Boo_Boo Loc: Jellystone

In the Main section of OPP there was a discussion on banking. As those conversations often do, this one came around to religion. The summation of the author of the thread came around to how Jesus talked about the Pharisees and how the Pharisees were evil bankers. It is with that thread in mind that I thought it high time to talk about the three dominate sects mentioned in the bible. And invite your thoughts.

In biblical times there were three groups or sects of Judaism: Essenes, Pharisees and Sadducees. All three had variations in understandings and they were prevalent in Palestine during the Second Temple Era.

The Essenes were best known for their beliefs in "Inspired Exegesis".....In the Dead Sea Scrolls, they often spoke of themselves as "Yahad" (meaning "oneness of G*d) in order to differentiate themselves from the those among the Jews who are repeatedly labeled "The Breakers of the Covenant." This view is expressed especially in the unique prophetic scroll entitled "Milhama" (meaning The War) in which the master of the Essenes, referred to as "The Teacher of Righteousness," prophesied that the Jewish so-called "Breakers of the Covenant" Jews will be on the side of the Son of Darkness in the great battle on the Day of the Lord. When looking at the teachings of Jesus and the Essenes, Jesus was a follower. All bible scholars are familiar with Josephus and Philo. If not, then they are not bible scholars. Philo reports that the Essenes led celibate communal lives...But, Josephus also identified a sect within the sect that did marry (War 2.160-161). According to Josephus, the Essenes practiced collective ownership (War 2.122; Ant. 18.20), elected a leader whose orders they obeyed (War 2.123, 134), were forbidden from swearing oaths (War 2.135) and sacrificing animals (Philo, §75), controlled their temper, served as channels of peace (War 2.135), carried weapons only as protection against robbers (War 2.125), had no slaves but served each other (Ant. 18.21) and did not engage in trading (War 2.127). Both Josephus and Philo have lengthy accounts of their communal meetings, meals, and religious celebrations. This sect believed in spiritual survival after death along with the notion that humanity is divided into "Children of Light and Children of Darkness," who will soon clash in an apocalyptic war. Certainly Saul adopted some of their teaching because he so often talked about the duality of human nature in his letters to the pagans and gentiles. If you are a scholar, then you know that John the Baptizer was Jesus' cousin. He is widely regarded to be a prime example of an Essene who had left the communal life. This sect did not so much die out as they were absorbed into the Pauline Doctrine and much of their beliefs still live on in the modern day Christianity.

Now at odds with the Essenes were the Sadducees. The historian, Josephus, who wrote that they were a quarrelsome group whose followers were wealthy and powerful, and that he considered them boorish in social interactions. Keep in mind, there are really no surviving books written by this sect, so one must rely on historians and of course the damnation of them in the New Testament. With that in mind, what those sources present is a sect of individual, which were no more than about 6000 strong throughout Palestine, rejected certain beliefs of the Pharisaic Judaism, including the Pharisaic tenet of an Oral Torah. The Sadducees interpreted the verses of the Torah literally. Being literalist, they felt that they did not need to justify their authority or develop any special skills in interpreting what was written, in fact to do so was forbidden, and against the will of G*d. The central tenet of their beliefs, assertion of human freedom and accountability for their actions. Their belief system was decisively non-Jewish, for most of their philosophy can be directly traced to Greece. Isaac Halevi suggests that there was evidence of the Sadducee from the time of Ezra, it emerged during the Hashmenite rebellion. And therefore they were more of a political party than a religious sect. The record of them ended around the Roman persecution. The only record of them was what was written by the Pharisees scribes. A note on scribes, they acted as secretaries of state, whose business it was to prepare and issue decrees in the name of the king.

Finally we come to the Pharisees, which was not just a religious sect but was very political. They combined their own thoughts with that of the Essenes in one notable philosophy, they believed in life after death. At the start, about 2 BCE, there were two systems or sages they followed; Hillel and Shammai. However, the Jewish revolt against Rome (which destroyed the Temple of Jerusalem in 70 CE) only Hillel survived. Again, we will need to rely on Josephus' accounts. Accordingly, the Pharisees emerged in opposition to the corruption of the Hasmonean dynasty of the second century B.C.E. The Pharisees emerged out of the group of scribes and sages who objected to the Hasmonean monopoly on power, hoped for a Davidic Messiah, and criticized the growing corruption of the Hasmonean court. Pharisees resisted Hellenization, viewing the Sadducees as generally corrupted by their association with Hasmonean and Roman rulers.

