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This chapter compares rabbinic and Josephan traditions about the Sadducees. It shows that traditions in the Bavli tend to be hostile toward the Sadducees, while traditions in Palestinian compilations tend to reflect a more neutral perspective. The Palestinian traditions acknowledge, or even revel in, the existence of individual Sadducees who are wicked, but these individuals are always quickly punished with death by God for their evil deeds, and the Sadducees as a group are harmless, obedient, in fact, to the rulings of the Pharisees. It is also shown that since it is a fundamental tenet of rabbinic thought that the rabbis possessed traditions that were authoritative despite their independence from scripture, the introduction into Babylonia of traditions that portray the Sadducees as accepting only scripture and rejecting traditions external to the Bible motivated these hostile Babylonian portrayals. It is argued that the Bavli's portrayal of the Sadducees as a group that accepts only scripture derives either from (1) Josephus, or (2) traditions drawn upon independently by both Josephus and the rabbis.

The new tendency of the Sadducees to appeal to Scripture for practical guidance caused a cultural and religious chain reaction. This chapter deals with the issue of the authority of the holy text versus traditional religious norms, delving into the Second Temple period. It explores the disputes and mutual agreements between Pharisaic and Sadducee-priestly halakhic systems in order to enable a detailed description and analysis of the changes that took place from that time onward. It explains the old traditions in accordance with their biblical origins. The exegetical techniques used in these explanations turned into creative tools, and new norms that resulted from the reading of Scripture were introduced, authorized by rewriting the Pentateuch in accordance with them. Due to the fact that any direct evidence for the Pharisees' legal tradition is not available, the inquiry is based on several methodological assumptions and involves some serious difficulties. While the sectarians left a relatively large textual inheritance of their literary creation, all present day knowledge of the Pharisaic halakhah stems from indirect sources. These include the writings of Flavius Josephus and Philo of Alexandria, the references to the Pharisees and their halakhah in the New Testament, rabbinical traditions concerning their forefathers' halakhah, and of course, what the scrolls themselves testify concerning the sectarians' rivals.

With the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E., the Sadducees, the Qumran sectarians, and other Jewish groups disappeared and only the Pharisees' tradition survived within the rabbinic movement. This chapter assesses the findings related to Halakhah and suggests a new explanation for the disappearance of the sects after the destruction of the Temple and for the hegemony of the rabbinic movement thereafter. The categories of stringency versus leniency differentiate between two groups within the Pharisaic-Rabbinic movement itself: the School of Hillel and the School of Shammai. The creation of these lists by itself testifies that in the eyes of its authors, stringency and leniency were real characteristics of the two schools' halakhic traditions. Further, the analysis makes the point that the Temple Scroll simply rewrites the Bible to include the extra prohibition. Looking into the different strategies used by the scrolls on the one hand and the Rabbis on the other to solve the contradiction between the tradition and the Bible is illuminating. The phenomenon that various groups disappeared, creating one rabbinic movement, had much to do with the fact that the Pharisees and their heirs, the Rabbis, actually adopted some basic concepts of the Sadducees' legal system.

The Second Temple period covers the legal system from the period in which the Judaean community under Nehemia and Ezra were able to restore the operations of various institutions that were authorized by the Persians, to the downfall of the initial revolt against Rome in 70 C.E. and the destruction of the Temple. This chapter demonstrates how this period underwent a wide range of approaches, since cultural environments varied greatly between the Palestine and Hellenized communities of Egypt; between the Palestines and the Pharisees, Sadducees, and other entities who seeked to achieve Jewish political hegemony; and between those who attempted to veer away from the then dominant rule in Jerusalem. As the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls played no small part in determining the legal developments in this period, this chapter shows that the law could be defined by the following approaches: Second Commonwealth halakhah; a pluralistic and historical approach; and the positivistic approach, which looks into the rise of formal institutional sources.

