A Malthusian look at the two last centuries of the Jerusalem Temple Cult.

 Abstract:

This article examines the socioeconomic and environmental factors contributing to the widespread Jewish diaspora in the 1st century CE, focusing on a Malthusian perspective. The impoverishment of the Land of Israel—exacerbated by desertification, overgrazing, droughts, and climate warming—made the traditional Temple Cult increasingly unaffordable for many Jews. The resulting reliance on alternative religious practices, such as synagogue prayers and ascetic movements, is explored alongside the rise of influential figures like John the Baptist and Jesus. These leaders responded to the economic and spiritual needs of the marginalized, offering accessible forms of purification and eschatological hope. The analysis also delves into Jesus’ critical stance on Temple practices, interpreting his actions as driven by socioeconomic frustrations rather than outright rejection of the cult.

Why Was There Such a Great Diaspora in the 1st Century CE?

The diaspora in Babylonia can be easily explained by the forced exile imposed on the Judeans by Nebuchadnezzar II in 597 and 586 BCE. Many settled there and were not motivated to return to their ancestral homeland.

But what about the Hellenistic world, where no Judeans had been exiled prior to 65 CE?

By the 1st century CE, Jewish communities existed throughout the Mediterranean basin. Alexandria, for example, was reputed to have more Jews than the Land of Israel. At the beginning of the 1st century, between one-half and two-thirds of Jews lived in the diaspora.

A Malthusian explanation

My hypothesis is that the Land of Israel had been greatly impoverished due to increasing desertification—similar to what we see today in Syria—combined with wars, overgrazing, droughts, and climate warming, which, believe it or not, also existed before the industrial era. Evidence of this can be found in the Mishna Bava Kama 7:7, compiled in the early 3rd century, which forbids the raising of perfectly kosher small cattle in the Land of Israel, and allows it in the neighboring areas.

This impoverishment rendered the Temple Cult, with the quantity and quality of its offerings fixed by the Pentateuch, unaffordable for many, if not most Jews. Animal sacrifices became prohibitively expensive.

The proliferation of synagogues during this period likely reflects this economic reality. Synagogue prayers offered a partial alternative to the Temple Cult.

Alternatives to the Temple Cult

The Qumran community overtly rejected the Temple Cult and its sacrifices. Unlike the Essenes, they were schismatic, establishing a solar calendar (as seen in the Halakhic Letter 4QMMT) and celebrating holidays on different dates from the Temple Cult and mainstream Judaism.

Hellenistic culture also played a role. Influenced by the philosophical traditions of care of the self (epimeleia heautou), as described by Michel Foucault (1984), Jews began to moralize and internalize notions of sacrifice, sin, defilement, and purity. This shift is reflected in the proliferation in this period of private mikveot (stepped ritual baths) for purification, as noted by Yonatan Adler (2022).

Despite these adaptations, the Temple Cult remained central to most Jews. The primary issue was not rejection but unaffordability. The half-Tyrian Shekel Temple tax (approximately 7 grams of silver) and the cost of sacrificial animals were beyond the means of many in an economically depressed region. For comparison, the Temple tax equated to roughly two days' wages for an average laborer at the time.

Synagogue prayers, though valued, could not provide the purification of sin, a concept increasingly individualized and moralized under Hellenistic influence.

Ascetic Movements and Poverty

Under the influence of Epicurean and Stoic thought, ascetic practices gained popularity among groups like the Pharisees, Essenes, and the Egyptian Therapeutae (assuming the latter were not a literary invention by Philo). Asceticism was also a practical way to dignify the endemic poverty.

Among these renouncers of pleasure were also the autochthonous Nazirites, that predated the Babylonian exile. Nazirites took vows forbidding contact with grape products, corpses, and graves, and they refrained from cutting their hair. Two types existed:

1. Temporal Nazirites, who made vows for a fixed period (e.g., two years), requiring Temple offerings at the start and end of their vow.
2. Permanent Nazirites, who inherited their status through parental vows made before their birth. Prominent examples include Samson and Samuel.

John the Baptist: An awkward Nazirite Priest

I assume as valid (it's only an assumption) and summarize the hypothesis of James F, McGrawth (2024):

Elizabeth and her husband Zechariah were both from the lineage of Aaron. Zechariah was active as a priest in the Temple, and the couple remained childless for a long time. Towards the end of the 1st century BC, at last Elisabeth conceived, and being afraid of the outcome of her pregnancy, she made a vow that her child would be a Nazirite. This was a disastrous decision in a priestly family, for if the child was a boy, he couldn’t officiate as a priest, which was the mandatory job for a priest’s son, especially if it was the only son.

The boy born in this extremely awkward condition was named Yôḥānān, who became known as John the Baptist (Josephus and the Gospels call him Ἰωάννης βαπτιστὴς = Ioannes Baptistes = John the immerser). Being the son of a priest, he was educated accordingly for a job he could never exercise because he couldn’t cut his hair. With this conspicuous Nazirite condition, John grew up as marginal in an impoverished country with great political instability, where many were seduced by eschatological ideas centered on the end of this world and the coming of a kingdom of God with justice for all.

