Beyond Sectarianism: Jewish Authority in the Greco-Roman World

“Moses received the Torah from Sinai and transmitted it to Joshua; Joshua to the Elders; the Elders to the Prophets; and the Prophets transmitted it to the Men of the Great Assembly. They [the Men of the Great Assembly] said three things: Be deliberate in judgment; develop many disciples; and make a fence for the Torah.”

--Avot Chapter 1, Mishnah 1(from The Complete ArtScroll Siddur)

In the world of Orthodox Judaism from which I emerge, there is no questioning of rabbinic authority. It all seems to be so clear, as spelled out in the chain of tradition in the first chapter of Mishnah Avot. Moses receives from God both a Written Law and an Oral Law at Sinai, both types of law passed down from generation to generation, eventually to be expounded by the Pharisees, the forerunners of the rabbis. The Rabbis are the sole legitimate arbiters of halakhah based on the tradition spelled out in the incorrectly dubbed “Ethics of our Fathers.” We can ask no questions of rabbinic legitimacy because the rabbis are the sole arbiters of Jewish law. Any other groups that challenged the Pharisaic heritage in the ancient Greco-Roman world are sectarian: that includes the Dead Sea Scroll community, the Essenes, and the Sadducees. As well, in the Orthodox worldview, the rabbinic texts are inherently Jewish, showing no signs of influence from pagan philosophy or the world of the Greeks and the Romans. The rabbis, as pious Jews, would not have tolerated influence from the outside world and stood within “the four ells of halakhah.”

Yet, as a student of history, I must reject the attempt in Orthodox Judaism to distinguish between “sects” that were illegitimate and the “normative” Judaism of the rabbis. Two thousand years ago the Dead Sea Scrolls community, for example, was not a “sect” of Judaism but a legitimate expression of Jewish faith that was completely normative and challenged Hasmonean authority in the Temple. True, the Dead Sea Scrolls community, the Essenes, and the Sadducees did not survive the Jewish rebellion against Rome in 66-70 CE. Certainly, the Rabbis of the Talmud—the sole survivors of the war—absorbed elements from these communities as they later included in their “big tent” both the factions responsible for the early synagogues and the midrash. The historical outcome, however, should not be imposed on the reality of many different normative Judaisms in the ancient world. Nor should we discount ancient Judaism’s Greco-Roman context. The different Jewish groups that emerged before the destruction of the Second Temple and texts of Rabbinic Judaism did not emerge from a void but were part of a larger context of such pagan religions as the Eleusinian mysteries and the Mithras cult, as well as philosophical trends such as the philosophies of Aristotle and Plotinus. 

Religious authority in the ancient world was closely allied with political authority. The family of Eli, priests that had authority at the early holy site of Shiloh, was later replaced by King David in Jerusalem with the priestly family of Zadok According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, David “harnessed the priesthood to the service of the realm.” The fact that the Zadokites remained loyal to David during an attempted coup by one of the king’s sons (I Kings 1:8), assured that they would have priestly authority over Temple sacrifice for centuries. In the Hebrew Bible, there is a debate focusing on the nature of the authority of the Jerusalem priesthood. Ezekiel, prophesying the return to Jerusalem and the rebuilding of the Temple destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE, envisions a Temple priesthood leadership consisting solely of Zadokites (Ezekiel 43:13-46:24). The Book of Leviticus, on the other hand, speaks of a priesthood descended from Aaron, far more inclusive than Ezekiel’s vision. The argument is a crucial one and would play a major role in the formation of the Dead Sea Scrolls community after the Maccabees took over the High Priesthood following the rebellion against the Seleucids.

While there is a paucity of sources on ancient Israelite history and theology, both the Dead Sea Scrolls and the writings of Josephus give us some insight into the bases of authority for different “sects” more than 2000 years ago. The scrolls found near the ruins of Qumran describe a community—perhaps Essene, perhaps not—that rejects the authority of the Hasmonean high priesthood in the Jerusalem Temple. The Zadokite leadership that is a part of “The Damascus Document” (found in the Cairo Genizah) and the texts found near the Dead Sea (including “The Community Rule”) rejected the Hasmonean priesthood in Jerusalem as being illegitimate. In the eyes of the writers and copiers of the Scrolls, the “Wicked Priest” in Jerusalem (whether Jonathan, Simon or John Hyrcanus) is defiling the Temple by offering sacrifices that are not legitimate. In other words, if the wrong priests are bringing the right sacrifices—the sacrifices do not count in God’s eyes. These sacrifices are illegitimate because the rightful, Zadokite priesthood is not offering them. The Scroll community envisions a day when the High Priesthood and the Temple will be back in their control.

