The Importance of the Second Temple Judaism to Understanding the New Testament
By Khen Lim
Introduction
In this story, we discover that a village was rapidly
flooding as the nearby river breaks its bunds. Water was flowing into the
village so quickly that many people resorted to either beating a hasty retreat
to higher lands or remaining put where they climbed trees or worked themselves
to the roofs. One of them was a person who decided to go into prayer and asked
God to save him from being drowned. In other words, he was looking for a
miracle.
As he perched himself on the rooftop of a house, the
flood level slowly rose. Time was running out but he remained faithful,
trusting that God would answer him. Out of the blue, a boat arrived at his
rooftop and as others began to board, he decided against it. He recognised the
person manning the boat and recalled how he disliked his behaviour and detested
the way he conducted himself. So he waved the boat away, confident that the
boat wasn’t sent by God.
Twenty minutes later, the flood level was now past the
top of the window frames. In less than two hours, it would reach the roofline.
Around the corner, another boat already with passengers arrived. There was
still room for him to climb onboard but he found the boat dirty and felt
uncomfortable with some of the passengers. He recognised them from the village
up the hillock, a community he found unfriendly to him. So even though there
was one seat ready for him to take, he refused the offer.
Another boat would come by and he would find something
else wrong with it. Yet another would come and there would be yet another
reason not to go with them. Inevitably there was nowhere to run. The flood
engulfed all the rooftops in the village and since he couldn’t swim, he
drowned.
This is not an original story but nonetheless, it’s a useful one to demonstrate how sometimes we can be so blind that we cannot recognise God coming to our rescue even as we pray for Him to help. He can come and be right in front of us and we still don’t see or recognise Him. Very appropriately then, Jesus says in Mark 8:18 (ISV), “Do you have eyes but fail to see? Do you have ears but fail to hear?”
As He said
in Luke 5:31, the Son of God came to heal those who are sick but then all were
found in need. We are all in a desperate position to be saved from all the ills
around us. The Israelites knew that. The Pharisees, Sadducees and every Jew
neither saw nor realised Jesus’ purpose. All they saw was someone interfering,
irritating and ruining their authoritarian control over the people. And for
that, they decided He had to pay with His life.
The period
of the New Testament was not a peaceful or quiet one. Set against the backdrop
of centuries of power struggles and shifts, the Jews constantly found
themselves in the cauldron of fire, looking desperately for the Messiah to save
them but despite whatever Jesus did to reveal Himself to them, those in power
within the Sanhedrin were too blind and deaf to understand the truth that He
brought.
The time frame and setting
The
narrative is set in the Second Temple Period, which according to Kostenberger
et al (2009),1 is technically the same as the Intertestamental
Period. It appears, accordingly, that the latter is the more popular term today
when referencing this era but for purposes of expediency, the term ‘Second
Temple Period’ is preferred herein.
In
approximate terms, we refer to the time period covered by the end of the Old
and the end of the New Testaments. It is the time in which nearly all the New
Testament events took place. Kostenberger et al (ibid) terms this period as
from the beginning of the Second Temple built by Zerubbabel in 515BC to its
eventual destruction by the Romans in 70AD. Within this time frame is also the
all-important period encompassing Jesus’ birth, childhood, ministry, His death
on the cross and His resurrection three days later, not forgetting the
resulting emergence of the Early Church.
Here’s a
broad look at the timeline for that period set against the times in which the
various books of the New Testament were written:
Timeline
of the Second Temple Period #1
* 167BC – 63AD
Timeline of the Second Temple Period #2
Take
note that the marked years for the recorded events in the chart are
approximations only. Different biblical experts appear to have drawn their own
conclusions for many of these events and the variances can sometimes be quite
dramatic and for certain others, fairly congruent or marginally different.
The Second
Temple Period is best defined by a few characteristics. Firstly revelations
from prophetically mediated divinations were absent. Those belonged to the Old
Testament era but here the paucity is obvious. God, it seems, had decided to
lay low but it turned out to be “anything but quiet” (Kostenberger et al,
ibid).