Not being able to officiate in the Temple despite being a priest, he decided to go into business for himself by offering to the public purification of sin, a service that, until then, was only provided by the priests in the Temple. To perform this, he conceived a purification ritual consisting in the repentance of sins and the total immersion in sloughs or pools of the river Jordan.

John could not fathom the importance of the cultic revolution that his purification by immersion was to have in the history of humanity. He had great success and attracted a great public with his purification offer. He was an awkward looking but silver-tongued charismatic figure that preached about the necessity of purification, and that spread hope and optimism by announcing the imminent coming of the kingdom of God.

Jesus meets John

Another marginal Jew, named Jesus, coming from Nazareth, a Galilean hamlet, was immersed by John and this experience marked him so deeply that he became John’s disciple. After the imprisonment of John, Jesus goes back to Galilee where he started his ministry as an eschatological preacher that announced the end of this world and the coming of the God's kingdom and incited his audience to prepare for this most extraordinary transformational event.

When Jesus received the news that John was beheaded by orders of Herodes Antipas, he reacted with profound sorrow and a desire for solitude. According to the Gospel of Matthew, after receiving the news, Jesus “withdrew by boat privately to a solitary place” (Matthew 14:13) to mourn and reflect on the tragic event. This withdrawal indicates that Jesus was deeply affected by the violent death of a person who had such a great influence on his ministry.

My take, from reading the Gospels, is that the beheading of John marked a turning point in Jesus' ministry. He became more impatient for the coming of God's kingdom that until that moment he only announced, and from that moment on he acted to provoke and accelerate the coming of that kingdom. From herald he turned to catalyst of the end of times.

The Gospels present us a very different Jesus from the one who is portrayed in the Catechisms and Sunday schools. The trite opposition between the angry YHWH of the OT and the kind and loving Jesus of the NT gets blurred when we read:

• Mark 11:12-25, where the narrative describes how Jesus, while leaving Bethany, sees a fig tree in full leaf and approaches it, hoping to find figs. However, he finds only leaves because it is not the season for figs. Disappointed, he curses the tree, saying, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” The next morning, his disciples notice that the tree has withered from the roots up.
• Matthew 10:34: "Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword."
• Luke 14:26:"If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple".

The anger episode that turned out to be the most lethal for Jesus was his attack on the Temple merchants, as described in Matthew 21:12-13, Mark 11:15-18, Luke 19:45-46, John 2:13-22. This drew him to the attention of the Sanhedrin, that was ill prepared and too perplexed to understand and deal with the behavior of this agitated preacher.

What would happen if some illuminated Catholic fanatic came to the Vatican and tried to violently shut down all souvenir shops?

In the Malthusian approach to this event, my explanation is simple: Jesus and his followers were frustrated and angry because they were poor. They didn’t have the means to pay the Temple tax that was collected by the money changers, nor to buy the cheapest sacrifice animals sold by the pigeon sellers.

Jesus and his disciples were not against the Temple cult, they simply couldn’t afford it.

Having examined all the scholarly literature on the Temple merchants event, Jonathan Klawans (2002) concludes:

“... two shared features of three of the four versions of the temple incident: in Matthew, Mark, and John, Jesus is said to have expelled both the money changers and the pigeon sellers. And the common denominator here is that both of these types of traders would have a marked impact on poor pilgrims in particular. The money changers have their impact on the impoverished because only the poor would feel pinched by the small surcharge assessed at the temple (again, following rabbinic sources). The pigeon sellers have their impact on the destitute because the birds are the cheapest of the animal sacrifices, and presumably it’s the poor who are buying pigeons, as opposed to more expensive animals such as lambs or goats… both the selling of pigeons and the money changers’ surcharge are practical and reasonable. But that doesn’t mean they are entirely unobjectionable, especially to a group or movement that has different ideas about how one should relate to the poor. It could be argued that any given tax or fee is practical and reasonable; but surely practically every tax or charge has had its opponents. In my view, Jesus opposed those aspects of the temple system—the temple tax and the pigeon sellers—that required exacting money or goods from the poor.” (p. 237)

The NT tends to downplay the importance of the influence of John the Baptist. If Jesus is the human incarnation of God, why would he need a mentor, and an inspirer like John? The mention of John in the Gospels attests to his historicity and to the historicity of Jesus himself. Why would the authors of the Gospels and Acts, whoever they were and whenever they wrote, invent John the Baptist?

Josephus writes more about John than about Jesus. It seems that at the time depicted by Acts the disciples of John were more numerous than those of Jesus. The Mandaeans claim to be followers of John and the Qur’an holds him in high esteem as a prophet named Yahya.

———————————————————————————————

REFERENCES

Adler, Y. (2022) The Origins of Judaism.

Foucault, M. (1984) Histoire de la sexualité. Vol. 3

Klawans, J. (2002) Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple.

McGrath, J. F. (2024) The Christmaker: A life of John the Baptist.