CHRISTIANITY BETWEEN THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT -- continued from "Search for the Real Parents of My Soul!

CHRISTIANITY BETWEEN THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT – continued from “Search for the Real Parents of My Soul!”

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© September 25, 2014

THE MACCABEAN REVOLT

The Maccabees were a Jewish rebel army led by Mattathias the Hasmonean, and his five sons.  After King Antiochus issued his decree forbidding Jewish religious practices, this father and his sons, coming from the small rural village of Modi’in, stood up to oppose Antiochus and his proclamation.

This sparked the Maccabean Revolt, a conflict that lasted from B.C. 167 to 160, between these Judean rebels and the army of the Seleucid Empire.

In the second century B.C., Judea lay between the Ptolemaic Kingdom based in Egypt and the Seleucid Empire based in Syria, kingdoms formed after the death of Alexander the Great (B.C. 356-323).

Judea had been under Ptolemaic rule, but fell to the Seleucids in B.C. 200.  At the time, the Hellenistic influence on Jews was pervasive.  Some Jews, mainly those of the urban upper class, notably the Tobiad family, wished to dispense with Jewish law altogether and to adopt the Greek lifestyle, mainly for economic and political reasons.  Hellenistic Jews even built a gymnasium in Jerusalem to compete in international Greek games, while desiring to remove their marks of circumcision and to repudiate the Holy Covenant (First Maccabees).

This incensed Mattathias the Hasmonean, who rallied Jews for the Maccabean Revolt with the declaration:

“If anyone be zealous for the laws of his country and for the worship of God, let him follow me” (Josephus, 1911).

Thousands flocked to his banner.  Mattathias killed a Hellenistic Jew who stepped forward to offer a sacrifice to an idol in Mattathias' place.  The full revolt was now underway.  He and his five sons fled to the wilderness of Judah to escape prosecution.  He subsequently died in battle.  After his death in B.C. 166, his third son, Judah Maccabee, became general of the Jewish army, which was thereafter known as the “Maccabees,” a term taken from the Hebrew word for "hammer."

After a long series of battles, with the Maccabean forces greatly outnumbered, Judah led his Jewish dissidents to victory over the Seleucid dynasty in guerrilla warfare, which was directed against Hellenized Jews, of whom there were many.

The Maccabees destroyed pagan altars in the villages, circumcised boys and forced reluctant Jews to convert to the cause (Nicholas de Large, 1997).

The Maccabees gained notoriety among the Seleucid army for their guerrilla tactics, which were unconventional for the time.  After the victory, the Maccabees entered Jerusalem in triumph in B.C. 165, and ritually cleansed the Temple, reestablishing traditional Jewish worship, restoring the true ritual of God.

Judah was killed later in battle but not before his rebel army had taken control of Judea, which had been ruled as a province of the Seleucid Empire.  The Maccabees founded the Hasmonean dynasty, which ruled from B.C. 164 to B.C. 63, reasserting the Jewish religion, partly by force conversions, expanding the boundaries of Judea by conquest and reducing the influence of Hellenism and Hellenistic Judaism.

The only survivor of Mattathias’ five sons was Jonathan Maccabee.  He proclaimed Judea an independent nation appointing himself as High Priest. The nation was now free of foreign domination.  But the years of religious anarchy and Hellenistic influence had taken their toll.   Dr. Lauterbach writes:

During the seventy or eighty years of religious anarchy, many new practices had been gradually adopted by the people (Lauterbach, 1951).

The British scholar Travers Hereford adds:

In the absence of authoritarian guidance, the people had gone their own way; new customs had found a place among old religious usages … new ideas had been formed under the influence of Hellenism, which had permeated the land for more than a century, and here had been no one to point out the danger which thereby threatened the religious life of the people (Hereford, 1933).

A large Seleucid army was sent to quash the revolt, and reestablish dominance, but it returned to Syria on the death of Antiochus IV.  Meanwhile, its commander Lysias, preoccupied with internal Seleucid affairs, agreed to a political compromise that restored religious freedom.

