Judaism in the Time of Jesus

Living under Greek rule

After Alexander the Great conquered the Middle East, Judea came under Greek kings. At first it was ruled from Egypt, then from Syria. Greek culture was attractive. It meant cities, theaters, gymnasiums, philosophy and international trade. Some Jews, especially the wealthy, embraced Greek ways. Others saw them as a threat to faithfulness to God's law.

The tension exploded in 167 BC. The Syrian Greek king Antiochus IV Epiphanes IV tried to force Greek religion on Judea. He banned circumcision and Sabbath-keeping and set up an altar to Zeus in the Jerusalem Temple. Many Jews chose death rather than break the law. A priestly family led by Judas Maccabeus ("the Hammer") launched a guerrilla war. Against the odds they won. In 164 BC they cleansed and rededicated the Temple, an event Jews still celebrate as Hanukkah. For about a century Judea was independent under the Maccabees' descendants.

The revolt left two legacies that matter for Christianity. First, it created the ideal of the martyr, someone who dies rather than betray God. The stories of Jewish martyrs inspired later Christian ones. Second, it strengthened belief in the Resurrection of the dead. If faithful people die for God's law, surely God will raise them to life. The book of Daniel, written around this time, contains one of the Bible's clearest statements of that hope.

Rome arrives

Jewish independence ended in 63 BC when the Roman general Pompey took Jerusalem. Rome ruled through the half-Jewish Herod the Great, who rebuilt the Temple into one of the wonders of the ancient world. Herod was a brilliant builder and a paranoid tyrant. He had several of his own family members executed. After his death in 4 BC, Rome divided his kingdom. Galilee, where Jesus grew up, was ruled by Herod's son Herod Antipas. Judea, with Jerusalem, came under Roman governors from AD 6.

Roman rule meant heavy taxes, occasional insults to Jewish religion, and the constant presence of foreign soldiers. Resentment simmered. Several would-be messiahs and rebel leaders rose and were crushed in the decades around Jesus' life.

Many Judaisms

We sometimes imagine first-century Judaism as one uniform religion. It was not. Historians sometimes speak of "Judaisms" in the plural. The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, writing in the AD 90s, described several main groups or "philosophies." Each had a different answer to the same question: how should God's people live faithfully under foreign rule?

Jewish groups in the time of Jesus

	Sadducees	Pharisees	Essenes	Zealots / rebels
Who	Priestly elite, wealthy families	Popular lay teachers and their followers	Separatist communities (Qumran?)	Revolutionaries, often rural
Scripture	Written law of Moses only	Written law + oral tradition	Scripture + their own sect's writings	Scripture; God alone is king
Resurrection?	No	Yes	Yes (end-time hope)	Varied
Attitude to Rome	Cooperate to protect Temple	Live faithfully; mostly non-violent	Withdraw and wait for God	Fight
The Temple	Ran it	Honored it; also stressed home and synagogue	Saw it as corrupt	Wanted it purified
After AD 70	Disappear	Become rabbinic Judaism	Disappear	Crushed (AD 70, 135)

Sadducees

The Sadducees were the priestly aristocracy who ran the Temple. They accepted only the written law of Moses as authoritative. They rejected newer ideas such as the resurrection of the dead and angels. Politically they cooperated with Rome, since stability protected the Temple and their position. They disappear from history after the Temple was destroyed in AD 70.

Pharisees

The Pharisees were a popular lay movement devoted to applying God's law carefully to everyday life, not just in the Temple. They followed "the traditions of the elders," an oral body of interpretation alongside the written Torah. They believed in resurrection and angels. In the Gospels they are often Jesus' sharpest critics. Yet he shared many of their beliefs, and their debates with him were the kind of arguments people have with near neighbors. Famous teachers such as Hillel the Elder taught a gentle, people-centered reading of the law. After AD 70 the Pharisees' successors, the rabbis, rebuilt Judaism around Torah study and the synagogue. Their form of Judaism survives today.

Essenes

The Essenes withdrew from what they saw as a corrupt Temple and lived in disciplined communities, sharing property and practicing strict purity. Most scholars connect them with the community at Qumran near the Dead Sea. Its library, the Dead Sea Scrolls, was discovered in caves from 1947 onward. The scrolls show a group expecting a final battle between the "sons of light" and the "sons of darkness," and the arrival of one or even two messiahs. They give us a vivid picture of the hopes alive in Jesus' world. John the Baptist's desert ministry has sometimes been compared to them, though no direct link has been proven.

Zealots and revolutionaries

Some Jews believed that faithfulness meant armed resistance: God alone was king, so paying taxes to Caesar was a betrayal. Josephus calls this the "fourth philosophy." Revolutionary groups grew in the decades after Jesus and eventually led the great revolt of AD 66, which ended in disaster (see The Fall of Jerusalem).

Ordinary people

Most Jews belonged to none of these parties. They were farmers, fishermen, artisans and laborers. They went to the local Synagogue on the Sabbath to pray and hear Scripture read and explained. They traveled to Jerusalem for the great festivals if they could. They kept the food laws and circumcised their sons, and they hoped God would one day set things right.

What almost all Jews shared

Despite their differences, most Jews agreed on a few great essentials. Some scholars sum them up as "one God, one people, one land, one Temple, one Torah." Each morning and evening faithful Jews recited the Shema: "Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one."

And many shared a hope that God would soon act decisively. Different groups imagined this differently. Some expected a royal Messiah from David's family who would drive out the Romans. Others expected a priestly Messiah, a prophet like Moses, or a heavenly figure the book of Daniel calls "one like a son of man." Many expected the resurrection of the dead and a final judgment. The phrase "the kingdom of God" summed up this hope: the time when God would rule openly over the world.

When Jesus began preaching "The kingdom of God has come near," he was speaking directly into these hopes. The surprise would be what kind of kingdom, and what kind of Messiah, he claimed to bring.

Jews beyond Judea

By the first century, more Jews lived outside the land of Israel than inside it. There were large communities in Alexandria, Antioch, Rome, Asia Minor and Babylon. These diaspora Jews mostly spoke Greek, read the Septuagint, and lived side by side with non-Jews. Thinkers like Philo of Alexandria blended Jewish faith with Greek philosophy.

Diaspora synagogues often attracted non-Jews who admired Jewish monotheism and ethics but did not fully convert. The New Testament calls them "God-fearers." When Christian missionaries arrived, these God-fearers were often their most eager listeners, which made the synagogue the natural bridge between Judaism and the wider Gentile world.