The contents of this page were assembled by Claude.ai on 4/29/2026 from the transcript of John J. Collins interview by Bart Ehrman and from a file with my Kindle Highlights from Paula Fredriksen’s book When Christians were Jews. Claude’s paper version of the merger and a widget version are in the 2nd Temple Judaism directory in Dropbox.
A Scholarly Timeline c. 930 BCE – 70 CE
Based on lectures and scholarship by
John J. Collins, Holmes Professor of Old Testament Criticism and Interpretation, Yale Divinity School
Paula Fredriksen, Aurelio Professor of Scripture Emerita, Boston University
Introduction
This white paper presents a chronological timeline of the major events and intellectual developments of Second Temple Judaism—the roughly 600-year period between the Babylonian destruction of the First Temple (586 BCE) and the Roman destruction of the Second Temple (70 CE). The timeline draws on two scholarly sources: a recorded conversation between Bart Ehrman and John J. Collins titled The Surprising Origins of Judaism Before Jesus, and Paula Fredriksen’s book When Christians Were Jews: The First Generation.
Together, these scholars illuminate a period whose importance can scarcely be overstated. The Judaism we recognize today—centered on Torah observance, scriptural interpretation, and synagogue life—did not exist before this period. Christianity, for its part, emerged from within this Judaism, not in opposition to it. The earliest followers of Jesus were thoroughly Jewish in their piety, their practice, and their expectations.
The Two Scholars
John J. Collins approaches the period from the perspective of canon formation, apocalypticism, and the sociology of law observance. His central argument is that the Maccabean Revolt (166 BCE) is the true watershed: only after it does the archaeological record show widespread Torah practice. Before that crisis, he argues, the religion of Judah was closer to a local Canaanite cult—”Yahwism”—than to anything we would recognize as Judaism.
Paula Fredriksen approaches the period from the perspective of New Testament studies and the historical Jesus. Her central argument is that Jesus, Paul, John the Baptizer, and the earliest Jerusalem community were all deeply embedded within Temple piety—not opponents of it. The crucifixion was not the climax of a religious conflict between Jesus and Judaism, but a Roman crowd-control decision during a volatile Passover. The movement that became Christianity was, in its first generation, thoroughly Jewish.
Thematic Overview
The Formation of Judaism
One of Collins’s most striking arguments is that Judaism—as a religion defined by Torah observance—is itself a historical development, not a timeless given. Before the Babylonian exile, the people of Judah practiced a localized form of Yahwism that bore little resemblance to later Judaism. The exile in Babylon, the Persian return, and above all the Maccabean Revolt progressively transformed a local ethnic cult into a portable, text-centered religious identity capable of surviving diaspora conditions.
Collins identifies three crucial turning points: the Babylonian exile (where the Torah likely took written shape), the arrival of Ezra with the Torah scroll (which established the principle of living by the Law, even if practice lagged far behind), and the Maccabean Revolt (after which Torah observance became both a religious duty and a political identity marker). Only then does the archaeology show ritual purification pools, purity vessels, and the other physical markers of Torah-observant life.
Apocalypticism: A New Worldview
Collins also stresses the radical novelty of apocalypticism—the belief in cosmic judgment, resurrection of the dead, and eternal life with the angels in heaven. This worldview, he argues, would have been completely foreign to the religion of Ezra. It emerges in the Books of Enoch and Daniel around the time of the Maccabean Revolt, developed by circles of scribes and visionaries on the margins of mainstream Judaism. Their innovation was to reframe the goal of human life: instead of long life in the land and prosperous descendants, salvation meant living forever with the angels in heaven.
This shift, Collins argues, is one of the most consequential in the history of religion. Without it, Christianity could not have taken the form it did. The resurrection of Jesus, as Fredriksen shows, was interpreted by the earliest disciples precisely within this apocalyptic framework—not as a unique miracle demonstrating Jesus’s divinity, but as the first fruits of the general resurrection expected at the End of the Age.