The Jewish festival of Hanukkah celebrates the re-dedication of the Temple following Judah Maccabee's victory over the Seleucids.  According to Rabbinic tradition, the victorious Maccabees could only find a small jug of oil that had remained uncontaminated by virtue of a seal, and although it only contained enough oil to sustain the Menorah for one day, it miraculously lasted for eight days, by which time further oil could be procured (The Talmud).

Professor John Ma of Oxford University argues that it is possible to read the main sources of the events covered here as not being the loss of religious and civil rights by the Jews in B.C. 168, or the result of religious persecution, but rather as an administrative punishment by the Seleucid Empire in the aftermath of local unrest.  And that the Temple was restored upon petition by the High Priest Menelaus, rather than liberated and rededicated by the Maccabees (John Ma, 2013).

THE SANHEDRIN

We are now at the point where the Pharisees first make their appearance in history, sometime after the Maccabean War.  Before we note this, we need to examine briefly the rise of the Sanhedrin, the body which Pharisees (separatists) dominated during much of its existence, emerging largely out of the group of scribes and sages.

The word “Pharisee” comes from the Hebrew and Aramaic parush or parushi, which means “one who is separated.”  It may also mean their separation from Gentiles, sources of ritual impurity or from irreligious Jews.  More on this later..

The term, Sanhedrin is the name of the Beth Din HaGadol (The Great Court) during the Second Temple Period.  The first part of the word “sin” refers to the Torah that was received on Mount Sinai combined with the second part of the word “hedrin,” meaning “glorification” to express the Great Court’s role.

This ancient Jewish court system, or the Great Sanhedrin, was the supreme religious body in the land of Israel during the time of the Holy Temple.  Smaller religious Sanhedrins were in towns, as well as civil political democratic Sanhedrins, and existed until the abolishment of the rabbinic patriarchate in about A.D. 425.  

The earliest record of a Sanhedrin is by Josephus who wrote of a political Sanhedrin convened by the Romans in B.C. 57.  Hellenistic sources generally depict the Sanhedrin as a political and judicial council headed by the country’s ruler.

The origin of the religious Sanhedrin can be found in the Council of the seventy elders founded by Moses:

Gather to Me 70 men of the elders of Israel, and bring them to the Tent of Meeting, so that they should stand there with you (Numbers 11:16)

This was the first Sanhedrin, counting Moses himself, it consisted of 71 members.  As members within the Sanhedrin passed away, or became unfit for service, new members underwent ordination.  These ordinations continued in an unbroken line from Moses to the prophets, including Ezra and Nehemiah, to the Knesses HaGedolah or Great Assembly.

It wasn’t until several hundred years after the destruction of the Second Temple that this line was broken, and the Sanhedrin dissolved.

The Great Sanhedrin dealt with religious and ritualistic Temple matters, criminal matters pertaining to the secular court, proceedings in connection with the discovery of a corpse, trials of adulterous wives, tithes, preparation of Torah Scrolls for the king and the Temple, drawing up the calendar of events, and the solving of difficulties relating to ritual law.

The Great Sanhedrin lost its authority in about A.D. 30 to inflict capital punishment.  After the Temple was destroyed, so was the Great Sanhedrin.

While some sources would lead us to believe that the Sanhedrin was the direct successor to the Synagogue, this was not the case.  It was not until B.C. 196, or after the hiatus of some eighty years that the Sanhedrin was first established.

This was discovered in the ancient manuscript called “Fragments of a Zadokite Work,” or “Damascus Document,” as it is also known, having some of the most interesting texts.  It is the only Qumran sectarian work known before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The Zadokite Work is a composite text edited together from different sections of a larger source.  Scholars have attempted to place the different sections in a chronological order to generate a more complete work of the original using evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls.

A number of fragments from the scroll were found in the Cairo Geniza before the Qumran discoveries. The Cairo Geniza was located in a room adjoining The Ben Ezra Synagogue in Old Cairo, which was gradually stuffed full of papers until it was discovered in 1897 by European scholar Solomon Schechter, who found over 190,000 manuscripts and fragments that were written in mainly Hebrew and Judaeo-Arabic.  Originally called the “Zadokite Fragments,” after the catch of documents found at Qumran, the name was changed to “Damascus” for its many references to that city.

