Posted by: Joe Yudin | April 23, 2010

Yes Judaism is the oldest known religion that has been constantly practiced in the world, but no, it is not the same religion today that originated about 3,200 years ago with roots going even further back than that. Judaism has evolved and there were two particular trying periods in our history where the keepers of Judaism made radical changes in order to survive. In the last 3,800 years there have been basically several separate eras which defined Judaism. For the purpose of our discussion I would like to point out three eras:

1. Pre Solomon’s (1st) Temple Destruction (about 3800 BCE – 586 BCE)
2. Judaism between the 1st & 2nd Temples (586 BCE – 515 BCE)
3. Second Temple Period (515 BCE – 70 CE)

The first period, often referred to as the Patriarchal Age, is a difficult period to describe as most of the source material we have is from the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) which isn’t considered a scholarly source at all. However much of the stories about Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Jacob’s twelve sons, and the twelve tribes that came from them is an accurate depiction of life in Israel, Egypt, Canaan and Mesopotamia at the time as we know from archaeology, and many of the Jewish laws as written in the Torah, are similar to ancient Mesopotamian and Egyptian laws. In fact the Torah’s laws often seem to blend the two and add a unique perspective. According to the Bible, the patriarchs would often converse with God during this period.

Judaism as a cult actually begins with the giving of the law at Mt. Sinai, and although the laws incorporate the Ten Commandments there are actually 613 laws that the Hebrews must follow as described in this holy work. More than two hundred of the laws deal with the “Mishkan” or “Tabernacle” and later King Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem where the priestly sacrifices took place three times a year. During this period, prayer in synagogues actually did not exist. The whole religion of the Israelite nation was based in and around the Temple where the Israelites were supposed to make a pilgrimage, pay a tax and offer a sacrifice. Of course they were supposed to follow the 613 laws, but we know from the Bible that sometimes many Israelites did, and sometimes they didn’t.

It is inferred in the Hebrew Bible (Ez. 8:1; 14:1; 20:1) that after the destruction of 'Solomon's Temple', the prophet Ezekiel gathered the 'Elders of Judah' together in his home to discuss the future of the Jewish people and the problems facing their nation, and acted upon these problems in order to preserve the people and their ideals. This was probably the beginnings of the institution that we call a synagogue. It wasn’t a place of worship but as it is called in Hebrew “A house of gathering”. A place were Jews could come, read scripture, recite Psalms, study, debate and sing God’s praises. Certainly something took place during those 70 years of exile because the Jewish people did survive as a nation without their own country, king, language or cult, and eventually did return to the Land of Israel and rebuild their nation, starting with the Temple. How the Jews and their Judaism survived and evolved, is the key to understanding the world to which Jesus was a part. There was no consensus as to what Judaism was in during the Second Temple Period. In fact, the Jewish people could be divided up into four separate sects which each included several subsets. These groups all had their own ideas as to what Judaism was and what it should be in the future. This, and the brutal Roman occupation of Judea (Israel), is the setting in the first centuries BCE (BC) and CE (AD).

The Synagogue remained a house of gathering, learning, sometimes prayer and community in the shadow of the Temple. The whole institution of the synagogue was founded and continued to thrive due to the "interest in the study of the Hebrew writings" . According to the Hebrew Bible, Ezra the Scribe…

…had set his heart to seek the Torah of the Lord, and to do it, and to teach in Israel statutes and judgments. 

Abraham Cohen argues that the verb in this passage 'to seek" in its Hebrew form 'darash' (דרש) literally means 'to deduce, interpret' and that the process of doing so in reference to what was to be believed as God's teachings handed down to Moses at Mt. Sinai, is called 'Midrash' and "…is the system of interpretation employed throughout the Rabbinic literature." According to tradition Ezra founded a 'Great Assembly' of Jewish elders called the 'Great Knesset' that was given the task of interpreting the Torah for its time and preserving it for the future, passing on its interpretations, arguments and oral traditions to the Sages and ultimately the Rabbis of the Sanhedrin (called a 'Senate' by Antiochus III cited by Josephus, Antiq. 12:3:3). 

By the early 2nd century BCE we find two separate and distinct groups in Judea: devout Jews called 'Hasidim' resisting Hellenism, and assimilated Jews who have embraced it. These two Jewish groups were forced into confrontation that played out in the Books of Maccabees and other sources. The Greek culture, if embraced fully by all Jews in the Land of Israel would have meant the end of the Jewish nation and the Hasidim resisted it. In this singular event of the 'Hannukah' rebellion we can see that the Torah, as it had been handed down over the years since the Babylonian exile, had become the center of being for Jews of this particular sect. Their victory over the Hellenistic forces wrought an age of freedom and independence (albeit with ties to Egypt, Persia and Rome) to Judea for almost 100 years.
Be deliberate in judgment, raise up many disciples, and make a fence around the Torah. 

