Post by Beck on Sept 23, 2005 13:57:10 GMT -5
I thought this was a good read thats about it. It makes me think of the division in today's Churches.
Jesus the Jew
copyright 2003 by Donald Sensing
Judaism in Jesus' day was political Judaism. There were two main reasons for the thorough mixing of
politics and religion. The first was that the gods of the ancient world were assumed to be national
gods. The Egyptians, the Greeks, the Persians, the non-Jewish Palestinians – all had a pantheon of
gods who were assumed to belong only to that particular nation. The political character of any ancient
nation was almost definitionally a religious character. This fact caused no end of grief for the Jews,
especially after the Roman cult of the emperor imbued the emperor with divinity, the perfect
confluence of religion and statism.
The second reason for political religion and religious politics in Israel was that Israel had been under
foreign occupation by pagan powers for almost 350 years, except for an uneasy and not very peaceful
period of independence from 140 – 63 BC. The consistent dream of the Jews was to be politically free of foreign occupation.
They were not free when Jesus lived. Even today they have not entirely achieved this goal. In 1948 the founders of modern Israel stated that their national goal was a free, democratic Israel over all the biblical lands of Israel and Judea. They are not there yet.
When you read the gospels you discover that Jesus was a rabbi, not a priest, who held discourses
or arguments with Pharisees and Sadducees. These were not just denominational identifications, but
political ones as well. There was another Jewish movement in Jesus' day, the Essenes, but they do not
figure prominently in Jesus' story. Before I try to explain how these factions developed, I'd like to
spend a moment outlining the common, basic convictions and forms of expression in the Judaism of
Jesus' day.
• the Jews were monotheists. Twice a day the Jews said the Sh'ma, the basic confession of Israel
of the one and only God. "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One." Alone among
ancient national leaders, only Moses had dared to commit a whole people to this faith in a
single God. Jewish monotheism renounced all other gods. This faith enabled Paul to tell the
Corinthian Christians that meat sacrificed to idols was just meat, since the gods symbolized by
the idols didn't really exist. Jewish monotheism was an ethical monotheism. In Judaism God is
the embodiment of ethical will.
• Judaism was founded on Covenant, a special relationship between the one and only God and
Israel. By election, God has made the people his own possession, done in the making of the
covenant, the call of Abraham, the exodus from Egypt and the giving of the Law, or Torah, on
Sinai.
The Torah makes demands on the people, but when the commandments are transgressed, the Torah
also gives ways of preserving the covenant through atonement, conversion and the assurance of God's
mercy. The Torah integrates daily life with religious life. The whole way of life is thus put under the
authority of God. This system puts a very high value on the ethical commandments. The
commandments encompassed both religious obligations and ethical ones; in fact, it almost makes no
sense to speak of them separately. In our day we speak of "secular" and "religious" as two different
categories, but such a distinction would have made no sense to Jesus or his contemporaries. The Jews
placed the religious and ritual commandments on the same level as ethical commandments. The
ethical commandments were as holy as everything else that makes it possible to approach God.
The Temple and the synagogues gave form to Jewish religion. Judaism in Jesus' day was a temple
religion with two special features: God allows himself to be worshiped only in one place, namely in
Jerusalem, and there in a temple without an image of God. The high esteem for the temple was
connected with monotheism. The more transcendent and invisible the one and only God was, the more
piety was directed toward the one place in which God made his dwelling. Alongside this, synagogues
were found almost everywhere. As a rule the synagogues were private rooms which were put at the
disposal of the community. While the priests ruled in the temple, in synagogues a lay religion
developed. There Jesus could teach and find a hearing. However, it was equally natural for him to go
to Jerusalem for the Passover. When there was a conflict with the temple and the priesthood there, it
was a conflict at the center of the Judaism.
Sacrifice and a liturgy of the word of God gave expression to Judaism. At the center of the sacrificial
cult at the Jerusalem temple was the Day of Atonement. On this day once a year the high priest entered
the Holy of Holies to accomplish atonement for the people. Alongside the practice of Temple
sacrifices, worship in synagogues brought forth a momentous religious innovation, the reading and
interpretation of Scripture. The basic order of worship in a synagogue was very similar to the order many churches use today, except there was no pulpit. Reading scripture aloud made it accessible to anyone and
was a strong motive for learning to read and write. Therefore Jews had a reputation among ancient
nations as a learned people, striving to live consistently in accordance with the teaching which they
continually studied and which had been summed up in a book.
