The Rise of Rabbinic Judaism
Written on September 8, 2022 – 12:42 pm | by dave |A critical part of understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls is to understand the Rabbinic movement that rose to prominence after the community in Qumran was abandoned.
The Disappearance of Other Groups
- Sadducees: Without a temple, there was no way to worship God in the Sadducee system.
- Essenes: Small groups like these often fade away or die out, especially if there is an apocalyptic component (such as the Roman invasion). This is likely what happened to the Essenes.
- Zealots: fade away after 73 CE when their stronghold, Masada, falls to Romans.
Christianity Rises
- The Christian community continues to develop but it becomes less and less of a Jewish phenomenon.
- The growing number of Christians in the world come from the formerly polytheistic population of the Greco-Roman world and not from the Jewish community.
Pharisees
- The only group that is able to bridge the pre-70 C.E. (Second Temple) period on the post-70 C.E. (Destruction of the Temple) period are the Pharisees
- They emerge as the dominant (or the sole) Jewish movement in the area.
- Pharisees begin to rebuild themselves as the core of Rabbinic Judaism
- Most of the core of Rabbinic group relocate to Sepphoris (Sepori) instead of Jerusalem
Rabbinic Texts Emerge 1 – The Mishna
- The Mishna is the earliest codification of Jewish law (halakha) and appears around 200 C.E. and is redacted by Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi
- Six orders of Mishna:
- Seeds – agricultural laws, sabbath year fallow
- Festivals – detailed descriptions of holy festivals and their observance
- Women – Rules about marriage, childbirth, etc.
- Damages – Levitical/Deuteronomical Laws
- Holy Things – Discusses things such as what is and is not permitted on the Sabbath.
- Purities – impurity examples (i.e. menstruation)
- An important question often asked about the Mishna is: “Does the Mishna innovate new law, or does it simply put into writing the practices that have existed for centuries?”
Rabbinic Texts Emerge 2 – The Tosefta
- The Tosefta (Supplement) is a companion book to the Mishna
- Some rules from the Tosefta are not found in the Mishna, and some of the laws in the Mishna are further expounded upon in the Tosefta.
The Talmud-in
- A series of rabbinic teachings throughout Judea are added to the Talmud of Israel which was completed around 400 C.E.
- Another Talmud, the Babylonian Talmud when Rabbi ha-Nasi traveled to other schools of Judaism in the Babylonian Empire and created the larger Talmud.
The Rabbis and the Synagogue
- The role of the synagogue became greatly expanded during the post-Temple period.
- Centering religion around the Synagogue also standardized many aspects of the Jewish system including the standardization of prayer due to the Berakhot (blessings)
- This also gave rise to the Systems of Liturgical Reading of the Torah including:
- Annual reading of the Torah
- Triennial system – the Torah is read over a three-year period
- Rabbis transferred many of the ritual used in the Temple to the synagogue such as:
- Blowing the Shofar (ram’s horn) on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year festival
- Bringing palm branches to the Sukkot festival service
- Purging/cleansing ritual that used to transpire in the Temple on Yom Kippur becomes part of the liturgy of the synagogue
- Rabbis also transferred some of the rituals used in the Temple to the home including:
- Washing of hands before a meal
- Having a seder on Passover where prayers and biblical passages are read
- In the early days of post-Temple life, many of the rabbis were limited to their own yeshiva (rabbinic academy)
- The Torah prohibits any depiction of pagan images, e.g., Helios, zodiac signs so any original synagogue would have contained no images of any entity.
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