High Priesthood During the Second Temple Period
Eric Wyatt
Paper One, M 101 – Old Testament, Winter 2006
Rev. Fr. Dennis O’Keeffe, D.Min
Return from Exile and Rebuilding of the Temple
When Cyrus, a Persian, defeated the Babylonians in 539 B.C. his success was seen as a part of Yahweh’s bigger plan of restoring His Chosen People. Cyrus had been supported by the exiled Jews and in return, he allowed them to go back to Jerusalem. The exile lasted over fifty years and most of those who remembered life in Israel were dead. Of those Jews who were living in Babylon, “most decided to remain behind in the comfort they had fashioned for themselves in Babylonia.” Those who did relinquish the temporal comforts of their relatively easy captivity returned to find a poor area inhabited by pagans in the North, and, in the South, peasant farmer Jews who had been left behind with little social infrastructure and no religious life.
Cyrus decreed the Temple to be rebuilt and returned the sacred vessels stolen by Nebuchadnezzar. An altar was built first, so that a bare minimum of sacrifices could be reestablished. The High Priest and his brethren priests then oversaw the rebuilding of the Temple and the reestablishment and expansion of religious practice. The rebuilding of the Temple (and more so, the return of the exiled Jews who were taking back the lands those who had been left behind had slowly claimed) angered the Samaritan neighbors and others. The reconstruction was abandoned early on in favor of rebuilding the homes, shops, and other more pedestrian parts of the city. It isn’t until 515 B.C. that reconstruction truly takes place and the Temple is reestablished.
Comparison of Temple Culture Between Pre-Exile and Post-Exilic Periods
Though the Temple was rebuilt, things were not the same: the exile had taken a permanent toll. “The intense spirituality of the First Temple cannot be compared to the Second. The constant miracles are gone. Prophecy is gone. The Ark of the Covenant is gone. And although there is a Holy of Holies, it stands empty.” The Ark was either taken by the Babylonians or hidden by King Josiah who had anticipated the invasion. Perhaps even more devastating was the loss of the spiritually challenging and supportive voice of the prophets. While the Second Temple is a spiritually different place, it is also much more physically humble structure. It is later expanded by Herod the Great (circa 30 BC), but even then it remains spiritually empty.
The High Priesthood was initially restored as a hereditary office; reestablishing the pre-exilic line of the High Priest Zudok. The other Temple priests claimed descent from Aaron and the minor clergy were descendants of Levi. At times after the exile, the High Priest served the role as sole and primary community leader for the Jews. Some Jews were looking for the return of the Davidic monarchy, and at times the ruling power was divided between a ruling governor or King and the High Priest, but on balance, the High Priesthood acquired a more and more civic role, especially during voids when no monarch could claim the throne.
Even though the exile was over, the long-term effects remained. “But when prophecy disappeared and central authority was weakened, it became easier for people to stray and for various holy institutions (like the High Priesthood) to become corrupt.” The loss of prophecy was a result of the spiritual weakness of the Jewish people who had returned from exile with the purpose of reestablishing the glory of Jerusalem only to put God on the back burner to focus on their own needs.
Duties of the High Priest and Others Within the Second Temple
The Temple life and use demonstrates the stratified holiness of the Jewish culture. Into the courtyards could come Yahweh’s people; a Holy people, especially when compared to the surrounding pagans. Into the Temple building itself the priests and Levites – endowed with a greater holiness through heredity and their vocation – could enter. Only the priests could engage in activities which dealt with the altars or incense (making the priests an order higher than the Levites), and only the High Priest could enter into the Holy of Holies.
Like the Temple itself, all aspects of the priesthood – especially as expressed through the chief priest – were intended to express symbolically the Holy and set apart nature of Israel. Israel was to be a holy nation by maintaining the covenant relationship with God, and the priests embodied this truth. If all of Israel is to be a “kingdom of priests”, then the priestly class served as the set-apart representatives of a set-apart people. The fundamental purposes of the priesthood were reconciliation and mediation on behalf of the Israelites, and the object of reconciliation was holiness. The qualifications to be a priest, the kinds of defilements that would interrupt their work, their mode of ordination, and their dress were all symbolic and representative of the larger relationship between God and His people.
