Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Jeffrey Gibson · 03-27-2013, 03:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

Jeffrey = "critical to" not "critical of"

Quite so. Need to have my eyes checked! Apologies?

But then the question is how an ancient movement is critical to (crucial for?) something that arose much later and whose theology differs substantially from Pharisaic Judaism at crucial points (on the Messiah, for instance, and the hope of the restoration of Israel, and on dietary restrictions, on the nature of the "divine inspiration" of the Torah, etc.).

Jeffrey

thief of fire · 03-27-2013, 03:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spin

Quote:

Originally Posted by thief of fire

Asserting things are "given" does not make them so though. You could present a case, some evidence, a reference or some reasoning why this is "given".

Perhaps, you could find out the scholarly views on the subject.

As you made the assertion that is your job.

Quote:

There are two types of argument from silence: a) those that don't talk about something, and b) those that don't about something that they should talk about. We are interested in the second here. If the Pharisees were a going concern in the 1st century, you'd expect that the Jews who preserved their traditions of the time with a copiousness that is reassuring to mention them.

You need to make a case why they should not merely assume they should. Again, this is your job. All you are doing is asserting with very little substance.

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The alternative is to trust a set of texts we cannot date and which we know contains significant amounts of ahistorical materials.

No , this a logical fallacy known as a false dilemma or false dichotomy.

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Now here I am not asserting for sure that there were no Pharisees in the first century,

As you didn't say anything like that, I can't see why you'd have to deny it.

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but I am floating the notion to see if it can stay up.

Ok.

Quote:

If you want to assert that there must have been Pharisees, fine,

Attempt to misrepresent my views, noted.

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but I'm not interested.

You're not interested in mispreresenting my views and then telling us your not interested in that misrepresentation? Wow.

Quote:

If you wonder about the evidence then you might find trying to deal with the issue useful.

You might try making a useful case too.

semiopen · 03-27-2013, 03:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeffrey Gibson

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

Jeffrey = "critical to" not "critical of"

Quite so. Need to have my eyes checked! Apologies?

But then the question is how an ancient movement is critical to (crucial for?) something that arose much later and whose theology differs substantially from Pharisaic Judaism at crucial points (on the Messiah, for instance, and the hope of the restoration of Israel, and on dietary restrictions, on the nature of the "divine inspiration" of the Torah, etc.).

Jeffrey

Sorry Jeffrey, I'm partially to blame for the misunderstanding.

I've made several posts on the Pharisees and Hanukkah and the Reform interpretation of them. Hanukkah is in some ways the most important Jewish holiday since Jewish kids can get presents like Xian kids. I was struck by how tenuous the reform explanation of the holiday is, ironically relying on a Greek book in the Christian Canon,etc. Of course, there is no reason you would have noticed my posts.

However these observatons are pertinent here, dealing with the Pharisees, Sadducees and the first century (both BC and BCE).

Jeffrey Gibson · 03-27-2013, 03:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by semiopen

I was struck by how tenuous the reform explanation of the holiday is, ironically relying on a Greek book in the Christian Canon,etc.

I'm not sure what you mean by "tenuous". And why, even assuming that 1 & 2 Maccabees are the only texts that Jews use in explaining Hanukkah, is it ironic that Jew make appeal to and use these the books when they are explaining what Hanukkah celebrates and why it is celebrated? What bearing does the fact that 1 & 2 Maccabees are in the Catholic and Orthodox canons have on the fact that these are still Jewish books which testify to events in Jewish history?

Should Jews not use Exodus, because that too is in Christian canons?

Sorry, but I have no idea what point you are trying to make.

Jeffrey

Clivedurdle · 03-27-2013, 03:59 PM

Quote:

The history of Judaism » Hellenistic Judaism (4th century bce–2nd century ce) » The Greek period (332–63 bce) » Social, political, and religious divisions

