RABBINIC JUDAISM 1. Before 70 CE and afterward 2. Pharisees, rabbis, synagogues 3. Mishnah, Gemara, Talmud 4. The orthodox path: Pirke Aboth 5. The unorthodox path: Elisha ben Abuyah

The story of rabbinic Judaism begins with the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE. As a result of that event, and as a result of the labors of the ancient Jewish religious leaders whom we call "the rabbis," Judaism was transformed from a priestly, sacrificial religion to a scholastic religion whose central modes of worship were prayer and, above all, study. Side by side with the ancient sacred library that we call the Tanach, the rabbis created a new sacred library of rabbinic literature. The most characteristic literary creation of the rabbis is the massive, multi-volume work known as the Babylonian Talmud.

Who were the rabbis? What was their Talmud? To answer these questions, we must look at the year 70 CE, and talk about what happened to Judaism when the Jerusalem Temple was destroyed for the second time.

First, I must tell you what did not happen in 70 CE.

The Jews were not driven into exile, not scattered in Diaspora. If you click here for the comparisons I've drawn up between the First and Second Temple periods, you'll see that the Diaspora was already in place during the Second Temple period. The devastation caused by the failed revolt surely sent some Palestinian Jews to join their cousins in Babylonia, or around the Mediterranean. But there was no massive exile, as there was at the time of the destruction of the First Temple. Sixty-five years later, when the Bar Kochba revolt failed (135 CE), the Romans expelled the Jews from Judea. But these expelled Jews settled in other parts of Palestine.

During the third century CE, economic troubles in the Roman Empire seem to have induced many Jews to leave Roman-ruled Palestine for the more prosperous Babylonia (which was part of the territory of the other "superpower" of the time, Sassanid Persia). Yet, down to the end of the rabbinic period, Palestine continued to be a major center of Jewish life and thought. In the early seventh century CE, on the eve of the Arab conquest, there were still enough Jews in Palestine to be an important military factor in the territorial struggles between the Romans and the Persians.

(What happened to these Palestinian Jews? It's anybody's guess. But my own guess is that they gradually converted to Islam under the pressure of the Arab rulers of Palestine, and that they are the ancestors of the people we now call "Palestinian Arabs.")

Notice that Palestine remained part of the Roman Empire after 70 CE, just as it had been before. That is why, on my "Outline of Major Periods of Jewish History" handout, I refer to the rabbinic period as "Roman Period, Part II." (Click here to orient yourself to what I mean by "the rabbinic period.") It's true that, beginning in the fourth century CE, the Roman Empire split into two, and we often speak of the eastern Roman Empire as the "Byzantine Empire." But the Byzantines continued to think of themselves as Romans, down to end of the last remnant of the Byzantine Empire in 1453 CE (when the Ottoman Turks captured Constantinople).

So the ruling power with whom the Palestinian Jews had to contend remained the same after 70 as it was before. The demographic distribution of the Jews may have changed somewhat after 70, but not a great deal. It was in the internal leadership of the Jewish people, and the ideology of the leadership, that there was a revolutionary change.

To understand that change, we have to go back before 70, and talk about three groups: the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes. We also have to talk about an institution called the synagogue.

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