By the time John Hyrcanus, a Hasmonean king, ascended to the throne of Judea (135-105 BCE), the Sanhedrin had become "a composite body of priests and laymen, presided over by the High Priest." It was during this century that the previous split between the Hassidim and Hellenist Jews reemerged with a twist. Two sects: the 'Sadducees' and what we call today, somewhat incorrectly, the 'Pharisees' had been developing and in the twilight years of the rule of John Hyrcanus the split became more profound. Hyrcanus was an expansionist king, conquering Judea's border cities and incorporating other nations into his own. Not only was he king and High Priest, but he was also considered a recipient of the Heavenly Voice בת קול)).

At the commencement of his rule he maintained close relations with the Pharisees, who also recognized his religious authority. Later rabbinic tradition depicts him as having been "righteous originally" (Ber. 29a)…The Mishnah (Sot. 9:10) ascribes certain regulations with regard to the Temple and the priestly portions to him. In the course of time, however, the authoritarian and secularist character of his administration began to show itself – a fact which also found expression in the recruitment of a force of foreign mercenaries from Asia Minor. The high priest came closer to the Sadducees and in his last years a breach occurred between him and the Pharisees. According to rabbinic tradition "Johanan officiated in the high priesthood for 80 years and in the end became a Sadducee" (Ber. 29a; Jos., Ant., 13:288ff.). 

According to Josephus, John Hyrcanus switched over to the Sadducees as a result of a lenient Pharisaic ruling against one of the King's perceived enemies. The events that play out in Judea during the last century before the Common Era changes the direction religion takes for much of the future world's population. A rift occurred in the previous century amongst the religious leaders and their followers, Pharisees and Sadducees, which came to a head after the passing of King John Hyrcanus. 

The Sadducees were the conservative priestly group, holding to the older doctrines, and cherishing the highest regard for the sacrificial cult of the Temple. The party was opposed to the Pharisees down to the time of the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. The main difference between the Pharisees and the Sadducees concerned their attitudes toward the Torah. The supremacy of the Torah was acknowledged by both parties. However, the Pharisees assigned to the Oral Law a place of authority side by side with the written Torah, and determined its interpretation accordingly, whereas the Sadducees refused to accept any precept as binding unless it was based directly on the Torah. The theological struggle between the two parties…was actually a struggle between two concepts of God. The Sadducees sought to bring God down to man. Their God was anthropomorphic and the worship offered him was like homage paid a human king or ruler. The Pharisees, on the other hand, sought to raise man to divine heights and to bring him nearer to a spiritual and transcendent God… On the whole, it can be said that while the Pharisees claimed the authority of piety and learning, the Sadducees claimed that of genealogy and position. 

Furthermore the Pharisees were popular among the common, poorer working class who the vast majority of the population in Judea were, as the Sadducees were aligned with the governing classes and aristocracy from the end of John Hyrcanus' reign until the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E. After the last Hasmonean king Antigonus II was defeated by Herod son of Antipater and his Roman army, then crucified by Rome, Herod took control over all of Judea. He removed all religious influences out of the government and destroyed its courts and institutions save the Temple in Jerusalem. Herod indeed purged the Sanhedrin of all [what he thought was] opposition and probably stacked the Jewish councils and courts with his own Sadducean cronies. His revenge on his enemies and the Sanhedrin was brutal, putting 45 Rabbis to death. 

This destroyed the political power of the Sanhedrin, which seems to have been left with only the authority of a religious court, lacking any real influence in practical legislation. He also made the appointment to the high priesthood dependent on his favor and during his reign dismissed and appointed high priests arbitrarily. The quarrel between religious sects and their views on the Torah now also took on political overtones.
This controversy over the validity of the Oral Torah stimulated its defenders to a fresh study of the Scriptural text. They set out to demonstrate that the Oral Torah was an integral part of the Written Torah, that they were warp and woof of the one fabric; and they further developed methods of exegesis previously employed by which the traditions rejected by the Sadducees could be shown to be contained in the wording of the Pentateuch. Exposition of Torah now entered upon a new phase and led directly to the creation of the Talmud. With the invention of new methods of interpretation the Torah became a science, and only men who were duly qualified to expound the text spoke with authority. They received the designation of Tannaim (Teachers). It is the name given to the Rabbis during the period which closed with the codification of the law in the Mishnah. A pioneer who left a profound influence on their work was Hillel.

