Judaism in the period just prior to and during the New Testament period.
The Jewish history, which is very challenging, can be divided into several periods, although the roots of Christianity are most directly traced to the period of Hellenistic Judaism (4th century BC to the 2nd century).
The period from the book of Malachi at the end of our Old Testament to the opening of Matthew at the beginning of New Testament comprises about 400 years. These 400 "silent years", as we call them, were only silent in the sense that there were no prophets from God who were writing Scripture. This four hundred year interval has been also called "the dark period" of Israel's history in pre-Christian times, because during it there was neither prophet nor inspired writer. With this period we seem to find the sad fulfillment of Psalm 74:9 upon Israel: "We see not our signs; there is no more any prophet; neither is there among us any that knoweth how long."
The condition of the Jews as a nation and race at the beginning of this four-hundred-year period should be kept in mind.
Two hundred years earlier Jerusalem had been overthrown and the Jewish people carried into the Babylonian exile (606 B.C. - 586 B.C.) as punishment for their unfaithfulness to God. At the end of this 70 year punishment period, the Babylonian empire having been overthrown and succeeded by that of Media-Persia (536 B.C.), Cyrus, the Persian emperor, issued a decree permitting the return of the Jews to Israel. Under the leadership of Zerubbabel, some fifty thousand Jews returned. Some twenty years after their return, after many setbacks, the building of the Temple was completed in 516 B.C. Then after another 58 years had passed, in 458 B.C., Ezra the scribe returned to Jerusalem with a small group of Israelites’ and restored the Law and the ritual. Still another 13 years later, in 445 B.C., Nehemiah had come to Jerusalem to rebuild the walls and become governor. Now, once again, there was a Jewish state in Judea, though of course under Persian rule.
Such, then is the picture of the Jewish people at the beginning of the four-hundred-year period between Malachi and Matthew: the Jewish Remnant back in Judea for about one hundred and forty years (536 B.C. - 397 B.C.); a small, dependent Jewish state there; Jerusalem and the temple rebuilt; The Law and the ritual restored; but with the mass of the people remaining dispersed through-out the Media-Persian empire.
Now, if we are to appreciate this Jewish community as it re-emerges in the pages of the New Testament, we need look at their political development as well as their religious development.
Viewed politically, the varying course of the Jewish nation in Palestine simple reflects the history of the different world-empires which ruled Palestine. The one exception to this was the Maccabean revolt, which resulted for a short period of time in there being an independent Jewish government.
Jewish history during those four centuries between the Testaments runs in six periods:
Persian,
Greek,
Egyptian,
Syrian,
Maccabean,
Roman.
As I said earlier, the period of Hellenistic Judaism (4th century BC to the 2nd century), was introduced with Alexander the Great’s conquest of Palestine in 332. Hellenistic influences on Jewish culture and religion were evident by the early 2nd century BC, when Hellenizing Jews took control of the high priesthood. While the Syrian King Antiochus IV Epiphanies edicts against the practice of the Jewish religion led to revolt by the Maccabees, Hellenistic Judaism continued and reached its climax during the reign of Herod I of Judaea (37 BC–AD 4).
Alexander the Great was born of royal lineage around the year 356 B.C. at the age of 14 he studied under the philosopher Aristotle who had a profound influence upon him; instructing him not only in philosophy but also in politics. After the assassination of his father in 336 B.C. Alexander was made the new Macedonian king. Between the years 334 B.C. and 331 He led his army eastward into victory over the Persian Empire conquering them in three major battles. In 327 B.C. Alexander reached India and eventually died in Babylon in 323 B.C. Alexander promoted Greek culture everywhere he conquered. When his armies took Palestine from the Persians in 332 B.C., they required the Jews to adopt Greek language and customs. One of the most notable effects that Hellenism was to have upon the Jews was the translation of the Hebrew Old Testament into the Greek language (the Septuagint LXX). By the time of Christ it had become the most common translation of the Old Testament. Many Greeks and Romans became attracted to Judaism because the Old Testament Scriptures were now in their own language.