These things – monotheism, biblical covenant, Temple and synagogue worship and reverence for
Scripture – were the unifying and common elements of Judaism in Jesus' time. Now, on to politics.
From about 200 years before Christ, Judean Judaism was in the grip of a chain of renewal movements
which as a rule moved within the framework of these common basic convictions, but which
emphasized different expressions of the religion. Jesus stands at the center of one of these renewal
movements within Judaism. All these movements ultimately go back to the challenge posed to
Judaism by Greek culture.
The Greek influence in Israel began with its conquest by Alexander the Great in 322 BC. The country
was ruled by a foreign power which was superior military, economic and cultural terms. This
exercised a great attraction for the upper classes, which assimilated to it. However, beginning about
200 BC the influence of Greek culture began to wane as the power of Rome grew. Probably with
Roman support, near-eastern cultures, including Israel, underwent an internal renaissance. One result
was a strong resistance movement against Greek influence which developed in Israel and resulted in
an independent Jewish state beginning about 140 BC. The state lasted until Rome conquered Israel in
63 BC and was strongly anti-Greek. A fundamentalist movement led by the Sadducees brought a new
ruling class into power which allied itself with some of the old Jewish aristocracy. This development
drove the religious movement of the people, led by the Pharisees, into opposition. Other parts of the
old aristocracy who had been kicked out of power formed an alliance with new religious forces, the
Essenes. These three groups, the Sadducees the Pharisees and the Essenes, where the three main
religious groups of Jesus' day. They shaped the Judaism of Jesus' time.
With the conquest of Israel by Rome, Western influence over Israel became stronger than ever. Jewish
resistance to this conquest and Roman occupation resulted in three wars between the Jews in Rome,
from 66-74, 115-117 and 132-135. But these resistance movements had no success. Judaism
experienced a chain of catastrophes, including the destruction of the Temple in 70.
Jesus lived near the beginning of this time of crisis. The time of Jesus' ministry had been preceded in
Israel by a series of messianic resistance movements after the death of Herod. After these resistance
movements faded away there began a series of prophetic protest movements that began with John the
Baptist. John pointed the way to Jesus, so Jesus may be considered also to be a prophetic protester. All
of these movements dreamed of a shift of history in favor of Israel, but it did not come about. The
Romans remained the rulers of the land. But one of these protest movements gave rise to Christianity,
which in the course of several centuries was to overthrow the Roman empire from within.
In 175 BC the Sadducean aristocracy had attempted a reform movement to get Israel in step with Western
culture. They adopted a western lifestyle, sometimes ostentatiously. Like all reformers, ancient or
modern, they insisted their movement was a return to the true roots of their faith. But their emphasis on
modernity was undeniable. They apparently wanted to assimilate all Israel into western culture and
wanted to do away with separatist rites like circumcision, revering the Sabbath and food laws. This
attempt failed. It was the first attempt to extend Jewish influence into western culture rather than the
other way round. In its moderate form it was a limited surrender to western culture. But it was a
reform from above, initiated and supported by the upper class, and sought to compel the people below
to comply.
The Jesus movement after Jesus' resurrection was also a reform movement, but this time from below,
and without compulsion. Where the Sadducean reformers had failed, Jesus' followers succeeded in
western nations. Early Christianity was basically a universalist Judaism without the ritual separatism
of Judaism. But probably one reason Christianity failed among the Jews themselves was that it
reminded them of the Sadducean reform and thus provoked bitter resistance.
By the time of Jesus there were three main religious movements in Israel. The Sadducees came from
the leading families of the nation – the priests, merchants, and aristocrats. The high priests and the
most powerful members of the priesthood were mainly Sadducees, according to Acts.
The Sadducees rejected oral and written commentary which interpreted the law of Moses. This
automatically placed them in direct conflict with the Pharisees, who had made the traditions
surrounding the Law almost as important as the Law itself.
