Multi-Temple Judaism

Given the existence of the heretical temple in Alexandria (with worship of more gods than Y-H), it's clearly possible for a religion that thinks of itself as Judaism to have multiple temples. It would, however, not be anything WE'd recognize as Judaism. It probably requires a non-monotheistic variant to survive.
 

Vixagoras

Banned
@Vixagoras, yes, the high places were usually used to worship other gods, but not always. The incident under Manasseh's an exception, and IIRC it's debated whether Jeroboam was trying to worship YHWH with the golden calves and two altars.

But we still have the explicit command in the Torah (Leviticus and again Deuteronomy), which was almost universally read to refer to the Temple. Deuteronomy 12 says to only go "unto the place which the LORD your God shall choose" to sacrifice; Josephus in Antiquities 4:5 - who's almost a contemporary of your PoD - glosses it even more emphatically:


To what incident are you referring there? And where is it debated that Jeroboam was attempting to worship Yahweh with the golden calves? Cuz from what I am reading in the KJV Bible here, it seems very obvious that God's problem with worshipping at these "high places" and the groves is that they were being set up and/or hijacked for the worship of foreign gods. Deuteronomy and Leviticus are certainly clear that sacrifices can only be offered at the place of god's choice, but unless it is specifically noted elsewhere in the Written Torah that that place can only be the temple on Mount Zion, because that is god's appointed place and that he is only capable of being in one place at a time, there are definitely some work arounds here. We know that John the Baptist taught that the "Kingdom of God" was not a political entity, but something that lived within men that was characterized by men following God's laws and living ethical lives. Jesus picked up on this doctrine, and John probably was not the first person to make that argument given the traction that Jesus was and his disciples were able to pick up, especially after his death. I imagine that among the diaspora, where the idea of caring about a political Kingdom of God, what with the recent failure of the Hasmoneans and the Herodians to draw off of, this narrative could have been quite popular, because it was able to explain their place in the world without carrying the implication that they were all complacent in their religion. Antiquities of the Jews was compiled nearly two decades after where we are in the timeline at present, and in a very different historical context, with Josephus having become a Pharisee after his having been ostracized by the Jews. ITTL, Josephus has been appointed the High Priest of Israel after he sided with the Romans from the start, and the temple has not been torn down, and the Romans are quite clear with their policies as far as Jewish nationalism is concerned. Coupled with the known existence of the temples at Elephantine (though now defunct) and Leontopolis as well as the already acknowledged acceptability of offering sacrifices at Mount Gerizim and Ebal, I think there could be some wiggle room here if we redefine what is the "Kingdom of God". After all, a temple in Egypt was prophesied by Isaiah, which appears to be at least part of the precedent off of which the Leontopolis temple was being based at the time. One might easily ask the question why God would give Isaiah a prophesy of another temple if the one at Jerusalem was the only one that he considered to be acceptable. Furthermore, following the idea that God can only dwell in a certain place of his own choosing kind of presupposes that he is only capable of being in one place at a time, which is an anthropomorphic and almost Hellenistic quality that I think could be easily argued as not fitting within the Jewish understanding of a God that is not human. God has to be able to be in more than one place at once for religion to make the slightest bit of sense (despite the fact that God supposedly is omniscient and omnipotent and lets so much horror happen, which means he is either impotent or immoral... but that's another discussion), because you can't have a god who has to divert his attention to tickle the heart of one of his followers while healing giving a prophecy five hundred miles away. And if God can be in more than one place at a time, that feasibly means that he can dwell in multiple temples of His choosing, which is an idea that appears to have been workable in the minds of at least a portion of the diaspora at the time... right?
 
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