The priestly caste, therefore, dealt with all ritualistic acts that required holiness: burning on the altars, slaughter on the altar of holocaust, sacrificial blood rites, pronouncements of what was pure and unpure, and blessings of the people. The priests in the Temple were charged with overseeing anything having to do with the lamps, the incense altar, and replacing the loaves on the table of showbread. With the Second Temple period, the priest became the sole administrator of animal sacrifice, a function that had earlier not been restricted to the sanctuary. Another additional duty of the High Priest in the Second Temple period was the collecting of additional funds to finance the building and expansion projects. This is a function that would have been accomplished by the monarch in earlier times. At the same time, the priesthood, with the High Priest as its head, took on additional responsibility to act in a judicial role. While the priests remained responsible for making law and legal judgments known to the people, the Scribes eventually became the ones who acted as jurists and theologians who interpreted the law. One way to have edicts or laws “published” in the ancient world was to have it read aloud, and this was one of the duties of the Jewish priesthood. The Holy of Holies was forbidden ground except for once a year – during Yom Kippur. The High Priest alone was allowed to enter the Holy of Holies to perform special rites in the presence of God on that day. He was to offer two sacrifices for sins of ignorance or omission: one for his own sins, and one for the sins of the people.
The Levites took care of more basic liturgical duties, and took assignments from the priests to perform required administrative functions. Keeping order and discipline – given the fact that an estimated 200,000 persons were sometimes within the Temple walls, with their money for tributes and possessing natural human tendency for behavior to devolve in large crowds – was a major consideration. The security function was typically assigned to the Levites. Physically enforcing the ceremonial cleanliness within the Temple was a security function that trumped other aspects of the Law, including the observation of the Sabbath.
Giving of Torah could be done by anyone skilled in the law, not just the priests. As the corruption of the priesthood expanded, the teachers of wisdom and those scribes who could instruct in the law gained to confidence of the people. The scribes were responsible for assuring the correctness of the copies of the sacred texts which were used in the synagogues. The teachers of the law went out to the people, teaching them in the estimated 450 synagogues within Jerusalem itself. As the role of the law increased – speaking for God in lieu of the voice of the Prophets, and resisting the institutional corruption of the priesthood – the role of the priests diminished somewhat.
The Corruption of the Priesthood
During the Second Temple Period, the spirituality of the Jewish people suffers greatly from outside influence and their own spiritual weakness. The decline of the High Priesthood mirrors the more universal decline of Jewish spirituality. When the Greeks conquer the Persian Empire in 312 B.C., they also gain control of Israel. The inclusion of Israel into the Greek empire
By 175 B.C., Jerusalem looked more like a Greek city than a small hill town full of religiously-oriented Jews who were devoted to the keeping of the Divine Law and fulfilling the Covenant between the people and Yahweh. Jason – the High Priest who broke the line of generational priesthood by purchasing the title from Syrian King Antiochus IV – made the building of a gymnasium a priority to modernize Jerusalem and to become a player in a larger world stage. With the addition of a gymnasium, Jerusalem could become a host of Greek sporting events and a player in international society. The Hellenization of Jerusalem was deepened.
The addition of a gymnasium was not problematic because of the sport, but because of the way sport was conducted. The Greek sportsman competed nude, and Jewish competitors stood out as different from the non-Jewish counterparts who did not bear the physical sign of the Covenant. This began a trend of “reverse circumcision” to make the Jewish sportsman “fit in”. This practice, which would have been an abomination in the past, was not condemned by the priesthood in this ever-increasingly-Hellenized Jerusalem.
Even though the increased profile of Jerusalem was seen as positive to the civic leaders in the Temple, much of the population found the increase of Greek influence troublesome. Jason was replaced by a more orthodox High Priest who led a renewed wave of orthodoxy. But this was short lived. Antiochus Epiphanes – possibly at the urging of those Jews who were embracing Hellenization – saw orthodoxy as an opposition to his policies, and he undertook a systematic effort to criminalize Judaism, outlawing the practice of circumcision, observation of Sabbath, and possession of the Scriptures. He ordered pigs sacrificed in the Temple, defiling the altars, and set up statues to the God Jupiter in the Holy of Holies. And while the Jews eventually rebelled (the Maccabean revolt) against such practices, many assimilated Jews initially cooperated with them.