The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection of the dead or the immortality of the soul, since
these doctrines are not mentioned in the law of Moses. Neither did they believe in heaven or hell. They
interpreted the law literally and tended to support strict justice as opposed to mercy toward the
offender. Since Jesus supported all these things opposed by the Sadducees, Jesus did not fit within the
Sadducean movement.
Being closely associated with the Temple, the Sadducees disappeared from history when the Temple
was destroyed in 70.
The Essenes' center was Qumran; they are the movement that made the Dead Sea Scrolls. The gospels
say nothing about the Essenes. Unlike the Sadducees of the Pharisees, the Essenes did not try to
influence the whole people. Jesus certainly knew of the Essenes, but seems not to have interacted with
them much, if at all.
The Pharisees were a religious and political party. Made up of ordinary people, the Pharisees were known
for their special commitment to keeping the laws of tithing and ritual purity. Pharisees felt it was
necessary to place limits on their contacts with other Jews as well as with Gentiles. For example, they
could not eat in the home of a non-Pharisee, since they could not be sure that the food had been
properly tithed and kept ritually pure. They revered tradition and the oral and written commentaries on
the Law.
The Pharisees did believe in the resurrection of the dead. The Pharisees enjoyed a good deal of popular
support. Unlike the Sadducees, who were mostly rich landowners and powerful priests, many
Pharisees were ordinary people. And even though other Jews might not have observed all the details of
the law, they respected the Pharisees for making the effort.
Doubtless the closest Jesus came to any of the three main movements was with the Pharisees. The
Pharisees' criticisms of Jesus in the gospels seems to indicate that they are judging him by special
standards, namely, their own, as if he were one of them. One could argue that the primary concerns in
daily life of both Jesus and the Pharisees were basically the same: purity and cleanness. The Pharisees
exhibited a defensive notion of cleanness: they want to avoid being infected by uncleanness. On the
contrary, Jesus had an offensive idea of cleanness: cleanness overcomes uncleanness, not the other
way round. Thus Jesus greatly offended the Pharisees by eating with sinners and speaking with
prostitutes.
Jesus was a devout Jewish man fully and firmly committed to the historic tenets of Jewish faith. Jesus
shared the basic convictions of Judaism of his day: faith in the one and only God who had made a
special covenant with Israel. Jesus ministry and that of his early followers was strongly shaped by the
political picture of first-century Israel – its domination by Greek and then Roman power and culture.
The challenge for the Jews of the first century was preserving their Jewish identity or redefining it in
ways that could survive military, political and cultural oppression. Jesus seems to have been
significantly out of step with most other Jews of his day, certainly with those who wielded political or
social power.
Jesus was a social and political and religious protester. He began a renewal and reform movement that
was unlike any other Jewish movement before or after. The other movements had longed for or
worked for a victory by Israel over the pagans, namely the Greeks and the Romans, and the ejection of
the pagans from Israel. However, Jesus formulated Jewish identity in a way that avoided combat with
the legions. The teachings of Jesus and his followers were open to the influx of pagans; Jesus was a
Jewish universalist.
The other reform or protest movements had intensified the specifically Jewish norms of the Law,
namely the food laws and purity laws. But Jesus intensified only the universal ethical norms and
relaxed the norms which led to separation of the Jews from others. Likewise, other movements tended
to separate themselves from others, while Jesus and his followers deliberately reached out to those on
the margins.
The Jesus movement was strongly oriented toward inward and outward integration. After Jesus' death,
the Jesus movement was only Jewish at first. This "Jesus sect" was distinguished by being oriented
toward greater openness and not by greater strictness, unlike almost all other sects or movements that
had gone before.
However, Jesus was more than a Jewish rabbinical reformer. Although gifted with unusual verbal
fluency, Jesus' teachings reveal nothing that is not already taught in the Law, the Prophets and the
Writings of the Jews. Jesus' ethical teachings may not have been in step with the mainstream of his
day, but they were in lockstep with the prophetic tradition of Jewish faith. Jesus' ethical and religious
teachings are wise and good, but frankly not exceptional. If you wanted to construct a religion based
on Jesus' ethics, you'd simply wind up with a very admirable form of Judaism.
