Rabbinic Judaism

The origins of Judaism may be located as far back as the Exile or as far forward as the writing down of the Mishnah (c. 200 ce) but its essential character as a world religion was forged, like that of Christianity, in the crisis of the first century.

The religious, cultural and political disintegration described at the beginning of this chapter makes it impossible to speak of Judaism as a unified entity before the Jewish War of 66-70 ce. But with the disappearance of the last visible expressions of Israel’s nationhood, the Temple and the Sanhedrin, all serious rivals to the triumph of Pharisaism were removed, and that tradition emerged as the sole source of continuity and reconstruction.

Enquiry into this crucial period of Judaism is hampered by similar problems in the extent and nature of the surviving historical evidence as those affecting research into Christian origins. The works of Josephus, The Jewish War (published«:. 77 ce) and the Antiquities (c. 94ce), give a full account of the period 66-70 and its background in earlier Jewish history and culture, but they do not cover the post-war period, and are biased towards Rome. Interest in the continuing history of Israel survived only in marginal, apocalyptic works such as 2 Esdras and the Apocalypse of Baruch which were later repudiated and are extant only in translation. The evidence for Rabbinic Judaism reaches us through much later sources which lack a chronological framework. They are of two kinds: oral law (lialachah) codified in the Mishnah and expanded with commentary later into the two versions of the Talmud; and scriptural exegesis (haggadah) contained in a series of expositions of the Hebrew Bible known as Midrashim. The dangers of anachronism and idealisation are thus very great; critical research can provide only a tentative outline of the historical and theological development of Rabbinic Judaism.

It may be helpful to focus attention on one particular figure, who was in several respects Judaism’s equivalent of Paul, namely Rabbi Jochanan ben Zakkai. Born at roughly the same time, he was the youngest and most promising of the pupils of Hillel. He inherited from his teacher a lasting aversion to violence as the solution to Israel’s plight. Between 20 and 40 ce, he lived in semi-retirement in Galilee, supporting his wife and child, rarely consulted on legal matters and with only one recorded pupil, the healer and sage Haninah ben Dosa. He claimed, as he left, that ‘Galilee hated Torah’; its religion was too enthusiastic and unscholarly for his taste. He returned to Jerusalem to become the leading spokesman of Pharisaism against the corruption of the Temple establishment, which he, like Jesus of Nazareth, saw as a threat to its very survival. In this more successful period of his career, he attracted many ordinary priests into the Pharisaic movement, which was to prove an important factor in broadening its base of support later. Eventually, he succeeded Gamaliel I, as joint leader with the latter’s son of the Hillelite school, and he numbered among his disciples five of the most influential teachers of the next generation. He abandoned Jerusalem before the fall of the Temple, and took refuge in the town ofjamnia (Yavneh) on the coastal plain to the west of the city, and with the permission of Vespasian set up a new school which quickly became the centre of restoration. After a brief but formative period of leadership, he stepped down in favour of the more forceful personality of Gamaliel II, and ended his long life in a small Judean village, revered by many as the one light in the choas and madness of Zealotism, as a forceful opponent, a ‘mighty hammer’, against the Sadducees, and as the pillar of Judaism renewed in its obedience to Torah.

As Pharisaism at Jamnia assumed responsibility for Israel as a whole, it had first to put its own house in order. Disagreements between the schools of Hillel and Shammai had from the early decades of the century weakened the movement; these were now reconciled or resolved, with the less stringent and nationalist opinions of the former often prevailing.

The earliest attempts were made to bring order into the varied judgements of legal experts by arranging them into standard thematic groups. The authority of oral law was put beyond question by tracing it back through Ezra and the Prophets to Moses himself. The Pharisaic movement, which had earlier been characterised by prominent lay participation, became ‘clericalised’ in a manner comparable to that in contemporary Christianity. The courtesy title ‘rabbi’ was granted as an official designation to all qualified legal scholars; they were appointed to their office by a rite of ordination, the laying on of hands. The successors of Jochanan even assumed the title Nasi (patriarch or president).

From Jamnia, the jurisdiction of the rabbis was extended to cover all Jews, wherever they lived. Since the destruction of the Temple, Palestine was itself becoming part of the Diaspora. There was no longer any logical ground for making the distinction. All Israel now Eved in exile. This gradually had the effect of reintegrating the Hellenistic and Palestinian forms ofjewish thought. Less emphasis began to be placed on the themes of election and covenant, and more on those of creation and universal moral obligation. But, at the same time, other trends in Hellenistic Judaism, the philosophical syncretism and allegorism of Philo for example, were firmly rejected, and his works survive only because Christians took an interest in them. The Septuagint translation into Greek of the Hebrew Scriptures, used by Philo and taken over by the Church, was edipsed by a more literal Greek translation better fitted to the precise rules of textual interpretation which were being developed. The boundaries around the threefold Jewish canon, the Law, the Prophets and the Writings, were marked out more clearly over against opposing Sadducean and Hellenistic (chiefly Christian) views.

In some respects, then, Rabbinic Judaism was inclusive and comprehensive. It synthesised scribal teaching into a common stream of tradition, and bridged the gap between Palestine and the Diaspora.

But it also consohdated its position by reducing the variety of permitted views and by excluding deviations from them. In particular, it defined itself in conscious opposition to Christianity, just as the Church did in relation to the Synagogue. At Jamnia, a curse against Nazarenes and heretics was inserted into the liturgy, so that any remaining Jewish Christians in the Synagogue could be rooted out. Whatever else one might be inclined to beheve about Israel’s hoped-for Messiah, the opinion that he had already arrived with the coming of Jesus was no longer to be tolerated. At a later period, during the religious persecutions under Trajan, some eminent rabbis were censured and banned merely for showing sympathy for suffering Christians. An anti-Christian motive may also he behind the change of emphasis in Jewish spirituality from the Decalogue, appealed to frequently by the Church against the elaborations of oral law, to the Shema with its vigorous insistence on monotheism.