We know what the “sons of Zadok” were protesting in their opposition to the Hasmoneans and the “Wicked Priest.” But what was the basis of authority for the Scrolls community? An obvious answer is that the Zadokite priesthood gains its authority from its roots as King David’s chosen officials to lead the Temple sacrifice. Yet, there is another source of authority that cannot be ignored—the role of “the Teacher of Righteousness.” This figure is central to the founding of the Scrolls community and his role as a charismatic teacher is central to the community’s theology. In the Commentary on Habakkuk, the Scroll writers describe the centrality of the prophet-like teacher:

Then God told Habakkuk to write down what is going to happen to the generation to come; but when that period would be complete He did not make known to him. When it says, “so that with ease someone can read it,” this refers to the Teacher of Righteousness to whom God made known all the mysterious revelations of his servants the prophets. 

In The Commentary on Psalms the authority of the “Teacher of Righteousness,” here referred to as “the Priest,” is reinforced:

They are the cru[el Israeli]tes who will not believe when they hear everything that [is to come upon] the latter generation that will be spoken by the Priest in whose [heart] God has put [the ability] to explain all the words of his servants the prophets, through [whom] God has foretold everything that is to come upon His people and [His land].

In addition to the Zadokite lineage and the textual authority of the Dead Sea Scroll community’s Scripture—very different from the later rabbinic, Masoretic texts—the role of the “Teacher of Righteousness” is central to the authority of his followers. He is a prophet and a charismatic teacher—the legitimacy of the community’s beliefs and its attitude toward the Hasmonean Temple establishment is based on the divine knowledge of the great “Priest,” persecuted by one of the Hasmonean rulers. As for the Hasmoneans, their claim to the High Priesthood—and later the monarchy—was based on realpolitik. We need not accuse the Maccabees of a cynical power-grab in claiming authority in ancient Judea. But, in the end, their claim to leadership was based on their leadership in the rebellion against the Seleucids. Their authority had no basis in Scripture or the Oral tradition of the Pharisees. Needless to say, the culture and politics of the Hellenistic dynasties of the Ptolemies and the Seleucids impacted Alexander Janneus and the other Maccabee rulers in a significant way (including the hiring of Greek mercenaries into the Maccabee army).

We have a paucity of sources for our understanding of the many other “Judaisms” of ancient Israel. The Jewish historian Josephus is our main source for our understanding of the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Essenes, and the “Fourth Philosophy” (i.e., the Zealots or the Sicarii). In The Jewish Antiquities, Josephus speaks highly of the Pharisees, whom he states are “extremely influential among the townsfolk” in Judea. Josephus, in the following passage, succinctly expresses the sources of authority for both the Pharisees and their Temple-centered, aristocratic opponents the Sadducees:

For the present I wish merely to explain that the Pharisees had passed on to the people certain regulations handed down by former generations and not recorded in the Laws of Moses, for which reason they are rejected by the Sadducean group, who hold that only those regulations should be considered valid which were written down (in Scripture), and that those handed down by former generations need not be observed. (my italics)

According to the ancient Jewish historian, the source of authority for the Sadducees is the text of the Torah. It is no shock that a Temple-based faith community would rely solely on textual authority. “As priests of the Temple,” writes William M. Schniedewind in How the Bible Became a Book, “they had special access to the sacred writings.” The UCLA professor’s thesis is that textual authority overtook the sacredness of oral traditions during the reforms of Hezekiah and Josiah before the Babylonian destruction of the Temple of Solomon in 587/6 BCE. The Sadducees were the conservatives, never veering away from the centuries-old authority of the Torah text. The Pharisees, on the other hand, attempted to reassert the sacredness of oral tradition. Those are the regulations “handed down by former generations” according to Josephus, and not recorded in the Torah. Perhaps this accounts for the popularity of the Pharisees in the eyes of Josephus. The Sadducees were elitists, bearers of the official textual religion. Their Judaism was based on the authority of text and sacrifice. The Judaism of the Pharisees—resembling in some ways the popular mystery religions of the Greco-Roman world—formulated a Judaism that was far more flexible in its interpretation of Scripture. As well, the Pharisess as a “sect” that stood apart from the elitist religion of the priests propagated oral traditions treasured by a good portion of the Judean populace.

