Paganism#

Mythology#

Atop the Greek pantheon or hierarchy of gods sat Zeus, son of Cronus. According to myth, Cronus, who had seized dominion of the world from his father, Uranus, ordinarily devoured his own children as soon as they were born. But the mother of Zeus saved her infant by giving Cronus a stone wrapped in baby blankets to swallow. On reaching adulthood, Zeus overthrew his father and divided the dominion with his two brothers, Poseidon, who ruled the sea, and Hades, who ruled the underworld. Zeus himself ruled the heavens. The gods had access to earth from their capital, Mount Olympus in Greece.

At Delphi, Greece, a temple of Apollo stood over a cavern out of which issued fumes thought to be his breath. A priestess seated on a tripod over the opening inhaled the fumes, fell into a trance, and muttered words that were written and vaguely interpreted by priests in answer to inquiring worshipers.

State Religion#

Roman state religion incorporated much of the Greek pantheon and mythology. Roman gods came to be identified with Greek gods: Jupiter with Zeus, Venus with Aphrodite, and so on. The Romans also added new features, such as a priesthood in which the emperor himself acted as pontifex maximus (chief priest). The all-too-human traits of the gods destroyed many people’s faith in the Greco-Roman pantheon, but for others this faith persisted through the New Testament period.

Emperor Worship#

Following the long-established practice of ascribing divinity to rulers, the Roman senate started the emperor cult by deifying—after their decease—Augustus and subsequent emperors who had served well. Because they had long regarded their living rulers as divine, enthusiastic loyalists in the eastern provinces sometimes anticipated this postmortem deification.

But first-century emperors who claimed deity for themselves while still alive failed to receive the senatorial honor even at death. They were Caligula, Nero, and Domitian.

The refusal of Christians to participate in what most others considered a patriotic duty and unifying pledge of allegiance to the emperor as divine brought increasing persecution.

Mystery Religions#

Much has been written about the widespread popularity and influence of Greek, Egyptian, and oriental mystery religions in the first Christian century: the cults of Eleusis, Mithra, Isis, Dionysus, Cybele, and many local cults. These promised purification and immortality of the soul and often centered on myths of a goddess whose lover or child was taken from her, usually by death, and later restored.

The mysteries also featured secret initiatory and other rites involving ceremonial washing, blood-sprinkling, sacramental meals, intoxication, emotional frenzy, and impressive pageantry by which devotees were supposed to gain union with the deity.

Not until the second, third, and fourth centuries of the Christian era do we get detailed information concerning the beliefs held by devotees of the mysteries. Therefore, though nobody doubts the pre-Christian existence of mystery religions, their pre-Christian beliefs remain largely unknown. Where their later beliefs look slightly similar to Christian beliefs, the direction of borrowing may have gone from Christianity to the mystery religions rather than vice versa, especially since pagans were notoriously assimilative and early Christians exclusivistic.

In particular, the myths of dying and rising gods do not really correspond to the New Testament accounts of Jesus’ death and resurrection.

1. In the first place, the deaths of the gods were not thought to purchase redemption for human beings.

2. Furthermore, the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection had to do with a recent historical figure; the myths usually had to do with personifications of vegetational processes (the annual dying and renewal of plant life) and thus did not move on the plane of history at all, much less recent history.

3. Finally, the mythological gods did not rise in full bodily resurrection, but revived only in part or merely in the world of the dead.

When the fourteen pieces of the dismembered corpse of Osiris were reassembled, he became king of the dead in the underworld. And all that Cybele could obtain for the corpse of Attis was that it should not decay, that its hair should continue to grow, and that its little finger should move. Yet the story of Cybele and Attis, who according to the myth died because of self-castration, is sometimes cited as a significant parallel to the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection!

As a matter of fact, the very thoughts of death by crucifixion and of physical resurrection were abhorrent to ancient pagans, who associated crucifixion with slaves and criminals and often thought of the body as a prison for the soul and as the seat of evil. If Christians had borrowed their beliefs from popular mystery religions, you would have to wonder why the pagans widely regarded the Christian gospel as foolish and incredible and Christians as deserving of persecution.

Superstition and Syncretism#

Superstition had a stranglehold on most people in the Roman Empire. Use of magical formulas; consultation of horoscopes and oracles; augury or prediction of the future by observing the flight of birds, the movement of oil on water, or the markings on a liver; and the hiring of professional exorcists (experts at casting out demons) - all these superstitious practices and many more played a part in everyday life.

