The period covered in this chapter, from the death of Herod the Great, King ofthejews, in 4 âñå to the end of the secondjewish war with Rome in 135 ce, is a period of lingering and terminal crisis in the history of Israel

Within it and from it arose two of the world’s religions, Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism. Both had, in a sense, foreseen what was to come; and both responded in different ways to the same basic problem, of how a people who believed themselves to be specially chosen by God could live with a past but with no earthly future.

A few days before his death, Herod altered his will. He nominated Archelaus to the throne, the son most like his father in brutality, but ensured that even in the grave he would not be outshone by making provision for other possible claimants, his sons Herod Antipas and Philip. Amid threatened rebellion in Palestine, the Roman Emperor on appeal partitioned the kingdom between them. The northern territories were secure, but in Judea, Archelaus lasted only ten years. At the request of the Jews themselves, Rome deposed him and annexed his territory to the Empire as a third-rate and underfunded province.

The tax census which followed sparked off a new movement of uncompromising opposition. The rebellion of Judas in 6 ce, though unsuccessful, was to inspire a succession ofZealot uprisings. From a Roman perspective, the Judean problem at first appeared settled. ‘Under Tiberius, all was quiet’ commented one historian. But the local perception was rather different. Pontius Pilate, the fifth and one of the longer serving prefects in charge of the province, deliberately offended Jewish scruples by a series of provocative acts. Later in 40 ce the ill-fated Emperor Caligula himself threatened to desecrate the Temple. The plan was foiled by his assassination, but it painfully reawakened old memories from the Maccabean period, ‘the abomination of desolation standing where it ought not’. After a brief, vain attempt at restoration of a Jewish monarchy, soon it was back to business as usual, a quick succession of Roman governors, quisling hierarchs and opportunist revolutionaries.

Within this political crisis, other disintegrating fac­tors were at work. The period was marked by extensive inroads of Greek culture into Palestine. New cities modelled on Greek lines with theatres and gymnasia, mixed races and mores, were established. The very precincts of the Temple reflected the vogue in Hellenistic architecture. The rural poor became cultural aliens in their own country. Confiscations of property and the creation of large estates owned by absentee landlords drove the surplus population to emigration, vagrancy or brigandage. The economic problems were compounded by the increasing burden of taxation and periodic natural disasters like famine and epidemic.

Not even Israel’s religious institutions could supply the element of cohesion needed in this situation, for they too were the object of controversy and division. The Jerusalem Temple was run as a profitable business for the benefit of a small group of families and their clients. Its corruption was such that some Jews on conscientious grounds abandoned the practices of pilgrimage and sacrifice, while others, both in Palestine and in the Diaspora, did so for simple economic reasons.

The scribes, the intelligentsia who constituted the other half of the Jewish Senate, attempted to apply the Law to changing circumstances. For this they appealed to authoritative oral tradition, traced back to Moses himself and expounded in the Jerusalem legal academies by different teachers who often disagreed sharply among themselves. Many scribes were attracted into the party of the Pharisees, a strict, separatist movement concerned with such matters as purity, tithing and Sabbath obedience. Once more active politically, they had retreated into quietism and the abandonment to divine providence. For them the focus of religion was not so much the Temple as the local synagogues. But the moralistic rigour of their teaching drove a wedge between the pious and ordinary folk.

In addition to Sadducees and Pharisees, there were other distinguishable sects in first-century Palestine. The Qumran settlement and its library known as the Dead Sea Scrolls probably belonged to a more widespread Essene movement, practising celibacy and ritual washing. Its ideology was to return to the wilderness to recapture the purity of Israel’s faith. They were more prophetic and mystical in temperament than the Pharisees, producing new sacred literature of their own as well as comment­ing on the Scriptures. Alongside monastic communities like Qumran, there may have been individual hermits and prophets who followed the Essene way, among them perhaps John the Baptist. Their stance on the political question was ambiguous and could easily be construed as incitement to rebellion and active involvement. As the prospect of all-out war loomed in the sixties, the Zealots emerged as a further distinct party, dedicated to repossession of the land.

Thus, Jewish religious institutions, the Temple and the priesthood, the scribes, the law and the synagogue, the reawakening of prophecy, and the ideology of wilderness and land, were disparate factors emphasised differently by competing sects, Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes and Zealots, as the Jewish historian Josephus analyses them. They lacked a coherent synthesis and were unable to provide the religious unity needed to combat the crisis of political, cultural and social disintegration. This is the matrix in which Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism were born.