During the Hellenistic period the priests were both the wealthiest class and the strongest political group among the Jews of Jerusalem. The wealthiest of the priests were the members of the Oniad family, who held the hereditary office of high priest until they were replaced by the Hasmoneans; the Temple that they supervised also functioned as a bank, where the wealth of the Temple was stored and where private individuals also deposited their money. From a social and economic point of view, therefore, Josephus is justified in calling the government of Judaea a theocracy. Opposition to the priests’ oppressive rule arose among an urban middle-class group known as scribes (soferim), who based their interpretation of and instruction in the Torah on an oral tradition probably going back to the time of the return from the Babylonian Exile (538 bce and after). A special group of scribes known as Hasidim, or “Pietists,” became the forerunners of the Pharisees, or “Separatists”—middle-class Jewish scholars who reinterpreted the Torah and the prophetic writings to meet the needs of their times. The Hasidim joined the Hasmoneans in the struggle against the Hellenizers, though on religious rather than political grounds.
Josephus held that the Pharisees and the other Jewish parties were philosophical schools, and some modern scholars have argued that the groupings were primarily along economic and social lines; but the chief distinctions among them were religious and go back well before the Maccabean revolt. Some modern scholars have sought to interpret the Pharisees’ opposition to the Sadducees—wealthy, conservative Jews who accepted the Torah alone as authoritative—as based on an urban-rural dichotomy, but a very large share of Pharisaic concern was with agricultural matters. To associate the rabbis with urbanization seems a distortion. The chief support for the Pharisees came from the lower classes, whether in the country or in the city.
The equation of Pharisaic with “normative” Judaism can no longer be supported, at any rate not before the destruction of the Temple in 70 ce. According to the Palestinian Talmud (the annotations and interpretations of the Oral Law compiled by Palestinian Jewish scholars in the 3rd and 4th centuries ce), there were 24 types of “heretics” in Palestine in 70 ce, thus indicating much divergence among Jews; this picture is confirmed by Josephus, who notes numerous instances of religious leaders who claimed to be prophets and who obtained considerable followings.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/...#ref=ref299213

http://www.freeratio.org/thearchives...d.php?t=253766

Quote:

PhariseeJewish history
Main

member of a Jewish religious party that flourished in Palestine during the latter part of the Second Temple period (515 BC–AD 70). Their insistence on the binding force of oral tradition (“the unwritten Torah”) still remains a basic tenet of Jewish theological thought. When the Mishna (the first constituent part of the Talmud) was compiled about AD 200, it incorporated the teachings of the Pharisees on Jewish law.

The Pharisees (Hebrew: Perushim) emerged as a distinct group shortly after the Maccabaean revolt, around 165–160 BC; they were, it is generally believed, spiritual descendants of the Hasideans (q.v.). The Pharisees emerged as a party of laymen and scribes in contradistinction to the Sadducees, i.e., the party of the high priesthood that had traditionally provided the sole leadership of the Jewish people. The basic difference that led to the split between the Pharisees and the Sadducees lay in their respective attitudes toward the Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament) and the problem of finding in it answers to questions and bases for decisions about contemporary legal and religious matters arising under circumstances far different from those of the time of Moses. In their response to this problem, the Sadducees, on the one hand, refused to accept any precept as binding unless it was based directly on the Torah, i.e., the Written Law. The Pharisees, on the other hand, believed that the Law that God gave to Moses was twofold, consisting of the Written Law and the Oral Law, i.e., the teachings of the prophets and the oral traditions of the Jewish people. Whereas the priestly Sadducees taught that the written Torah was the only source of revelation, the Pharisees admitted the principle of evolution in the Law; men must use their reason in interpreting the Torah and applying it to contemporary problems. Rather than blindly follow the letter of the Law even if it conflicted with reason or conscience, the Pharisees harmonized the teachings of the Torah with their own ideas or found their own ideas suggested or implied in it. They interpreted the Law according to its spirit; when in the course of time a law had been outgrown or superseded by changing conditions, they gave it a new and more acceptable meaning, seeking scriptural support for their actions through a ramified system of hermeneutics. It was due to this progressive tendency of the Pharisees that their interpretation of the Torah continued to develop and has remained a living force in Judaism.

The Pharisees were not primarily a political party but a society of scholars and pietists. They enjoyed a large popular following, and in the New Testament they appear as spokesmen for the majority of the population. Around 100 BC a long struggle ensued as the Pharisees tried to democratize the Jewish religion and remove it from the control of the Temple priests. The Pharisees asserted that God could and should be worshiped even away from the Temple and outside Jerusalem. To the Pharisees, worship consisted not in bloody sacrifices—the practice of the Temple priests—but in prayer and in the study of God’s law. Hence the Pharisees fostered the synagogue as an institution of religious worship, outside and separate from the Temple. The synagogue may thus be considered a Pharasaic institution since the Pharisees developed it, raised it to high eminence, and gave it a central place in Jewish religious life.