In its
place was the new Greek social dynamic inspired by the far-reaching conquests
of Alexander the Great and following his death, was further consolidated by Antiochus
Epiphanes including Herod. The Greek medium became the lingua franca of the
time, spreading across to Palestine, Jerusalem and all the way throughout the
Roman Empire.
It was a
radically different time to the Davidic era to which the Jews would remember fondly.
Those were days of national pride, conquests and their enemies remembered them
with fear. The Jews were powerful in many ways and were an indomitable force.
In the Second Temple Period, all that changed. Inspired prophets that were so
much of the Jewish traditional fabric had ceased to speak. World military
powers had shifted from the East to the West. And along with that, the winds of
change were sweeping through Israel like a proverbial hurricane.
For the
Israelites, troubles abounded and so were their hardship, turmoil and
frustration. From Babylon to Medo-Persian empires, Daniel had foretold the string
of Jewish tragedies that later included the Macedonian conquest by Alexander the
Great before his own empire went four ways, of which the most relevant for the
Jews were the Seleucids.
Map of Babylonian, Mede and Persian Empires
Image
Source: bible-history.com
Then Rome
came into the picture – almost by accident. As Jewish infighting ensued, Rome
was asked to step in and intervene. Pompey and his army were strategically well
placed to exploit this power vacuum and they swept into power, installing Herod
the Great in 40BC as the client King, answerable to the authorities in Rome.
Interestingly Herod signalled the end of the Jacobean covenant line since he
was a descendant of Esau. Interestingly this fact did not appear to be apparent
to the Jews who were very attached to the Davidic royalty lineage that came
from this line.
In the
meantime, Herod had also sacked the temple of its high priests to signal an end
to the sacred Aaronic tradition. In their place, he selected those who would be
in compliance with him and hence, the Roman authorities. With all of these in
place, control of Jewish religious affairs was firmly in his hands as he
attempted to put the local population under his grip.
The eviction
of the traditional high priests was not an isolated incident either. Earlier in
170BC during the Seleucid Period, Antiochus Epiphanes had plundered the temple
of its wealth and desecrated it to the horror of the Jews. Three years later
(167BC), he ordered the Torah to be destroyed and plotted a wide-scale
Hellenisation of the Jewish community. In subjugating Jewish society, he was
also intent on transforming it and to do that, he tried to destroy as much of
the Jewish culture as possible.
Where he
couldn’t, he outlawed whatever remnants that remained. Incomparable to his
predecessors, Antiochus’ desecration of the temple went to an all-time low when
he brought pigs into its hallowed sanctums. Knowingly an unclean animal, he
made broth out of it and splashed it everywhere within the interior of the
temple. And if that wasn’t enough, he brought in statues of Grecian gods and various
idols, much to the dismay of the Jews.
The Foreign Occupation of Israel
Notes:
Dates can vary depending on information source
With the
temple in complete shambolic ruins (literally and figuratively speaking), worship
and the reading of the Torah had shifted to synagogues. If there ever was a
turning point in the Second Temple Period, it has to be at this point. The
Roman oppression under Herod was so stifling that influential groups within
Jewish society had recognised and remembered the brief but successful Hasmonean
Dynasty (135BC to 63BC). Past leaders from that era such as Judas Maccabeus had
brought pride back to the Jews.
The
triumphant tales from the Maccabees would have fuelled the desire to once again
free themselves from the bondage of territorial occupation. From this point,
the leading edge of Jewish society began to carve out niches for five clear
groups. Each of these had their own ways of looking at the Jewish future. Each
believed in their own approaches to wrestle back their land from foreign
colonisation. Each interpreted the Messianic vision in ways that were
self-beneficial. These five were the Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Herodians
and the Zealots but more about them later.
