Ritual Purity in Daily Life after 70 CE

The Chalk Vessel Assemblage from Shuʿafat as a Test Case

Bibliographic Data

ID10906606
AuthorsYonatan Adler (0000-0002-7709-5453, Dept. of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology, Ariel University Ariel Israel, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume52
Issue1
Pages39-62
Publication date2020-12-23
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal for the Study of Judaism (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0047-2212 • E-ISSN: 1570-0631
PublisherWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1163/15700631-bja10025
OpenAlexW3115588264
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited4

Chalk vessels became common at Jewish sites throughout the Southern Levant beginning in the late first century BCE , apparently because Jews considered stone to be impervious to ritual impurity. It is commonly thought that a drastic decline in the phenomenon occurred after 70 CE as a direct result of the temple’s destruction—on the assumption that the central motivation for Jews’ observance of the purity regulations was the temple cult. These notions are reconsidered here in light of an impressive assemblage of chalk vessels recently unearthed at Shuʿafat, occupied during the brief 70–132 CE interwar period. The character of this assemblage, presented here preliminarily, suggests that both use and production of chalk vessels continued unabated for decades after 70 CE , contradicting the notion that the chalk vessel industry was reliant on a functioning temple and that observance of the purity laws was inexorably linked with the Jerusalem cult

Aesthetics · Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Assemblage (archaeology · Character (mathematics · Cult · Period (music · Ancient Egypt and Archaeology · Ancient Mediterranean Archaeology and History · Archaeology and Historical Studies · History

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