The Pharisees and the Temple-State of Judea
Imprint: Cascade Books
174 Pages, 6.00 x 9.00 x 0.35 in
- Paperback
- 9781666748635
- Published: September 2022
$24.00 / £21.00 / AU$38.00
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- 9781666748659
- Published: September 2022
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Far from being a stable situation, the historical context in the late Second Temple Era was full of conflict at the level of the empires and that of the rulers in Palestine. Ordinary people, including both Jerusalemites and villagers, periodically mounted resistance and even revolts against exploitative and/or domineering rulers. Pharisees and scribes, sometimes as retainers of the temple-state but sometimes as dissident retainers, usually attempted to mediate tensions and conflicts but also offered resistance at certain crisis points. With broader critical assessment of the sources and a clearer sense of the changing social-political context, it is possible to construct a (provisional) history of the Pharisees' political position and role in, or in opposition to, the temple-state in Judea under imperial rule.
--from the Introduction
Richard A. Horsley is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Liberal Arts and the Study of Religion at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. His numerous publications include these recent works from Cascade Books: Empowering the People: Jesus, Healing, and Exorcism (2022), You Shall Not Bow Down and Serve Them: The Political Economic Projects of Jesus and Paul (2021), Jesus and the Politics of Roman Palestine, 2nd ed. (2021), Jesus and Magic (2014), and Text and Tradition in Performance and Writing (2013).
“Richard Horsley’s groundbreaking essays on the Pharisees and Jewish society are now brought together for the scholar, student, or interested reader who wants to go beyond superficial accounts of this history. At every point Horsley rethinks our use of sources, asks new questions, and tries new approaches. The result is a challenging and refreshing dive into the reconstruction of Jewish groups and early followers of Jesus.”
—Lawrence Wills, author of Introduction to the Apocrypha
“This is a superb collection of essays. With great clarity, method, and passion, Richard Horsley situates in their historical and scholarly context major issues that he has been working on for more than fifty years. His leading voice invites us to question antiquated conjectures in exploring the historical Jesus, the politics of the Jerusalem temple, the role of its priests, its scribes, and the perplexing Pharisees.”
—Gildas Hamel, author of Poverty and Charity in Roman Palestine
“Decades in the making, Richard Horsley’s spiral of insights demonstrate how the evidence, carefully examined anew, leads to a portrayal of Pharisees as ‘retainers’ serving the Jerusalem temple-state under Hasmoneans, Herod, and the high priests in the first century CE. Informed constructions of ‘the Pharisees’ will never be the same.”
—Mark Nanos, Lund University
“Horsley examines the role of the Pharisees (and scribes) in the unstable history of the temple-state under imperial rule, emphasizing the variation in their role, sometimes acting as mediators and other times as dissidents or resistance leaders. Horsley impressively creates a comprehensive treatment of the historical and sociological context to redress the distortion of the Pharisees by New Testament scholarship and, ultimately, to understand the nature of the conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees in the Gospels.”
—Sarah J. Tanzer, McCormick Theological Seminary
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