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Judaism was one of the religions of the Greco-Roman world, and it is perhaps most important for our study because Jesus and his earliest followers were Jews. They read Jewish scriptures, worshipped the Jewish God, and kept Jewish customs. To understand Jesus, then, we must understand first-century Judaism.
Like pagans, Jews believed in the existence of a higher realm and a powerful deity, that this deity provided benefits for those who worship him or her properly, and that proper worship included prayer and sacrifice. In addition, there were temple priests who oversaw the sacred space and ritual acts.
Monotheism: The Belief in the One True God
Like pagans, most Jews believed in a hierarchy of supernatural beings, but unlike pagans, Jews advocated the exclusive worship of the one supreme creator God. About six hundred years before Jesus, most Jews were exiled from their homeland when the Babylonians defeated the southern kingdom of Judah. This exile is known as the diaspora, literally, the dispersion of the Jews from Israel. By the time of Jesus, more Jews lived in the diaspora than in Israel. Most Jews in the diaspora, moreover, knew Greek, not Hebrew, so the Jewish Scriptures were translated into Greek. This translation is known as the Septuagint (abbreviated LXX).
The Covenant: Israel’s Pact with Its God
Most Jews believed that the one supreme God had established a special relationship with them. This pact, or covenant, entailed God’s protection of his chosen people and their proper response to this protection, the observance of his laws.
The Law: Israel’s Covenantal Obligations
God’s laws are contained in the Torah, a term that can mean the laws Moses received on Mt. Sinai or the first five books of the Bible (also called the Pentateuch). These books tell the stories of creation and primeval history, Jewish patriarchs and matriarch, and the entry into the Promised Land. The Jewish Law covered aspects of both communal and cultic life. Jews did not believe they had to keep every law to earn God’s favor. On the contrary, they followed the Law because they had already received God’s favor through the covenant. The Law, then, was not considered a burden but a gift resulting from God’s favor.
Temple and Synagogue: Israel’s Places of Worship
In addition to being monotheistic, diaspora Jews were unique in the ancient world because they worshipped a god of a distant land, not a local god. Although Jewish ritual worship was similar to the worship of pagan gods, the sacrificial worship of the Jewish God took place exclusively in Jerusalem, at the only Temple for the Jewish God. He received sacrifices only in Jerusalem (in contrast to the many temples of other deities throughout the Empire) because the inner sanctum of the Jerusalem Temple, the Holy of Holies, was regarded as the specific place of his presence. Because most Jews could not worship in the Jerusalem Temple (because they lived in the diaspora), they developed synagogues, gatherings for prayer and study.
Forms of Early Judaism
Although there was general agreement among Jews in one true God, who made a covenant with them and provided them with laws, significant diversity also existed within early Judaism. Many of the different forms of Judaism emerged during a series of political crises.
Political Crises in the Jewish Homeland and Their Ramifications
For about eight hundred years, the Jews and their land had been ruled by foreign powers. In 721 BCE, the northern kingdom, Israel, was conquered by Assyria, scattering the Israelites and resettling the northern kingdom with other peoples. In 587–586 BCE, the southern kingdom, Judah, was conquered by Babylonia. Many Jews (descendants of those from the southern kingdom of Judah) were forced to leave the land—the beginning of the diaspora. About fifty years later, after the Persians defeated Babylonia, exiled Jews were allowed to return to the land. Eventually, Alexander the Great defeated the Persian Empire and introduced Greek culture, or Hellenism, into the Mediterranean world. After Alexander the Great died, his general Ptolemy ruled Israel, followed by his heirs. During this time, the Jewish high priest was the local ruler, a state of affairs that did not change when Syria gained control of the region. Under the Syrian rulers, Hellenization was pushed more aggressively onto the Jews. One ruler, Antiochus Epiphanes, made circumcision illegal, turned the Jewish Temple into a pagan sanctuary, and required the Jews to offer sacrifices to the pagan gods. In response to this, a revolt broke out in 167 BCE, led by Judas Maccabeus. The Jewish Revolt was successful, and the Jews ruled themselves for almost a century until the Romans conquered Israel in 63 BCE.
The Formation of Jewish Groups
The prominent Jewish historian, Josephus, described four philosophies (or groups) of Judaism that arose around the time of the Maccabean revolt: Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, and the Fourth Philosophy. It should be emphasized that most Jews did not belong to any of these groups. Still, they are important for understanding the New Testament.
The Pharisees were a group of devout Jews who were, above all else, intent on keeping the entire will of God. Because the laws given to Moses were often vague, the Pharisees debated what was and was not allowed if one was to keep the laws (these decisions are known as the “oral law”; many of these oral traditions were later written down in the Rabbinic period in a document known as the Mishnah, which later became the heart of the Talmud). The Pharisees held very little political power until after the Jewish revolt against Rome that culminated in the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE.
The Sadducees were the primary political power-holders in Jesus’ lifetime. They were the priestly and aristocratic Jews whose main affiliation was with the Jerusalem Temple. They also made up the majority of the Sanhedrin, the local Jewish council. They did not observe the Pharisaic oral laws or, like the Pharisees, believe in an afterlife. They deemed authoritative only the five books of Moses (the Pentateuch).
The Essenes were a separatist group that believed that the Pharisees were too lax in their religious observances, while the Sadducees were corrupt and had defiled the Temple (largely because a non-Zadokite high priest had been appointed by the Hasmoneans, the descendants of the Maccabees who had taken power after the Jewish Revolt). In 1947, a collection of texts was discovered, known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, which most scholars now ascribe to a group of Essenes who had left Jerusalem and settled at Qumran in the desert near the Dead Sea. In addition to community rules and several other kinds of texts, these scrolls contain portions of all the books of the Hebrew Bible except Esther. The Essenes are the only one of the four philosophies not mentioned in the New Testament.
The Fourth Philosophy referred to a number of individual groups whose common goal was to overthrow the foreign powers that ruled the land of Israel. These groups favored armed rebellion against foreign authorities. Among the groups were the Sicarii (the “daggermen”) and the Zealots.
The Jewish Context for the Traditions about Jesus
Like their pagan counterparts, the Jews believed there were divine beings other than the one true God and that these sometimes appeared in human form. Likewise, Jews believed there were humans whose special relationship to God made them something more than human. These were sometimes called sons of God, and they performed miracles like healing the sick and calming storms. Stories about Jesus’ miracles, therefore, were intelligible to both Jews and pagans in the ancient world.
Jewish Apocalypticism
One of the worldviews held by many Jews in the first-century is called “apocalypticism” (lit., “revealing” or “unveiling”). The Jews were confronted with a long history of foreign rule, a history that raised many questions: If God had given the land to the Jews, why did a seemingly unending line of foreign powers rule over it? Why were the Jews suffering under these foreign regimes? The answer, according to apocalypticists, was that God was ultimately in control, but the time was coming when God would regain control of the world, reward the righteous, and punish the wicked. Thus, apocalyptic thought offered an explanation for the foreign domination of Palestine and the suffering of the Jews.
Jewish apocalypticists were dualists: they believed in evil and good, Satan and God, death and life. These were cosmic powers with which humans had to ally themselves. They believed that the suffering of the righteous would not subside until God broke into history and established his kingdom. For those who remained faithful, though, there was the promise of vindication—and all of this would happen soon.