Subject: History of the 2nd Temple Period - Part 6
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From: JUICE Administration <juice@virtual.co.il>
To: Contemporary Jewish History <history@virtual.co.il>
Subject: JUICE History 6
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World Zionist Organization
Student and Academics Department
Jewish University in CyberspacE
juice@wzo.org.il birnbaum@wzo.org.il
http://www.wzo.org.il
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Course: An Introduction to the History of the Second Temple Period
Lecture: 6/12
Lecturer: Scott Copeland
Diversity and Debate: The Jewish Sects
As a living civilization, Judaism was never a monolithic, static construct.
Throughout history, Judaism has been constantly developing in a series of
interpretations and renovations. At the root lay the development of the
relationship between the people of Israel and the God of Israel. With the
destruction of the First Temple (586 BCE), the later prophets, Ezra, and
the scribes began the process of rebuilding Judaism around a set of
evolving sacred texts. By the 2nd Century BCE, with the rise of the
Hasmonean house, the debate among Jews over the meaning of the sacred texts
divided the Jewish world into a number of conflicting, competing
ideological camps.
Josephus, in The Jewish War, presents three different "schools" that, in
broad strokes, were the major Jewish camps or sects of the time: the
Saducees, the Pharisees, and the Essenes. (A fourth "school", the Jewish
rebels of the Great Revolt will be dealt with in more detail in a later
lecture.)
The Saducees were the Jewish establishment of their day. Representing the
aristocracy, and the priesthood of the Jerusalem Temple, they were a kind
of theological caste who drew their legitimacy from the hereditary status
of the priesthood back to Aaron, the brother of Moses. At the center of
their existence stood the Temple itself. Jewish pilgrimage and tax monies
poured into the Temple from around the land of Israel and the Diaspora. The
tax monies went to the maintenance of the physical structure, to the
expense of the festival ceremonies, but it also paid the salaries of the
priesthood. As all established groups, the basic position of the Saducees
was a conservative one; a position that served to reinforce the status quo.
Philosophically, the Saducees upheld a literal reading of the Torah. For
them, "an eye for eye" meant as it is written; ink on parchment. The
written law, without any tradition of oral interpretation, provided the
single basis for authority. As representatives of the Jewish aristocracy, a
small circle of wealthy families, they rejected any notion of an afterlife,
or of the resurrection of the dead. The soul died with the body. Priestly
families who resided in luxurious villas, enjoying the best of this-world,
apparently had little need for the promise of a better world just around
the bend. In addition, they championed an extreme notion of free will.
Neither fate nor God play a role in determining human action. Each
individual bears sole responsibility for their own actions.
Outside of the writing of Josephus, the Saducees are known from the
rabbinic traditions of the Mishna, and from the Greek-Christian Bible (the
New Testament). Each of the above mentioned sources presents the Saducees
in a very negative portrait. While the Christian sources blame them for
the trial of Jesus, the Jewish sources paint them as collaborators with the
Romans. Although it seems that many of the priestly families lived in
indolent comfort under the Romans, and had earlier cooperated with the
Seleucids in the Hellenization policies of Antiochus IV, their political
stance towards non-Jewish rule is not absolutely clear. When the Great
Revolt broke out against Rome in 66 CE, members of the priesthood led the
Jewish campaign. Eleazar Ben Hananiah, the High Priest, was the very first
to raise the banner of revolt against Rome when he discontinued the Temple
sacrifice in honor of Caesar. Several of the regional commanders, including
Josephus, who commanded the Galilee, were from priestly families. Josephus,
for example, although he was from a priestly family, and a relation of the
Hasmonean kings, identified himself with the Pharisees, the sages, and
rabbis. At this time, there are no written documents that can identified
with the Saducees themselves, nothing in writing that can give their side
of the story.
If the Saducees represented the status quo, then the Essenes rallied around
a revolutionary stance whose twin pillars were monasticism and messianism.
Critical of the Jerusalem priesthood's financial wealth and
cultural-political ties with the powers-that-be, the Essenes withdrew from
the mainstream, in order to establish themselves as an alternative
priesthood. They valued material simplicity, and organized themselves in a
communal life-style that rejected any notion of private property. Like
other Jewish groups, ritual purity was a central aspect of their religious
life. In Jerusalem, none could enter the confines of the Temple without
immersion in a ritual bath, a mikveh. For the Essenes, none could enter
their camp without ritual immersion. A newly inducted Essene, after
completing a year long status as a novice, received a hatchet, and a white
robe. In the case that someone had to relieve themselves, they would exit
the borders of the community, use the hatchet to bury their waste, and upon
returning to the community immerse themselves in a mikveh. The community
itself represented an ideal Temple, and each Essene; a priest. Josephus
describes them in perpetual prayer and study. Although the writings of
Philo and Pliny do not mention it, Josephus describes them as an entirely
celibate, male community. From his account, the Essenes are seen as a
monastic commune of religious philosophers, who having abandoned the
corruption of the larger, surrounding culture, seek enlightenment through
seclusion and discipline.