A socio-political cauldron
3D Map of Israel During the New Testament Period
Image
Source: bibleplaces.com (arrows and labels added by author)
With the
New Testament firmly part of the Second Temple Period, the political complexion
was significant and telling. As the Maccabees had managed to turn things
around, there were glimmers of hope, which then turned Palestine and Jerusalem
into hotbeds for political insurrections. The mood for change was palpable as
people were crying to have their Promised Land returned to them. This mood
drove Israel to split their influences five ways. Each of these ways was vested
in self-interests concerning the political and socio-cultural ideals.
Judaistic
factionalism, as we now see it, offers no unified messianic definition.2
From one faction to the next, the concept of the Messiah was individually
tailored as a ‘rescue package’ that served self-interests. The only common
thread through the disparate concepts was that everyone was looking to physical
liberation from foreign oppression. Centuries of living under the shadows of
other powers had obviously shaped the way these factions regarded Messianism.
All the same, the common thread was overshadowed by different deliverances that
likely had their origins in folklore but nonetheless, all of them were
“divergent eschatological views.”3 From what we know, these
divergent views included the following:
-
A direct and defiant confrontation with the Romans,
forcing a return to authoritative ruling power to the Jews (Aslan, ibid)4
-
The emergence of a divinely despatched apocalyptic
force to destroy the prevailing world order and deliver the much-anticipated
utopian paradise (Aslan, ibid)5
-
The arrival of the Messiah who would come as King of
the Jews to rule over all kingdoms
-
The arrival of the Messiah who would come as High
Priest
-
Others
All of
these were in stark contrast to the Messianic ideal envisioned by David. Back
then was a single unified interpretation. In fact, in Jewish eschatology, the
term Messiah (mashiach) was used to
refer to a “future Jewish king from the Davidic line” and one who would be
anointed with “holy anointing oil.” He would rule the Jews through the
Messianic Age.6 With the growing factional powers, there developed a
rash of Messianic ideas plus a range of repressive conditions for the average
Jew.
To
understand the politically explosiveness of the situation, let’s see how the
powerful factions lined up then:
Pharisees
The Pharisees were the most infamous of the major
groups throughout the New Testament but they were also the most influential. As
Hebrew nationalists, they vehemently opposed the encroaching Hellenisation, which
placed them in direct conflict with the other major group, the Sadducees who
were pro-liberal in the Hellenic ideas and who sought to diminish the role of
Jewish culture. Hence the Pharisees were commonly regarded as bastions of the
Mosaic laws.
Meaning ‘to
separate,’ the name Pharisee was therefore synonymous with ‘separatists.’
The Pharisees dedicated themselves to the opposition of all foreign occupations
and to the resistance of external influences over the Jewish populace. For all
intents and purposes, the Pharisees were probably better known for their
serious conduct of orthopraxia7 and with that, they became undisputed
experts in creating convoluted ‘hedges’ around the written codes of Jewish law.
Of the many examples, perhaps the best known was their interpretation of the
Shabat (Sabbath), which, as the Gospels recorded, earned wrathful lessons from
Jesus (Mk 2:23-28, Mt 12:1-8, Lk 6:1-5).
While their separatist ideals made the Pharisees
pro-nationalistic, it is also important to view that within the legalistic
frame where their unbendable dogma became repressive against the people. They
controlled the people through codified religious laws that provided serious
contradictions. Religiously speaking, they were hypocritical – on the one hand,
they mastered the art of an outer veneer of the law but from within, they
committed violations of the very spirit of it.
The ultimate Pharisaic concept of Messianism is the
anticipation of the invincible warrior who would pulverise the Roman oppression
(Douglas et al, 2011)8 from which the Jews would all be immediately
emancipated from. The keyword here is ‘immediately,’ which explains the reason
behind their rejection of Jesus and opposition to His views (Jn 18:36).
Sadducees
Founded on their pan-Greco influence, the Sadducees
were politically the most formidable of the Jewish factions. While the
Pharisees portrayed a religious façade, the Sadducees were inwardly and
outwardly rationalists who were more liberal minded than any other group,
preferring to abandon the Pharisees’ strict legal interpretations and the
Essenes’ beliefs in the supernatural. For that matter, they also eschewed any
concept of the afterlife or meaningful divine intervention. They might not have
minded the written law but the Sadducees placed an inordinate degree of
importance on the liberal concept of the free will ideal.
