According to the ancient Jewish historian Josephus (approx.
37-100 CE), the Palestinian Jews of the first century CE were divided into
three sects, or "philosophies" as Josephus calls them. These were
the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes. The New
Testament, too, tells us a great deal about the Pharisees and the Sadducees.
(For some reason no one has ever explained, the Essenes are never mentioned
in the New Testament.)
Putting together different pieces of information from different
sources, we can infer that these three sects had their origins in the politics
of the Hasmonean period. (Click
here to review the dates for that period.) Before they were religious
sects, in other words, they were political parties. The Sadducees were the
supporters of the Hasmonean monarchy. The Pharisees were the opponents of
the Hasmoneans, but those who operated (as we used to say when I was young)
"within the system." The Essenes were the "dropouts":
the people who became convinced that politics was hopelessly corrupt, and
went off to live as monks in their monasteries--including one famous monastery
by the shores of the Dead Sea--and wait for the end of the world.[1]
When the Romans added Palestine to their empire, in 63 BCE,
pro-Hasmonean and anti-Hasmonean politics became irrelevant. Yet the Pharisees
and the Sadducees lived on, albeit with their agendas transformed. The Sadducees
became the priestly, aristocratic movement within Palestinian Jewry,
associated with the Temple and its leadership. The Pharisees became the popular,
grass-roots leaders, preachers and teachers in the local synagogues. The
Essenes stayed in their monasteries, still waiting for the end of the world.
(This will explain why, throughout the Synoptic Gospels,[2]
Jesus's main Jewish opponents are the Pharisees, whom he encounters in the
Galilean synagogues. But, when he and his disciples go up to Jerusalem, the
Pharisees vanish from the story. Instead we read about a new set of opponents:
the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders. The most obvious explanation
is that the Pharisees had little or no clout in the ruling circles in Jerusalem.
They don't take any actions against Jesus in Jerusalem, because there weren't
any actions they could have taken.)
When the Temple was destroyed in 70, the Sadducees lost their
power base, and withered away. The Essenes left their monasteries, and are
lost to history: nobody knows where they went, or what became of them. There
was a power vacuum, and the Pharisees stepped into it. From then on, we no
longer speak of them as the Pharisees, but rather as "the rabbis."
(They spoke of themselves as the hakhamim, "the sages"; and
Jews traditionally refer to them as hazal, the Hebrew initials for
"our sages, may their memory be a blessing.")
The precise details of this process are
very obscure. We can be fairly sure that the leading figure was a man named
Yochanan ben Zakkai ("Yochanan the son of Zakkai"), who was known
in Jerusalem as a Roman sympathizer and whom the Romans therefore spared--that
is, they did not execute him horribly--when Jerusalem fell. They banished
Yochanan to an obscure coastal town called Yavneh,[3]
where he gathered around him a small group of followers and began to claim
that he and his followers were the true inheritors of the Temple's authority.
Through talent and sheer audacity, he got some at least of the Jews to take
his claims seriously.
When the Jews started taking him seriously, so did the Romans.
Why? Because in their fury and frenzy, after putting down the Jewish revolt,
they had effectively annihilated or driven into exile the old priestly leadership.
That must have been a pleasant way to discharge their rage, for the first
year or so. But slowly it must have dawned on the Romans that by destroying
the old leadership class they had destroyed the very people through whom they
might be able to govern the Palestinian Jews. They needed a functioning, effective
Jewish leadership just as much as the Jews themselves did. Yochanan and his
colleagues promised to provide it. So the Romans in effect recognized them
as the new leaders of the Jews--which certainly increased Yochanan's status
in the eyes of the Jews themselves.
Yochanan had one major disadvantage. As far as we can tell,
he was a man who came out of nowhere, without any ties of heredity or discipleship
to the pre-70 Pharisaic leadership. Later rabbinic storytellers tried to cover
this up by making Yochanan a disciple of Hillel, the legendary Pharisaic teacher
of the beginning of the first century CE. (This forced them to credit Yochanan
with extraordinary longevity.) But, after Yochanan had laid the groundwork
for his reconstituted Pharisaism--what we call "the rabbinic movement"--one
of Hillel's actual descendants, a man named Gamaliel,[4]
showed up at Yavneh. He pushed Yochanan aside and declared himself leader
of the movement.
Most of Yochanan's followers seem to have abandoned their old
leader and gone over to Gamaliel's side. So did the Roman authorities. Gamaliel
became the ancestor of the family of the "patriarchs," the nesi'im,
whom we might think of as the Roman-approved "popes" of rabbinic
Judaism. The patriarchs continued to lead the rabbinic movement, at least
in name, down to the fifth century CE. They didn't stay in Yavneh, though.
Yavneh's importance ended with the Bar Kochba revolt, and from then on the
center of the patriarchate shifted from one Palestinian locale to another.
Let's review what we've been saying. In the history of Pharisaism,
we can distinguish three phases:
(1) The Hasmonean period (140-63 BCE). The Pharisees are
the anti-Hasmonean political party (as opposed to the pro-Hasmonean Sadducees,
and the "dropout" Essenes).
(2) The Roman Period, Part I (63 BCE-70 CE). The Pharisees are
the popular, grass-roots leaders of the Palestinian Jews (as opposed to
the aristocratic Sadducees and the monastic Essenes).
