ABSTRACT
The ensuing centuries of Roman rule saw many momentous changes in Jewish culture. It was during the Roman period, in the wake of major Jewish revolts in the first and second centuries CE, that Judea lost much of its Jewish population, and there was a shift in the center of Jewish communal life from Jerusalem to a region north of Judea and to diasporic locations like Babylon and Rome. During this period, Jewish religious life became more diffuse as well. After the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, Jews developed new ways of worshipping God that were not dependent on the offering of sacrifice, forms of worship based in the synagogue and the study house. Many of the Jewish groups we encountered in Chapter 3-the Hasmoneans, Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes/Dead Sea Scrolls sect-disappeared by the second century CE, while new non-Temple-centered movements began to flourish: Christianity, which began as a form of Judaism, and rabbinic Judaism which would eventually reshape religious belief and practice for the majority of Jews.