As such, the Sadducees differed from the others in
embracing not just materialism but also natural explanations of the world in
contrast to the spiritual approach of the Pharisees and the more
ascetically-minded Essenes. In particular, their deeply secular nature placed
them at direct odds with Jesus’ Messianic claims. For example their indignant
response followed after the children in the temple had referred to Jesus as
‘Son of David’ (Mt 21:15-16).
Free from strict religious compliances, the Sadducees
leaned on its political connections with the Roman authorities. This was a
staple relationship and as such, stability was derived from handling all
political matters with sensitivity; in other words, it was important for them
not to rock the boat with the Romans (Douglas et al, ibid).9 That
meant that any form of Messianic revolts would not have gone down very well
with the Sadducees (Douglas et al, ibid).10 And herein laid the
difference in how one responded to Jesus – wherein the Pharisees accused Jesus
of blasphemy against God, the Sadducees told the Romans that He was a threat to
their national security. This difference underscored how they would bypass
whatever Mosaic laws to rid themselves of their enemies. Going to the Romans
spoke volumes of how one was cosseted in the other’s palm.
From the public view, the Sadducees were probably
better known for usurping the rights to the role of the high priests. Long the
traditional mainstay of the Aaronic priesthood line, they had now made it theirs
to control, echoing what Antiochus Epiphanes did not too long ago. Having
wrestled the role, the Sadducees went on to use their own powerful priests with
political overtones.
Essenes
Of the three main factions, the Essenes were arguably the
least known. This was understandable as they were also the most reclusive,
choosing to alienate themselves from the mainstream Jewish community. They made
this choice once they realised they could not cohabit with the Pharisees and
Sadducees. The corrupt nature of the two had simply put an end to any
relationships they might have had up to that point.
The Essenes lived in readiness to usher in the
apocalyptic age as they firmly believed in the End Time theology (Elwell, 2001).11
They basically lived a life of asceticism, with many practising celibacy and
conducting themselves in strict piety (Douglas et al, ibid).12 They
governed their own communities in a reclusive manner and exacted high demands
on their own in terms of the lifestyle they were expected to adopt.
Like the others, the Essenes interpret their own
version of the Messiah with one that has a dual nature (Aslan, ibid).13
This duality defined two Messiahs – one who would come as the ultimate Priest
and another who would arrive as the King of all kingdoms. For them, a single
solitary Messiah was not on the cards.
Perhaps the most important role that the Qumran-based
Essenes have played so far is their connection to the Dead Sea Scrolls that
were discovered between 1946 and 1956. These were a collection of different
texts that were of major historical, religious and cultural significance. It
has been argued by some that these scrolls had originated from the Essenes’
library but there’s no proof of this.
Herodians
The Herodians are actually documented in Galilee and
also later on in Jerusalem across several parts of the New Testament, notably
Mark (3:6, 8:15, 12:13), Matthew (22:16), Luke (13:32-33) and also Acts (4:27).
And interestingly, they were often mentioned in conjunction with the Pharisees,
perhaps to suggest a political collusion of sorts.
For example, in Mark 3:6, it was the Pharisees who
initiated the plot against Jesus, following His remarks about the Sabbath and
then the Herodians were brought in to complete the complicity and fulfil the conspiracy.
In 8:15, Jesus recognised the evil alliance between the Pharisees and the
Herodians, saying, “Watch out! Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the
leaven of Herod.”
While they may not be as recognisable a sect as the
Pharisees and Sadducees, the Herodians were distinct in their allegiance, as a political
party, to Herod the Great and his dynasty. In their partiality to Herod, their
adherents made astonishing claims that, the Herodian Dynasty was the
realisation of Jewish theocracy. This claim could have been made on the account
of the group wanting to enlarge its popularity and hence drive forth its
political inertia. However saying this had another implication; that, Herod
himself was therefore the Messiah (Pseudo-Tertullian in Adversis Omnes Haereses).
