Imagining the temple in rabbinic stone: the evolution of the ʾEven Shetiyah

The mythical ʾeven shetiyah, often translated as the "foundation stone," marks the physical place where the Jerusalem temples once stood in the rabbinic imagination. In its earliest incarnation it identified the place where the ark of the covenant resided in Solomon's Temple. Over the...

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Bibliographic Details
Subtitles:Research Article
Main Author: Koltun-Fromm, Naomi 1964- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: University of Pennsylvania Press [2019]
In: AJS review
Year: 2019, Volume: 43, Issue: 2, Pages: 355-377
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Temple (Jerusalem) / Corner stone / Mishnah / Rabbi
IxTheo Classification:BH Judaism
Online Access: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
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Summary:The mythical ʾeven shetiyah, often translated as the "foundation stone," marks the physical place where the Jerusalem temples once stood in the rabbinic imagination. In its earliest incarnation it identified the place where the ark of the covenant resided in Solomon's Temple. Over the centuries it absorbed cosmogonic and eventually eschatological meaning. In later post-talmudic rabbinic literature, it adopted another mythic trope—the seal on the tehom. I argue that these two separate narrative strands of a seal on the tehomunder the Temple and ʾeven shetiyahin the Temple became intertwined, but only in late (post-talmudic) rabbinic midrash. I trace this evolutionary trend and argue that while the early rabbis both innovated and reinvigorated older biblical and ancient Near Eastern cosmogonic motifs with their ʾeven shetiyah, the later rabbinic texts were influenced by Christian and Muslim competition for spiritual and earthly Jerusalem. The stone that started as a means for rabbinic self-authorization became a reassertion of God's control of history and protection of Israel and the world, but in the process displaced priestly authority.
ISSN:1475-4541
Contains:Enthalten in: Association for Jewish Studies, AJS review
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1017/S0364009419000539