The distinctiveness of the Jesus movement lies in nothing more – and certainly nothing less! – than the
proclamation, "He is risen! He is risen indeed!"
Jesus the Jew
copyright 2003 by Donald Sensing
Judaism in Jesus' day was political Judaism. There were two main reasons for the thorough mixing of
politics and religion. The first was that the gods of the ancient world were assumed to be national
gods. The Egyptians, the Greeks, the Persians, the non-Jewish Palestinians – all had a pantheon of
gods who were assumed to belong only to that particular nation. The political character of any ancient
nation was almost definitionally a religious character. This fact caused no end of grief for the Jews,
especially after the Roman cult of the emperor imbued the emperor with divinity, the perfect
confluence of religion and statism.
The second reason for political religion and religious politics in Israel was that Israel had been under
foreign occupation by pagan powers for almost 350 years, except for an uneasy and not very peaceful
period of independence from 140 – 63 BC. The consistent dream of the Jews was to be politically free of foreign occupation.
They were not free when Jesus lived. Even today they have not entirely achieved this goal. In 1948 the founders of modern Israel stated that their national goal was a free, democratic Israel over all the biblical lands of Israel and Judea. They are not there yet.
When you read the gospels you discover that Jesus was a rabbi, not a priest, who held discourses
or arguments with Pharisees and Sadducees. These were not just denominational identifications, but
political ones as well. There was another Jewish movement in Jesus' day, the Essenes, but they do not
figure prominently in Jesus' story. Before I try to explain how these factions developed, I'd like to
spend a moment outlining the common, basic convictions and forms of expression in the Judaism of
Jesus' day.
• the Jews were monotheists. Twice a day the Jews said the Sh'ma, the basic confession of Israel
of the one and only God. "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One." Alone among
ancient national leaders, only Moses had dared to commit a whole people to this faith in a
single God. Jewish monotheism renounced all other gods. This faith enabled Paul to tell the
Corinthian Christians that meat sacrificed to idols was just meat, since the gods symbolized by
the idols didn't really exist. Jewish monotheism was an ethical monotheism. In Judaism God is
the embodiment of ethical will.
• Judaism was founded on Covenant, a special relationship between the one and only God and
Israel. By election, God has made the people his own possession, done in the making of the
covenant, the call of Abraham, the exodus from Egypt and the giving of the Law, or Torah, on
Sinai.
The Torah makes demands on the people, but when the commandments are transgressed, the Torah
also gives ways of preserving the covenant through atonement, conversion and the assurance of God's
mercy. The Torah integrates daily life with religious life. The whole way of life is thus put under the
authority of God. This system puts a very high value on the ethical commandments. The
commandments encompassed both religious obligations and ethical ones; in fact, it almost makes no
sense to speak of them separately. In our day we speak of "secular" and "religious" as two different
categories, but such a distinction would have made no sense to Jesus or his contemporaries. The Jews
placed the religious and ritual commandments on the same level as ethical commandments. The
ethical commandments were as holy as everything else that makes it possible to approach God.
The Temple and the synagogues gave form to Jewish religion. Judaism in Jesus' day was a temple
religion with two special features: God allows himself to be worshiped only in one place, namely in
Jerusalem, and there in a temple without an image of God. The high esteem for the temple was
connected with monotheism. The more transcendent and invisible the one and only God was, the more
piety was directed toward the one place in which God made his dwelling. Alongside this, synagogues
were found almost everywhere. As a rule the synagogues were private rooms which were put at the
disposal of the community. While the priests ruled in the temple, in synagogues a lay religion
developed. There Jesus could teach and find a hearing. However, it was equally natural for him to go
to Jerusalem for the Passover. When there was a conflict with the temple and the priesthood there, it
was a conflict at the center of the Judaism.
Sacrifice and a liturgy of the word of God gave expression to Judaism. At the center of the sacrificial
cult at the Jerusalem temple was the Day of Atonement. On this day once a year the high priest entered
the Holy of Holies to accomplish atonement for the people. Alongside the practice of Temple
sacrifices, worship in synagogues brought forth a momentous religious innovation, the reading and
interpretation of Scripture. The basic order of worship in a synagogue was very similar to the order many churches use today, except there was no pulpit. Reading scripture aloud made it accessible to anyone and
was a strong motive for learning to read and write. Therefore Jews had a reputation among ancient
nations as a learned people, striving to live consistently in accordance with the teaching which they
continually studied and which had been summed up in a book.
