During their years of exile in Babylonia and Persia, the Jewish people had absorbed the idea that life is a battlefield between Good and Evil. Later, back in Roman-occupied Judea, the line between good and evil seemed to have been traced clearly between the Jews and the Romans. This division was further fueled by several conflicts that had been long brewing:
First, there was the growing anger and cynicism caused by the corruption and violence of its own rulers and its occupiers. Several new groups and “movements,” notably the Pharisees, Sadducees, Zealots, and Essenes, were formed and motivated by these sentiments.
The Sadducees were mostly members of the wealthy, conservative elite. They had opened their hearts to the secular world of Greek culture and commerce, while insisting that the only dignified form of Judaism was found in a rather spiritless, fundamentalist, “pure letter of the law” Torah reading. Philosophically, they denied concepts such as resurrection, personal immortality, or other ideas found only in oral tradition. Politically, they were content with the way things were and resisted change, preferring instead to promote cordial relations with the Romans. Although they often held influential positions in society, they were unpopular with the masses who generally opposed all foreign influences.
The Pharisees, the largest group, were mostly middle-class Jews who emphasized exact observance of the law as it had been interpreted by the sages, elders, and rabbis. Politically, they were ardent anti-Hellenists and anti-Romans. The Pharisees were admired by most Jews, but they were never a very large group as most people had neither the education nor the time to join the party and follow all their strict rules regarding prayer, fasting, festival observance, tithing, etc. The Pharisees were heavily influenced by Persian ideas of Good and Evil, and adhered to the growing belief in the resurrection of the body with an afterlife of rewards and punishments. In time, many of the best impulses of self-righteousness would weaken into empty religious formalism (as they always do), focusing on outward actions rather than the inner experience of the soul. Although the group had initially been extremely tolerant, this began to develop into a feeling of contempt for those Jews who did not meet their standards of behavior.
From among the more politically radical Pharisees arose a new group called the Zealots, which means “men of action.” These were revolutionary patriots, seeking to overthrow the Roman regime by any means necessary. They were strongest in Galilee. As the Romans committed one atrocity after another, the ranks of the Zealots grew. (By AD 66, their ranks would rise and they would lead the charge against the Roman oppressors, initiating a long, costly, and bitter war, which ultimately ended in inevitable Roman victory and the destruction of the Second Temple in AD 70. .) .
At the other extreme were the Essenes. These were religious Jews who, in contrast to the Sadducees, now rejected the Temple and the Priesthood, believing that they had been desecrated by corruption and murder. They also despised what they felt was the spiritually empty and overly ‘comfortable’ life of the Pharisees. And unlike the Zealots, they did not like politics or violence. Instead, they chose to withdraw from secular activities and devote themselves entirely to spiritual purification and contemplation within austere religious communities. The Essenes are not mentioned in the New Testament, but Flavius Josephus, Philo, Pliny, and several others speak of them in their writings. According to the evidence of the Dead Sea Scrolls that were discovered in 1947, and additional scrolls that were later excavated in a Jewish monastery in Qumran, the Essene communities worked and worshiped according to their own customs, studied and copied literature Religious, they practiced baptism and a communion meal, and lived an ascetic life dedicated to spiritual growth and perfection of the soul.
Another source of seething hostility in Palestine was a new and peculiar experience of the time, the phenomenon called “religious persecution.” People had often wondered why God allowed good people to suffer despite being good. But now, when the Jews found themselves persecuted simply for their religious practices, they began to wonder why God allowed people to suffer BECAUSE they were good! Such persecution seemed the very essence of evil.
Fortunately, the belief in a cosmic struggle between Good and Evil brought with it a growing conviction that Good would ultimately triumph. Thus, the experience of religious persecution, according to Julie Galambush in “The Reluctant Parting,” “proved to be the catalyst for the development of the belief that those who died for their faith in this world would be rewarded in another world.” : life after death through Resurrection.” Instead of being seen as unfortunate wretches who had been inexplicably forgotten by God, these people began to be seen as martyrs, religious heroes whom God would reward in the afterlife for their goodness and faithfulness. The philosophical belief that God – and Good – would ultimately triumph over Evil, coupled with growing political tension with Rome and the anticipation of inevitable war, led to an increasingly “apocalyptic” view of the world: in other words, many Jews in Palestine began to believe that the end of the world (at least as we know it) was fast approaching. God was about to triumph over Evil, he would judge the wicked, reward the just, and a New Order would dawn.
To lead the legions of God to victory against hopelessly adverse political conditions, and to establish a new kingdom of God, would require a leader with divine power. And so, a messianic hope was kindled in the heart of Judaism. God had promised Samuel that an anointed son of David would reign over the Israelites forever. Where was he? Now, after centuries of Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, and Roman oppression, faith in God and hope for the future were combined in the belief that God would finally send Moshiach, “the anointed one,” the Messiah, to rescue to Israel. and take them to a new world. As Galambush writes: “Messianic expectations, cosmic dualism, martyrdom and resurrection, a whole constellation of beliefs absent from the ancient Israelite religion, suddenly took center stage. In some respects, Jewish life continued as it had been.” Made Over Centuries: Rituals in Jerusalem The temple followed the forms laid down in Leviticus, and the rhythm of the Sabbath and festivals continued as usual, but in the last few centuries before the Common Era, the popular Jewish imagination had come to occupy a a far more colorful religious landscape, one in which history was unfolding, rapidly approaching its end.” It was into this colorful, dangerous, and hope-filled world that a child named Jesus, from the Tribe of Judah and the House of David, was born in Bethlehem.