In your limited understanding the Pharisees were the nemesis of Jesus and were the ones who had him arrested. But, this is untrue, it was actually the Sadducean high priest and his family who had Jesus arrested and turned him over to the Romans on a charge of treason against Rome (John 18). No Pharisee is named as a persecutor of Jesus, while several Sadducees are named as such; and one Pharisee, Nicodemus, is depicted as courageously defending Jesus before the Sanhedrin (John 7:50-51). Later, in the Book of Acts, another Pharisee, Gamaliel I, known to Jewish history as the grandson of Hillel, successfully defended the disciples before the Sanhedrin against Sadducean persecution (Acts 5:33-40). Acts also mentions that some of the members of the Jerusalem church were Pharisees themselves (Acts 15:5) and that thousands of early Christians were "zealous for the Law." (Acts 21:21) Later, when Saint Paul found himself on trial before the Sanhedrin, (Acts 23) he identified himself as a Pharisee who believed in the resurrection, which Sadducees denied, and thus won a temporary reprieve from the accusations of the Sadducean high priest.

All three sects no longer exist. Remnants of their belief systems still resonate in Hebrew teachings but only to the point of a need to understand the progression of history. However, in Christianity and in particular Paulinee Christianity remnants of all three are quite alive and taught in churches around the world.

Now then, banking as it is known today had its roots in Babylon. Outside of the sinful reputation given it by the Bible, the city is known for codes of law which predate Mosaic Law. It is from this city that banking had its start. One of the leading cities of Mesopotamia was Babylon. Centuries before the Israelites entered the Promised Land, the Babylonians invented the economic system called “capitalism.” The Encyclopedia Britannica (1943 Ed., Vol. 3, “History of Banks,” p. 67) notes that the Babylonians had developed a banking system “as early as 2000 BC.” The same article notes that the banking system began as an invention of the sun-god temples, and it states: “the temples of Babylon…were also the banks.” This Britannica article cites a document from that period which mentions a person who had borrowed silver and that: “He will pay the sun-god’s interest. At the time of the harvest he will pay back the sum and the interest upon it.” Farmers were even then borrowing money from banks to plant their crops. Babaylon was Persian.... and Persians are not follows of the Hebrew G*d, later they would become the founders of Islam. Therefore, if you wish to place blame for the "sins" of usury, blame the Arabs.

fiatlux

Neither the Saducees nor the Pharisees were the enemy of Jesus. Jesus had no enemies. His message could be summarized in Pogo: "We have met the enemy...and it is us." He was looking to expose that enemy within. The Saducees and Pharisees merely represented common worldliness, found everywhere but clearly manifested in how they lived.

Boo_Boo Loc: Jellystone

Rumitoid,

What an insightful and scholarly response to historical information. Good thing that you only read the Pauline doctrine and have totally ignored the book of Mark. You don’t crucify a person for being meek and mild. You don’t execute a man for traveling around helping the sick and telling witty stories. Jesus was crucified on a Roman cross under a Roman charge. And it was the Romans that wanted him out of the way. But, to understand why this is true, one must understand how the Roman Empire spread and why.

The Roman Empire slowly emerged over a long period of time from a political unit in Italy to cover the entire Mediterranean basin. And the growth is attributed to different dynamics, certainly through invasion, through conquest, but also through invitation. Part of what became the empire was looking for, a firm, stable political authority and found, in Rome, that authority. By the time of Jesus' execution, Rome had either conquered or was invited into: North Africa, Egypt, Asia Minor, modern day Turkey, Syria. And gradually, they also conquered Judea. In the process, they set up some as provinces, and some as client kingdoms. Judea became a client kingdoms run by its own independent, or semi-independent, King. This is the person we know as Herod the Great.

