The destruction of the Jerusalem Temple: its meaning and its consequences

Abstract

The Jerusalem Temple was destroyed by a Roman army in the year 70 CE, approximately halfway through a fierce seven-year struggle between Jewish rebels and the Empire. This apparent act of sacrilege became controversial almost at once and has remained that way since that time. Once the Temple was destroyed, it was never rebuilt. Regarding the history of Judaism, the most important reactions to the destruction of the Temple were those that found expression in the voluminous literary output of the early Rabbis. The Mishnah's predominant response to the destruction of the Temple centered on acting as if the disaster had never occurred; the document's relentlessly ahistorical tone allows it to speak as though the Temple were still intact, its cult functioning as in centuries past. In later centuries, the transformation of Jewry into a religious communion was accelerated by the increasing dominance of Christian ways of thinking in the Roman world.

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