The Temple and Its Centrality
Fredriksen’s most insistent theme is the positive centrality of the Jerusalem Temple to every major figure in the New Testament. John the Baptizer’s ritual immersions cohered with Temple purity practice; Jesus proclaimed the Kingdom in the Temple’s outer court; Paul drew his richest theological metaphors from Temple sacrifice; the earliest Jerusalem community worshiped in the Temple daily. The Essenes are the exception—they reviled the Temple—but even they did so because of its illegitimate priesthood, not because of any principled anti-cult theology.
This has significant implications for how we read the New Testament. The so-called “cleansing of the Temple” was not a rejection of Temple worship but, in Fredriksen’s reading, a symbolic prophetic act announcing the Temple’s coming apocalyptic replacement by God’s own eschatological sanctuary. Jesus’s followers expected the End, and Jerusalem—and specifically the Temple—was its appointed stage.
Annotated Timeline
The following timeline presents twenty-two events spanning from the division of the Israelite monarchy (c. 930 BCE) through the Roman destruction of the Second Temple (70 CE). Each entry identifies the source scholar and the primary historical actors.
c. 930 BCE
Division of the United Monarchy into Israel and Judah Collins
The northern kingdom (Israel) and southern kingdom (Judah) split after the reign of Solomon. Collins emphasizes that before the Babylonian exile, the religion of Judah was more properly called “Yahwism”—a local cult of the deity Yahweh, resembling neighboring Canaanite chiefdoms. The Law of Moses as a binding national identity did not yet exist in any recognizable form. Key players: The Davidic dynasty of Judah; the northern tribes of Israel.
722 BCE
Assyrian destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel Collins
The Assyrians wiped out the northern Israelite kingdom, scattering its people. Collins notes that many Israelites migrated south into Judah, swelling Jerusalem’s population, but Judah remained a small, localized kingdom little different from Moab, Ammon, or Phoenicia. Key players: The Assyrian empire; the northern Israelite tribes.
586 BCE
Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem and the First Temple Collins
Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylonians destroyed Solomon’s Temple and deported Judah’s elite leadership to Babylon. Collins argues this catastrophe was the accidental catalyst for Judaism’s formation: the exiled priestly class, treated relatively well in Babylon, was able to preserve and codify traditions. Most scholars believe this is when the Torah—the written Law of Moses—took its essential shape. The Judean identity transformed from a local ethnicity into something portable and textual.Key players: Nebuchadnezzar II (Babylon); the Judean priestly class in exile.
539 BCE
Cyrus of Persia permits the Judean exiles to return Collins
The Persian king Cyrus conquered Babylon and issued an edict allowing deported peoples—including Judeans—to return to their homelands. Collins notes this was an enlightened policy of religious tolerance. The returning Judeans prioritized rebuilding the Temple and restoring the kingship; the Law of Moses was not yet the central preoccupation. The rebuilt temple was reportedly so modest that elders who remembered Solomon’s structure wept. Key players: Cyrus the Great (Persia); the Judean returnees; the prophets Haggai and Zechariah.
c. 458–445 BCE
Ezra arrives in Jerusalem with the scroll of the Torah Collins
Roughly 75 years after the initial return, the scribe Ezra obtained Persian permission to govern Judea according to ancestral law and arrived bearing a Torah scroll. Collins considers this a watershed: when Ezra read the law publicly, the people’s reaction suggested most had never heard it. They discovered forgotten festivals (such as Sukkot) on the spot. Nehemiah had to enforce basic Sabbath observance—evidence that even after Ezra, compliance was inconsistent. Collins concludes that the idea of living by the Torah was accepted in principle long before it was practiced in earnest. Key players: Ezra (scribe and priest); Nehemiah (Persian-appointed governor of Judea); the Persian king Artaxerxes I.
c. 300–200 BCE
The Hellenistic period: Ptolemaic and then Seleucid rule of Judea Collins
After Alexander the Great’s conquests, Judea passed first to the Ptolemies (Egypt) and then to the Seleucids (Syria). Collins notes the Ptolemies were mainly concerned with taxes and commerce and did not interfere with Jewish customs. The Seleucids, however, were under financial pressure from Rome and looked to plunder temple treasuries throughout their realm—including Jerusalem’s. Key players: The Ptolemaic dynasty; the Seleucid dynasty; the high priests of Jerusalem.
