So - my previous post answering BH should cover question 1 to an extent. The authority of high priest was at least tainted. From the Talmud we read that some were basically buying the position through bribery. Most of the priests were Sadducees, and aligned with the wealthier, aristocratic, urban social classes, and those people wanted to keep the status quo, and supported Roman rule within limits (they were opposed to having Rome interfere with religious practices centered around the Temple).Lev wrote:Well, OK I'll go ahead and take you up on your invitation to keep asking questions. Just say so if I begin to sound like a toddler asking: why, why, why... Deal?
Two questions related to your last post: 1. What led to the marginalized status of the priests within Judaism? and 2. Why do you suppose none of the four gospels makes it clear which movement Jesus was associated with? Reading the NT, I get the picture of Jesus as a radical independent, coming on the scene to shake everything up. An equal-opportunity revolutionary. If, as you say, he was part of one of the factions and had at least some degree of loyalty to that faction (by acknowledging the Pharisees' claim to authority), why isn't this made explicit? Two possible answers I can think of are that either it was well-known by the audiences of each of the gospels and thus didn't need to be said, or that by the time the gospels were written, Christianity had developed enough as its own movement that it didn't necessarily matter which "branch" of Judaism it had come from, just that it came from Judaism in general (sort of like when you meet a person who's moved to the US from Canada--they never say which province they're from, just "Canada").
Lev
2. Most people who had lived through all this history and lived in the area would have been intimately familiar with it, and would see no reason to have to give a synopsis of history in their writings. Why should they?
If you were writing - say - a mystery novel, would you interrupt your narrative to summarize the Constitution and 200 years of US history? You'd assume your reader would already know it, and understand a comment about, say, 'the 60's' without any further description. And you might say 'the Kennedy's problem with Chappaquiddick' and your readers would know what you meant.
But in 500 to 1000 years, a reader probably wouldn't get it at all.
Probably the writers thought they WERE explicit, because their readers would know the background.
Also, after the period 69 to 135 CE, which is when a lot of the NT was written, the Temple had been destroyed (in 70 CE) which removed the main center of the priests and Sadducees, and the rebellions of 115 and 130-135 CE almost completely wiped out Judea (and the north to Galilee) altogether. It certainly destroyed or sent into exile, any Jewish Jesus-following groups.
So you ALSO had a largely gentile Christian body of Jesus-followers, who - as you mention - might not have bothered to differentiate all that strongly among the various philosophies within Judaism. Plus by that time, the ONLY Judaism was 'pharisaic Judaism'.
(Might explain why those NT quotes about the Sadducees always seem to add that little explanatory phrase 'who do not believe in the resurrection of the dead').
Paul Before the Sanhedrin
…7As he said this, there occurred a dissension between the Pharisees and Sadducees, and the assembly was divided. 8For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, nor an angel, nor a spirit, but the Pharisees acknowledge them all. 9And there occurred a great uproar; and some of the scribes of the Pharisaic party stood up and began to argue heatedly, saying, "We find nothing wrong with this man; suppose a spirit or an angel has spoken to him?"…
Matthew 22:23
That same day the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question.
Mark 12:18
Then the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question.
Luke 20:27
Some of the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus with a question.