The “Damascus Document” makes no literal reference to Damascus in Syria, but to what is understood geographically as Babylon or Qumran itself, probably taking up the Biblical language found in Amos 5:27, "therefore I shall take you into exile beyond Damascus.”

Damascus was part of Israel under King David, and the Damascus Document expresses an eschatological hope of the restoration of a Davidic monarchy.

In any event, the “Damascus Document” or “Zadokite Work” points to B.C. 196 as the year the Sanhedrin first met (Lauterbach, 1951).  This body is said to consist of “men of understanding Aaron,” or priests, and “from Israel wise teachers,” that is also lay teachers who were not priests.

Priests and lay teachers in the new Sanhedrin was a new innovation.  Until that time, the priests with their assistants, the Levites, were considered to have the only authority to teach religion to the Jewish people.  This would not have been permitted while the Synagogue was in authority.  This is clearly shown from the writings of Malachi, who was contemporary with the early days of the Synagogue:

For the priest’s lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth, for he (the priest) is the messenger of the Lord of Hosts (Malachi 2:7).

The Law of Moses, which God had directly commanded him, clearly enjoined that the priests and Levites were to perform the functions of teachers, not lay teachers who would presume to do so (Deuteronomy 18:1-7; 33:10, Ezekiel 44:23).

Incidentally, the Sanhedrin is mentioned in the Gospels relating to the Sanhedrin trial of Jesus and several times in the Acts of the Apostles, including a Great Sanhedrin in chapter five, where Gamaliel appeared, and in the stoning of Stephen the deacon in chapter seven.

The Hasmonean court in the Land of Israel was presided over by Alexander Jannaeus, King of Judea until B.C. 76.  After his death, it was presided over by his wife, and called the Sanhedrin.

The exact nature of this early Sanhedrin is not known.  It is believed it was a body of sages and priests, or political legislative and judicial institutions.  Only after the destruction of the Second Temple was the Sanhedrin made up of only sages.

THE LAY TEACHERS REJECT THE PREMISE OF THE SANHEDRIN

Why this radical departure?  Again, we must go back briefly to the period of religious anarchy when the Egyptian Ptolemies ruled Judea.  Both the Ptolemies and the later Seleucid rulers looked upon the High Priest of Israel as the head of the Jewish nation.  In turn, it was the High Priest with the assistance of other priests who dealt with the Hellenistic rulers and acted in behalf of Hellenistic authority with the Jewish people.

Outstanding among these High Priests was Joseph, the son of Tobias, and his son Hyrcanus.  In order to be successful diplomats at the Hellenistic court in Alexandria, they felt it necessary to adopt the Greek ways and the Greek manner.  This culture or mindset was brought back with them to Judea.  Thus, it was the priests, the ones who should have been teaching the Law of Moses and the Law of God  to the Jewish people, who by default or design, as their temperaments varied, became the chief proponents of Hellenism.

From B.C. 206 to B.C. 196, or during this ten-year period, a series of battles between the rival Hellenistic kings of Syria and Egypt came to devastate several parts of Judea.  Many Jews blamed Hellenism for this collateral damage to their sacred places and sought to return to the old ways and laws of their fathers.  But to whom could they turn?

They felt betrayed by the High Priests and the Levites for these priests, as a whole, had become thoroughly Hellenized.  Incredibly, different priests were taking sides in the Hellenistic wars, and raising armies to help either the Syrians or the Egyptians, while the Jewish tradition was all but abandoned, except for a few lay teachers and some minor priests.  They appeared to be the only ones who had studied God’s Word, and remained loyal and committed to God’s Law.  They sat in a new Sanhedrin refusing to accept the authority of the High Priest, or to teach at his behest.

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NEXT: WHAT WAS GOD’S WAY ANYWAY?  ENTER THE PHARISEES!