The rabbis at Jamnia were faced with an even more important task than the integration of their own tradition and its differentiation from Christianity; they had to show that the Torah alone was sufficient to preserve the faith of Israel without the support of Temple worship and without even the pretence of political independence. Jochanan ben Zakkai had foreseen the destruction of the Temple, but when vindicated, he could not simply applaud its passing as the judgement of God upon Israel’s disobedience to Torah. That would have been to invite unfavourable comparison with the patriotism of those who had given their lives in its defence. Moreover, the Temple occupied too central a place in the Torah for it to be simply dispensed with. Confronted with this dilemma, Rabbinic Judaism adopted a paradoxical stance. It proceeded on the one hand to elaborate in great detail the rules for the conduct of Temple worship, and on the other hand to propose practical alternatives to their implementation.

The strange obsession with cultic rules has often been interpreted as a great act of faith in the future, implying that one day the Temple will be rebuilt. But it could equally be seen as a retreat from hard reality into the abstract beauty of a legal system developed for its own sake. Rabbinic judgements even on non-cultic matters were often delivered ‘in remembrance of the Temple’; the motive of piety towards the past was at least as important as that of hope towards the future.

Many Jews reacted to the loss of the Temple with penitence and fasting. So much so that the rabbis began to counsel moderation in the use of ascetic practices. Excessive sorrow would only exaggerate the importance of what had been lost and make it appear irreplaceable. They preferred to promote the pious duties of the Synagogue, prayer, fasting and especially almsgiving, as a socially and religiously more positive replacement for the discontinued offerings in the Temple. ‘1 desire mercy not sacrifice’ (Hos. 6:6) was a favourite text for the rabbis, as it was for post-apostolic Christianity (Matt. 9:13). Israel had been along this path before. In the Babylonian Exile it had to cope with the same problem. The difference in the Rabbinic response to the destruction of the Second Temple was that it established permanent practical substitutes for the Temple cult in the worship of the Synagogue, and particularly in the study of Torah and in the deeds of mercy.

The attitude of Rabbinic Judaism towards the political vacuum created by the defeat of 70 ce was as ambivalent as its attitude to the Temple. The Jamnia Academy reserved to itself full liturgical authority, for example in relation to the calendar, and its composition of 72 scholars consciously reflected that of the old Jerusalem Sanhedrin, but it did not attempt to exercise the political powers of that body or to have the High Priesthood restored. The possibility was at first left open that by patience and

The First-Century Crisis: Christian Origins co-operation with Rome, Israel might at some future date recover the freedom it had lost.

Consistently, Jochanan warned against messianic speculation and enthusiasm: ‘If you have a sapling in your hand,’ he is reported to have said, ‘when they tell you the Messiah has come, plant it first and (when it has grown into a tree) only then go out to meet him.’ But it took more than this to dislodge eschatological expectation from its place in first-century Jewish thought. The apocalypses of Ezra and Baruch mentioned above are evidence for its persistent hold on the imagination, despite the object lesson in its impracticality so recently given. In 115-17 ce, a widespread revolt broke out among Diaspora Jews, in support of a messianic pretender from Cyrene, but it did not touch Palestine. However, when enough time had elapsed for the trees to grow again, messianic activism flourished briefly, before it was finally eradicated in Bar Kochba’s rebellion of 132-5 ce. Rabbinism, in the person of Akiva, endorsed his claim to Messiahship and suffered the consequences, when that humble scholar and exegete was martyred with the words of the Shema on his dying lips. In the heroism of that act, Rabbinic Judaism expunged any taint of cowardice attaching to the generation of Jamnia; but equally, in its patent futility, it abandoned all earthly means to secure the advent of the promised Messiah. Eschatology was subordinated to Law in Judaism, just as it was subordinated to Christology in post-apostolic Christianity. Only if Israel repented and obeyed Torah perfectly, would Messiah come. That possibility was in principle always near; one or two sabbaths properly observed would suffice to bring it about. But in practice it was always far off and receding. The Scriptures contained no revelation about the course of future history for Israel; God had revised the programme and all previous dates for the End had expired. The matter now rested solely on obedience to the scriptural summons to repentance and good works. As Jochanan ben Zakkai said: ‘Happy are you, O Israel! When you obey the will of God, then no nation or race can rule over you!’ In Torah there was both an explanation of why the End was delayed, and also the possibility of a partial realisation of the freedom it promised.

The response of Rabbinic Judaism to the crisis of the first century was to mobilise the resources of the Synagogue and Pharisaic tradition to fill the gaps left by the destruction ofjerusalem and Israel’s life as a nation. The past could not of course be forgotten. Idealised blueprints of Temple and Sanhedrin were reverently preserved. The glories of Israel’s history were permanently fixed in a closed canon of scripture. But the way forward into the future was determined by the practical ordering of one’s domestic concerns in accordance with Torah. Through legal and spiritual exegesis of Scripture, clear answers could be given to all questions of immediate relevance. The dubious speculations of philosophy, mysticism or apocalyptic were idle, if not positively dangerous, and were suppressed. True religion had to do with the study of Torah, the development of moral character and with the values of family life. Within its forced limitations,

Rabbinic Judaism followed that definition of the whole duty of man provided by the prophet Micah (6:8): ‘What does the Lord require of you, but to do justice and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God?’

Rabbinic Judaism

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