Destruction - Ch. 7

This chapter continued to challenge my perception of my own faith. Having finished the book and pretty much finalizing my view of Armstrong as a historian, I wish I took better notes of all the things that pissed me off. Chapter 7 is about the Temple, its history, its nature, its significance, and all these things. I grew up knowing how important the Temple was/is but I feel like it is become so far removed from the consciousness of most Jews today. Which is sad because so much of Judaism deals with the rebuilding of the Third Temple and the re-establishment of Davidic reign. Armstrong cites a few examples. 

This chapter is challenging because it tries to detail exactly how Jews went from animal sacrifice in the Temple to worship in synagogues. The simple answer is because the Romans destroyed the Temple and the Jews were forced to adapt their religion in exile. A deeper explanation put forth by many rabbis is that the Jews themselves brought the destruction upon themselves by violating the covenant with Hashem. But what actually happened is lost to history and I simply cannot swallow most of Armstrong's speculation. Maybe it's her writing style or I'm just stubborn but I just can't find much evidence for much of her claims and I remember so many sentences that included "the must have....." or "this probably made them feel....." and a large number of could haves, would haves, and maybes.

The idea of an accurate representation of Christianity's emergence from Judaism sounds pretty great. I don't think we'll ever really understand exactly how a new religion is established. There's so much behind it, I'll bet a thousand theologians would take a million issues with Armstrong's story. It's crazy but another thousand would also praise her. I guess I have to give her credit for trying. She talks about how people began to believe they could find the divine in human beings, rather than Temples.... it's almost impossible for me to imagine a time when this thought seemed "blasphemous to many Jews" (pg 147). Armstrong loves talking about how this is a universal thing but in my own biased framework, thats a belief that Jews gave to the world. I dunno, if it's even worth debating things like who came up with what first. So much of this discourse is about who established different precedents, who shot first, the exact sequence of certain events. Too bad we're never gonna know.