THE ALTARS OF GENTILES A NOTE ON THE JEWISH “IUS SACRUM”*

I

According to rabbinic teaching which presumably codifi ed the practice of the Temple of Jerusalem, Gentiles like Israelites, were allowed to present voluntary oblations to God, for instance in payment of a vow. Therefore, they could offer two kinds of sacrifi ces: The holocaust ({olah) and the peace-offerings (shelamim), eaten before the Lord. They might not, however, bring obligatory offerings which were to be brought by the Jews at specifi ed times and occasions in fulfi lment of the ritual laws set down in the Torah.1 Thus, a gentile mother, after the birth of a

* Abbreviations: B.C., = Information supplied by Prof. B. Cohen. Cook = A.B. Cook, Zeus I–III, 1914–1940. Cumont = F. Cumont, Les religions orientales dans le paganisme romain, 4th ed. 1929. Goodenough = E.R. Goodenough, Jewish Symbols I–VI, 1953–1956. Juster = J. Juster, Les Juifs dans l’Empire Romain I–II, 1914. MAMA = Monumenta Asiae Minoris Antiqua. Maim. = Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Abodah. Engl. transl. Maimonides, Code Book VIII transl. M. Lewittes, Yale Judaica Series XII, 1957. Nilsson = M.P. Nilsson, Geschichte der griechischen Religion II, 1950. Robert = L. Robert, Hellenica I–X, 1940–1955. In dealing with rabbinic materials I received invaluable assistance from my friend Professor Boaz Cohen (The Jewish Theological Seminary, New York). References to him, by his initials, in notes, acknowledge only a part of my obligations to his learning. My warmest thanks are due also to my friend Professor S. Lieberman (The Jewish Theological Seminary) and to my friend and colleague, Professor Morton Smith, for their generous aid. 1 M. Shek. I, 5: “This is the general rule: They accept from them (the Gentiles) all that is vowed or offered voluntarily”. A discussion between R. Akiba and R. Jose the Galilean, perhaps conducted with regard to the expected restoration of the Temple service in the Bar-Kochba rebellion, about the year 130, concerned the sacrifi cial rights of the heathens. According to R. Akiba (R. Jose in Menah. 73b): “You accept from them holocausts, peace-sacrifi ces, birds, meal offerings, wine, wood, frankincense, and salt”. Holocausts and peace-offerings (shelamin) were animal sacrifi ces. Birds are pigeons which could be offered as holocausts (Lev. 1, 14). Meal offerings (menahot) could be brought by themselves as fl our (wafers, etc.) with salt, oil and frankincense (lebonah). Cf. Maim. 5, 12. Wine was a part of a “drink offering” (wine and salted fl our) which accompanied the animal sacrifi ce. Yet, a man could offer fl our, or wine, or frankincense, or oil by itself (Maim., 5, 14, 1). All animal and cereal offerings required salt (Maim., 5, 5, 11). Salt and wood (for altar fi re) had to come from the Temple stores (Maim., 4, 5, 13) but could be offered to the Temple (Maim., 5, 14, 1, who mentions wood alone). In the list of R. Akiba oil, by chance, is lacking. He deduced the permissibility of the above named gentile offerings from a rather strained interpretation of Lev. 22, 18. In fact the verse mentions the vow and free-will holocausts of the sojourners. Accordingly R. Jose (R. Akiba in Menah. 73b) permits the whole burnt offerings only. This restric-

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son, was able to offer any animal authorized for sacrifi ce, say a lamb one year old, at any time, in recognition of the blessing bestowed on her. But she was not permitted to bring a one year lamb for a burnt offering and a pigeon as sin-offering as an Israelite woman of means was required to do forty days after the birth of her son.2 On the other hand, the didrachma tribute, collected annually for the Temple, the offering of the fi rst-born of clean cattle, tithes, and other sacred levies imposed on the Jews in the Torah, were not accepted from a gentile. This disability must have been quite agreeable to the pagan subjects of the Maccabees and the Herodian dynasty.3 Whether agreeable or not to gentiles, these discriminatory rules with regard to the sacred rights and duties, followed from the principle that the commandments of the Torah were addressed to the children of Israel alone, just as, say, the Roman ius divinum was no concern of the Jews and other peregrini. Though the Roman government protected the burial places of the provincials, these tombs were not loca religiosa in the meaning of the pontifi cal law, but pro religiosa, as Gaius, a contempo- rary of R. Akiba, says. Trajan reminded his governor of Bithynia that a temple on foreign soil, though consecrated to a deity (Mater Magna) worshipped by the Roman State, could not be “dedicated” to her in the terms of “our law”.4 Yet, the fact that some oblations of gentiles were accepted in the Temple of Jerusalem necessarily involved the pagan offerers in the intricacies of Jewish sacral law. Obviously a victim offered by a

tion was accepted by Maimonides (5, 3, 2). Cf. T. Shek. I, 7; Menah. 73b; Sifra on Levit. 22, 19; p. 96a, ed. I.H. Weiss; Sifre on Numer. 15, 3, § 107, p. 111 ed. H.S. Horovitz. These texts are mostly translated in H.L. Strack, P. Billerbeck, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament III, 1924, p. 549. Sifra, and Sifre are translated in B. Ugolinius, Thes. Antiq. Sacr. vol. XIV, XV. German transl.: Jacob Winter, Sifra, 1938, p. 569. Cf. also P. Levertoff, Midrash Sifre, 1926, p. 91. 2 Cf. Lev. 3, 1 and on the other hand, Lev. 12, 6. It is said expressly (M. Shek. 1, 5) that the atonement sacrifi ce after childbirth is not accepted from a gentile mother. 3 See M. Shek. 1, 5; M. Bekorot 1, 1 (fi rst-born), Aboda Zara, 21a (tithes). This was obviously the reason of the rabbinic rule forbidding the sale or rental of houses or fi elds to gentiles in the Holy Land (M. Aboda Zara 1, 9) of which a rather anachronistic explanation, in the spirit of modern nationalism, has been proposed. Cf. Louis Ginzberg, On Jewish Law and Lore, 1955, p. 85. In fact, the parallel interdiction of sale of cattle to gentiles had been already enacted before the destruction of the Temple, and probably goes back to the Maccabean period, as Ginzberg, ib. p. 83 has shown. 4 Gaius, 2, 2–7; Plin., Epist. ad Traj. X, 50. Cf. also X, 70–1. On the protection of burial-grounds in Palestine cf. the famous diatagma so often discussed since its fi rst publication in 1930. Cf. L. Robert, Collection Fröhner, 1936, no. 70 = Fontes Juris Rom. I, no. 69.

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