The importance of the Essenes, in terms of authority, is that like the Dead Sea Scrolls community—the likelihood is high that the sources of the scrolls were Essene—the Essenes do not recognize the authority of the Hasmonean priesthood in the Jerusalem Temple. Josephus does not mention a “Teacher of Righteousness” in the Essene population. But much of the Essenes’ asceticism and their communal way of life correspond to the Qumran “Community Rule.” In addition, we must view Essene practices in the context of the way of life of adherents among pagans of the Greco-Roman mystery religions. In fact, Lawrence Schiffman’s thesis of Pharisaic “Orthodoxy” and Sadducean “sectarianism” in his history of Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism is way off the mark. All the “philosophies” discussed by Josephus are in some way a part of a much greater Hellenized world. The idea that the Pharisees represent “mainstream” Judaism in the ancient world is an illusion and a reading back through the lens of rabbinic theology the ancient past. Schiffman is wrong—all ancient Jewish expressions of faith should be considered legitimate and not sectarian. Perhaps the Pharisaic tradition lived on in Rabbinic Judaism due to its populist nature (according to Josephus). But just as well it may be that Pharisaic tradition survived the rebellions against Rome due to the accidents of history and the wise political accommodation to Rome of Rabbi Yohanan Ben Zakkai.

While the connections between the Pharisees and the Rabbis are not as clear-cut as the first mishnah in Avot—qouted above—would have us believe, we cannot ignore them. Though the rabbinic writings rarely mention the Pharisees by name, the rabbis are indeed the spiritual and ideological heirs of the Second Temple group praised by Josephus. The authority of oral tradition in Pharisaic Judaism would find its earliest expression in writing in the Mishnah. Edited by Rabbi Judah the Patriarch in the land of Israel around the year 200 CE, the Mishnah is a summation and codification of the Oral Law that, in many ways, is quite odd. The Mishnah uses a repetitious, formulaic language that has two purposes. First, it reflects an oral tradition that is passed down through highly structured language that makes it simple to memorize and pass on to students and scholars. Second, it is a document that attempts to impose order on chaos following both the Roman destruction of the Second Temple in 70 and the crushing of the Bar Kokhba rebellion in 135. The Mishnah does not quote its sources in the Torah—it assumes that the reader of the text will already know the Biblical issue that the rabbis are addressing. But this leaves us with a critical question—if the Mishnah does not cite Biblical sources to bolster rabbinic authority, from where do the rabbis of the Mishnah—the tanna’im—derive their authority?

Professor Jacob Neusner, studying the Mishnah as a self-standing document independent of the larger Talmudic corpus, provides important answers to this question. Neusner does not only view the Mishnah as a law code—which it most definitely is—but also as a “philosophical statement.” Neusner explains the Mishnah as philosophy in this way:

The specific basis for my proposed reading of the Mishnah as philosophy is simple. The Mishnah’s main principles of method are the same as the method of natural philosophy through classification presented by Aristotle. Its principal proposition, demonstrated through systematic and orderly hierarchical classification of the things of nature, whether persons or objects or actions or matters of status, is the same as one proposition of fundamental importance to Middle and Neo-Platonism and, later on, (long after the closure of the Mishnah), to Plotinus; namely, the ultimate unity of all being in a hierarchical sequence culminating in, or emanating from, the One on high.