The active period of Pharasaism, the most influential movement in the development of Orthodox Judaism, extended well into the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD. The Pharisees preserved and transmitted Judaism through the flexibility they gave to Jewish scriptural interpretation in the face of changing historical circumstances. The efforts they devoted to education also had a seminal importance in subsequent Jewish history; after the destruction of the Second Temple and the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70, it was the synagogue and the schools of the Pharisees that continued to function and to promote Judaism in the long centuries following the Diaspora.

http://www.britannica.com/bps/home#t...20Encyclopedia

http://www.freeratio.org/thearchives....php?t=238661&

The Pharisees were anti-slavery...

Duvduv · 03-27-2013, 06:29 PM

I was going to reference this myself. I have to remember to check the various commentaries to see what it said about this. I think it is significant that there was a recognition of different types of "Pharisees" and see what implication this has for the gospel stories. Acts has Paul being the student of Rabban Gamliel the First, and states nothing negative about R. Gamliel or his group. On the other hand, of course, Paul is also in the employ of the Sadducee high priest, which should have some implications for the overall view of pharisees through the eyes of the author(s) of Acts and even the epistles and gospels.

Quote:

Originally Posted by stephan huller

mary,

Sotah 22b makes reference to Salome being told by her husband 'Fear not the Pharisees and the non-Pharisees but the hypocrites who ape the Pharisees; because their deeds are the deeds of Zimri but they expect a reward like Phineas'

I can find more references but today is crazy busy.

Duvduv · 03-27-2013, 06:36 PM

Quite apropos since tonight, Wednesday, we "Pharisees" count Day 2 of the 49 days of the Omer.

Quote:

Originally Posted by stephan huller

Here is the reference from Abu'l Fath chronicle:

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They (the Dositheans) discontinued the Festivals and the Passover sacrifice. They discontinued the fasting and Priestly share (= teruma). They counted the fifty days (until Pentecost) from the day after the Passover day as the [Pharisaic] Jews do, making their offensiveness public [82.15 - 83.1]

spin · 03-27-2013, 07:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by semiopen

Jacob_Neusner is the big academic expert on the Pharisees and he considers them to have been active in the first century,

In Josephus, Judaism, and Christianity, ed. Louis Feldman & Gohei Hata, (Detroit: Wayne State, 1987), Neusner wrote a survey paper on the Pharisaic references in Josephus's works ("Josephus' Pharisees: A Complete Repertoire", 274-292) and concluded "As a political party [the Pharisees] function effectively for roughly the first fifty years of the first century BC. While individuals thereafter are described as Pharisees, as a sect the group seems to end its political life with the advent of Herod and of Hillel." (292)

Has he changed from that position?

spin · 03-27-2013, 07:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by thief of fire

Quote:

Originally Posted by spin

Quote:

Originally Posted by thief of fire

Asserting things are "given" does not make them so though. You could present a case, some evidence, a reference or some reasoning why this is "given".

Perhaps, you could find out the scholarly views on the subject.

As you made the assertion that is your job.

Quote:

There are two types of argument from silence: a) those that don't talk about something, and b) those that don't about something that they should talk about. We are interested in the second here. If the Pharisees were a going concern in the 1st century, you'd expect that the Jews who preserved their traditions of the time with a copiousness that is reassuring to mention them.

You need to make a case why they should not merely assume they should. Again, this is your job. All you are doing is asserting with very little substance.

Quote:

The alternative is to trust a set of texts we cannot date and which we know contains significant amounts of ahistorical materials.

No , this a logical fallacy known as a false dilemma or false dichotomy.

Quote:

Now here I am not asserting for sure that there were no Pharisees in the first century,

As you didn't say anything like that, I can't see why you'd have to deny it.

Quote:

but I am floating the notion to see if it can stay up.

Ok.

Quote:

If you want to assert that there must have been Pharisees, fine,

Attempt to misrepresent my views, noted.

Quote:

but I'm not interested.

You're not interested in mispreresenting my views and then telling us your not interested in that misrepresentation? Wow.

Quote:

If you wonder about the evidence then you might find trying to deal with the issue useful.

You might try making a useful case too.

Enjoy the wilderness.

stephan huller · 03-27-2013, 08:06 PM

Quote:

Has he changed from that position?

I think he has Alzheimer's disease or something like that.

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