175–167 BCE
Antiochus IV Epiphanes Hellenizes Judea by force Fredriksen
The Seleucid king Antiochus IV replaced the legitimate Zadokite high priest with his own appointees. When he mistakenly believed Judea had revolted, he mandated Hellenization and outlawed Jewish ancestral customs. In 167 BCE, the Temple altar was converted to pagan sacrifice—”the abomination of desolation” described in Daniel. Collins adds that this suppression produced a fierce backlash: suddenly, people would keep the Law. Before this, there is little archaeological evidence many cared deeply about Torah observance. Key players: Antiochus IV Epiphanes (Seleucid king); Jason and Menelaus (rival high priests); the Zadokite priestly families.
166–164 BCE
The Maccabean Revolt and rededication of the Temple (Hanukkah) Both Scholars
Judah Maccabee and his brothers led an armed revolt against Seleucid rule and rededicated the Temple. Collins calls this the great watershed of Second Temple Judaism: it is only after the revolt that archaeological evidence for Torah observance—ritual purification pools (mikvaot), purity vessels, absence of pork bones—appears widely across Judea*. Fredriksen notes the revolt also gave rise to intense messianic speculation and apocalyptic hope. Sectarian groups debating fine points of the Law now emerge for the first time. Key players: Judah Maccabee and the Hasmonean family; the Seleucid forces; the author(s) of Daniel (the first Jewish apocalypse). [*See Yonatan Adler’s post at this site here with link to his YouTube lecture.]
152 BCE
Jonathan Maccabee assumes the high priesthood; Essene origins Fredriksen
Jonathan Maccabee was elevated to the high priesthood despite not being of the legitimate Zadokite line. A Zadokite priest—known as the Teacher of Righteousness—left Jerusalem in protest and assumed leadership of a separatist priestly sect: the Sons of Zadok, later the Qumran community. Fredriksen notes they shared with the later Jesus movement communal property, messianic expectation, apocalyptic hope, and sexual renunciation. But unlike the Jesus movement, they reviled the Temple; their alienation was rooted in its illegitimate priesthood. Key players: Jonathan Maccabee (high priest); the Teacher of Righteousness (Essene founder); the Hasmonean dynasty.
c. 150–63 BCE
Hasmonean rule: native kingship and the emergence of Jewish sects Collins
The Maccabees’ descendants—the Hasmoneans—became both kings and high priests and ruled an independent Jewish state. Collins notes the irony: the Hasmoneans adopted Greek cultural customs while promoting a distinctive Jewish identity focused on Torah observance. It is in this period that the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes emerge and begin debating the Law. The Dead Sea Scrolls letter 4QMMT documents one such dispute over the purity of liquid streams—reflecting a society now intensely engaged with legal interpretation. Key players: The Hasmonean kings and high priests; Pharisees; Sadducees; the Qumran Essenes.
63 BCE
Pompey conquers Jerusalem and enters the Temple Fredriksen
The Roman general Pompey swept into Judea to end a Hasmonean civil war and conquered Jerusalem. He entered the Temple sanctuary—in Jewish eyes, defiling it—then stripped the city of territory and revenue. Fredriksen presents this as the beginning of Jerusalem’s humiliation and the start of Roman domination, which would persist through the time of Jesus. Key players: Pompey (Roman general); the rival Hasmonean claimants; Julius Caesar; Mark Antony; Octavian/Augustus.
37–4 BCE
Herod the Great rules Judea and rebuilds the Temple Fredriksen
Installed by Rome, Herod the Great ruled a vast territory including Judea, Galilee, Transjordan, and Samaria. His most lasting achievement was the massive reconstruction of the Jerusalem Temple—so magnificent that later rabbis said, “Whoever has not seen Herod’s temple has never seen a beautiful building.” The outer court, accessible to all including Gentiles, housed the money-changers and those selling sacrificial animals. Fredriksen argues it is precisely this Temple that frames the entire ministry and execution narrative of Jesus. Key players: Herod the Great (client king of Rome); Rome (Augustus); the Jerusalem high priesthood.
