Includes bibliographical references (p. [323]-350) and indexes.

Sacrifice and purity -- The twisted fortunes of related ritual structures -- The sacrificial process of ancient Israel -- Rethinking the prophetic critique -- Temple as cosmos or temple in the cosmos -- Priests, purity, sacrifice, and angels -- Sinful people, impure priests, and inadequate structures -- The temple as defiled and rejected -- The purity of the Second Temple in Rabbinic literature -- The Last Supper, the temple incident, and the "spiritualization" of scarifice in the New Testament.

"Ancient Jewish sacrifice has long been misunderstood. Some find in sacrifice the key to the mysterious and violent origins of human culture. Others see these cultic rituals as merely the fossilized vestiges of primitive superstition. Some believe that ancient Jewish sacrifice was doomed from the start, destined to be replaced by the Christian eucharist. Others think that the temple was fated to be superseded by the synagogue. In Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple Jonathan Klawans demonstrates that these supersessionist ideologies have prevented scholars from recognizing the Jerusalem temple as a powerful source of meaning and symbolism to the ancient Jews who worshiped there. Klawans exposes and counters such ideologies by reviewing the theoretical literature on sacrifice and taking a fresh look at a broad range of evidence concerning ancient Jewish attitudes toward the temple and its sacrificial cult."--BOOK JACKET.