In a practice known as syncretism, pagan people simply combined various religious beliefs and superstitious practices, much as many modern people diversify their investments and buy multiple insurance policies. If one fails, another may take up the slack. The images of birds, dogs, bulls, crocodiles, beetles, and other creatures filled the idol shelves of pagan households.

Gnosticism#

Plato’s dualistic contrast between the invisible world of ideas and the visible world of matter formed a substratum of Gnosticism, which started to take shape late in the first century and equated matter with evil, spirit with good. Out of these equations came two opposite modes of conduct:

1. asceticism, the suppression of bodily passions because of their connection with evil matter

2. libertinism or sensualism, the indulgence of bodily passions because of the transience and consequent unimportance of matter.

In both modes, oriental religious notions mixed with Platonic philosophy.

Physical resurrection seemed abhorrent so long as matter was regarded as evil. Spiritual immortality seemed desirable, however, and attainable through the knowledge of secret doctrines and passwords by which at death one’s departing spirit could elude hostile demonic guardians of the planets and stars on its flight from earth to heaven.

Under this view the human problem does not consist in guilt, which needs forgiveness, so much as in ignorance, which needs replacement with knowledge.

To keep the realm of supreme deity pure, later Gnostics separated it from the physical and therefore evil universe by a series of lesser divine beings called “aeons.” Thus an elaborate angelology developed alongside demonology.

Gnostic ideas seem to stand behind certain heresies attacked in later New Testament literature; but the contents of a Gnostic library discovered in the 1940s at Nag Hammadi, Egypt, give evidence that full-blown Gnostic mythology did not yet exist at the time Christianity arose. In the first century, Gnosticism was still developing out of an aggregate of loosely related philosophical and religious ideas and had yet to turn into highly organized systems of doctrine.

Philosophies#

The intelligentsia were turning to purer forms of philosophy.

• Epicureanism taught pleasure (not necessarily sensual) as the chief good in life.

• Stoicism taught dutiful acceptance of your fate as determined by an impersonal Reason that rules the universe and of which all human beings are a part.

• Cynicism regarded the supreme virtue as a simple, unconventional life in rejection of the popular pursuits of comfort, affluence, and social prestige.

• Skepticism was relativistic, so that its followers abandoned belief in anything absolute and succumbed to doubt and conformity to prevailing custom.

With the partial exception of Stoicism, however, these and other philosophies did not determine the lives of very many people. Superstition and syncretism characterized the masses. Thus, Christianity entered a religiously and philosophically confused world.

Judaism#

Synagogues#

This Judaism, known as Second Temple Judaism, originated toward the close of the Old Testament period. The prophets had predicted exile as punishment for the idolatry practiced by the people of Israel. Fulfillment of the prediction cured them of idolatry. Loss of the temple at the beginning of the Babylonian exile gave rise to increased study and observance of the Old Testament law (the Torah) and at least ultimately to establishment of the synagogue as an institution.

A reasonable conjecture is that since the Babylonian conqueror Nebuchadnezzar had destroyed the first temple (Solomon’s) and deported most of the Jews from Judea, they established local centers of worship called synagogues (“assemblies”).

Once established as an institution, synagogues remained and multiplied even after the second temple was built under the leadership of Zerubbabel.

At first not very elaborate, the typical synagogue came to consist of a rectangular room perhaps having a raised speaker’s platform behind which rested a portable chest or shrine containing Old Testament scrolls. The congregation sat on stone benches running along two or three walls and on mats and possibly wooden chairs in the center of the room. In front, facing the congregation, sat the ruler and elders of the synagogue. Singing was unaccompanied. The speaker stood to read from an Old Testament scroll and sat to preach. Everyone stood for prayer.

The typical synagogue service consisted in the following:

• Antiphonal recitations of the Shema (the “golden text” of Judaism) and of the Shemone Esreh (a series of praises to God)

• Prayer

• Singing of psalms

• Readings from the Hebrew Old Testament Law and Prophets interspersed with a Targum (a loose oral translation into Aramaic or Greek, which many Jews understood better than Hebrew)

• A sermon (if someone competent to preach was present)

• A blessing or benediction

There was freedom in the wording of the liturgy. The whole congregation joined in an “Amen” at the close of prayers. The elected ruler of the synagogue presided over meetings, introduced strangers, and selected different members of the congregation to lead recitations, read Scripture, and preach. Qualified visitors were likewise invited to speak, a practice that opened many opportunities for Jesus and Paul to preach the gospel in synagogues.