It is probably at this point where Hillel returns to Judea and is supposedly appointed Nasi, or President of the Sanhedrin (other scholars suggest that although he was not elected Nasi he did hold a position of major influence, especially among the "Pharisees" ). I suggest that perhaps Herod's brutality towards the Sanhedrin puts into question the integrity of the body itself and it is quite possible that the official Sanhedrin was a tool of Herod's and another Sanhedrin was convened by the sages in secret, hence the suggestion in the Talmud that Hillel was indeed Nasi. Herod's rule ends with his death about the year 4 BCE while according to the Talmud, Hillel presides over the Sanhedrin approximately between 30 BCE and 10 CE. Hillel...considered one of the "fathers of the world" (Eduy. 1:4; Tosef. Eduy. 1:3) who laid the foundations for the spiritual and intellectual movement of the tannaitic period...The personality of Hillel, in which wisdom was combined with righteousness, and humility with simplicity, became a model of conduct for subsequent generations.

The New Testament claims the Jesus of Nazareth is born the same year of Herod's death, hence about 4 BCE, during the reign of Hillel and a period of transition between Herod's Roman influenced régime and direct Roman control over all Israel. So basically the situation in the late first century BCE and early first century CE is that there are two separate sects of Jews in Judea (there are actually more but these are the big two )one led by the Sages and shaped by the influence of Hillel who sought to bring Judaism to a more spiritual level, based on doing good deeds, being humble, loving they neighbor and not doing evil to others. The Sages or Rabbis who led this group had influence only because of their genius, knowledge and charisma. They built a following. This group, the Pharisees, where the more popular and also poorer of the two. 

The second group, the Sadducees, were allied first with Herod and then his successors, his sons and later the Roman governors. They were chosen to preside over the practices in the Temple by birthright. The could not own land and therefore lived off a portion of what was dedicated to the Temple. The were more strict in their biblical interpretations, or more accuracy literalists. They did not believe in interpretation.
These two groups had completely different world views and often clashed in the synagogues in the form of a typical Talmudic debate which was always quite animated. The interesting thing is that much of these “clashes” are not recorded in the Hebrew Bible or the Talmud but in an entirely different source: The “New Testament”. We will take a look at this in part II of this blog.

[1] Cohen, Abraham, Everyman's Talmud: the Major Teachings of the Rabbinic Sages, Shocken Books, New York, 1949, p. xxxiii-xxxiv.

[2] Ibid.

[3]  Cohen, A., p. xxxv, citing Hebrew Bible, Ezra 7:10.

[4] Cohen, A., p. xxxv-xxxvi.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Talmudic Tractate, Avot 1:1

[7] Cohen, A., p. xxxix.

[8] Stern, Menahem. "Hyrcanus, John." Encyclopedia Judaica. Eds. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik. Vol. 9. 2nd ed. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007. 653-654. 22 vols. Gale Virtual Reference Library. 

[9] Ibid.

[10] Josephus (Flavius), Jewish Antiquities, Book 13, Chapter 10, Section 6, translated by Whitson, William, Kregel Publications, Grand Rapids, MI, 1999.

[11] Mansoor, Menahem. "Sadducees." Encyclopaedia Judaica. Eds. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik. Vol. 17. 2nd ed. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007. 654-655. 22 vols. Gale Virtual Reference Library. 

[12] Applebaum, Shimon, and Bathja Bayer. "Herod I." Encyclopaedia Judaica. Eds. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik. Vol. 9. 2nd ed. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007. 31-38. 22 vols. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Gale. Haifa University. 26 Jan. 2009 

[13] Ibid.

[14] Cohen, A., p. xxxix.

[15] Cohen, A., p. xxxix-xl.

[16] See Charlesworth and Johns, editors, Hillel and Jesus, Fortress Press, Minneapolis, MN, 1997, p. 26.

[17]  Other scholars, such as James H. Charlesworth, believe that Hillel influenced Judaism for a longer period, from 60 B.C.E. to 20 C.E. See Charlesworth & Johns, p. 4.

[18]  Wald, Stephen. Hillel, Encyclopaedia Judaica. Eds. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik. Vol. 9. 2nd ed. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007. p108-110. 22 vols