The years that followed the Maccabean revolt were a time of back and forth warring with the Syrians, often aided by self-serving and Hellenized Jews. Even once the Syrians were effectively eliminated from the picture, the Jews were plagued by infighting and Civil War, which eventually led to the rule of the Romans. In 37 B.C. Herod was appointed King. Herod was the grandson of forced converts to Judaism. He murdered forty-five of the Sanhedrin (the Jewish Supreme Court), a High Priest, and most of his own family.
The infighting extended into the priestly class. Many of the priests were members of the Sadducees faction. The Sadducees reject the oral law as God-inspired, claiming an obligation to the written Torah only. Contrary to Orthodox Judaism, they promoted a sort of private, personal interpretation of the law in the areas where the written law was unclear. This personal interpretation was popular among Hellenized Jews and was a source of turmoil within Jewish society, and is considered a major factor in the corruption of the priesthood. For many who subscribed to the Sadducees’ philosophy, the ritual of worship was important, but the reason for the worship was lost. An example of this thinking led the Sadducees to conclude that the ritual uncleanness of a knife used during a murder inside the Temple building was worse than the loss of life itself.
While there were good and holy priests scattered into the mix, by the time of Christ the priesthood had become as much of a stumbling block as it was a conduit to God. Faithful Jews were looking for a savior – a Messiah – who would restore Israel to national prominence, kick out the foreign interests, and reestablish Orthodox worship to Zion. The concept of Messiah was “flexible within a broad concept… [which] different claimants could quite easily reshape around themselves.” And while the Jewish mindset was turned toward the ouster of external rulers, the heterodox state of the Jewish leaders and teachers was the real, internal enemy from whom Israel needed rescuing. The culmination of all of this led to the rise of the Christian sect and the eventual destruction of the Temple and the scattering of the Jewish people.
Prophecy
Call to Prophecy
The word of the Lord that was given to the prophet, received in a vision:
Listing of specific Sins
Thus, the Lord says to you,
In a message delivered to the prophet;
Words given so that you may know the Will of the Lord,
And that on this day, your hearts may be opened to Him:
See how I, the Lord your God, ...
Though you ... I, your God will...
Because you... My patience is
Therefore I will...
The Challenge
The Lament
This is the message I have heard,
These are the sins of men against our Creator.
Because of your sins, I lament,
My tears flow like rivers from my eyes because you refuse to listen,
I howl like an animal in my weeping,
And yet your hearts remain hard.
The Lord waits for you, in His mercy and love He tarries,
He withholds righteous judgment from you,
And yet even in His mercy He is just.
Woe to you if you fail to repent,
Woe to you who fail to hear the words of the Lord,
Spoken through the prophets of your fathers,
Spoken through the law of Israel,
Spoken through the sacred texts.
As He has not changed, neither has His Word changed,
Though the messenger may be different, the message remains the same:
Repent and be saved!
Turn from your wicked ways, and God will again welcome you!
Follow the paths of righteousness which He has made known to you,
And you will dwell in the house of the Lord, your God, forever and ever.
Response to Questions
The Wisdom Literature of the Old Testament developed through longer periods than the prophets and differently than the Law. Scripture scholars find the wisdom literature to be mostly practical and concrete in its own tradition and rhetorical overkill. Write a brief chapter of wisdom literature using your own experience and the life experience you would teach to a younger generation. Use the style most effective for the moral case you would build.
All that we have comes from God
My Creator and God,
Lord of love, kindness, and mercy, who from eternity spoke the Word of Establishment,
Bringing forth all things, physical and spiritual, seen and unseen, known to man and those things yet unknown,
Give me the wisdom to live in harmony with you.
As you desired the company of our first parents, let you desire my company,
And as our father Adam lived in your presence before the defilement of sin,
Let me strive to restore that communion with you in my own life.
Remind me always that all that I have,
My possession, my talents, my desires, my joys – everything good in my life – all flow forth from you like water bubbling forth from a spring.
Remind me in each sunset and every sunrise that everything on Earth reflects the craftsmanship of your hand.
May I mark my sleeping and my waking with praise for you.
May I never forget that in your image I was made, and for your company I am designed.
The Responsibility to Care
The gifts you have given me aid me in my quest to draw closer to you,
Affording me material comforts,
Providing me with time to seek you,
Blessing me with talents to use in your service.