A synagogue attendant took care of the scrolls and furniture, lighted the lamps, blew a trumpet announcing the Sabbath, stood beside readers to ensure correct pronunciation and accurate reading of the sacred texts, and sometimes taught in the synagogue school. A board of elders exercised spiritual oversight of the congregation. Erring members faced punishment by whipping and excommunication. Alms taken into the synagogue were distributed to the poor.

Not only was the synagogue a center for religious worship every Sabbath (Saturday). During the week it also became a center for the administration of justice, political meetings, funeral services, the education of Jewish lads, and study of the Old Testament. This study made the teaching of the law important. As a result its teachers began to wield an influence that vied with that of priests, whose base of power lay in the temple.

The Second Temple#

The Mosaic law prescribed that sacrifices should be offered only at a central sanctuary. The second temple continued to be important, therefore, until its destruction in A.D. 70. The urging of the prophets Haggai and Zechariah had spurred its building during the Old Testament period of restoration from the exile. Plundered and desecrated by Antiochus Epiphanes in 168 B.C., it had been repaired, cleansed, and rededicated by Judas Maccabeus three years later.

At much expense, Herod the Great beautified it even beyond the glory of the first temple, which had been built in grand style more than nine hundred years earlier by King Solomon, son of King David. The outer retaining walls jutted up as much as 100 feet from street level. Some of its stones reached 150 feet in length, and they were all neatly fitted together without mortar. The two-door gate towered 45 feet high, each door 22 feet wide.

Much of the temple proper was overlaid with gold. It stood in the middle of courts and cloisters covering about twenty-six acres. Gentiles could enter the outer court; but inscriptions in Latin and Greek warned them on pain of death not to enter the inner courts, reserved for Jews alone.

• Just outside the temple proper stood an altar for burnt offerings and a laver, which was a large basin full of water that the priests used for washing.

• Inside the first room, or holy place, curtained from the outside with a heavy veil, stood three pieces of furniture:

1. the menorah, a seven-branched golden lampstand that burned olive oil mixed with other substances;
2. a table stocked with bread that represented God’s providential presence;
3. a small altar for the burning of incense.

• Another heavy veil curtained off the innermost room, the holy of holies, which the high priest entered once a year, alone, on the Day of Atonement

Besides private sacrifices, daily burnt offerings for the whole nation were sacrificed at midmorning and midafternoon in conjunction with the burning of incense and with prayers, priestly benedictions, the pouring out of wine as a libation (liquid offering), the blowing of trumpets, and chanting and inging by choirs of Levites to the accompaniment of harps, lyres, and wind instruments. Sabbaths, festivals, and other holy days featured additional ceremonies.

The Religious Calendar#

Closely related to worship in the temple were religious festivals and holy days. The Jewish civil year began approximately in September — October, the Jewish religious year approximately in March — April.

Because of differences in calendrical systems, the equivalents in our months are only approximate. The Mosaic law prescribed the first six items on the calendar: Passover — Tabernacles The remaining two, Hanukkah and Purim, arose later and apart from scriptural command. Pilgrims thronged to Jerusalem from elsewhere in Palestine and also from foreign countries for the three main festivals: Passover-Unleavened Bread, Pentecost, and Tabernacles.

THE JEWISH RELIGIOUS CALENDAR

The Literature of Judaism#

Old Testament#

The Old Testament existed in three linguistic forms for Jews of the first century: the original Hebrew, the Septuagint (a Greek translation), and the Targums (oral paraphrases into Aramaic that were just beginning to be written down). The Targums also contained traditional, interpretive, and imaginative material not found in the Old Testament itself.

Apocrypha#

Written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek and dating from the intertestamental and New Testament periods, the apocryphal books of the Old Testament contain mainly history, fiction, and wisdom. The Jews and the earliest Christians did not generally regard these books as sacred Scripture. Thus apocrypha, which originally meant “hidden, secret” and therefore “profound,” came to mean “noncanonical.”

The apocry￾phal books include the following:

• 1 Esdras

• 2 Esdras (or 4 Ezra, apocalyptic in content)

• Tobit

• Judith

• Additions to the book of Esther

• Wisdom of Solomon

• Ecclesiasticus, or the Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach, or simply Sirach

• Baruch

• Letter of Jeremiah

• Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Young Men

• Susanna

• Bel and the Dragon

• Prayer of Manasseh

• 1 Maccabees

• 2 Maccabees

Pseudepigrapha and Apocalyptic#

Other Jewish books dating from the same era are labeled pseudepigrapha (“falsely inscribed”), because some of them were written under the falsely assumed names of long-deceased Old Testament figures to achieve an air of authority. Some pseudepigraphal writings also fall into the class of apocalyptic literature, so called because they claim “to reveal” (Greek: apokalyptein) in highly symbolic and visionary language the true course and end of human history with the coming of God’s kingdom on earth.

