A Prior World of Temples and Texts

Both Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism share a textual heritage belonging to a time before either of them came into being, and both claim an uninterrupted continuity with the communities of this earlier period. The defining feature of this common era is the existence of the Temple as the principal point of religious practice and definition, be it through contested or uncritical allegiance. Both Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity are emerging in this period alongside other communities that share a focus on the Temple. This Temple world is also a textual world. All of these communities share Torah and engage with it. Therefore, together with Torah itself, this textual world serves as a background and influence on the literature of Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity.

This chapter will explore that earlier literary world, and is divided into two parts. In the first part, I will discuss what I term scriptural references to Sodom and Gibeah. Included here are not only the Hebrew Canon and the Christian New Testament but also a variety of other texts, some of which were incorporated into later Christian canons or were contenders for canonical status. A number of other texts were important for communities such as the one at Qumran, which did not survive the Temple era or were subsumed into later Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism. In the second part, I will discuss three other ancient writers who were not contenders for scriptural status, but were important both in their own time and subsequently.