Give me the wisdom to place my gifts always at your service,
Remind me when I forget, that I have been given these things not to benefit me for my own sake, but to draw me closer to you.
May I, through your grace, care for and attend to my possessions, my use of time, and the cultivation of my talents in a way which honors you.
For those who offer back to you what you have so generously given will increase their blessing,
They will share more closely in the Divine Life,
And will find themselves drawn closely to your side.
The Responsibility to Share
The blessed gifts you give me are not mine alone, but are to be shared with others,
Both for my own good, and for the good of others,
Through my sharing, others may too be drawn to a fuller communion with you.
Guide me into the lives of others,
So that I may share with them from the gifts you have given me.
For all who share their gifts and aid in another's drawing closer to you,
Will share also in the joyous celebration of the Heavenly Hosts.
The Corruption of Gifts
All you have given me is good, as you also are good,
All you have placed at my fingertips, everything you have given me,
Can be used for your glory,
To worship you is the greatest calling.
And yet,
Too often, I corrupt the gifts you give me,
Making my possessions, my talents, my time into idols which deny you,
As powerfully destructive as the calf made by the Hebrews in the desert,
The very things you have given me turned into blasphemous distractions.
I become a man who wallows in the deception of self-sufficiency,
Forgetting my own dependence on you,
Forgetting that for which I was made,
And yet your love for me endures, your gifts continue to pour forth as you patiently wait.
God's Mercy
Even when I am selfish with my gifts,
Depriving others of an opportunity to draw closer to you,
Still you have mercy on me, and draw me back to you.
But even in your mercy, I am reminded that you are just,
I am cautioned that even in your love, you cannot abide my sinfulness,
I am reminded that even in your grace, I must respond to your invitation.
Remembering God
You, God, are good and true, treating me with undeserved mercy,
Offering unmerited grace,
Patiently waiting for my slow response to your loving kindness.
Remind me that my gifts come not from my own doing, but are a manifestation of your love.
When I forget my place speak to me, draw me back to you when I stray.
When I believe that my accomplishments are a result of my own power,
Correct my delusional thinking.
Prayer for Wisdom
My Lord and my God,
In you ways guide me,
In your arms hold me,
In your Divine Will keep me, so that I may find in you the very thing for which I was created.
Select a site mentioned in the Old Testament, a city or a more specific location, and detail its characteristics, as it would have been known in the Old Testament times.
The area of Moab was one of the foreign nations present in various mutations from the time the Hebrews entered the Promised Land. The nation of Moab is mentioned prominently in two instances in the Old Testament: an effort by King Balak to have Balaam curse Israel, and an episode where the Israelites were unfaithful to God, who punished them by allowing Moab to defeat them and partially rule over them, only to raise up a savior in Ehud, who killed the Moab king, Elgon.
Moab was located, for the most part, between the Zered and Arnon rivers, east of the southern half of the Dead Sea, a plateau region with an elevation 4,300 feet above the Red Sea. Its borders expanded and contracted somewhat depending on conquests and military actions, with the Arnon River being the chief natural attribute of the region. At times, the lands of Moab extended also north of the Arnon River gorge, a gorge that measures up to 2300 feet deep. To the East, Moab was bordered by the Arabian Desert.
The chief city was Kir-hareseth, built on an isolated hill and a natural stronghold. So perfectly, naturally protected, this city has been a military stronghold even in modern times. This city was able to withstand military might that was quite strong. To the north of the Arnon River lay the cities of Aroer, Dibon, Medeba, and Heshbon. The northern areas were often disputed areas that were only periodically under Moabite control. When the Israelites, led by Moses, entered this area, it was ruled by the Amorites. For a short time, parts of it came under control of the tribe of Reuben.
Moab was an area not well suited for large agricultural cultivation, although there were areas where crops were grown. The ground was often steep and not good for crops, but it was fertile and well suited for livestock. Sheep, and their wool, were important commodities for Moab. The wealth generated by the flocks of sheep may have been a contributing factor to the “pride” which the Old Testament accuses the Moabites of.
There were also natural resources available in the area, including limestone, salt, and balsam. The location of Moab gave them a lucrative market along a very well-traveled trade route.
The area of Moab was mostly treeless, but grassy. It received a plentiful amount of rainfall, on average. The climate was variable, with hot summers and often snow in the winter.