Interestingly it was said that Paul could have been a
Herodian himself – an argument put forward by none other than Josephus in
Antiquities (Book XX, Chapter 9:4) who apparently identified him as ‘Saulus,’ a
“kinsman of Agrippa.” This may also be scripturally supported in Rom 16:11
where Paul had cited, “Greet Herodian, my kinsman” but admittedly we cannot be
sure about this.
Zealots
The term ‘zealots’ identifies a collective of
different political adversaries, basically thrown in for the single common
purpose of acting, as the online-based Encyclopaedia Britannica suggests,
against the Roman authorities (Britannica, 2015).14 The reference
source cited the Zealots as an “aggressive political party”15 who,
amongst the extremists, would resort to “terrorism and assassination”16
to achieve their aims. They would go as far as to despise any Jews for seeking
peaceful accord and conciliation with the Romans.
The historian Josephus had referred to the Zealots,
whom he originally coined the name, as the “fourth Jewish philosophy” founded
by Judas the Galilean and Zadok the Pharisee. He linked public acts of defiance
and trouble such as the burning of the Temple to this group. However it must be
noted that much of what we know of the Zealots came from Josephus since he was
the only source to mention them although to be fair, Simon the Zealot was among
Jesus’ disciples as well.
Unlike the two major sects, the Zealots were a hodgepodge
amalgam of rebel factions.17 By encompassing different militias,
there was little to suggest a single collective unity, which is why it was not
surprising that there were considerable infighting amongst them (Scott Jr,
ibid).18 As a loose collection of revolutionary hotheads, the
Zealots were religious and nationalistic at the same time, dabbling in military
rebellion while maintaining a piety for the Torah. Through this unholy alliance
of two opposites, the Zealots had little trouble imagining a Messiah with a
militaristic accent, one with revolutionary ideals whose primacy was to
violently overthrow all anti-Jew oppressors who crossed their path (Scott Jr,
ibid).19
Despite the Zealots appearing to share Jesus’ view of
the kingdom of God (Aslan, ibid),20 it was superficial. In contrast
to the militaristic standpoint, Jesus focused God’s relationship with man to
bring a very different form to the kingdom ideal where He emphasised the
spiritual (Jn 18:36), cosmological (Mk 9:47, Lk 13:28-29), utopian (Lk 6:20,
7:28) and the mysterious (Lk 8:10, 13:20, 17:20, Jn 3:3). These differences became
apparent once they understood that Jesus had to die for the sins of the world.
Of the different elements within the Zealots, perhaps the
most controversial and notorious were the Sicarii that sprang up around the
time of Felix the procurator (52AD to 60AD). Known not only for their banditry,
the Sicarii – as the Latin origin of the name indicates – had a preference for
using knives in crowded marketplaces to kill. According to Josephus, these were
brigands whose rebellion against Rome was robbing the wealthy who supported
Rome. They also practised assassinations out in the open, beginning with
Jonathan the high priest and were probably even better known for their siege of
the Masada until 73AD.
In fact there is a theory to suggest that Jesus’
betrayer Judas was a member of the Sicarii by etymological semblance of his
name ‘Iscariot’ although the chronological conflicts might not hold water here.
However, if that was true, there would be interesting speculations as to Judas’
motives for betraying Jesus.
Jesus’ views run aground
Herod’s Temple (aka Second Temple or Temple of Jerusalem)
Image Source: kneelatthecross.com
The tension
between these factious sects and what Jesus represented became evident once His
ministry began in earnest. The Messianic expectations set them all apart and
laid the groundwork for an explosive ending. Some of the outstanding factors
behind this powder keg situation were the following:
-
The sects
were incapable of seeing eye-to-eye with one another
The tussle took
on political overtones because all of them not only had different ideas but
doctrinally, they were all in opposition also.
-
Each sect
was indifferent to Jesus’ message
Inevitably their
own ideals did not match up with what Jesus had said. As He said in His
parables, they were deaf and blind to Him.
