Roman Diaspora Jews’ repatterning of the biblical “world”
Fundamentally, Roman Diaspora Jews and Judaism seem to have perceived the archi-
tecture of their “world” in a manner which at one and the same time resembled
both (1) the cultural patterns of their contemporary “pagan” neighbors and (2) ancient
Israelite culture. By the latter I mean Israelite culture of the period prior to those
radical centralizing tendencies which inform the redaction in the early Persian period
of the Hebrew scriptures in their current form (see Lightstone 1984, 1988). Let me
first expand upon the latter assertion, before returning to the former.
Following the lead of an earlier effort in the seventh century bceat radical
centralization, which did not survive the death of its royal sponsor, King Josiah,
the Persian-period radical centralizers, for whom Ezra and Nehemiah were key
leadership figures, vilified, among other things, the ancient Israelite practice of
engaging in cultic activity “on [every] high place and under every spreading tree”
(Deuteronomy 12. 2). The aspects of these centralizers’ program may be character-
ized by the following list: the worship of YHWH alone; cultic practice at the Jerusalem
Temple only; the singular authority of the Torah wholly revealed to Moses; strict
endogamy and maintenance of caste distinctions; strict application of purity main-
tenance for and in the Temple cult. These centralizers rejected what appears to
have been a normative, shared construction and perception among ancient Israelites
of their “world” – unfortunately called “syncretistic” by Morton Smith (1971).
“Syncretistic” in fact misses the unity and coherence of this ancient Israelite map-
ping of the “world,” in which access to the divine, and to its gifts, benefits, and
powers, could be had at a multiplicity of propitious locations and via a range of
mediating figures, human and supernatural.
These gateways of access between heaven and earth were identified as such in tribal
and clan stories and traditions. Many of these traditions have been preserved, ironic-
ally, by the centralizing framers of the extant Hebrew scriptures. For example, Jacob’s
dream (Genesis 28. 11–23) of a ladder connecting heaven and earth upon which
angels, God’s agents, ascend and descend, serves to justify the location of an
Israelite cult at Bethel. Moreover, according to Genesis 35. 6 – 8, on his return years
later from Padan-Aram, Jacob is said to have buried his wet-nurse “under the altar”
which he himself had previously erected at Bethel. Similarly, Shekem, the traditional
burial site of the tribe/clans of Joseph, is itself a principal ancient Israelite cultic site.
It is as if the co-location of cultic altar and ancestral tombs at the same site enhanced
the locale’s efficacy as a conduit of communication and exchange between heaven
and earth – anathema to the later framers of scripture, who see the tombs of the
dead, even of the most holy and revered dead, as sources of virulent uncleanness,
from which the central Jerusalem Temple must be protected.
In ancient Israel, not only were there a multiplicity of propitious locations where
access to heaven and God’s blessings could be had, but also there were a variety of
holy persons, living and dead, who could effect beneficent exchange between heaven
and earth: priests, local levites, ecstatic judges/heroes, prophets and prophetesses,
even the spirits of the dead, and others labeled and vilified by scriptures’ framers as
witches and necromancers.
Roman Diaspora Judaism 369