After Alexander's death his field marshals struggled for dominion of the lands they had conquered. These leaders and their successors (the Ptolemy’s of Egypt and the Seleucids of Syria) warred among themselves until the Roman conquest began in 197 B.C. After the death of Antiochus of the Seleucid Empire in 187 B.C, he was succeeded by his son Antiochus IV (Epiphanies’) in 175 B.C. Antiochus, believing strongly in the superiority of the Greek culture, having lived the past fifteen years as a hostage in Rome as part of a treaty made by his father, developed a taste for conquest. He detested anything Jewish and set out to destroy anything associated with the Hebrew religion. Besides massacring forty thousand of the residents of Jerusalem, Antiochus Epiphanies’ stripped the temple of its treasures and erected a statue of Jupiter in the Holy Place. He ordered the offering of swine as sacrifices and prohibited the practice of circumcision. Along with this he made every effort to find and destroy all copies of Scripture. In pursuing his desire to establish Hellenism, prohibited the Jews from practicing their worship and laws, and ordered them to conform to the worship of Zeus. The climax of his campaign was to establish a pagan alter in the place of the alter in the Jerusalem temple in 167 B.C. 1 Maccabees 1:54, 59 records this event, and Jesus refers to it by using a phrase that comes from the LXX version of Daniel 12:11 "The abomination of desolation" (Mark 13:14), to explain a future desecration of a similar kind. Many Jews inevitably refused to comply with the wishes of Antiochus and as a result suffered martyrdom. Other Jews took up direct resistance, finding leaders in the priest Mattathias of the Hasmonaean family, and his five sons, of whom Judas Maccabaeus was eventually to emerge as leader. Their efforts of resistance were successful and the prohibition of Jewish religion was abandoned. In honor of the rededication of the temple in 164 B.C., the Jews instituted the Festival of Dedication described in 1 Maccabees 4:59. It is this annual festival that Jesus is present at in John 10:22-42. Having gained religious freedom the Maccabees continued to grow in strength and went on to found a dynasty which controlled Judah until the Roman conquest of 63B.C.E.
On the other hand, two very noticeable Jewish religious leaders appeared: Sadducees and Pharisees.
The conservative and aristocratic Sadducees accepted only the Pentateuch (five books of Moses) while at the same time denying the existence of angels, spirits, and the resurrection of the body.
The Sadducees seem to have been in the first instance neither a religious sect nor a political party, but a social clique. Numerically they were a much smaller body that the Pharisees, and belonged for the most part to the wealthy and influential priestly families who were the aristocrats of the Jewish nation. The leaders of the party were the elders with seats in the council, the military officers, the statesmen, and officials who took part in the management of public affairs. With the mass of the people they never had much influence; like true aristocrats, they did not greatly care for it. Their one ambition was to make themselves indispensable to the reigning prince, that they might conduct the government of the country according to their own views. The Sadducees held, like most modern politicians, that the law of God had no application to politics. If Israel was to be made great and prosperous it must be by well-filled treasuries, strong armies, skillful diplomacy, and all the resources of human abilities. To expect a Divine deliverance merely by making the people holy, they accounted as sheer and dangerous fatalism.
As a body they rejected totally the Oral Law accumulated by the scribes and held to by the Pharisees, and professed to stand by the Written Law alone; though, even their stand on the Written Law alone was done so with great skepticism. Matthew 22:23 and Acts 23:8 show how skeptical was their attitude to the Written Law, for we are told that they denied the bodily resurrection, and did not believe either in angels or spirits. Thus, we can understand how intolerable to such groups the teaching of Jesus and His Messianic claims were. Their hatred is measured by their readiness to consort even with the detested Pharisees in order to kill Him. It was they, in fact, who were directly responsible for His crucifixion (compare Luke 3:2; John 11:49, 18:13, 14, 24, 19:15; Mark 15:11).The mark of the Sadducee - the rationalist - is that he is always TAKING FROM. He cannot accept the written Word of God in its entirety, nor the truth of the Gospel as it stands without drastic deletions. Everything must be tried at the bar of human reason. This, that, and the other thing must be cut out to make faith reasonable and tenable. This was precisely the attitude of the Sadducee. He could not, or rather would not, believe either in angels or demons, either in the resurrection of the dead or in any other miracle.
The strict Pharisees accepted texts outside the Pentateuch and embraced doctrines of angels and resurrection.