Although not all scholars agree, there is a wide consensus that the Dead
Sea Scrolls describe the life-style and philosophy of a group or groups
associated with, perhaps even identical with, the Essenes. Over the last
fifty years, a vast number of parchment fragments discovered in the Judaean
Desert, the most renowned at Qumran, are slowly revealing the remains of an
ancient Jewish sect who divided the world into two rival camps: the
Children of Light and the Children of Darkness. They believed that through
maintaining a rigorous, religious discipline, a constant state of ritual
purity, and a secure distance from the outside world, they, the Children
of Light, would eventually overthrow the rule of the Children of Darkness.
A messianic figure, whom they called "the Great Teacher" would lead them in
the reconquest of Jerusalem. The Jerusalem of the priests, and of the
secular authority (whether Hasmonean or Roman) would be destroyed, and a
new Jerusalem complete with a perfect Temple would be erected.
Although Josephus describes the Essenes as pacifists, other evidence
presents a different image. Qumran, on the Northern Shore of Israel's Dead
Sea, is built as a military compound, complete with thick, defense walls,
and guard towers. The "Scroll of War", one of seven Scrolls found in Qumran
Cave I, provides a detailed description of the war that the sect believed
would ultimately be fought at "the end of days." The details of the stages
of battle, the array of troops, the use of reserve units, and the breakdown
of the army into battalions and division are all provided. The troops of
"the Children of Light" would be led into battle by the angels of heaven
themselves. In essence, the Essene-Dead Sea Groups, at least as described
by the Scrolls, were an apocalyptic order whose monastic life-style was a
means to the ends of reconquering Jerusalem, and establishing a new
world-cosmic order that they would lead.
Lastly, and most importantly for the growth of Judaism after the Second
Temple period were the Pharisees, or the sages, Hachemei Yisrael.
The opponents of the sages coined the name, Pharisee - from the Hebrew
l'Phrosh - to secede, as a suggestion that the sages were abandoning the
path of sanctioned, official Judaism as defined by the priesthood. The
Sages referred to themselves as Hachemei Yisrael, the teachers of Israel,
or simply, Israel. Unlike the theocracy of the priests, the Pharisees
represented an organic conception of leadership, not based on family
status, but growing directly out of the people itself. Many of the sages
were common workers, who disdained what they considered the priestly abuse
of position as a tool to increase personal wealth. Leadership based on
merit, on charisma, learning, and ethical example was the Pharisaic
alternative to Saducean elitism.
The Pharisees rejected the idea that the Temple represented the only
legitimate expression of Jewish worship. If God is omnipresent, then prayer
may be offered outside of the Temple, then all facets of human existence
have the potential to become expressions of the ties between the human and
the divine. The study of Torah became the central pillar in Jewish life
for the Pharisees. Unlike the Saducees, the Sages supported the
co-existence of two equal parts of the Torah - the written law and the oral
tradition. They recognized that a living civilization must strike a balance
between the letter and the spirit of the law. Their development of a system
of textual-legal interpretation formed the basis for a Judaism that
throughout the centuries was capable of combining critical examination in a
search for relevance with an uncompromising commitment to tradition.
The Pharisees could not, based on the dire situation of the Jewish
community under Roman rule, remain ivory-tower academics. They became
champions of the common people, stressing basic human ethics and the
construction of a decent society as central concerns of the Jewish
religious conception. God is concerned about human affairs, the Pharisees
argued. God is involved in the world, yet human beings are free to choose.
Ultimately, the Pharisees believed that a God who loved humanity would not
abandon them to the seemingly random injustices of everyday life. Not only
did the Pharisees present the hope of a life after death, but based on
their readings of the Biblical text, they taught that a messiah would come
to save the Jewish people, and usher in an end of days when the dead would
be resurrected.
The growth of the Jewish sects during the Second Temple period points to an
intense historic debate over the nature and future of the Jewish people on
the religious, social, and national levels. The Saducees, stripped of their
power base with the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, became extinct. The
Essenes may have been wiped out by Roman troops who marched through the
Judaean desert on the way to Masada. In the final analysis, it was the
Pharisees, and their message of legal activism, community, and hope for the
future that survived. With the crises of the Great Revolt (66-70 CE) and
the Bar Kochba Revolt (132-135 CE), the Pharisees, who by the 3rd Century
CE would become the Rabbis of the Mishnah, became the torchbearers of
continuing Jewish survival and creativity.
For further reading:
1. Lee I. Levine, Ed. Jewish Sects, Parties and Ideologies in the Second
Temple Period . (Hebrew University, 1982.)
2. Jacob Neusner The Pharisees : Rabbinic Perspectives. (Ktav Pub. House,
1985.)
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