-
Jesus was
not the Messiah the sects had envisioned
He came in
peace but they wanted someone who would deliver them militaristically by trading
blows with and eventually overthrowing the Romans.
-
Jesus was
not moving at the pace that they demanded
Most of the
sects had the notion that deliverance was going to be immediate, swift and
decisive. Having tasted what the Maccabees did in their recent history, the
desire was for inflicting a massive strike that would cause the Romans to
recoil and retreat.
-
Jesus had
no time for the legalistic laws that crowded out the Jews
The stifling
conduct of these laws alienated Him from the Pharisees, a powerful sect that
had the backing of the Sanhedrin and just this fact alone fuelled their anger
leading to the plotting of His demise.
-
None of the
sects agreed that Jesus was their ideal of an immediate solution
After
centuries of subjugation, it is reasonable to imagine the growing frustration
at being occupied and repressed. The Jews were crying out for immediacy;
someone who would do to the Romans the way Moses did to the Egyptians.
Besides all
these, here were also other prickly issues that emerged:
-
Jesus posed
a serious threat to national security
More to the
point, the Sadducees viewed Jesus as a wedge in the delicate nature of the
political relationship with Rome. With Jesus in their way, the next step could
be riots and all forms of public unrest. If that was the case, the Sadducees
faced the real risk of withering Roman political support, which would then
adversely affect their standing in the Jewish community.
-
Jesus was
too controversial for them to handle
Not
surprisingly, Jesus’ perception of the Mosaic Law did not go down well
especially with the Pharisees. He called them evil and hypocritical. He spoke
of His resurrection, that He would die and be risen again, which was impossible
for them to understand, let alone accept. When they plotted to undermine His
teachings, Jesus simply turned around and responded in a way that was
humiliating to them.
-
Jesus was
considered a treasonous and seditious traitor of the highest degree
The
Sadducees did not view Jesus as a blasphemer. The way they manoeuvred the
situation, He became more of a Roman problem. With Him, the Sadducees painted a
picture of Someone who would destabilise the Jews, wreck the peace and bring
mayhem to the authorities.
-
The
Pharisees made Him out to be a heretic with His divine proclamations
While the
Sadducees took the political road to corner Jesus, the Pharisees were angling
from the religious perspective. They accused Him of heresy as He proclaimed
Himself the Son of God (Lev 24:16). His claim of God being human was a serious
breach of Levitican traditions and His rhetoric about the destruction of the
temple and the subsequent raising in three days were too much for them to
ignore.
-
The Zealots
rejected Jesus’ peaceful designs and kingdom teachings
Jesus’
peaceful approach did not work well with the Zealots who were looking for a
warring leader, capable of leading armies to evict the Roman oppressors. With
no interest in peace, they found Jesus to be the antithesis of all they had
hoped for. Perhaps the biggest disappointment for the Zealots was when Jesus
chose to ride into Jerusalem on a donkey (Mt 21:1-7) – no quite the vision of a
warrior in the making. The reception was fit for a king. The coats and palm
leaves laid on His path might have left an impression of a Messianic hero but
the reality was likely not what the Zealots were pining for.
The
underlying torrents for change had been in place for centuries. From one
foreign conquest to the next, the Israelites were occupied, controlled and oppressed.
Feelings of enmity developed over the ages, fomenting into a whole multitude of
ideas to rid themselves of the colonialists. In the time of the Second Temple Period
that coincided with the New Testament, that would be the Romans. Once they
dealt swiftly and convincingly with them, they would have an easier time
deciding what to do with Herod.
