Religious Variety and the Temple in the Late Second Temple Period and its Aftermath

Abstract

This article challenges the standard picture that religious variety within Judaism before 70 CE was focused on the Temple, and that variety was replaced by unity in 70 when the Temple was destroyed. Evidence is presented that different groups shared the Temple despite their disagreements on how the cult should be organised, and it is argued that the loss of this shared institution did not cause such groups to disappear, although it may have made it easier for them to ignore each other.