Second Temple Judaism refers to the Jewish religion as it developed during the Second Temple period, which began with the construction of the Second Temple in Persian Judah around 516 BCE and ended with the destruction of Jerusalem amidst the First Jewish–Roman War in 70CE. This period was marked by the emergence of multiple religious currents as well as extensive cultural, religious, and political developments among the Jewish people. It saw the progression of the Hebrew Bible canon, the synagogue, and Jewish eschatology. Additionally, the rise of Christianity began in the final years of the Second Temple period—initially as a Jewish sect, but eventually as a distinct religion in its own right.
According to Jewish tradition, authentic prophecy (, ) ceased during the early years of the Second Temple period, leaving religious Jews without their version of divine guidance at a time when they felt most in need of support and direction.The Jewish Backgrounds of the New Testament: Second Commonwealth Judaism in Recent Study, Wheaton College, Previously published in Archaeology of the Biblical World, 1/2 (1991), pp. 40–49. Under Hellenistic rule, the growing Hellenization of Judaism became a source of resentment among Jewish traditionalists, who clung to strict monotheistic beliefs. Opposition to Hellenistic influence on Jewish religious and cultural practices was a major catalyst for the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid Empire. Following the establishment of the Hasmonean dynasty, traditional Judaism was reasserted by the Maccabees across the Land of Israel as they expanded their independent territory. The later years of the Second Temple period saw the development of several Jewish messianic ideas. From to 30CE, five successive generations of the Zugot headed Jewish spiritual affairs.
The late Second Temple period saw the emergence of several Jewish schools or groups. The Pharisees, as one influential group, included members from both the priesthood and the general population, and believed both the Written Torah and ancestral traditions were equally binding. The Sadducees, consisting of high priests and aristocrats, rejected the resurrection of the dead. The Essenes criticized the practices of the Temple, deeming the priests illegitimate and the rituals flawed. They expected a victory of good over evil, with some members choosing to live in isolation. Nonetheless, most Jews were not affiliated with any particular group and practiced common traditions like observing Shabbat, celebrating holidays, attending synagogue, making pilgrimages to the Temple, following Mosaic dietary laws, and circumcising their newborn males.
After the Roman army destroyed the Second Temple and the rest of Jerusalem in 70 CE, Judaism shifted away from Temple-based rituals, including sacrificial worship, and adapted to a new framework without its sacred centre. Jewish sectarianism disappeared, while the Pharisees, later succeeded by the rabbis, emerged as the leading religious force. This transition focused on Torah observance, ethical deeds, communal prayer, and rabbinical law—giving rise to Rabbinic Judaism, which has remained the dominant form of the religion since late antiquity.
Historical background
Periods (Note: dates and periods are in many cases approximate and/or conventional) Persian, 539–333BCE Hellenistic, 333–164BCE Ptolemaic, 301–200BCE Seleucid, 200–164BCE Hasmonean, 164–37BCE Herodian, 37BCE–6CE Herodian Kingdom of Judea, 37–4BCE Herodian Tetrarchy, 4BCE–6CE Roman, 6–70CE
Overview In 586BCE, Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II captured Jerusalem, destroyed the Temple of Solomon, and deported the elite of the population to Babylon (the "Babylonian exile"). In 539BCE, Babylon fell to the Persian conqueror Cyrus, and in 538BCE, the exiles were permitted to return to Yehud Medinata, a Judean province of the Persian Empire. The Temple is commonly said to have been rebuilt in the period 520–515BCE, but it seems probable that this is an artificial date chosen so that 70 years could be said to have passed between the destruction and the rebuilding, fulfilling a prophecy of Jeremiah.
The Persian period ended after Alexander the Great's conquest of the Mediterranean coast in 333-332BCE. His empire disintegrated after his death, and Judea fell to the Ptolemies, who ruled Egypt. In 200BCE, Israel and Judea were conquered by the Seleucids, who ruled Syria. Around 167BCE, for reasons that remain obscure, the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes attempted to suppress Jewish worship; this provoked a Jewish revolt that resulted in the end of Greek occupation.
Hasmonean Judea was a client kingdom of the Romans, and in the 1st century BCE , the Romans replaced them with their protégé Herod the Great. After Herod's death, Judea became a province under Rome's direct rule. Heavy taxes under the Romans and insensitivity towards the Jewish religion led to a revolt, and in 70CE the Roman general (and later emperor) Titus captured Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple, bringing an end to the Second Temple period.
