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Ancient Israel’s Stone Age

Purity in Second Temple times

By Yitzhak Magen

In the decades before the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple in 70 C.E., Jews gave a new and heightened emphasis to ritual purity. In fact, purity laws may have been interpreted more strictly at this time than at any point before—or since. A very early rabbinic text says simply, “Purity broke out among Israel.”1 As early as this text is, however, it postdates the destruction of the Temple by about a hundred years. So it is fair to ask, How reliable is it? Until recently this question plagued historians of the era, called the late Second Temple […]

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Footnotes

1.

MMT stands for Miqsat Ma’ase Ha-Torah, which is often translated as “Some Torah Precepts.” See “MMT as the Maltese Falcon,” BAR 20:06.

2.

“Pure” is used in a literal, ritual sense as well as a metaphoric sense; washing for cleanliness occurs before and apart from the ritual washing of the hands.

Endnotes

1.

Tosephta to Mishnah tractate Shabbat 13b.

2.

For further details, see Yitzhak Magen, “The Stone Vessel Industry During the Second Temple Period,” in “Purity Broke Out in Israel” (Tractate Shabbat, 13b)—Stone Vessels in the Late Second Temple Period, University of Haifa Catalogue No. 9 (spring 1994) and “Jerusalem as a Center of the Stone Vessel Industry During the Second Temple Period,” in Ancient Jerusalem Revealed, ed. Hillel Geva (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1994).

3.

Mishnah, Hagiga 3.8.

4.

Mishnah, Kelim 10.1; Oholoth 5.5; Parah 5.5; Yadayim 1.2.