes and the many pilgrims made the city prosperous. Herod the Great began an immense rebuilding of the Temple complex around 20 BC, and work continued for decades, so that the building was still being finished in Jesus’ lifetime (John 2:20 mentions forty-six years).
Step 2: Torah and the synagogue
Beyond Jerusalem, Jewish life was shaped by the reading of Torah. On the Sabbath, communities gathered to hear Scripture read and explained. The Gospels show Jesus teaching in synagogues (Luke 4:16 describes him standing to read in Nazareth), and Acts shows Paul beginning in the synagogue of almost every city he enters.
The Torah gave Jews distinctive marks of identity: circumcision, the Sabbath, the food laws and rules of purity. These practices separated Jews from their neighbors in the Roman world and bound them to each other. How strictly to keep them, and what they required in daily circumstances, was a constant topic of debate.
Step 3: Land, language and region
Most Jews in Galilee and Judea spoke Aramaic as an everyday language. Hebrew was used in worship and study. Greek was the common language of trade and government across the empire, and it was known in Palestine too. Jesus very likely taught mainly in Aramaic, and the Gospels were written in Greek.
Galilee, in the north, was largely rural and Jewish, with fishing villages and farming towns. Judea, in the south, held Jerusalem and the Temple. Samaria lay between them, and Jews and Samaritans were estranged. Many more Jews lived in the Diaspora, in cities such as Alexandria, Antioch and Rome, where they kept their ways while living among Gentiles, a term for non-Jews.
Step 4: Hopes shared and contested
Most Jews believed that the God of Israel was the one true God, that Israel was his chosen people, and that he would one day set the world right. They read the prophets as promising a restoration of Israel, the return of God’s presence and justice for the nations.
Beyond these shared convictions, expectations varied. Some looked for an anointed king from David’s line. Others looked for a priestly figure, or a prophet like Moses, or for God alone to act. Some believed in a resurrection of the dead at the end of the age, and others did not. The next lessons look more closely at these differences. Scholars still debate how widespread any one expectation was, and the evidence is not always clear.
- Which practices in this lesson would have made a Jewish community visible to its neighbors?
- How did the Temple and the synagogue serve different needs in Jewish life?
- What difference does it make to read Jesus as a first-century Jew rather than as a figure from a later religion?
- Why might the memory of the Maccabean revolt still matter to people living under Roman rule?
- What can a historian say with confidence about this period, and what is only inferred from later sources?
- Which of your own assumptions about the Jewish world of the New Testament does this lesson challenge?
Examples
A pilgrim at Passover
A farmer from a village in Galilee travels south with his family for Passover. They walk several days, stay in a crowded city, buy an animal for the sacrifice and take part in the meal. (A constructed example based on the practice described in the Gospels, not a real person.)
A Greek-speaking Jew in the Diaspora
A merchant in Alexandria reads the Scriptures in the Septuagint, sends the Temple tax to Jerusalem and keeps the Sabbath, while speaking Greek at the market. (A constructed example. Alexandria did have a large Jewish community, and Philo is a real writer from it.)
Jesus in the synagogue at Nazareth
In Luke 4:16 to 21, Jesus stands to read from the prophet Isaiah in the synagogue and says that the passage is fulfilled. The scene assumes a community that read Scripture aloud together and heard it as God’s promise for their own time.
Different perspectives
Scholarly view
Most historians of the period stress that Judaism was diverse. They speak of ‘Judaisms’ in the plural to remind readers that the Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes and others shared a common heritage but practiced it differently. Others reply that a common core of Temple, Torah and covenant justifies speaking of one Judaism, held in varied forms.
Jewish view
Jewish tradition regards the Second Temple period as the formative age of the Judaism that survived the destruction of 70 AD. The rabbis who shaped later Judaism looked back to teachers of this era, especially the Pharisees, as their predecessors.
Catholic and Orthodox views
Both traditions teach that the church grows out of Israel and that the Old Testament, including the books of the Greek Septuagint, belongs to Christian Scripture. The Catholic Church’s Second Vatican Council taught that the church cannot forget the bond that joins her to the Jewish people.
