Nadene Goldfoot
During the 2nd Temple period (about 597 BCE) we had the Jewish sect of Sadducees who were like Priests or judges with their own standards. It may have been introduced with the high priest Zadock whose descendants served in the government until 162 BCE. We also had the Pharisees, judges but had their own standards that differed from the Sadducees in many ways. They were rather like judges of the Left and judges of the Right political persuasions.
The Sadducees, wealthier Jews, well-connected priests, prominent aristocrats who belonged to this group who were influential in political and economic life. For them, religion was primarily the Temple cult without a basis of abstract faith. They differed from the Pharisees in the nature of their religious outlook and way of life.
According to the Sadducee viewpoint, individuals and groups must aspire to well-being in this world without expecting recompense in the world to come. The Sadducees had no belief in the future world, resurrection, or the immortality of the soul and also rejected the existence of angels and spirits. Their slavish adherence to the Written Law led them to behave severely in cases involving the capital penalty and they interpreted the Les Talionis (an eye for an eye) literally rather than in the sense of monetary compensation which was adopted by the Pharisees.
Their austere conceptions extended to the Temple and its cult retaining the decisive role of the priest and opposing Pharisaic innovations like the Water-Drawing Festival, which might have given a foothold to non-sacerdotal circles. Developing into the supporters of the Hasmonean kings from the reign of John Hyreanus, they lost influence under Salome Alexandra and suffered severely at the hands of Herod. The whole power and existence of the Sadducees was bound up with the Temple cult, and on the destruction of the Temple, they disappeared.
Therefore, the origin, like that of other contemporary parties, is unknown but probably they represent a continuation of the Hasideans. Although a relatively narrow body, closed to the masses, their activity was directed to the masses whom they sought to imbue with a spirit of holiness by propagating traditional religious teaching. The gulf between the Pharisees and those ignorant of the Law or not practicing it was complete.
The Pharisees used to eat in groups and observe all the rules of purity in the same manner as the priests consuming consecrated food in the Temple. They endeavored to extend their influence over the Temple at the expense of the Sadducees, whose control there was absolute. In addition, they incorporated into the cult, folk-customs not mentioned in the bible, as the Water-Drawing Festival to the dismay of the Sadducees.
Started by the Pharisees, every day of the year, after the sacrifice was burned, an offering of wine was poured on the altar. During Sukkot, there was also a water libation (nisukh hamayim). Some have suggested that it was a folk rite, an inducement for rain made by pouring out water at the season’s onset, transformed by the rabbis into a symbolic Temple ritual.a water ritual: the Rejoicing (Simchat) at the Place of (Beit) the Water Drawing (Hashoavah). From the time King Solomon built the Temple in Jerusalem until the day it was destroyed by the Romans (with a brief interim for temporary exile to Babylonia), the can’t-miss-it event-of-the-year for Jews was the Water-Drawing Celebration. Envision streams of Jewish families—farmers, vintners, shepherds, merchants, craftspeople, and scholars—streaming in from every part of Israel, Syria, Babylonia, Egypt, and other nearby lands, converging upon Jerusalem and celebrating day and night, non-stop for eight days. The hot spot was, of course, the Temple Mount (Chabad).
The antagonism between the two parties extended to many spheres, which some scholars attribute to basic social differences . Generally, the Pharisees admitted the principle of evolution in their legal decisions, while the Sadducees were incapable of adaptation to a changing environment.
The Pharisees were priests who avoided contact with others for reasons of ritual purity, concerned about their Jewish religion and political party during this 2nd Temple Period.
Pharisees were generally lenient in their interpretations of the law, while the Sadducees clung to the letter of the written text. The Pharisees placed the nation's life within a halakhic framework expressed in the Oral Law which they regarded as no less vital than the Written Law or Torah or Bible. Their doctrine aspired to embrace the entire life of the community, touching therefore, on the theological foundations of life, questions of fate, good and evil, the immortality of the soul, and eschatology. Rabbinic Judaism holds the Oral Law to be of divine origin. The divinity and authoritativeness of the Oral Law as transmitted from God to
Rabbis of the Talmudic era-we had 2 different ones, The Jerusalem or Palestinian Talmud was completed c. 350, and the Babylonian Talmud (the more complete and authoritative) was written down c. 500, but conceived of the Oral Torah in two distinct ways. First, Rabbinic tradition saw the Oral Torah as an unbroken chain of transmission. The distinctive feature of this view was that Oral Torah was "conveyed by word of mouth and memorized." Second, the Rabbis also viewed the Oral Torah as an interpretive tradition, and not merely as memorized traditions. They saw the written Torah as containing many levels of interpretation. It was left to later generations, who were steeped in the oral tradition of interpretation, to discover those ("hidden") interpretations not revealed by Moses. Instead, Moses was obligated to impart the explanations orally to students, children, and fellow adults. It was thus forbidden to write and publish the Oral Torah; some rabbis kept private notes of their teaching, but only for their personal convenience.
Pharisees admitted Divine predestination but also man's responsibility for his deeds. In contrast to the Sadducees, they believed in life after death, the resurrection of the dead, the advent of the Messiah, and the Day of Judgment. They seemed to have two avenues for Judaism, the exact same condition of many Jews of today.
Not all Pharisees lived up to their high principals, and the Talmud itself lists 7 hypocritical types: nevertheless, in reality they were far removed from the derogatory pictures from other competitive religions. Pharisees were responsible for strengthening morality and introducing the elasticity which enabled Judaism to withstand its subsequent tribulations; the movement was continued in the stream of historic Judaism. It seems that Pharisee ideas rule today's Judaism. Hillel (1st century BCE) wrote the Golden Rule, Don't do to people what you wouldn't want done to you, all the rest is commentary.
Resource:
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1971019/jewish/The-Joyous-Water-Drawing-Ceremony.htm
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