The
socio-political cauldron that the Israelites found themselves in had become a
tinderbox. Capable of catching fire anytime, the dynamic in the Jewish
community was just waiting to incinerate. Jesus came at a time when all of
these were slowly coming to a head. Having that said, just being in the wrong
place and the wrong time would have accelerated the problem and in quick time, He
manifested Himself as the single most significant socio-political threat to not
just the Jewish authorities but also the aristocracy whose deeply-lined pockets
were sewn in the interests of their Roman rulers. The Gospels record cases of
Jewish dissension and rejection in Matthew 21:1-10 and 27:11-26 and Paul also
documents them in Romans 11:7 (Scott Jr, ibid).21
Given the circumstances
and the underlying Messianic views, the rejection of Jesus was unavoidable and
inevitable. All of them would have taken Jesus to task and then gotten rid of
Him. The only difference was in how each sect would do so.
There was
no question that the Zealots would simply have had Him killed using their own
hands. The Pharisees could stone Him if it were their exclusive choice. After
all, if Stephen was stoned to death later, they could have meted out the same
punishment but the Sadducees had a more devious plan of branding Jesus as a
prime source of national threat.
A tone set by irreconcilable differences
Image Source: ‘Passion of the Christ’
And so in
the end, what is it with the Second Temple Period that makes it an important bellwether
for understanding the New Testament? In a nutshell, it’s about not being able
to see eye to eye. Virtually everything Jesus brought to the table was rejected
by the Jews. Moulded by their history of subjugation, the Jewish priority was no
longer wanting God on God’s terms. For them the primacy was to get rid of
foreign incursions into their religious and spiritual freedom, governance,
authority and culture.
Jesus was
not who they needed at that time. The Jews were certainly waiting for their
Messiah; it’s just that they did not see any Messianic attributes in Jesus and
so like the man on the rooftop waiting for his rescuer to arrive, the Jews were
blinded by their own expectations and never understood the big picture that was
the kingdom of God that was at hand.
The Jews
were talking politics. They were plotting military rebellions. They were even killing
off wealthy aristocratic Jews who supported Rome. At the same time, they held a
tight rein over ordinary Jews by dictating their religious obligations that
have been distorted to benefit the powerful Pharisees. Meanwhile the Sadducees
were hedging their bets by cavorting with the foreign occupiers. The Essenes
didn’t want to have anything to do with them and they set off on their own but
even they had distorted ideas of Messianism.
In a
crucible of complete confusion among the Jews and led utterly astray by
divergent doctrines and beliefs, it is little wonder that when Jesus arrived,
no one knew who He was no matter what He did and no one understood anything
about Him. Darkness had befallen the Jews and there was no reconciliation
between what they knew and what Jesus wanted them to know.
The
ruination of Solomon’s Temple, leading to the destruction of subsequent temples
over time would not have done much to uphold Jewish integrity but while they
may cry out for the Messianic redeemer to save them, they have failed to
understand their own sins. Over centuries, their disobedience had become
transparent to them that even as they finally threw away their dependency on
pagan gods, they still were blinded to their sin.
Messianism was
so central to ancient Jewish culture that inherently it is woven into its
socio-political fabric. There was no way one can take it apart from the
historical setting in understanding the Second Temple Period (Talmon, 1992).22
The divergent ideas of Messianism must also take into account the changing worldviews
that were forced upon the Israelites on so many different points in their
cultural history, not least the Babylon conquest and then the pan-Hellenism
fanned by Alexander the Great (Scott Jr, 1995).23
Looking at
the period in terms of understanding how the New Testament unravelled itself is
to note the meandering but torturous history of a conquered Israel amidst its
Promised Land. The humiliation of a proud race being oppressed. The cultural
decimation reflected in the desecration of its temple. And the need to safeguard
Judaism away from their destroyed temples forced them into an inward culture of
self-preservation but void of the spiritual understanding of God’s grace. All
of these culminated in the rise of the powerful sects, each of which possessed
dramatically different doctrinal views24 plus the variations of
Messianic interpretations.
Indeed
everyone wanted a piece of Jesus but in Jesus, they found nothing they liked.
As it turned out even if they had all agreed to a divinely-appointed King (Hanson,
1992),25 they were all too blind and deaf to have seen or heard Him
even when He was there in their midst.
