Judaism: Practice and Belief 63 BCE-66 CE (review)

164 SHOFAR Fall 1994 Vol. 13, No.1 all students ofjudaism and Christianity in the relevant period will consult with profit-not only those with a special interest in Eusebius. Alden A. Mosshammer Department of History Univer~ity of California, San Diego Judaism: Practice and Belief 63 BCE-66 CE, by E. P. Sanders. London: SCM and Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1992. 580 pp. 7 plates, 9 plans. $29.95 (p). The book that Professor Sanders says he "always wanted to write" (p. ix) is rich in detail and panoramic in vision. In addition to capping a series of contributions which he has made to the Judaic setting of Christianity, his most recent work represents a consideration of early judaism which may be regarded as state of the art. . After brief consideration of preliminary matters, Sanders develops his most pivotal concern: the place of the Temple within early judaism. Treated within a presentation of "Common judaism" (pp. 45-303), Sanders shows that sacrificial worship and attendant matters are to be regarded as the systemic center of the religion. He also shows that the subject may be taught under such an approach; the pages in question are the most lucid and analytic in the book. He usefully refers to Businck's indispensable work, Der Temple von jerusalem. But Sanders sometimes resorts to an awkward choreography of sacrifice because he conceives of the priests as more separated from Israelites than Businck does (cf. Sanders, p. 107 in comparison with Businck, p. 1072), and because he puts the shambles entirely within "the Court of the Priests," rather than have it extend into the larger, northern court (cf. Sanders, p. 62 and Businck, pp. 1184, 1185). While the details of sacrifice were vitally important for many jews within the period, they are often more a matter of inference (and uncertainty) than Sanders would sometimes seem to suggest. Fundamentally, Sanders is successful in relating the practice of the Temple to the concerns of early judaism at large. I might mention that he and I have independently (and with somewhat different bibliographies) come to the conclusion that the banquet is the best model of sacrifice (Sanders, p. 104 and Chilton, The Temple ofjesus, pp. 27-67), and we to some extent (once again, independently) agree on where the vendors of animals were sited (Sanders, pp. 85-91 and Chilton, pp. 107-111). But Book Reviews 165 one might have wished for an explicit consideration of recent works by such contributors as Gary Anderson, Luc de Heusch, Rene Girard, Jacob Milgrom, and David Wright. That might have prevented Sanders from making some odd arguments from etymology, when an analytic perspective is more helpful (cf. pp. 110-112). Such a perspective might also have helped him to develop the systemic connection between sacrifice and purity. Sanders fully acknowledges the importance ofpurity and the centrality of sacrifice within early Judaism, but the relationship between the two is not explained. When priests are pictured as hearing confessions (p. 79)even when the claim is qualified (cf. p. 109)-the opportunity for confusion on the part of the reader emerges. Sanders appreciates that purity was necessary for sacrifice (cf. pp. 73-76). But he does not relate the two, and so he permits the unwary reader to separate them from one another, and to see guilt rather than purity as the ordinary medium of sacrifice. He speaks of "orthopraxy" (pp. 191,237), as scholars before him have done, but he does not provide a fully systemic description. Teachers will need, then, to observe how their students are taking the book. But there can be no doubt about its incentive to practical thinking in regard to the realia of Jerusalem during the targeted period. Sanders openly takes up from the work of Joachim Jeremias, Jerusalem in tbe Time ofJesus, and sometimes his estimates of populations and constituencies largely concur with Jeremias's (cf. pp. 127ff.)j the old deduction from Matthew 20:2 that a drachma was a day's wage is alive and well here (cf. pp. 156, 167,405 with Jeremias, p. 111), and rabbis appear as contemporaries of Pharisees (from p. 155). Sanders is not only unafraid to uphold...