Date of Award

9-6-2024

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Theology

First Advisor

Christopher Skinner

Abstract

Jewish identity during the Second Temple period (515 BCE – 70 CE) was complex, multifaceted, and variable, but many studies of this period treat Jewish attitudes toward one key feature, the Jerusalem temple, as simple and uniform. I aim to complicate this notion by examining early Christian traditions of Jesus’s relationship with the temple. Early Christian memory constructed, transformed, and transmitted traditions about the past into their present contexts. Examining early Christian memory, as represented by canonical and non-canonical gospel traditions in the first three centuries CE, allows scholars to ask how certain figures, institutions, or beliefs were remembered and represented, as well as posit theories as to why memories were constructed in particular ways and how they relate to their contemporary historical and social frameworks. In this study I explore the realm of memory theory as a means of examining the relationship between the present and the past. I survey the ways in which memory theory has been introduced into New Testament studies and has focused on gospel traditions as a means of remembering Jesus. I chart paradigms of Jewish identity within Second Temple Judaism and give particular focus to attitudes toward the Jerusalem temple. Finally, I examine gospel traditions, particularly the Gospel of Mark, that demonstrate the early Christian reception and remembering of Jesus’s attitude toward the temple in both positive and negative ways, then situate these traditions within the larger context of the social, cultural, and historical frameworks of Jewish attitudes in the Second Temple period. Early Christians remembered Jesus as having a complex relationship with the Jerusalem temple, and these early Christian traditions of Jesus impacted their own contemporary worldviews. However, this complicated relationship with the temple was not a new phenomenon but one that was already familiar to those constructing, experiencing, remembering, and transmitting their Jewish identity throughout the diaspora world in the Second Temple period.

Download

Share

COinS