Jewish diaspora The Jewish exiles in Babylon were not slaves or prisoners, nor were they badly treated, and when the Persians gave permission for them to return to Jerusalem the majority elected to remain where they were. They and their descendants formed the diaspora, a large community of Jews living outside Judea, and the 1st centuryCE historian Josephus reports that there were more Jews in Syria (i.e., the Seleucid Empire) than in any other land. There was also a significant Egyptian diaspora, although the Jews of Egypt were immigrants, not deportees, "... attracted by Hellenistic culture, eager to win the respect of the Greeks and to adapt to their ways." The Egyptian diaspora was slow to develop, but by the Hellenistic period it exceeded the Babylonian community in importance. In addition to these major centres there were Jewish communities throughout the Hellenistic and subsequently the Roman world, from North Africa to Asia Minor and Greece and in Rome.Strayer, Joseph R. ed. (1986). "Jerusalem" Dictionary of the Middle Ages. 7 New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. p. 59. There is also evidence for Jewish missionary activities in the Greco-Roman world.Louis H. Feldman, "The Omnipresence of the God-Fearers" , Biblical Archaeology Review 12, 5 (1986), Center for Online Judaic Studies.Shaye J. D. Cohen, From the Maccabees to the Mishnah (1989), pp. 55–59, Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, .A. T. Kraabel, J. Andrew Overman, Robert S. MacLennan, Diaspora Jews and Judaism: essays in honor of, and in dialogue with, A. Thomas Kraabel (1992), Scholars Press, . "As pious gentiles, the God-fearers stood somewhere between Greco-Roman piety and Jewish piety in the synagogue. In his classic but now somewhat outdated study titled Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era, Harvard scholar George Foot Moore argued that the existence of the God-fearers provides evidence for the synagogue's own missionary work outside of Palestine during the 1st century CE. The God-fearers were the result of this Jewish missionary movement."
Samaritans Overall, Second Temple Judaism and Samaritanism were two religions that gradually split from the common religion of Yahwism. For most of the Second Temple period, Samaria was larger, richer, and more populous than Judea—down to about 164BCE there were probably more Samaritans than Judeans living in the Levant. They had their own temple on Mount Gerizim near Shechem and regarded themselves as the true Israel, who remained after Eli, a wicked high priest, convinced the other Israelites to abandon Gerizim and worship at Shiloh. Second Temple Judeans, however, derided them as foreign converts and the impure offspring of mixed marriages. By the late 2nd centuryBCE, the Jews and Samaritans permanently split after a Hasmonean king destroyed a Samaritan temple at Mount Gerizim; before that the Samaritans seem to have regarded themselves as part of the wider Jewish community, but afterwards they denounced the Jerusalem temple as anathema to Yahweh.see also: Jonathan Bourgel, "The Destruction of the Samaritan Temple by John Hyrcanus: A Reconsideration", JBL 135/3 (2016), pp. 505–523
Hebrew Bible
In recent decades it has become increasingly common among scholars to assume that much of the Hebrew Bible was assembled, revised and edited in the 5th centuryBCE to reflect the realities and challenges of the Persian era. The returnees had a particular interest in the history of Israel: the written Torah (the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy), for example, likely existed in various forms during the Monarchy (the period of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah), but according to the documentary hypothesis (disputed by some Christians) it was in the Second Temple Period that it was edited and revised into something like its current form, and the Chronicles, a history written at this time, reflects the concerns of the Persian Yehud in its almost exclusive focus on Judah and the Temple.
Prophetic works were also of particular interest to the Persian-era authors, with some works being composed at this time (the last ten chapters of Isaiah and the books of Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi and perhaps Joel) and the older prophets edited and reinterpreted. The corpus of Wisdom books saw the composition of Job, parts of Proverbs, and possibly Ecclesiastes, while the book of Psalms was possibly given its modern shape and division into five parts at this time (although the collection continued to be revised and expanded well into Hellenistic and even Roman times).
In the Hellenistic period, the scriptures were translated into Greek as the Septuagint by the Jews of the Alexandrian diaspora in Egypt, who also produced a rich literature of their own covering epic poetry, philosophy, tragedy and other forms. Less is known of the Babylonian diaspora, but the Seleucid period produced works such as the court tales of the Book of Daniel (chapters 1-6 of Daniel - chapters 7-12 were a later addition), and the books of Tobit and Esther. The eastern Jews were also responsible for the adoption and transmission of the Babylonian and Persian apocalyptic tradition seen in Daniel.
Features "True Israel" The Hebrew Bible represents the beliefs of a small sector within the Israelite community who were exiled by the Babylonians and emphasized on orthodox worship, genealogical purity and adherence to the codified law. In the earliest stages of the Persian period, the returnees insisted on a strict separation between themselves ("Israel") and those who had never gone into exile ("Canaanites"), to the extent of prohibiting intermarriage; this was presented in terms of religious purity, but there may have been a practical concern for land ownership. Ethnic markers for Israelite (or later, Jewish) identity were radically reformed, with increased emphasis on genealogical descent and/or faith in Yahweh, compared to circumcision.