Excerpted from Lawrence H. Schiffman, From Text to Tradition, Ktav Publishing House, Hoboken, NJ, 1991. It is against the background just sketched that the phenomenon of religious sectarianism came to fruition. There had been divergences in Israelite religion even in the biblical period, and in many cases the very same issues that had led to conflicts in […]
The Sadducees say- We complain against you, Pharisees, for you say that the Holy Scriptures defile the hands [that is, are holy], but the writings of Homer do not defile the hands –Mishnah Yadayim 4-6 “Jon Q. Judean,” the “average” Jew in the Hellenistic and early Roman world, did not write books. We can gain […]
Overview- Culture and Religion in Hellenistic Israel (circa 332 BCE-70 CE) Pharisees and Sadducees (332 BCE-c. 70 CE) Second Temple Sectarianism (332 BCE-c. 70 CE) Literature of the Second Commonwealth (332 BCE-c. 70 CE) The Significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls