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This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Diversity in Christian Attitudes to the Destruction of the Temple The Case of Luke-Acts Monier, Mina Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 30. Sep. 2021 Diversity in Christian Attitudes to the Destruction of the Temple: The Case of Luke-Acts Thesis submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies, King’s College London Mina Monier April 2018 1 ABSTRACT This study explores Christian responses to the destruction of the Second Temple of Jerusalem, with a particular focus on examining the ambiguities of the attitude to the Temple found in Luke-Acts. It is argued that a unified Christian attitude should be questioned from a historical perspective. After diagnosing the methodological problems in scholarly discussions, a new approach is proposed: one in which the study of Luke-Acts takes place in relation to the writings of the Apostolic Fathers, using the conceptual framework of Tertullian for this categorisation. This is supported by modern scholarship on the dating of Luke-Acts. The study takes place by situating Luke-Acts within the context of the work of the Apostolic Fathers. Of these, the key texts chosen are 1 Clement and the Epistle of Barnabas. The examination follows after a review of Jewish attitudes to the Temple and its destruction, with an acknowledgement that the boundaries between ‘Judaism’ and ‘Christianity’ are not fixed in the period through to the Bar Kokhba revolt. The study shows that both Jews and Christians developed various attitudes towards the destruction of the Temple at the same time, under the same political circumstances and in different regions. While the Epistle of Barnabas categorically rejected the idea of Temple worship, questioning the legitimacy of any Christian compromise towards the Temple authorities of Jerusalem and their claim to represent the true heritage of Israel, 1 Clement offered a completely opposing view. Through a comparative analysis of Luke-Acts and the other two ‘apostolic’ texts, the study finds that Luke-Acts’s main narrative voice shows a close affinity to 1 Clement and that both reflect the concepts used by contemporaneous Trajanic biographers to assert legitimacy through fulfilling the values of Roman imperial ideology. At the same time, there is a distinctive alternative voice that lies behind Stephen’s speech (Acts 7), which has a strong similarity to the views of the Epistle of Barnabas. This study concludes that the challenge presented to scholars by the Temple attitude found in Luke-Acts’ is due to the existence of diverse responses within the work, evidenced also in other Jewish and Christian texts. 2 Contents Contents ...................................................................................................................................... 3 Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 8 1.1 The Temple in Scholarship ................................................................................................ 8 1.2 The Status Quaestionis..................................................................................................... 27 1.3 Method ............................................................................................................................ 28 1.4 An Apostolic Approach .................................................................................................... 31 Jewish Attitudes to the Temple .................................................................................................. 34 2.1 Philo ................................................................................................................................ 38 2.1.3 The Therapeutae ....................................................................................................... 42 2.2 Josephus .......................................................................................................................... 46 2.3 Sibylline Oracles 5 .......................................................................................................... 54 2.4 Sibylline Oracles 4 .......................................................................................................... 57 2.5 Fourth Ezra ...................................................................................................................... 61 2.6 2 Baruch .......................................................................................................................... 65 2.7 4 Baruch and the Apocryphon of Jeremiah ....................................................................... 72 2.8 The Apocalypse of Abraham............................................................................................ 75 2.9 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 77 The Epistle of Barnabas ............................................................................................................ 78 3.1 Provenance ...................................................................................................................... 78 3.2 Date................................................................................................................................. 80 3 3.3 The Structure of the First Part (1–16) ............................................................................... 85 3.4 Deconstructing the Jewish Temple ................................................................................... 87 3.4.1 Barnabas 5–15 .......................................................................................................... 87 3.4.2 Barnabas 16 .............................................................................................................. 93 3.5 Constructing the Christian temple .................................................................................... 94 3.5.1 Barnabas 4.10-11 ...................................................................................................... 94 3.5.2 The Son and Creation: Barnabas 5–6 / Genesis 1:26-28 ............................................. 95 3.5.3 The Vessel of the Spirit: Barnabas 11.1-11 / Ezekiel 47:1-12..................................... 98 3.5.4 Sabbath and Continuous Creation: Barnabas 15.4-6 / Genesis 2:2-3 ........................ 101 3.5.5 Barnabas 16 ............................................................................................................ 102 3.6 Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 103 1 Clement ............................................................................................................................... 105 4.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 105 4.1.1 Date ........................................................................................................................ 105 4.1.2 Background ............................................................................................................ 111 4.2 The Temple in Clement’s Rhetoric ................................................................................ 118 4.3.1 1 Clement 23.5 ........................................................................................................ 120 4.3.2 1 Clement 29.1–30.1 ............................................................................................... 124 4.3.3 1 Clement 40–41 ..................................................................................................... 127 4.3 Temple language in 1 Clement ....................................................................................... 133 4.3.1 Martyrdom as access to the Holy Place ................................................................... 133 4.3.2 The Blood of Christ (1 Clement 7.4) ....................................................................... 134 4 4.3.3 The Patron of our Offerings (1 Clement 36.1) ......................................................... 135 4.4 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................