References
1. Köstenberger, Andreas J., Patterson,
Richard D. 2011. Invitation to Biblical Interpretation
– Exploring the Hermeneutical Triad of History, Literature and Theology. Grand
Rapids, Missouri: Kregel Publications. 103.
2. Horbury, William. 1998. Jewish Messianism and the Cult of Christ. London:
SCM Press. 25
3. Aslan, Reza. 2013. Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of
Nazareth. New York, NY: Random House. 27-28
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Telushkin, Joseph. 1991. The Messiah. The Jewish Virtual Library
Jewish Literacy. NY: William Morrow & Co.
7. Comes from the original Greek ὀρθοπραξία, to mean ‘correct practice,’ alluding to correct ethical and
liturgical conduct but in direct opposition to faith and grace and in sharp
contrast to orthodoxy, which dealt with correctness of belief and ritualism.
8. Douglas, J.D. and Tenney, Merrill C. 2011. Zondervan Illustrated Bible Dictionary. Grand
Rapids: Zondervan. 1118.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. Elwell, Walter, ed. 2001. Evangelical Dictionary of Theology. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Baker
Academic. S.v. ‘Essenes’ 391.
12. Douglas and Tenney, Zondervan Illustrated Bible Dictionary. 437.
13. Aslan, Zealot. 27-28.
14. “Biblical Literature.”
Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. Encyclopaedia
Britannica 2010. Web. Last accessed April 1 2015. < http://global.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/656131/Zealot>
15. ibid.
16. ibid.
17. Gowan, Donald E. 1995. Bridge Between the Testaments. A Reappraisal
of Judaism from the Exile to the Birth of Christianity. 3rd Edition. Eugene,
Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers. 157-164.
18. Scott Jr, J. Julius. 1995. Jewish Backgrounds of the New Testament. Grand
Rapids: Baker Academic. 212.
19. Ibid, 213.
20. Aslan, Zealot. 117-118. The author cites proof from Mk 1:15, 9:1, 13:5-37
and Lk 17:21
21. Scott, Jr, J Julius. Jewish Backgrounds. 107, 112.
22. Talmon, S. 1992. The Concept of Māšȋah and Messianism in Early
Jerusalem in The
Messiah: Developments in Earliest Judaism and Christianity. Ed. James H
Charlesworth. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. 81.
23.
Scott Jr, J Julius. Jewish Brackgrounds.
107, 112.
24. There may not be actual
consistent views on this issue but the possibility is there that we may be able
to isolate views from each of these factions to illustrate diversity of views
within each group.
25. Hanson, P.D. 1992. Messiahs
and Messianic Figures in Proto-Apocalypticism in The Messiah: Developments in Earliest Judaism and Christianity. Ed.
James H Charlesworth. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. 68.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Aslan,
Reza. Zealot: the Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. New York,
NY: Random House, 2013.
Douglas,
J.D. and Tenney, Merrill C. Zondervan Illustrated Bible Dictionary.
Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011.
Elwell,
Walter, ed. Evangelical Dictionary of Theology. 2nd ed. Grand
Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001.
Gowan,
Donald E. 1995. Bridge Between the
Testaments. A Reappraisal of Judaism from the Exile to the Birth of
Christianity. 3rd Edition. Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers. 157-164.
Hanson,
P.D. 1992. Messiahs and Messianic Figures
in Proto-Apocalypticism, in The Messiah: Developments in Earliest
Judaism and Christianity, ed. James H. Charlesworth. Minneapolis: Fortress
Press.
Köstenberger,
Andreas J., Patterson, Richard D. 2011. Invitation
to Biblical Interpretation – Exploring the Hermeneutical Triad of History, Literature
and Theology. Grand Rapids, Missouri: Kregel Publications.
Scott
Jr., J Julius. 2000. Jewish Backgrounds of the New Testament. Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books.
S.
Talmon, 1992. The Concept of Māšȋah and Messianism in Early Jerusalem, in The
Messiah: Developments in Earliest Judaism and Christianity, ed. James
H. Charlesworth. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.
No comments:
Post a Comment