The interactions between Moab and Israel fluctuate between war-like, peaceable, and an in-between ambivalence. At times there was warring between the tribes of Israel and the Moabites, but at other times a healthy commercial relationship bloomed. During a famine, members of the tribe of Judah relocated into Moab peacefully (at least it appears so) to live, and, in the case of Ruth, to intermarry. Originally descendant from one of Lot’s sons after the destruction of Sodom, through the marriage of Ruth into the tribe of Judah the Moabites become an integral part of the story of Israel.
Describe the Hebrew understanding of the human person; this is not a philosophy as the ancient Greeks would have constructed, but based in a faith experience. Use the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings for support of the description given.
To the Hebrews – and ultimately to us – God is revealed in historical experience. Because God revealed Himself to man through covenant relationships with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David, the relationship between man and God is the defining attribute of the human person. Within the historical experience of the Hebrews, God is saying: “Because I am you God, you will do what I ask of you.” Conversely, the Hebrews respond to this outreach of God by saying: “If we do what You ask of us, we are demonstrating that You are, indeed, our God.” God is ever-faithful, and His faithfulness demands a response. It is in this response that humanity is established and judged. It is this interaction with God which separates man from other created beings.
Even though man is created superior to other created beings, he is weak and flawed. In his flesh, man is predisposed to act contrary to the spirit of God. Throughout the recorded experience of the Hebrews, God is acting to restore and reunify the human family, torn apart through sin. This revelation of God to man is accomplished through a series of progressive covenants which establish a shared bond of “interpersonal communication” between God and man. The first, the marriage covenant, is the covenant established to reunify males with females. The second, the covenant of Noah’s household, acts to reunify many marriages within a core family unit. The third, the covenant of the Tribe of Abraham, acts to reunify many households within a core tribal unit. The forth, the national covenant of Moses, draws together many tribes into a national power. The fifth, the world covenant of David, brings many nations under the subjugation of Israel.
(The final covenant is that of the New Covenant of Christ, which allows participation of all nations in the covenant relationship with God, not just a physical subjugation of other peoples to the nation of Israel. While it is not germane to this discussion, it bears remembering as it completes the covenant cycle of the Hebrews.)
It is within this covenant structure that God shows His love, mercy, wisdom, and concern for man by providing a vehicle for restoring the created man – who had been created in God’s own image – to the purposes of the Creator. This act of love by God is given to the Hebrews not because of their own merits, but out of His infinite mercy. With each successive covenant, God is reiterating the basic premise of personhood: I am yours, and you are Mine. It is only in this relationship to God that the person could be complete.
The Hebrews understood that God would reward those who loved Him, and punish those who did not. Within the large context of the Hebrew society, God showed his concern for His people, and took care of them when they remembered Him. The collective faithfulness (or, sadly, lack thereof) of the Hebrews was the singular defining quality of the people, and therefore, of the individual.
For the individual within the larger Hebrew society, humanity – or personhood – is tied to a response to God. Life consists of a series of challenges and it is man’s response to these challenges that defines him. Responding in a noble and worthy way makes one human. Failing to respond to the challenges in life in a Godly way is to renounce your humanity. The “proper” responses to the challenges of life are presented in the Law, specifically in the Ten Commandments which form the basis of man’s obedience to God. The precepts of the Commandments were expanded and applied to the various aspects of life. At times, it was necessary for God to remind the people of their covenant relationship through the words of the Prophets.
As with the larger society, God rewards those individuals who respond appropriately, as He has instructed through the Law and the Prophets. While there is a responsibility to the larger community to keep the covenant, there is also as personal responsibility, even when the larger society has turned away from God. This is not a “personal relationship” as current day Christians might view it, but rather an “individual relationship” which places responsibility on the person.
Greatness, both as a society or nation and as an individual is achieved because of faithfulness to God. The covenant laws become fixed moral principals which govern the societal order. To the earliest Hebrews, the truth of the human person is limited to experience, and their experience is limited to this earthly life, therefore the response to God and his reciprocating response is limited to blessings in this life. The blessings given to a faithful servant of the One True God were physical in nature: a long life, and many descendants. The renouncement of humanity by those who scorned God was also considered to be generational in nature, with the “iniquity of the parents visited upon the third and forth generation.”