6 CE
Judea becomes a Roman province; the tax revolt of Judah the Galilean Fredriksen
After Herod’s inept son Archelaus was removed by Augustus, Judea alone was placed under direct Roman provincial rule with a prefect and a census for taxation. Judah the Galilean and the Pharisee Zadok launched a revolt, rallying crowds with the cry “No king but God!” Josephus traced the origins of the Jewish-Roman War of 66 CE back to this very revolt—sixty years of revolutionary ferment flowing from one Roman administrative decision. Key players: Judah the Galilean; Zadok the Pharisee; the Roman prefect; Josephus (later historian of these events).
c. 28–29 CE
John the Baptizer’s ministry near the Jordan River Fredriksen
Fredriksen presents John as a prophetic figure embedded firmly within first-century Jewish Temple piety. His baptism was a ritual purification that cohered with Temple practice rather than opposing it—purification always led toward the Temple. John preached “piety and justice” and gathered such enormous crowds near the Jordan that Herod Antipas had him arrested and executed—worried about the crowd, not the content of his teaching. Key players: John the Baptizer; Herod Antipas (ruler of Galilee and Perea); the crowds of followers; Jesus of Nazareth (among those immersed).
c. 29–30 CE
Jesus’s ministry: Judean focus and the Temple Fredriksen
Fredriksen argues that John’s Gospel is more historically plausible than the Synoptics in depicting Jesus as primarily Jerusalem-focused, visiting the Temple repeatedly during pilgrimage feasts. Jesus proclaimed the imminent Kingdom of God in the Temple’s outer court—associating the Kingdom with Jerusalem and the Temple just as the prophets had. He was a known quantity to both Caiaphas and Pontius Pilate. His message posed no military danger; it was the enthusiasm of the crowds around him that made the authorities nervous. Key players: Jesus of Nazareth; the Twelve disciples; Caiaphas (high priest); Pontius Pilate (Roman prefect); the pilgrimage crowds.
c. 30 CE
Crucifixion of Jesus at Passover Fredriksen
Fredriksen’s reconstruction: Jesus arrived in Jerusalem for Passover and was publicly acclaimed as messiah by the crowds. This messianic acclamation was the trigger. Both Caiaphas and Pilate—who knew Jesus’s nonviolent message posed no real danger—nevertheless had to act: an excited messianic crowd at Passover could easily tip into riot. Jesus was arrested quietly at night and crucified the same day. The title “King of the Jews” identifies the charge. Crucifixion was Rome’s instrument; the political problem was the crowd, not Jesus himself. Key players: Pontius Pilate (who ordered the execution); Caiaphas (high priest); Judas Iscariot (informant); Peter and the other disciples.
c. 30–35 CE
Resurrection appearances and formation of the Jerusalem community Fredriksen
Within days of the crucifixion, Jesus’s followers reported seeing him risen. Fredriksen stresses variance among the accounts but notes all sources agree the appearances began very shortly after the execution. The disciples interpreted the resurrection not primarily as proof of Jesus’s divine status, but as confirmation that the Kingdom was at hand—the first fruits of the general resurrection. A community settled in Jerusalem within weeks of the crucifixion and began practicing communal sharing of goods—paralleling the Essenes at Qumran. Key players: Peter; Mary Magdalene; James (brother of Jesus); the original Twelve; Paul (who experienced the risen Christ somewhat later in Damascus).
c. 33–36 CE
Paul’s call and the early diaspora mission Fredriksen
Paul, a diaspora Jew whose native language was Greek, had been violently persecuting the Jesus assembly in Damascus when he experienced a vision of the risen Christ. In Galatians, Paul says he did not consult with the Jerusalem apostles for several years. His positive use of Temple imagery—the assembly as God’s Temple; Gentile converts as sacrifices offered to God—reveals that Paul, far from being anti-Temple, found in it his richest theological vocabulary. Key players: Paul (apostle); James, Peter, and John (the Jerusalem ‘pillars’); the Gentile communities Paul founded in Asia Minor, Greece, and eventually Rome.
