62 CHAPTER TWOTemple (and the Torah, too) most probably was less important, actually if not
symbolically, for non-Judaean than for Judaean Jews.
Yet it remains overwhelmingly likely that the Temple and its staff enjoyed
tremendous prestige among the Jews. The very fact that Jewish groups whose
activities in practice may have undermined the authority of the Temple and
the priests nevertheless appropriated the priestly concern for purity, as the
Pharisees may have done, or, like the Dead Sea sect, felt constrained to view
their holy community (or in the case of some Christians, their messiah) as a
replacement for the Temple, indicates as much.^34 For nonsectarian Jews, the
symbolicpoweroftheTempleisbestdemonstratedbythefactthattheTemple
treasury was overflowing with silver. Relatively little of this silver could have
been extracted from areas where priests had recognized legal jurisdiction,
which for most of the first century was probably restricted to Judaea, and
perhaps also Idumaea and the western part of Lower Galilee—assuming that
priests had some sort of jurisdiction in areas under the rule of the Roman
prefect/procurator. Much of it was given voluntarily, in some cases by Jews
who had to petition the Roman government for permission to do so, as we
kno wfrom the documents quoted by Josephus, discussed above. It is worth
emphasizing that these voluntary gifts were made to an institution that could
offer nothing tangible in return, in a society whose economy was probably
functioning not far above subsistence level, and in which there was intense
competition for what little surplus was produced.^35
God, Temple, and Torah as an Ideological SystemIt is much easier to establish the likelihood that many or most Palestinian
JewsinthefirstcenturyconsideredGod,theTemple,andtheTorahimportant
factors in making them what they were than to determine what exactly they
in the Literature of Second Temple Judaism,”Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy6 (1997):
89–104.
(^34) This point is well made by Himmelfarb, “Kingdom.” That the Pharisees believed that laype-
ople should observe the laws of purity the Pentateuch imposed only on the priests is commonly
accepted but has been challenged by E. P. Sanders,Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah(Phila-
delphia: Trinity Press International, 1990), pp. 131–254. There is no reason to think the Pharisees
were opposed to the Temple or priesthood (many of them were in fact priests). Himmelfarb
pointed out that Jubilees provided strikingly cultic interpretations of the generally applicable
biblical laws forbidding consumption of blood and certain sexual relations.
(^35) As far as the fact of widespread voluntary contribution is concerned, there was nothing
unique about the Jerusalem Temple—Egyptian peasants in the Hellenistic and Roman periods
made voluntary contributions to their temples, too. On the economy of the Jerusalem Temple,
the best and most wide-ranging treatment is Goodman,Ruling Class, pp. 51–75. See also M.
Broshi, “The Role of the Temple in the Herodian Economy,”JJS38 (1987): 31–37; he attempts
(35–37) a perhaps ill-advised computation of the value of annual income from the Temple tax
and discusses (34) confiscations and Roman legislation forbidding them. E. P. Sanders,Judaism:
Practice and Belief, provides a detailed but somewhat idealizing account of the Jews’ devotion to
the Temple and the priests.