The emotion and the intellect – the corporal and spiritual, the civic and religious – are not distinct concepts to the Hebrews, and both are integral to personhood. The idea of a soul separate from a created body is unfamiliar to the Hebrews. The soul of a person did not exist prior to his birth, and it was not considered to have continued on after the physical death of the person. The Israelite concept of the unification of flesh and spirit grew out of their experiences of life; living in limited, finite bodies but experiencing deeper desires that transcend a purely physical reality.
Describe briefly an understanding of the Tribe of Judah at the time immediately prior to the dawn of Christianity. What were the influences that most impacted the people and their desire for freedom? What exactly did the Old Testament message preached in the different synagogues of the day claim to be?
The Hasmonean rulers usher in a time of great moral and religious decline. They allow the very thing their Maccabean ancestors had fought against: the Hellenization of Jerusalem. It is during this time that a Hasmonean ruler – Yochanan Hyrcanus – forcibly converts surrounding peoples into the Jewish religion, an act considered anti-Jewish and an act with far reaching consequences. One family in an area that the Hasmonean-led Jews conquered was told to convert or leave, and like many others they chose a nominal conversion over leaving their homes.
Later, when two Hasmoneans (Hyrcanus and Aristobolus) are fighting over who should be king, they invite Rome in to settle the argument. Invited in, the Romans over-run Israel and the surrounding lands with little resistance or effort. They allowed a local puppet government to remain in effect (choosing Hyrcanus, the weaker of the two brothers to rule) just as they did in other areas, but this system of ruling by proxy ended Jewish autonomy. The authority of the Sanhedrin – the Jewish Supreme Court – was abolished under Roman rule.
The Hasmonean puppet-king was weak, just as the Romans hoped he would be. But before long an even more appealing option presented itself to the Romans: one of the families who had been forcibly converted years earlier had risen to power under the weak Hyrcanus. The general Antipater was soon the real power in Jerusalem. The Romans decided that a convert such as Antipater would not identify with the growing nationalism and values of the Jews, and would, therefore, help keep their “militant monotheism” in check. Rome established Antipater as King to replace Hyrcanus, and Antipater’s son – Herod – would follow as the most famous king of the Jews, at a great cost to the Jewish world.
Under Herod, the Jewish people were doing well economically, which was a positive for the civic health of the people, but Herod’s rule was characterized by a continuing cycle of “good news-bad news” situations. The good news: the economy was booming. The bad news: the religious and moral life of God’s Chosen People was disintegrating, especially within the upper levels of religious leadership. The good: Herod was sparing no expense to rebuild and remodel the Temple complex. The bad: He killed at least one High Priest, forty-five members of the Sanhedrin and anyone else who seemed to gain popularity for espousing orthodoxy to the Jewish traditions. Good: There was a relative peace from the warring of prior times. Bad: That peace came at the cost of all semblance of Jewish self-determination and autonomy.
And even though external conflict had settled under Roman rule, the internal struggles between orthodox and heterodox factions within the Jewish culture continued to tear at the fabric of Israel. At the time of Christ, the Jewish people were feeling the effects of the almost constant state of warring and infighting they had experienced since the return from exile. The Orthodox Jewish culture was waning under the influence of King Herod, again reverting to the pre-revolt sacrilege. Faithful Jews were longing for a promised Messiah; the anointed one who would restore Israel's independence and the glory of the Davidic Kingdom. While there was no one view of what the Messiah would do or look like, there were three aspects of Messiahship for most Jews: a return from the political and cultural exile of the Second Temple era, a defeat of evil, and a return of Yahweh to Zion in the form of a reinvigorated religious practice. Within these broad characteristics, though, the idea of Messiah could be whatever people made of it.
In Jesus, then, the Jews were confronted with an unfamiliar Messiah figure. In Jesus, the state of the Jewish leadership and its lax moral and religious fortitude were the real enemy, not the Roman occupying forces. The Romans were simply a convenient scapegoat to deflect attention from the real problem: Israel's failure to maintain the covenant relationship with God. Or, in the words of N.T. Wright: “It was Jesus' contention...that Israel needed rescuing, and that he had come to do it. The enemy from whom she needed rescuing, however, was not an outside enemy, on to whom she could project all her insecurities and ambiguities.”
Ultimately, the Israelites were awaiting the culmination of their long history. What they expected was a restoration of socio-political position along with a revival of religion. What they received was something quite different.