This chapter focuses less on the differences in matters of halakhah between the followers of the rabbis on the one hand and the various sectarians on the other than on the responses to the sectarian challenges that are given halakhic expression, i.e. the new rules and regulations introduced for the purpose of combating sectarian ideas and practices. The three groups towards which there is explicit halakhic reaction in the Talmudic period are the kutim (Samaritans), the tsadukim (Sadducees), and the minim (sectarians of sorts holding heretical views). The extent to which Talmudic statements about the origins and identity of all these groups reflect historical reality is irrelevant to the discussion, but it does make the enquiry extremely difficult. Adding to the difficulty is the notorious exercise of censorship, external and internal, on the Talmudic sources. From the complete absence of any reference in the Talmudic sources to any attempt by a follower of the rabbis to become a Samaritan or vice versa, it would seem to follow that the terms Israelites and kutim are ethnic groupings. Consequently, the rabbis were chiefly concerned with establishing the halakhic status of the Samaritans vis-à-vis the Jews.

The chapter examines the conceptualization and role of holiness in classical rabbinic and para-rabbinic literature. The first part contends that while holiness structured the thought world of sectarians in the late Second Temple period, it figures less importantly for the rabbis themselves, who in an assortment of texts appear self-consciously to disrupt holiness-based hierarchies. They instead assign a structuring role to law. The second part of the chapter surveys the ways in which texts from rabbinic Palestine deploy holiness discourse, and ventures that the rabbis continue to think of holiness as closer to a natural property than to an evaluative shorthand.

As resurrection increased in its reception among a range of groups within the second century BCE, it did so against a cultural backdrop in which other attitudes toward death already occupied a traditional role within Jewish society. The present chapter examines the rationale for denial of an afterlife. Jews who resisted hope in an afterlife viewed life and death within the creation differently; they valued the continuity of the Jewish people on earth; and they held differing claims about divine justice. Negations of the afterlife were not the minority view of a narrow aristocratic cadre of Sadducees, but had strong and widespread precedents in earlier tradition. Reconstructing the rationale of denial helps to set the resurrection hope into deeper contextual relief: those who affirmed resurrection advanced a more insurgent and controversial theodicy that posed inherent contradictions with earlier tradition.

Chapter 4 returns to the temple arena with the account of an event in which either Alexander Janneus (Josephus) or an anonymous priest (Mishnah, Tosefta) is pelted with citrons in the temple. In Josephus this etiological story explains the circumstances underlying Janneus’s erection of a wooden barrier in the temple and, as in the previous chapter, evidences tension between Janneus and the people. The rabbinic tradition also concerns the history of the temple and its laws, but from a different direction, a conflict over the performance of the water libation. As opposed to the legends treated in the previous chapters, we cannot definitely state that these two versions derived from a single Ur-text.

Josephus (37–100 CE) was a Jewish Roman scholar, historian, general, and advisor to Vespasian and Titus. For a brief period he led Jewish troops in a rebellion against the Roman occupation but was eventually reconciled to Roman rule and his own role as an intermediary. According to his autobiography, divine guidance figured prominently in his life, especially when he fully expected to be executed after being captured by Vespasian in the Jewish War. Although dreams and special revelation clearly play a role, Josephus, like Philo (for whom he had a high regard), places Moses and the scriptures at the center of divine guidance. But Judaism was not monolithic, and Josephus describes some of the features distinguishing Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes. In common with most Jews of his day, Josephus displays a remarkable degree of freedom in approaching biblical interpretation.

This chapter turns to the Gospel of Matthew, beginning with a basic overview of historical contexts before digging more deeply into a specific issue, this time the various manifestations of Jewish practices in the Second Temple period. Emphasizing the Jewishness of Jesus, this chapter offers an overview of different Second Temple Jewish “schools of thought,” both those appearing in the Gospels and Acts and those we know of from extrabiblical materials. The chapter, then, gives a literary overview of Matthew before examining three main themes: Jesus’s origins and kingship, the Sermon on the Mount, and Jesus’s reception by Matthew’s minor characters, including the Gospels’ problematic portrayal of Jewish religious leaders. The conclusion emphasizes the importance of reading Matthew in its context as a Jewish writing that participates in intra-Jewish polemic in order to combat anti-Jewish and anachronistic interpretations.