Herod ruled from 37 B.C.E. to 4 B.C.E., upon his death, his kingdom, which was the largest extent for the Jewish state since the time of David and Solomon, was subdivided among three of his sons. Herod Antipas, took the northern territories of the Galilee and those on the east side of the Jordan River. Phillip, took the areas to the east of the Sea of Galilee ... the area now thought of as the Golan Heights. The third son, Archelaeus, took the major portion, and in fact the most important cities to include Judea was the most important of the three sub-divisions. But Archelaeus, in contrast to his two half-brothers, didn't fare as well as his father. And within ten years, he was removed by the Roman overlords, and replaced with military governors, known as Procurators, or Prefects, posted there by the Roman administration to oversee the political activities of the state.

Pontius Pilate, is one of the governors posted to the province of Judea, once it was given over to Roman military governorship. A stone was discovered at Caesarea sheds light on the area of the time, and gives us three pieces of information. First, it tells us that Pontius Pilate was the Governor. Secondly, it calls him a Prefect. Thirdly, and in some ways most interestingly, the first line tells us that Pilate had built a Tibereum. What that means is, a temple for the Emperor Tiberius, as part of the Imperial Cult. Thus, here we have, at Caesarea Maritima, a Roman Governor building a temple in honor of the Roman Emperor.

Now one must examine the mindset of the governors of the time. Rome took no chances when it came to the potential for uprisings. When an individual’s or a group’s actions seemed even possibly seditious, any perceived threat was put down with decisive state-sanctioned violence. Rome crucified hundreds, if not thousands of people -- mostly slaves and suspected revolutionaries -- and used military force routinely in the provinces.

Since Jesus died by crucifixion, we know that he was killed by the Roman authorities (Jewish authorities did not practice crucifixion). And while Jesus did not exercise conventional kinds of political authority, his actions and his message included threats to the status quo.

Chief among his threatening actions, Jesus could draw a crowd. The gospels report that great crowds followed him. When he entered Jerusalem during the last week of his life, he entered to local fanfare. The popularity of Jesus, combined with the gathering perhaps hundreds of thousands of pilgrims in Jerusalem for Passover, would have made Roman authorities very nervous.

And the governors were well aware of peaceful protests and how empire can fall without the backing of the people. For ancient people spiritual and social realms were thoroughly integrated with one another, as were religious and political elements of life. The Hebrew prophets offer an example of spiritual leaders whose speech and actions were regularly seen as dangerous to political authorities. Prophets level judgment against greed and corruption wherever they witness it, whether in the marketplace, the royal court, or the temple.

Both John the Baptist and Jesus continue the tradition of calling those in authority to live honorable lives and work on behalf of the common good. As such, both of them threaten Rome and Rome’s client rulers in Judea. Ergo, Jesus made himself an enemy of the state. And as an enemy of the state, he was crucified between “two thieves”, but you didn’t get crucified for mere theft. However “thief” and “robber” were synonymous with “Zealot”, “sicariot” (or knifeman) and “insurgent” to the forces of the Roman Occupation. It is reasonable to assume that the “thieves” were leaders in the armed wing of the Zealot resistance – but not as prominent as Jesus, and not part of his cadre of preachers. Seven decades after Rome assumed control of Palestine, in 6 C.E., growing Jewish opposition to Roman laws relating to the census, taxation, and heathen traditions boiled over. Especially despised was the Roman imposition of a census of property for tax purposes. Ancestral land held an exalted position in Jewish ideology and many Jews feared that the new laws would lead to its appropriation by Rome. Jewish uprisings in protest of the laws led to the crucifixion of over 2,000 Jewish insurgents and the selling into slavery of perhaps 20,000 more. The most intense opposition to Rome came from an area of Palestine called Galilee, which was the center of an armed resistance movement called the Zealots.

As you can see, by the manner of his death, he was seen by the Roman Empire to be part of the Zealots, even to the sign posted over the cross you can see that Rome thought of him as a threat.

So coupled with the Roman appointment of religious leaders and his association with people resisting their rule, one can make the case that Jesus did indeed have enemies.

fiatlux

You do not understand that worldliness is pandemic. All your history means nothing. Worldliness is the enemy; it has no country or name. Who does it attack and defeat? Anyone who chooses it. The "threat" to Jesus and us is the enemy within: the preference for worldliness. Jesus did not make himself an enemy of the state: worldly values did.

Very good history, though, thank you.