Protestant view
Protestants read the Hebrew Bible as the Old Testament and give the Second Temple period high value for understanding the New Testament. Many Protestant scholars have been central to recent study of Jesus as a Jew, though Protestant churches differ over how far the Apocrypha should inform that study.
Why it matters
Almost every figure and idea in the New Testament assumes this Jewish background: Temple, Torah, covenant, Messiah, resurrection and kingdom. A reader who does not know it will tend to hear the gospels in modern terms and miss what the first hearers heard. Knowing this setting also protects against two errors: treating Jesus as if he opposed Judaism as such, and treating first-century Judaism as one uniform thing.
Common misunderstandings
Misunderstanding: First-century Judaism was a religion of empty legalism that Jesus came to correct.
Correction: This old caricature does not fit the evidence. Jewish writers of the period speak of Torah as a gift of God’s grace, and keeping it as a response to the covenant. Jesus and Paul argue within that world, and Christians of all traditions now reject the caricature.
Misunderstanding: All Jews of the time expected the same kind of Messiah.
Correction: The sources show a range of hopes. Some texts expect a royal Messiah, some two figures, some none at all. Careful readers ask what a particular text or group expected rather than assuming one pattern.
Misunderstanding: Christianity began as a new religion unrelated to Judaism.
Correction: The first followers of Jesus were Jews who worshiped in the Temple and synagogues. How and when the two communities separated is a matter of ongoing historical debate, and most scholars place it well after the first century.
Misunderstanding: Everyone in Judea spoke Hebrew.
Correction: Aramaic was the common spoken language of Jews in the land, Hebrew was the language of Scripture and worship, and Greek was widely known. Many people used more than one.
Knowledge check
What is the Second Temple period, and when does it end?
It is the age that began with the rebuilding of the Jerusalem Temple after the Babylonian exile, traditionally about 516 BC. It ends in 70 AD, when Roman forces destroyed the Temple during the Jewish revolt. Jesus and the apostles lived near the end of the period.
Name three shared practices or institutions that bound Jews together.
The Temple with its sacrifices and festivals, the Torah read and studied in synagogues, and the covenant marks of circumcision, Sabbath and food laws. Together they gave Jews a distinct identity whether they lived in Judea, Galilee or the Diaspora.
What languages were used in Jewish life in the first century?
Aramaic was the common spoken language in the land. Hebrew was used for Scripture and worship. Greek was the common language of the empire and was used by many Jews, especially in the Diaspora, where the Septuagint was read.
Why do historians speak of Judaism as diverse in this period?
Groups such as the Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes shared a heritage but disagreed on interpretation of Torah, the Temple, resurrection and political hope. The sources show many ways of being Jewish, though a common core of Temple, Torah and covenant remained.
Why is the Maccabean revolt relevant to the New Testament world?
It shaped Jewish memory of resistance to foreign rule and the defense of the Temple and Torah. Under Roman rule, many Jews recalled it as a model of faithfulness under pressure, and it influenced the hopes and tensions of Jesus’ day.
Think it through
- What picture of Judaism did you bring to this lesson, and where did it come from?
- How might a Jewish listener in the first century have heard Jesus’ words in the synagogue differently from a modern reader?
- Which institution do you think held the community together most strongly, Temple or Torah, and why?
- How should a Christian speak about the Jewish background of the faith in a way that is both accurate and respectful?
Independent assignment
A map of the Jewish world
In your own notebook, write 300 to 450 words. Draw a simple sketch map of Galilee, Samaria, Judea and the Diaspora cities named in this lesson. Under it, list five practices that shaped Jewish life and write one sentence on how each appears in the Gospels or Acts. Finish with a paragraph that states what surprised you most. Do not send this to anyone.
Further study
- F. F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? Read the opening chapters to see how a traditional introduction treats the New Testament’s setting.
- Bruce M. Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament Read selectively for the background of the Greek Scriptures and the shape of early Christian use of them.
- Jewish Publication Society, The Hebrew Bible in English (JPS translation) Read Ezra 3 and Nehemiah 8 for the return from exile and the public reading of Torah.
- Luke 4:16 Jesus reads in the synagogue at Nazareth.
- John 2:20 The rebuilding of the Temple took forty-six years.
- Acts 2:5 Devout Jews from every nation are in Jerusalem for Pentecost.