The Pharisees must be distinguished from the scribes. Again and again in the Gospel narratives they are mentioned in conjunction with the scribes (Matthew 5:20, 12:38, 15:1, 23:2, Mark 2:16, Luke 5:21, 30, etc.), but although this reveals closeness of affinity it does not imply oneness of identity. The Pharisees were an ecclesiastical party, held together by their peculiar aims and views, whereas the scribes were a body of experts in a scholastic sense. Certainly a man might be both a Pharisee and a scribe; and the fact is, that practically all the scribes were Pharisees in outlook and association; yet the two fraternities were different from each other. It was inevitable that the Pharisees should have much in common with the scribes, those specialist in the Written Law, and in the ever enlarging Oral Law (The Oral Law was that complex code of application of the Written Law to every area of one's life and activities). Indeed, as mentioned earlier, most of those who were scribes by vocation would be Pharisees in conviction. The origin of the Pharisees as a movement may be compared to a river which flows underground for some distance before coming to the surface and flowing visibly onwards. The spirit and attitudes of the Pharisees were present in post-exile Judaism long before the sect took its historical form under the name "Pharisees." We see the spirit of Pharisees’ in the aim of Ezra and leaders of the Jewish remnant as expressed in Nehemiah 10:28, 29. It is a spirit of "separatism" from all others to Jehovah through a strict observance of His Law. By common consent all mixed marriages were dissolved, and other irregularities corrected. In a mass meeting, and by signed covenant, the book of the Law was acclaimed as the binding standard for both state and individual. Separation to Jehovah was the controlling Idea. Separatism based on the Law (Written and Oral) was the ideology of the Pharisees. The thing, however, that eventually crystallized them into a clique or sect was a body of Jews, primarily made up of the priests, whose goal and interest was the worldly aspects of religion and politics. These two groups provoked each other into existence. Thus we have the Pharisees on one side and the Sadducees on the other.
The Pharisees as a body were influential way beyond their numbers. According to Josephus the number of Pharisees in Herod's time was only about 6,000. Yet, despite their small number, they had in fact such a hold on the popular mind that no governing power could afford to disregard them. We need only read the four Gospels to see what sway they had in our Lord's days on earth - and what influence they had in bringing about His crucifixion. The mark of the Pharisee - the ritualism - is that he is always ADDING TO - He is not content with the written Word of God, and with the plain truth of the Gospel. He must start adding his own ideas and ordinances, until religion and salvation are a highly complicated matter. This is just what the Pharisees did, until, with the weight of their accumulated religious ceremonies and observances, they made religion a burden too heavy for men to bear.
In Matthew 22:16, Mark 3:6 and 12:13 we find yet another Jewish clique, namely, the Herodians. This is a political group and the leading aim of its members was to further the cause of the Herod government. Whether they were directly connected to the Herod household or throne is mere conjecture, but obviously the ready seal of royal approval would be theirs. We can well imagine that many would consider it sound policy to strengthen the hold of the Herod house on Jewish leaders and public. What could be wiser than to back the Herodians throne, which enjoyed the favor of Rome, and thus giving Judea the protection of that mighty empire? Many would see in the Herods the one Jewish hope of separate national continuance; the one alternative to direct heathen rule. Others would be inclined to favor a blend of the ancient faith and Roman culture such as the first Herod and his successors had sought to effect as the highest consummation of Jewish hopes. This group was hated by the Pharisees. The two parties were bitterly intolerant of each other, which makes the consorting of the Pharisees with the Herodians against our Lord all the more astonishing. The mark of the Herodians - the secularist - he cared neither for adding to nor taking away from. Like the careless Gallio, he "cared for none of these things." The written Word of God, the message of the Gospel was far from his first concern. His prime consideration was the life that now is. What does it matter that a heathen Herod reigns on a throne made crimson with crime so long as material interests are furthered? While the ritualist Pharisee was busy adding to, and the rationalist Sadducee was skeptically taking away from, the secularist Herodians was heedlessly passing by.
There is one further Jewish institution which had its beginning during the inter-Testament period, which plays a big role in the Four Gospels: that is the Sanhedrin, quite often translated as "council". The Sanhedrin was the supreme civil and religious tribunal of the Jewish nation. The supreme judicial, and administrative council of the Jewish people. With that representative body must lay forever the real responsibility for the crucifying of Israel's Messiah, the incarnate Son of God.
The Sanhedrin consisted of seventy-one members, made up, so it would seem, of:
The high priest;
Twenty-four "chief priests" who represented all twenty-four orders of the whole priesthood (I Chronicles 24:4,6);
Twenty-four "elders," who represented the laity, often called "elders of the people," as in Matthew 21:23, 24:3; Acts 4:8 - reminding us of Revelation 4:4;
Twenty-two "scribes," who were the expert interpreters of the law in matters both religious and civil.