These things – monotheism, biblical covenant, Temple and synagogue worship and reverence for
Scripture – were the unifying and common elements of Judaism in Jesus' time. Now, on to politics.
From about 200 years before Christ, Judean Judaism was in the grip of a chain of renewal movements
which as a rule moved within the framework of these common basic convictions, but which
emphasized different expressions of the religion. Jesus stands at the center of one of these renewal
movements within Judaism. All these movements ultimately go back to the challenge posed to
Judaism by Greek culture.
The Greek influence in Israel began with its conquest by Alexander the Great in 322 BC. The country
was ruled by a foreign power which was superior military, economic and cultural terms. This
exercised a great attraction for the upper classes, which assimilated to it. However, beginning about
200 BC the influence of Greek culture began to wane as the power of Rome grew. Probably with
Roman support, near-eastern cultures, including Israel, underwent an internal renaissance. One result
was a strong resistance movement against Greek influence which developed in Israel and resulted in
an independent Jewish state beginning about 140 BC. The state lasted until Rome conquered Israel in
63 BC and was strongly anti-Greek. A fundamentalist movement led by the Sadducees brought a new
ruling class into power which allied itself with some of the old Jewish aristocracy. This development
drove the religious movement of the people, led by the Pharisees, into opposition. Other parts of the
old aristocracy who had been kicked out of power formed an alliance with new religious forces, the
Essenes. These three groups, the Sadducees the Pharisees and the Essenes, where the three main
religious groups of Jesus' day. They shaped the Judaism of Jesus' time.
With the conquest of Israel by Rome, Western influence over Israel became stronger than ever. Jewish
resistance to this conquest and Roman occupation resulted in three wars between the Jews in Rome,
from 66-74, 115-117 and 132-135. But these resistance movements had no success. Judaism
experienced a chain of catastrophes, including the destruction of the Temple in 70.
Jesus lived near the beginning of this time of crisis. The time of Jesus' ministry had been preceded in
Israel by a series of messianic resistance movements after the death of Herod. After these resistance
movements faded away there began a series of prophetic protest movements that began with John the
Baptist. John pointed the way to Jesus, so Jesus may be considered also to be a prophetic protester. All
of these movements dreamed of a shift of history in favor of Israel, but it did not come about. The
Romans remained the rulers of the land. But one of these protest movements gave rise to Christianity,
which in the course of several centuries was to overthrow the Roman empire from within.
In 175 BC the Sadducean aristocracy had attempted a reform movement to get Israel in step with Western
culture. They adopted a western lifestyle, sometimes ostentatiously. Like all reformers, ancient or
modern, they insisted their movement was a return to the true roots of their faith. But their emphasis on
modernity was undeniable. They apparently wanted to assimilate all Israel into western culture and
wanted to do away with separatist rites like circumcision, revering the Sabbath and food laws. This
attempt failed. It was the first attempt to extend Jewish influence into western culture rather than the
other way round. In its moderate form it was a limited surrender to western culture. But it was a
reform from above, initiated and supported by the upper class, and sought to compel the people below
to comply.
The Jesus movement after Jesus' resurrection was also a reform movement, but this time from below,
and without compulsion. Where the Sadducean reformers had failed, Jesus' followers succeeded in
western nations. Early Christianity was basically a universalist Judaism without the ritual separatism
of Judaism. But probably one reason Christianity failed among the Jews themselves was that it
reminded them of the Sadducean reform and thus provoked bitter resistance.
By the time of Jesus there were three main religious movements in Israel. The Sadducees came from
the leading families of the nation – the priests, merchants, and aristocrats. The high priests and the
most powerful members of the priesthood were mainly Sadducees, according to Acts.
The Sadducees rejected oral and written commentary which interpreted the law of Moses. This
automatically placed them in direct conflict with the Pharisees, who had made the traditions
surrounding the Law almost as important as the Law itself.
