Judaism of the Second Temple Period, vol. 2: The Jewish Sages and Their Literature.

• Author: Oliver, Isaac W.
• Position: Book review

Judaism of the Second Temple Period, vol. 2: The Jewish Sages and Their Literature. By DAVID FlUSSER. Grand Rapids, Mich.: WILLIAM B. EERDMANS PUBLISHING Co., 2009. Pp. x + 380. $42.

David Flusser has been enjoing a remarkable Nachleben since he died in 2000. During his lifetime the works of the Jewish orthodox scholar of the New Testament and Second Temple Judaism were ignored by many English-speaking scholars, who could not read his works written predominantly in German and Modern Hebrew. All is beginning to change though, thanks to the initiative of Flusser's faithful students, who have devoted their efforts to the collection, editing, and translation of his numerous and extensive articles. The volume under review represents this ongoing effort to render into English the unique and original ideas of the late Israeli scholar, who acquired an unequaled control of the ancient and modern languages as well as the vast amount of literature related to the ancient Jewish, Christian, and Greco-Roman worlds.

The assembled articles are quite extensive and variegated in their contents, as the title of the volume with its expansive category of "Judaism of the Second Temple Period" indicates. Its broad range of topics, too large to summarize in this brief review, reflects the immense oceans navigated at different points during the lifetime of this exceptional scholar. In it one will discover articles focusing on events and literature from the Second Temple Period, ranging from the book of Daniel to the Gospel of Matthew, while along the way are discussed topics of martyrology, messianism, the Decalogue, and ethics in early Judaism and Christianity. Other articles focus more on philological issues, such as the Second Temple origins and the development of certain rabbinic blessings and prayers recited up to this day in Jewish liturgy (see, for example, "He Planted It as Eternal Life in Our Midst," pp. 199-206).

In our day, of course, some specialists on Second Temple Judaism and Rabbinics, especially those residing in North America, might not endorse Flusser's description of Josephus as having "a strong rabbinic background with regard to Scripture, Jewish law, and homiletic writings" (p. 6 n. 1), let alone his assertion that talmudic and midrashic literature represents a "very important repository of the opinions and beliefs of those who represent mainstream Second Temple Judaism...