Category:Intertestamental Judaism (subject)

Overview

The concept of "intertestamental" Judaism has been one of most successful Christian models of interpretation of {{Second Temple Judaism]]. From the Christian point of view the period between the Babylonian Exile and the Jewish War appeared to be the connecting age between the Old Testament and the New Testament.

It was the British scholar Humprey Prideaux who in 1716-18 published the first introduction to "intertestamental" Judaism, which could serve both as a epilogue to the Old Testament and a prologue to the New. Christian scholars and theologians enthusiastically accepted the category, which allowed them to give sense to a previously insignificant period. There were discussion weather this period was a mere intermission (a period of silence between the ancient prophecies and their fulfillment in Christ), or a time of religious decadence, or on the contrary a period of creativity that "helped" the emergence of Christianity, but the teleological approach provided a comfortable framework in which Christian theology did not feel challenged by scholarly research. At the end it was the rise of anti-semitism that at the turn of the 20th century largely overshadowed the term and concept. "Intertestamental" appeared too a neutral and soft term to denote a religion which at the conclusion of its providential task of being the (hostile) cradle of Christianity deserved only to die with contempt.

The concept of "Intertestamental Judaism" knew a remarkable recovery and revival after War World II, when it appeared as a less derogatory and more neutral category for scholarly research. It gave scholars and Christian theologians the time out they needed to cope with the guilt of the Holocaust and absorb the profound impact of the discoveries of Nag Hammadi and Qumran. Starting form the 1970s, the theological implications came to be criticized by a growing number of scholars pointing at the many ideological and chronological inconsistencies of the term. New terms emerged, such as {{Early Judaism]] or Middle Judaism, which emphasized as the period was not the end of Judaism before the emergence of Christianity but the foundation of new developments in the Rabbinic tradition. In addition, Jesus and his movement could not be taken away and located at the conclusion of a period of which they were major actors and components. After three centuries of glorious service, the concept of intertestamental Judaism has now been virtually abandoned by contemporary scholarship, where it survives only in some conservative circles.