Did Jesus Exist? - The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth by Bart Ehrman (read book .TXT) 📕

The Law was given to the Jewish people not as some kind of onerous burden that they had to bear—as so many Christians today seem to think—but for the opposite reason: to provide guidance to God’s people about how they should worship him and relate to one another in their communal lives together. The Law was the greatest gift God had given his people, instructions from on high by the Almighty himself about how to live. What could be greater? People today wonder about how to act, how to behave, what is right to do and what is wrong; people wonder about ultimate reality, the meaning of life, the purpose of existence. Ancient Jews believed that God had told them. It was in the Law that God had given.

This Law was written down and could be found in the five books of Moses, which together are often simply called the Torah, the Hebrew word for law (or direction or guidance or instruction). These books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy—the first five books of the Hebrew Bible—describe how God created the world, chose Israel to be his people, guided the lives of their ancestors, saved them from their lives of slavery, and gave them the Law. The Law itself is spelled out in great detail in these books—not just the Ten Commandments, but all the laws showing how to serve God and live with one another. Keeping this Law was widely seen as not only the greatest obligation but also the greatest joy. It included directions about circumcision—the “sign” that the Jews were chosen and distinct from all the nations—kosher food laws, Sabbath observance, festivals, and procedures to be followed in worshipping God.

The worship of God involved, among other things, sacrifices of animals and other foodstuffs to God at different times and for various occasions. In the days of Jesus it was almost universally thought that these sacrifices had to be performed at the central sanctuary, as dictated in the Torah, which was located in the capital city of the Jews, Jerusalem. This sanctuary was the famous Jewish Temple, originally built by King Solomon but then destroyed by the Babylonian armies in the sixth century BCE and later rebuilt. In the days of Jesus the Temple was an enormous and spectacular structure that played a major social, political, and economic—not to mention religious—role in the lives of Jews, especially those living in Jerusalem and the surrounding areas of Judea. It was run by priests who inherited their sacred duties from their families. One could not aspire to be priest; one was either born into a priestly family or not. Priests ran the Temple and all its functions, including the sacrifices of animals prescribed in the Torah.

Outside Jerusalem it was not allowed to perform these sacrifices, so Jews from around the world came to Jerusalem, if they could afford the time and expense, to participate in the worship of God at the Temple. This especially happened during the set annual festivals, such as the Passover, a celebration that commemorated God’s deliverance of Israel from slavery in Egypt back in the days of Moses. This does not mean, however, that Jews outside Jerusalem could not worship God. They certainly did worship, but not through sacrifices. Instead, communities of Jews throughout the Roman world gathered in synagogues, local meetings where they would hear the sacred scriptures (especially the Torah) read and interpreted and where they would offer up their prayers to God. Jews would gather together in synagogues on their weekly day of rest, the Sabbath, a day set apart from all others.

These are some of the key aspects of what we might call “shared Judaism” in the days of Jesus: the belief in one God; the covenant he had made with them, including the circumcision of male infants; the Law he had provided; the Temple in Jerusalem where sacrifices were to be made; the observance of Sabbath; and synagogues scattered throughout the world where Jews would meet to discuss their traditions and offer prayers to God.

Different Jews and Jewish groups emphasized different aspects of their shared religion, however, and as is true of almost every large religious group today (Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, you name it) there were wide-ranging and deep disagreements about major points. We know of four such groups in Palestine in the days of Jesus, based on the writings of the Jewish historian Josephus, whom we met before as our principal source of knowledge of first-century Palestinian Judaism. Josephus indicates that there were four major Jewish sects in the days of Jesus: Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, and a group that he calls the Fourth Philosophy. It should not be thought that every Jew belonged to one or another of these groups. On the contrary, most people didn’t belong to any. It is not, then, like modern political parties in America today (“Are you a Democrat, Republican, or Libertarian?”); it is more like civic organizations or secret societies (“Are you a member of the Elks or the Rotary Club? Were you in Skull and Bones?”).5

The Pharisees

The Pharisees are probably the best known and least understood of the four Jewish groups mentioned by Josephus. Largely because of the nasty things said about them in parts of the New Testament (for example, Matthew 23), most Christians seem to think that Pharisees’ chief defining characteristic was that they were hypocrites. In fact, in English dictionaries you will often find hypocrite as one of the definitions of Pharisee. I’ve always thought this is rather odd. Pharisees were not required to be hypocritical.

The Pharisees were a highly religious group that stressed the importance of keeping the Law God had given. There is obviously nothing wrong with that from a religious perspective. If God gave you a law, you are well advised to keep it. The problem with the Law of Moses, however, is that it is not very