Ep. 12 - Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, oh my!
Episode Transcript
Ep. 12 - Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, oh my!
[00:00:00] JC Schroeder: Welcome to Bite Size Seminary. In this podcast, we discuss issues in biblical studies, theology, ministry engagement, and following Jesus. I'm JC Schroeder. If you want to be challenged by new ideas and encouraged by old ones, then keep listening.
[00:00:25] Today, we're going to talk about the Pharisees, Sadducees, and the Essenes. Oh my! These different groups within first century Judaism shared a lot of core beliefs, but they also diverge in some significant ways. We'll look at how these groups help us better understand Jesus and the Gospels.
[00:00:47] But before we begin, don't forget you can also sign up to receive episodes emailed directly to you, as well as read a transcript of today's episode all at my website, [00:01:00] bitesizeseminary.com. All right, let's dive in.
[00:01:04] Introduction
[00:01:04] JC Schroeder: When we read the New Testament, our familiarity with different groups, like the Pharisees and the Sadducees, sometimes exists on a range. Sometimes, we have a really good understanding of what they believe and what their perspective is. And other times, we feel a bit befuddled. But if we're being honest, a lot of the time, our knowledge is incomplete and lacks some context.
[00:01:38] If you'll indulge me with a perhaps strange analogy. If you think of Darth Vader a little bit from Star Wars. You know, he's the bad guy. From the first movie, you get that picture that he is that bad guy. But in the second one, The Empire Strikes Back, you get a totally different perspective. It's revealed then--spoiler it's been out for 40 years, so sorry. [00:02:00] It's revealed that he's actually Luke's father. "I am your father." Well, that's shocking. And that changes everything about the story, how we see the character, totally revamps everything that we know in that story. We now have a better perspective and context for how we're supposed to understand the story and the character Darth Vader, and even Luke Skywalker. I see now that maybe this is a dumb analogy. Please stay with me. And don't hate me.
[00:02:30] So bringing that into the Bible, the more that we know about these different Jewish groups. The better we understand what Jesus did and said and how he agreed with these groups, but also how he contrasted with them. So in this episode, we're going to look at a few different Jewish groups, both their common beliefs, what would unite them as Jews, but also their beliefs that would have distinguished them from each other. And as we go on this [00:03:00] journey of understanding these different groups that we learn about in the Bible and existed during the time of Jesus, we're going to look at how this helps us understand Jesus better and understand the Bible's presentation of Jesus as well.
[00:03:16] Five Points of Unity in Ancient Judaism
[00:03:16] JC Schroeder: First, we'll look at what united Jews in the Second Temple Period. Here I'm drawing a little bit of this information from Campbell and Pennington's Reading the New Testament as Christian Scripture, as well as deSilva's An Introduction to the New Testament. So they lay out here, that there are five main key areas of agreement within Second Temple Judaism. If you don't remember what Second Temple Judaism is, we talked about it in the previous episode, episode 11. Second Temple Judaism is just that in between time after the exile of Israel by Babylon in 586 BC, all the way to when the Temple is destroyed a second time, in [00:04:00] 70 AD by the Romans. So that period, when that second temple existed is called Second Temple Judaism. And during this period, there is a wide amount of unity and agreement among Jews of their core beliefs. As we'll see, there is some disagreement, but there is a wide agreement of what is central to Judaism.
[00:04:26] So five key areas, the first one is monotheism. All Jews in this period, who would have identified as Jews, believed in monotheism. There is one true God. This goes back to Deuteronomy 6:4, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord, our God. The Lord is one." That there is this one God, that Israel was to know and to serve. And this was a defining feature within the polytheistic surrounding culture.
[00:04:55] A second key area of agreement in Judaism is [00:05:00] election. This is such an essential concept for Israel is that they do not just worship a God who they did not have a relationship with, but that God had come and had entered into this covenantal relationship with Israel that he had made them his chosen people.
[00:05:18] A third area of agreement is Torah. Or how we would translate it in English as "law" or perhaps even better "instruction." And with Torah, is this idea that God has provided a way to live, that there was instruction from him of the things to do or to not do that will lead to flourishing in a person's life that would lead to the right way that God wants Israel to live. Now as we discussed in the previous episode, in the Second Temple Period and the shifting of the identity of Jews during this period, they began to [00:06:00] see that there were different elements within the Torah and within their specific practice that would be used as identifying marks for Judaism and for Jews. Their adherence to Torah and in these specific items would mark them out as being faithful Jews, things like Sabbath observance, or the practice of circumcision. But during this period, as we saw last episode, those elements become a higher defining point of a Jewish identity. But nonetheless, all Jews would have recognized Torah as an essential element that they all would have agreed in that this Scripture, that God has spoken in Scripture, that he has given this way of life, and that they as Jews must follow that way of life.
