Schabbat

The sabbath is important as a Jewish 'identity marker'. Lutz Doering investigates sabbath law and practice in Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity from the Elephantine ostraca until the second Jewish revolt. All available sources and traditions for that period pertinent to the issue are analyzed and compared with one another. What emerges is a multiform picture of sabbath law and practice. Not only common traditions and lines of development but also divergent halakhic viewpoints can be recognized. Though the sabbath was shared by virtually all Jews in antiquity, its details were sometimes shaped in different manners.