(3) The Roman Period, Part II (70-sixth century CE). The
Sadducees and Essenes are out of the picture. The Pharisees--now "rabbis"--are
the leaders of Judaism, engaged in the creation of their distinctive "rabbinic
literature."
I need to say one more thing before we go on to the rabbinic
literature. In what has preceded, I've talked about synagogues and the Pharisees'
connection with them. Yet this is the first time (starting from Deuteronomy)
we've seen anything about synagogues. What were they, and where did they come
from?
There's a lot we don't know about the early history of the synagogue.
But one thing is certain. By the beginning of the first century CE synagogues
were everywhere--everywhere, that is, where there were Jews. There were synagogues
all over Palestine, all through the Diaspora. "For from early generations
Moses has had in every city those who preach him, for he is read every Sabbath
in the synagogues" (New Testament, Book of Acts, 15:21).
A Greek inscription found in Jerusalem, from the beginning of
the first century CE, boasts of having "built the synagogue for the reading
of the Law and for the study of the precepts, as well as the hospice and the
chambers and the bathing establishment, for lodging those who need them, from
abroad."[5] Jesus walks into
a synagogue in his home town of Nazareth one Sabbath; he's handed a copy of
the Book of Isaiah, which he proceeds to read from aloud and then preach about
(New Testament, Gospel of Luke, 4:16-30).
If you'd like to see a picture of what the
"reading of the Law" in an ancient synagogue might have looked like,
click
here. This is a wall fresco from the third-century CE synagogue in the
city of Dura-Europos on the Euphrates, in eastern Syria.[6]
The handsome young man in Greek clothing who reads from the scroll is presumably
intended to be some Biblical figure--perhaps Moses, perhaps Ezra. But I'd
be willing to bet the artist was inspired by the "readings of the Law"
that actually took place in the synagogue.
The synagogues, then, were structures completely independent
of the Temple, intended primarily for the reading and the exposition of the
sacred books of the Tanach. They were certainly also places of prayer--Egyptian
synagogues were called by a Greek name that literally means "prayer-houses"--and,
as we see from the inscription I just quoted, they could serve a number of
community functions as well. (According to one report, the great synagogue
in Alexandria served as an employment agency for newcomers to the city!)[7]
Needless to say, sacrifices were never offered in the synagogues.
That was the role of the Jerusalem Temple, and of the Temple alone. According
to the law in Deuteronomy (12:5-14), there could be only one Temple. But there
could be as many synagogues as there were Jews to pray and study in them.
When did synagogues first come into existence? Alas, we don't
know. First-century writers, like the author of the New Testament Book of
Acts, took for granted they had been around "from early generations."
But actual evidence from before the first century is sparse. Many modern writers
assume the synagogues were created during the Babylonian exile, as a response
to the loss of the First Temple. (See Goldberg and Rayner, p. 51.) To which
I say: maybe. But it does trouble me a little that the stories of Antiochus's
persecution of Judaism, in the First and Second Books of Maccabees, never
say anything about synagogues.
However long they had been around, by the first century CE synagogues
had grown up everywhere, in the shadow of the Jerusalem Temple, like little
trees in the shadow of a great oak. And when the great oak was cut down--behold!
the little trees grew and flourished. After 70 CE, Judaism was no longer a
priestly, Temple-oriented religion, but a scholastic religion dedicated to
"the reading of the Law and the study of the precepts." Its future
lay in the synagogues.
Now I'm going to ask you to take a break from listening to me, and read
your first introduction to the rabbinic literature. This is in Goldberg
and Rayner:
Reading assignment #7: Goldberg & Rayner, Part
II, chapter 3, (pp. 210-217)
Click here
for the study guide to this assignment
(Actually, this isn't quite your first introduction.
There is a good though unsystematic description of the Talmud, and the
process of studying Talmud, in Chapter 14 of The Chosen, and it
might be worth your while to review it. It would also be worth your while
to read Potok's wonderful novel The Promise--sequel to The Chosen,
with many of the same characters--which talks a great deal more than The
Chosen does about the process of Talmud study. I can assure you: what
Potok says about the Talmud is absolutely authentic!)
When you've finished this,
click here
to go on with the course
1. Before 70 CE and afterward
2. Pharisees, rabbis, synagogues (go back to the
top)
3. Mishnah, Gemara, Talmud
4. The orthodox path: Pirke Aboth
5. The unorthodox path: Elisha ben Abuyah
[1] This was where they copied and studied
their famous library, the "Dead Sea Scrolls." [Go
back to text.]
[2] The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke,
called the "Synoptic Gospels" because they share a common viewpoint;
as opposed to John, the Fourth Gospel. [Go
back to text.]
[3] Following the analysis of Gedalyahu
Alon, "Halikhato shel Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai le-Yavneh," in
Mehkarim be-Toledot Yisra'el, vol. 1, pp. 219-252. [Go
back to text.]
[4] We call him "Gamaliel II"
to distinguish him from his ancestor, the Gamaliel who appears in Acts 22:3
as Paul's teacher. [Go back to text.]
[5] The writer of the inscription, a certain
Theodotos, claims to be a "priest and head of the synagogue" (archisynagogos])
," son and grandson of heads of the synagogue. [Go
back to text.]
[6] The picture is taken from "Building
God's House," the website of a course taught by Professor Gary Gilbert
of Claremont McKenna College (http://visualize.cgu.edu/gilbert).
[Go back to text.]
[7] Tosefta, Sukkah 4:6. [Go
back to text.]