[00:06:52] The fourth area of agreement is land and temple. Is this idea that God has given his people a land, a specific place to [00:07:00] live. And within that land is the place, which they can go to worship the Lord, the Temple. And what we'll see in a few minutes in the next section, is that this idea of the Temple is an essential component of how Jews viewed their relationship with the Lord and as well as the hopes that they had for the restoration of their people. So they saw the Temple as the place that they could go and worship before the Lord.
[00:07:28] The final element of agreement in Judaism is kingdom, is that God has given hope for the future. And this is really based off of God's covenant that he made with David in 2 Samuel 7, where he promised that Israel would always have a king from the dynasty of David. This covenant becomes the foundation point for messianic hope and the restoration of Israel's kingdom in the [00:08:00] future. And so along with this idea of temple and kingdom, working together, these become symbols of hope of things that the Jews were looking for, longing for, and had questions about how do we find restoration for the kingdom. Is it through the temple? Is it through something else? How do we find this restoration?
[00:08:27] These points of unity among Jews create this foundation point for all the Jews to identify together, but also for their subsequent discussions. And Jesus himself being a Jew, also would have agreed with these five elements, and it becomes the foundation point for his entry into discussion with the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and other groups at this time.
[00:08:53]
[00:08:54] Diversity within Ancient Judaism
[00:08:54] JC Schroeder: So along with the unity of these beliefs, by the Jews, [00:09:00] there is also diversity. It's important for us to recognize that Second Temple Judaism was not monolithic. Both ideas of unity and diversity are important for understanding this period of Second Temple Judaism. So again, these different groups within Judaism all had these five core ideas that they agreed on. But there are important questions that they would have differed on that differentiated these various groups. Each one of these groups had their own beliefs about key questions and the ramifications from those core ideas that were foundational for Judaism. Like the temple, what would bring its restoration? Jesus and the New Testament authors, they also enter into these questions. And that's what makes this type of exercise of learning more about Second Temple [00:10:00] Judaism and these various groups so helpful is that we begin to hear what Jesus says in a different note, in a different key. And we hear the message of the New Testament authors as they enter into these discussions. And they say, "You've got a piece of the puzzle, right. But there are other elements in which that's not the right answer. The right answer is over here. It is found in the person of Jesus. It is found in his actions and his life." And so learning more about the Pharisees and the Sadducees helps us learn more about Jesus and his mission, his work, and how the New Testament presents him to us.
[00:10:40] Now there are a variety of different groups within Judaism in this time. You have groups like the Herodians, which were very pro-Rome and keep Herod and power. You had groups like the Zealots who were a loose collection of people that were very anti-Rome, different end of the spectrum. But then three [00:11:00] main ones I want to look at here are the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes. One ancient author, Josephus, himself a Jew and a historian, describes these different groups. And he describes his interactions with them, and him analyzing all of them as a young man to determine which group he would fit into. And so in his writings, he describes, his close familiarity with all of these different groups and their different perspectives and their questions that they had about Judaism and life within Judaism.
[00:11:36] And as we look at these three different groups, I'm going to put them into kind of three different boxes. We'll look at who they are, what sort of political beliefs they have, and what sort of theological beliefs they have. Now, of course, those political and theological beliefs are merged to some degree, but it is helpful to perhaps think of them in separate categories, at least for my mind. And here I'm drawing a little bit from Powell's [00:12:00] Introduction to the New Testament.
[00:12:01] The Pharisees
[00:12:01] JC Schroeder: So first, what we'll look at is the Pharisees. The Pharisees are primarily teachers and scholars with a lot of grassroots support. Josephus tells us that the common person really admired the Pharisees. They saw them as being very pious individuals and not like highfalutin, snooty people, but as just more regular type of people that wanted to be obedient to the Lord. And this resonated with the regular Joe or the regular Joseph on the street. And so the Pharisees found a lot of support throughout Judea. And we see this in the Gospels, as Jesus is traveling around Galilee and throughout Judea, and even in other areas, he encounters a lot of different Pharisees. Even in the book of Acts, as Paul is going about the Greco-Roman world, he is encountering lots of [00:13:00] different Pharisees. As we'll see, this is different from the Sadducees. The Sadducees are a more elite group, but we'll come back to them in a moment.