The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection of the dead or the immortality of the soul, since
these doctrines are not mentioned in the law of Moses. Neither did they believe in heaven or hell. They
interpreted the law literally and tended to support strict justice as opposed to mercy toward the
offender. Since Jesus supported all these things opposed by the Sadducees, Jesus did not fit within the
Sadducean movement.
Being closely associated with the Temple, the Sadducees disappeared from history when the Temple
was destroyed in 70.
The Essenes' center was Qumran; they are the movement that made the Dead Sea Scrolls. The gospels
say nothing about the Essenes. Unlike the Sadducees of the Pharisees, the Essenes did not try to
influence the whole people. Jesus certainly knew of the Essenes, but seems not to have interacted with
them much, if at all.
The Pharisees were a religious and political party. Made up of ordinary people, the Pharisees were known
for their special commitment to keeping the laws of tithing and ritual purity. Pharisees felt it was
necessary to place limits on their contacts with other Jews as well as with Gentiles. For example, they
could not eat in the home of a non-Pharisee, since they could not be sure that the food had been
properly tithed and kept ritually pure. They revered tradition and the oral and written commentaries on
the Law.
The Pharisees did believe in the resurrection of the dead. The Pharisees enjoyed a good deal of popular
support. Unlike the Sadducees, who were mostly rich landowners and powerful priests, many
Pharisees were ordinary people. And even though other Jews might not have observed all the details of
the law, they respected the Pharisees for making the effort.
Doubtless the closest Jesus came to any of the three main movements was with the Pharisees. The
Pharisees' criticisms of Jesus in the gospels seems to indicate that they are judging him by special
standards, namely, their own, as if he were one of them. One could argue that the primary concerns in
daily life of both Jesus and the Pharisees were basically the same: purity and cleanness. The Pharisees
exhibited a defensive notion of cleanness: they want to avoid being infected by uncleanness. On the
contrary, Jesus had an offensive idea of cleanness: cleanness overcomes uncleanness, not the other
way round. Thus Jesus greatly offended the Pharisees by eating with sinners and speaking with
prostitutes.
Jesus was a devout Jewish man fully and firmly committed to the historic tenets of Jewish faith. Jesus
shared the basic convictions of Judaism of his day: faith in the one and only God who had made a
special covenant with Israel. Jesus ministry and that of his early followers was strongly shaped by the
political picture of first-century Israel – its domination by Greek and then Roman power and culture.
The challenge for the Jews of the first century was preserving their Jewish identity or redefining it in
ways that could survive military, political and cultural oppression. Jesus seems to have been
significantly out of step with most other Jews of his day, certainly with those who wielded political or
social power.
Jesus was a social and political and religious protester. He began a renewal and reform movement that
was unlike any other Jewish movement before or after. The other movements had longed for or
worked for a victory by Israel over the pagans, namely the Greeks and the Romans, and the ejection of
the pagans from Israel. However, Jesus formulated Jewish identity in a way that avoided combat with
the legions. The teachings of Jesus and his followers were open to the influx of pagans; Jesus was a
Jewish universalist.
The other reform or protest movements had intensified the specifically Jewish norms of the Law,
namely the food laws and purity laws. But Jesus intensified only the universal ethical norms and
relaxed the norms which led to separation of the Jews from others. Likewise, other movements tended
to separate themselves from others, while Jesus and his followers deliberately reached out to those on
the margins.
The Jesus movement was strongly oriented toward inward and outward integration. After Jesus' death,
the Jesus movement was only Jewish at first. This "Jesus sect" was distinguished by being oriented
toward greater openness and not by greater strictness, unlike almost all other sects or movements that
had gone before.
However, Jesus was more than a Jewish rabbinical reformer. Although gifted with unusual verbal
fluency, Jesus' teachings reveal nothing that is not already taught in the Law, the Prophets and the
Writings of the Jews. Jesus' ethical teachings may not have been in step with the mainstream of his
day, but they were in lockstep with the prophetic tradition of Jewish faith. Jesus' ethical and religious
teachings are wise and good, but frankly not exceptional. If you wanted to construct a religion based
on Jesus' ethics, you'd simply wind up with a very admirable form of Judaism.
The distinctiveness of the Jesus movement lies in nothing more – and certainly nothing less! – than the
proclamation, "He is risen! He is risen indeed!"