When the word Sanhedrin is used, as in Mark 14:55, it denotes this fourfold assembly; and vice versa, where "chief priests and elders and scribes" are mentioned together, as in Matthew 16:21 it is referring to the Sanhedrin. An alternate name for the elders is "rulers." In some places we find just "chief priests and rulers" (Luke 23:13 or simply "rulers" (Acts 3:17)."
We can mention few other religious groups, which ascended as well; (maybe less important): the Zealots, who were revolutionaries seeking freedom from Rome; and the Essenes, who were a semi-monastic sect that allegedly preserved the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Essenes followed a separate religious calendar, avoided Temple worship in Jerusalem, and awaited divine intervention in human affairs.
Now that we know the political background and religious leaders, I should also mention that during the Hellenistic period the Syria, Babylonia, Asia Minor and especially in Alexandria were major centers of Judaism. We also know that in this period The Pentateuch was translated into Greek Septuagint.
I am not sure what influence, the above mentioned Jewish religious groups, had on the early Christians. The Gospel writers/authors bring their readers “attention to Jesus” condemnation directed at the Scribes and Pharisees with their legalistic interpretation of Judaism – but we know that one of the disciples, Simon was a Zealot.
From history we can learn that Roman rule was challenged by Jewish determinations to institute an independent state; several quasi-monastic groups as well Zealots, each known for its own conservative and rigid observance of the Law, pushed this very hard.
In Roman period, the rise of Christianity became the most important sectarian movement. For Romans this sectarian movement was nothing but another type of Jew. In those days, after Jewish revolt against the Romans, the Jews had to choose between Pharisees and Christianity. As I said in paragraph above, about the Pharisees, they were the one who reaffirmed the “Mishna” (“Oral Law”) and “Talmud” (commentary on the “Mishna”) as normative Judaism. Speaking about the Christianity, Christianity embraced the ideal of a world religion, which welcomed even Gentiles at the price of sacrificing Jewish superiority.
Apostle Paul spoke so many times against observing the “Torah” as means of salvation, but we know that many Jews who followed Jesus became “Jewish Christians” but did not abandon the “Torah”. From this, two groups immerge: Nazarenes and Ebionites. Nazarene Jews accepted Jesus as both God and Messiah, but could not let go of the “Torah”; on the other hand Ebionite Jews also accepted Him as Messiah, but denied His divinity. At the end only small number of Jews converted.
This very small conversion brought two very major issues: a) the messianic function of Jesus; and b) the validity desirability of the Mosaic Law for everyone. Why? Well, from Amos (8th century BC) forward, Judaism was marked by a dynamic tension between the notion of God’s special favor toward Israel and the notion of monotheism (with its ideal of universal salvation). In Palestinian Judaism, the predominant mood was one of exclusion and separation, with an emphasis on the distinctive Jewish customs of “Sabbaths”, “kosher food”, “circumcision”, and “Temple worship”, to name a few.
The newly converted Jews worship with other Jews in the synagogue, the same can be said for earliest Gentiles as well. Some of them read the scripture outside of the synagogue and preserved the same basic flavor of synagogue worship. This tell us, historically, that every Christian liturgy since followed this same formula of Jewish worship. Early Christians, majority of them as I said were Jews, revised the Sabbath synagogue services and celebration of Jesus’s Last Supper with His disciples in fulfillment of the Passover and new covenant with the redeemed people of God.
From all this we can see that Christianity was so deeply rooted in Judaism, so early Christians honored sacred writings as their Jewish counterparts. Interestingly saying, these Jews who had respected their own sacred writings added to their own: New Testament – Christian writings. By doing this, they built upon the monotheism of Judaism as part of the essence of their truth and way of salvation in Christ Jesus.
The picture of God, which was relatively intimate, early Christians, inherited from the Jews, but Greek influences on their religion added the concept of God who was greater than any human words and/or ideas; in another words this God must be described in human words and ideas. From this the words as substance, essence and being were added to Biblical witness in the Creeds.
To summarize all this, when Jesus arrived in the Palestine, Palestine was the land that was politically unsettled as we saw thru out of the history. Ancient celebration of liberation from Egypt at Passover, Hanukkah was added as reminder of more recent liberation. Unfortunately, the country was once again subservient to a foreign power and Palestine was prepared for uprising. Knowing this, Jesus consistently ordered His disciples not to tell people who he was, until after the resurrection, because people were waiting for messiah that would be of a militant nature.