Now it becomes far clearer why the rabbis of the Mishnah have no need to quote Scripture. The Mishnaic enterprise is one based on an internal logic that defines terms and boundaries in a chaotic, post-70 world. This is, indeed revolutionary although I am sure Judah the Patriarch would not at all have believed that he was an innovator. Rabbi Judah’s revolution was, in his worldview firmly rooted in Revelation. When the Mishnah encounters a hen’s egg born on a festival or a broken vessel that might be impure, it is dealing with the nitty-gritty of day-to-day life for Jews living in a world without a cult. The rabbis of Yavneh and Usha transfer issues of purity and the like from the priestly class and they democratize them for all Jews. This was necessary. Without a cult, Jewish tradition had to continue. The only way to do so was to define the limits and boundaries of the Law, especially in ambiguous cases. For Rabbi Judah, the Mishnah’s authority may have derived from the transmission to the rabbis of an Oral Law from Sinai. But, in reality, the authority of the Mishnah derives from its imposition of order on chaos through the vehicle of rabbinic logic derived from Aristotle. Furthermore, there is also a Roman influence at work in the editing of the Mishnah. “The Mishnah is a digest or anthology, writes Shaye J.D. Cohen, “indeed, it resembles the Digest of Roman law published by the emperor Justinian in 533 C.E. Both works are topical collections of legal dicta ascribed to various authorities who lived for the most part in the second and early third centuries C.E.” Whether the influence is that of Aristotle, Plotinus or Roman emperors, the Mishnah is firmly rooted in the Greco-Roman world of antiquity.

In contrast to the Mishnah, the Talmud is a text of the Diaspora, specifically Babylonia under the rule of the Sassanian dynasty of the Persians. The Sassanian leadership was far more highly centralized than that of earlier rulers of Babylonia (the Achaemenids, the Seleucids, and the Parthians). The world of the Talmud reflects that reality. The Exilarchs—leaders of the semi-autonomous community in Babylonia who claimed, like the Patriarchs in Palestine, descent from the House of David—appointed rabbis as civil servants and judges. Over time, however, the power of the Exilarch would shift to the rabbis of the great academies of Sura, Pumbeditha, and Nahardea. The basis of Talmudic authority was never the Exilarch—nor the mystics and certainly not the early Church. That fact can be seen in the famous argument among the rabbis over the status of “Achnai’s oven.” (B.T. Baba Metzia 59b). Although Rabbi Eliezer has the support from a divine voice, his ruling is still not followed because authority is in the hands of the rabbis based on majority rule and the chain of rabbinic authority.

Critics have often attacked the massive corpus of the Babylonian Talmud as a combination of rabbinic splitting of hairs in legal matters and the telling of primitive tales in the aggadic sections of the text. Just as Neusner elevates the status of the Mishnah to a self-contained philosophy of all-encompassing holiness, we can understand the Talmud as volumes of theology.  There is Talmudic debate over what constitutes a sukkah and what constitutes the sacredness of Chanukah candles. Underlying all these details—and, as they say, “God is in the details”—is a theological discussion of the sacred space and time of Jewish faith and practice. Furthermore, according to Shaye J.D. Cohen, the Babylonian and the Palestinian Talmudim “routinely attempt to show that the laws of the Mishnah can be derived from scripture, because humans do not have the authority to innovate religious law.” The amorai’im are far more conscious of the need for the Bible to serve as an authority for what we might consider innovation. Of course, the rabbis of the Talmud would never admit to being post-70 revolutionaries. Rabbinic Judaism differs in many ways from the religion of Biblical Israel. But the problem is that we know very little about the faith of pre-Mishnah Jews, whether they lived in Judea or in Babylonia or in Alexandria. The best we can do, in many cases, is to make an educated guess.

At first glance, after discussing the literature of the Mishnah and the Talmud, it seems that rabbinic authority in both Israel and the Diaspora was all encompassing from the days of Rabbi Yohanan Ben Zakkai. But the idea of a monolithic rabbinic establishment is a myth. It took centuries for the early rabbis to exert ultimate authority over Jews in Palestine and in the Diaspora. Proof of this comes from the fascinating phenomenon of ancient synagogues. While we do know of places of worship, such as the Great Synagogue of Alexandria, before the destruction of the Temple, there is little information from rabbinic literature on the institution of the synagogue. What we do know from archaeological excavations of synagogues such as that of Beit Alpha in Israel’s Jezreel Valley and the Dura-Europos synagogue in Syria is that early rabbinic involvement in synagogue life was quite limited. Shaye J.D. Cohen concludes that rabbinic authority over early synagogues was minimal for two reasons: the artwork in synagogue mosaics that may have been frowned upon as being idolatrous by the rabbis; the paucity of rabbis’ names in inscriptions of the synagogues’ officers and donors. It is highly unlikely that there was active rabbinic involvement in synagogue life between the second and sixth centuries C.E., especially in Palestine.