[00:13:07] Now as we look at the Pharisees' political beliefs, it's important for all three of these groups that the differentiation between them had to do with resulting questions from their core united ideas that they had about Judaism. And so remember how we talked about one of the core ideas was kingdom for Israel, for Judea. Each of these groups are going to have their own answer to the question of how will the kingdom be restored because Israel was not their own kingdom. They were under Roman oppressive rule. And so now the question was, how will they find restoration? The Pharisees' answer to that question of where restoration would come from, is that it would come through a Levitical obedience to the Torah by all people. What the Pharisees did [00:14:00] is that they took the requirements for the Levitical priests and the extra stringent sort of requirements for their lives within the Temple. And they took that and they applied that to all of Israel. So in one sense, they saw all Jews as being priests in some sense, and all homes as being temples in some sense. And that Israel would never be restored, that that kingdom would not be brought back unless all Jews would return to the Lord in this more stringent obedience to Torah. Basically restoration would not come unless all people acted like Levitical priests.
[00:14:44] This helps color a little bit of the apostle Paul's life before he turns to Christ. In his life within Judaism with his previous name, Saul. Why is he so uptight of people becoming Christians? And [00:15:00] why is he going in persecuting and throwing them in jail and even killing some. It's because he sees that as an existential threat to the restoration of Israel. If these people are going to walk away from Torah observance, or if they're going to walk away from acting as these Levitical priests, with this more stringent obedience to Torah, then they are going to bring condemnation to Israel. And so in order for Israel to survive, they must be stopped.
[00:15:29] Because of the Pharisees' more common person, mass support, after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, Phariseeism, if that's a word, becomes the more dominant form of Judaism. The other forms of Judaism, these other groups that we'll see, fade away into the sands of history. But Phariseeism continues on in rabbinic Judaism. So what we see in various other texts, such as the Mishnah [00:16:00] or the Talmud are reflections of later developments of Pharisee thought.
[00:16:06] Some other additional theological beliefs that the Pharisees had is this need to follow the traditions of the elders. They had this idea of, we have the law, of what the law tells us to do. But in order for us to be most faithful to the law, let's expand the fence of what counts as obedience. So we don't even come close to disobeying the law. They don't want to even come close to breaking the law. So they create a more stricter form of laws, of traditions, that would help them preserve. So there's some wisdom here is that they don't want to go too far. But over time these traditions develop into the Law itself. So when Jesus comes and his disciples are eating without washing their hands, the Pharisees take that as, [00:17:00] "Hey, you broke the law." And Jesus goes, "No, they didn't. They're breaking the tradition of the elders, which is not the same thing as the law." Pharisees also had a strong belief in both fate and free will. They also had a belief in the bodily resurrection and eternal rewards and punishment. So there's a lot there about the Pharisees.
[00:17:22] The Sadducees
[00:17:22] JC Schroeder: Now we come to the Sadducees. Who are the Sadducees? Well, unlike the Pharisees, the Sadducees are priestly, aristocrats. They're more, upper-class, they're more elite, and they have a higher stake in the power game in Israel. And thus their power base is primarily in Jerusalem and in the temple. For their political beliefs, just like all these other groups, they had a specific vision of answering the question of how will the kingdom be restored? Their vision was through temple sacrifices. Their [00:18:00] vision was, we need to keep the sacrifices going that way, one day the Lord will bring restoration to his kingdom and to his people. And so, they aim for the status quo. They want to keep the sacrifices going and not let something again happen, like what happened with Antioch Epiphanes, where the Temple is turned into a temple for Zeus and the sacrifices stop. They want to keep those going. So thus, they collaborate with Rome to maintain power. Now I'm sure some of that had to do with maintaining their own power. But it is also partially out of this theological belief that if they keep the sacrifices going, then God will restore. And unlike the Pharisees, who continue on after the destruction of the temple, they fade into the sands of history, because their power is in the temple. And if the temple has been removed, then their identity and their position is really gone.