37–41 CE
Emperor Caligula orders a statue placed in the Jerusalem Temple Fredriksen
The Roman emperor Caligula ordered that a statue of himself be erected in the Jerusalem Temple—an act that would have triggered open revolt. Governor Petronius delayed the order, and Caligula’s assassination in 41 CE prevented the catastrophe. Fredriksen notes that Luke, writing his account of the Jerusalem community during precisely these decades, is completely silent about this crisis—revealing his theological rather than historical agenda. Key players: Emperor Caligula; Governor Petronius (who resisted the order); King Agrippa I (who interceded); the Jerusalem community.
c. 47–58 CE
Paul’s missionary journeys and the Collection for Jerusalem Fredriksen
Paul undertook journeys founding communities of Gentile Christ-followers across Asia Minor, Macedonia, and Greece. He organized a major financial collection to be delivered to the Jerusalem community—likely because they were still practicing communal goods-sharing and had become economically dependent on outside support. This reflects how literally they expected the End to arrive: there was no reason to plan for the long run. Key players: Paul; Timothy and Titus (co-workers); the communities of Corinth, Philippi, Thessalonica, Galatia; the Jerusalem leadership (James, Peter).
62 CE
Execution of James, brother of Jesus, by the high priest Ananus Fredriksen
The high priest Ananus took advantage of a gap between Roman prefects to execute James—the brother of Jesus and leader of the Jerusalem community. Josephus records that Law-observant Jerusalemites outside the Jesus movement were outraged and secured Ananus’s dismissal. Fredriksen notes this reveals how well-integrated the Jerusalem community was within mainstream Jewish piety as late as 62 CE. After James’s death, the community’s fate is unknown. Key players: James the Just (leader of the Jerusalem church); Ananus (high priest); Law-observant Jews outside the movement who defended James.
66–70 CE
The Jewish-Roman War and destruction of the Second Temple Fredriksen
Open revolt broke out in 66 CE. Titus’s legions besieged Jerusalem for months. In August 70 CE, during brutal street fighting, a Roman soldier set the Temple colonnade ablaze; the fire engulfed the entire sanctuary. Josephus—an eyewitness—described the Temple Mount as “one huge mass of fire, appearing to be boiling up from its very roots.” The Second Temple was destroyed, never to be rebuilt. With it went the entire cultic infrastructure of Jewish life: sacrifice, the high priesthood, the Sadducees, the Essenes. Only the Pharisees, whose tradition of scriptural interpretation was portable, would survive to become the rabbis. Key players: Vespasian and Titus (Roman commanders); Josephus (Jewish commander turned Roman collaborator and historian); the Jerusalem community.
Conclusion
The picture that emerges from Collins and Fredriksen together is of two profound, interconnected transformations occurring over roughly a thousand years of Israelite and Jewish history.
The first is the transformation of Yahwism into Judaism. Under the pressures of exile, Persian governance, Hellenistic competition, and the crucible of the Maccabean Revolt, a local ethnic cult became a portable, law-observant, scripture-centered religion capable of surviving without a king, without a land, and eventually—after 70 CE—without a Temple. Collins shows us that this transformation was neither inevitable nor smooth; it required catastrophe and conflict at every stage.
The second transformation is the emergence of the Jesus movement from within Second Temple Judaism. Fredriksen shows us that the earliest followers of Jesus were not proto-Christians breaking free from Judaism; they were Jewish apocalypticists awaiting the imminent Kingdom of God in Jerusalem, worshiping in the Temple, and interpreting Jesus’s resurrection as the first sign that the End was at hand. The movement only gradually became something distinct—and that distinction was driven not by Jesus himself, but by the long delay of the Kingdom, the destruction of the Temple, and the increasing Gentile composition of the assemblies.
By the fourth century, the Jewish-Christian roots of the movement had been so thoroughly obscured that, as Fredriksen observes, James, Peter, and Paul would all have been condemned as heretics by mainstream Christianity. In their own eyes, however, they were simply the last generation of Israel—waiting, in the holy city, for the Kingdom their teacher had promised.
Sources
Collins, John J. Interview: “The Surprising Origins of Judaism Before Jesus.” Conducted by Bart Ehrman. Transcript compiled from The Bart Ehrman Podcast.
Fredriksen, Paula. When Christians Were Jews: The First Generation. Yale University Press, 2018. (Reader highlights and annotations.)