What was the basis of authority—and theology—in the synagogue? If we side with Erwin R. Goodenough, the art of the synagogue was symbolic of a certain type of mysticism. Many of the synagogues that have been excavated portray two main pillars with a curved shell on top. This shell was a Greek symbol that indicated that the pillars were a scared portal and a reminder of the Temple in Jerusalem. The architecture of the synagogue was typically Roman and archaeologists are not even sure if there was a separate gallery for women in the structures. These are indicators—along with the little discussion of synagogue life in early rabbinic literature—that rabbinic authority was not monolithic in the ancient world. By the sixth century, however, the rabbis were able to include synagogue life in their “big tent” and absorb it into “mainstream” Judaism.

The integration of different “Judaisms” into the rabbinic fold is also apparent in Midrashic literature. There is the impact of Leopold Zunz and the movement of Wissenschaft des Judentums on the categorization of midrash literature. Modern scholars such as Barry W. Holtz divide up midrashic literature into narrative, exegetical, and homiletical streams. Whether this is accurate or not—Jacob Neusner argues against the blanket term of “midrash” for all the literature and impresses upon us the need to treat each part of the literature on its own terms—there is a strong priestly, Eretz Yisrael-centered voice in midrashic literature. The authority of the midrash, unlike that of the Mishnah, is in the Holy Scriptures. Perhaps the midrash is in some way connected with the mysticism of synagogue life, especially in Palestine.  Would the rabbis of the Babylonian Talmud have approved of a literature that emphasizes the centrality and sanctity of the Land of Israel? We do not know. But just like the synagogue, the midrashic literature might be a realm of ancient Judaism initially not under the rubric of the rabbis of the Mishnah and the Talmud.

After surveying in brief the world of ancient Judaism, I can arrive at the conclusion that we must move beyond sectarianism to understand ancient Judaism. The Mishnah Avot paints a portrait of a normative rabbinic Judaism that has its roots in the Sinai revelation through the Oral Law. The historical reality, however, is far more complex. Just because, for example, the Dead Sea Scrolls community disappeared after the revolt of 66-70 CE, does not mean that it is a sect and a dead-end in the evolution of Judaism. The “sons of Zadok” were a legitimate group expressing a legitimate belief in God that differed from Pharisaic Judaism, the forerunner of Rabbinic Judaism. But, in the end, the Pharisees were just one group of many to express belief in God and Israel in a specific way. The mission of a competent student of history is not to look back at the past through the lens of 1900 years of rabbinic Judaism. That approach distorts our view of the past, expunging any idea that the Jews of old were part of a larger Greco-Roman world and were not monolithic in their beliefs. As well, even rabbinic Judaism was a revolution that did not take hold among all Jews immediately and even was opposed later in the medieval period by groups such as the Karaites. Jewish unity was an illusion in the past as it is an illusion today. The history of Jews, certainly in ancient times, is a history of many Judaisms, many biblical canons, and a refreshing diversity that cannot be denied.

Bibliography

Ariel, David S. The Mystic Quest: An Introduction to Jewish Mysticism. New Jersey: Jason Aronson, 1988.

Cohen, Shaye J.D. From the Maccabees to the Mishnah. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1987.

Editors. Encyclopaedia Judaica, First Edition, Vol. 13. Jerusalem: Keter Publishing, 1972.

Neusner, Jacob. Judaism as Philosophy: The Method and Message of the Mishnah. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999.

Schniedewind, William M. How the Bible Became a Book: The Textualization of Ancient Israel, New York: The Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Segal, Alan F. Life After Death: A History of the Afterlife in the Religions of the West. New York: Doubleday, 2004.

VanderKam, James, and Flint, Peter. The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Their Significance for Understanding the Bible, Judaism, Jesus, and Christianity. New York: HarperCollins, 2002. 

As well, I have written a number of short essays on ancient Judaism and modern historiography (especially in the Zionist movement):

Kavon, Eli. “Hanukkah: The Maccabees in the Zionist Imagination,” Midstream, Vol. LIII, November/December 2007, pp. 5-7.

-----------. “Tisha B’Av Meditation: Bar Kokhba: Rebel Hero or Failed Messiah?” Midstream, Vol. LIII, July/August 2007, pp.37-8.

------------. “Tisha B’Av Meditation: Yohanan Ben Zakkai—Yavneh’s Lost Hero,” Midstream, Vol. LII, July/August 2006, pp. 22-3.

------------. “Revelation and Revolution,” The Jerusalem Post Online Edition, May 21, 2007.