[00:18:59] The [00:19:00] Sadducees would have been a bit more Scripturally conservative then what we find with the Pharisees. The Pharisees were okay with the progress of further revelation about things like angels or about the tradition of the elders. The Sadducees were more conservative. "Just the facts, ma'am." They would just want to like, show me the verse, the chapter and the verse, otherwise I'm not going to believe it. And so they didn't believe in things like resurrection or they were just skeptical of things like angels. Things that can find some evidence in the Old Testament, but are not as clear as we might like. And so they looked at that uncertainty or that non-clarity. And they said, "I'm going to err on the side of safety and just go, no, that ain't, that ain't a thing." They also believed in free will as opposed to fate or some form of predestination.
[00:19:57] Now their focus was on the temple [00:20:00] and the preservation of the temple sacrifices. And what's so interesting about what Jesus does as he comes into Jerusalem, the week of his death, is that he goes in and he cleanses the temple. He sees that it is not a place of worship to the Lord. It is not a place for people to come and to pray and to worship the Lord freely. And he cleanses the temple of those that are doing all this buying and selling in the temple courtyard. And you see that his actions are an action of judgment on the temple and the temple structure. And the way that the New Testament Gospels present this story, I think of the story of Mark, is that Jesus is condemning the Temple and that the true sacrifice and that the true way to worship is through Jesus. It's no longer through temple sacrifices. It is through Jesus himself.
[00:20:55] The Essenes
[00:20:55] JC Schroeder: Now our third and final group is called the Essenes. We [00:21:00] actually don't have any information about the Essenes from the New Testament. What evidence we do have is from archeology and other ancient historians, like Josephus. The Essenes are most likely the group that participated in the copying of the Dead Sea Scrolls. So they live off in the desert and they were an ascetic sect. They had some of the most strict observance of all of these groups. Typically from our Christian perspective, we think of the Pharisees as being really extreme in their observance of Torah. But the Essenes, you know what they called the Pharisees? They called them "the lover of smooth things." Meaning they like the easy life. Which is not how we would view the Pharisees, but the Essenes because of their strict asceticism, of limiting their pleasures in life, they look at the Pharisees, going "ah, you guys got it easy." They thought of their own community as the true Israel. [00:22:00] They saw the other Jews, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, as being corrupt, as not being faithful to the Lord. And they were the only ones who were faithful to God.
[00:22:11] Their political beliefs were that Jerusalem, the Temple, and the sacrifices were all corrupt, and thus we're ineffective. So everything that the Sadducees were doing to preserve the sacrifices, didn't matter anything. It wasn't doing anything. The only way that they were going to find restoration, that the kingdom was going to be restored to Israel, is through their own faithfulness, this strict asceticism and a separation from all other Jews who were not a part of their sect. The Essenes also disappeared into time after the destruction of Jerusalem. Some of their beliefs include a strong view in predestination. They also have a lot of apocalyticism, meaning they were thinking about the end of the world and visions [00:23:00] with angels and things of that nature. As well as lots of themes about Messianism or the Messiah.
[00:23:07] 3 Groups in Contrast with Jesus
[00:23:07] JC Schroeder: Now it's so powerful about this is that all of these three groups have different answers to the question of where do we find restoration. For the Pharisees, it's Levitical obedience. But Jesus says it's through me. It's through my fulfillment of the law. That's what Jesus says through his fulfillment of the law, by his death and resurrection. For the Sadducees, they thought it was through temple sacrifices. But the New Testament tells us that it is him who becomes this new temple, this new way that we can find the forgiveness of our sins and we can go and worship the Father. And for the Essenes, they thought of restoration as being achieved through their faithfulness. But what we see, and this is the power of what we see in Jesus, is that restoration is through his faithfulness, not our own, not someone else's, but in his faithfulness, [00:24:00] and the need to rest in his faithfulness.
[00:24:03] Now I know we've covered a lot. But I think knowing more about these groups and Second Temple Judaism in general will help situate us as better readers of the Gospels and the New Testament, and see more clearly God's message to us. And we can see how beautiful and how precious Jesus is.
[00:24:25] Outro
[00:24:25] JC Schroeder: That's all I have for today. If you made it this far in the episode, would you mind giving an honest review, either on Apple Podcasts, or on Spotify, or wherever you listen? Don't forget too. You can also find a transcript of today's episode at my website, bitesizeseminary.com, where you can also connect with me on Twitter or Facebook. You can see all the links in the show notes below. Thanks for listening.