By promising the soon arrival of that kingdom, apocalyptists encouraged the Jewish people to endure persecution. Repeated disappointment of the hopes built up in this way eventually stopped the publication of apocalyptic literature.

The pseudepigraphal literature, which has no generally recognized limits, also contains anonymous books of legendary history, psalms, and wisdom. A list of better-known pseudepigraphal books follows:

• 1 Enoch

• 2 Enoch

• 2 Baruch, or Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch

• 3 Baruch, or Greek Apocalypse of Baruch

• Sibylline Oracles

• Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs

• Testament of Job

• Lives of the Prophets

• Assumption of Moses

• Martyrdom of Isaiah

• Paralipomena of Jeremiah

• Jubilees

• Life of Adam and Eve

• Psalms of Solomon

• Letter of Aristeas

• 3 Maccabees

• 4 Maccabess

There are also apocalypses attributed to Adam, Abraham, Elijah, and Zephaniah, and testaments attributed to Adam, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and Solomon, plus various other books.

Roman Catholics call the pseudepigrapha the Apocrypha, and they accept what Protestants call the Apocrypha into their Scripture as deuterocanonical books. Others call the pseudepigrapha the Outside Books. The Eastern Orthodox and Ethiopic Scriptures include some of the pseudepigrapha as well as the Apocrypha.

Dead Sea Scrolls#

In addition, the approximately eight hundred scrolls discovered in caves near the ruins of Qumran just off the northwest shore of the Dead Sea contain literature similar to the traditional pseudepigrapha:

• Damascus (or Zadokite) Document

• Community Rule, or Manual of Discipline

• War Between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness

• Description of the New Jerusalem

• Temple Scroll

• Copper Scroll

• Thanksgiving Hymns

• Genesis Apocryphon

• Psalms of Joshua

• Melchizedek Text

• Pseudo-Jeremianic literature

• Apocryphal Danielic literature

• Various commentaries on the Old Testament books of Psalms, Isaiah, Hosea, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah

• Various books of laws, liturgies, prayers, blessings, mysteries, wisdom, and astronomical and calendrical calculations

Talmud#

Rabbinic case decisions about interpretive questions stemming from the Old Testament law formed a memorized oral tradition in New Testament times. This tradition grew during the succeeding centuries until the Jewish Talmud enshrined it in writing.

Chronologically, the Talmud consists of the Mishnah, or oral law, developed by rabbis through the second century, plus the Gemarah, which contains comments on the Mishnah by rabbis living from the third through the fifth centuries. Topically, the Talmud consists of the halakah, or strictly legal portions, and the haggadah, or nonlegal portions (stories, legends, explanatory narratives).

By eventually asserting that the oral law dates back to Moses at Mount Sinai, the rabbis elevated their conflicting interpretations of the Old Testament to a position of greater practical importance than the Old Testament itself. Two famous schools of rabbinic interpretation existing already in the first century were the usually moderate school of Hillel and the usually strict school of Shammai, though even the moderate school seems very strict by prevailing modern standards.

The Theology of Judaism#

Jewish beliefs sprang from the acts of God in history as recorded and interpreted in a collection of sacred books (the Old Testament), not as in paganism from mythology, mysticism, or philosophic speculation, though later legendary material, mystical practices, and philosophic speculation did make their way into Second Temple Judaism.

The intertestamental period saw an increased emphasis on the fate of the individual and therefore on the doctrine of individual resurrection, especially for the redressing of martyrdom suffered at the hands of Antiochus Epiphanes. Nationalism and the awareness of being God’s chosen people had by no means died out, however.

Messianic Hope#

Jews were looking for the Messiah to come. Indeed, some of them awaited a variety of messianic figures—prophetic, priestly, and royal. But they did not expect the Messiah to be a divine as well as human being, or to suffer, die, and rise from the dead for their salvation from sin.

Some have interpreted a fragment among the Dead Sea Scrolls to indicate a belief at Qumran in the Messiah’s suffering, but this interpretation is neither the only one possible nor the most likely one.

The Jews looked, rather, for God to use a purely human figure in bringing military deliverance from Roman domination. Or God himself would deliver his people, they thought, and then introduce the Messiah as ruler.

“This present age”, evil in character, was to be followed by the utopian “days of the Messiah” or “Day of the Lord”, indeterminate or variously calculated as to length. Afterwards, “the coming age” - that is, the eternal future—would begin. Occasionally in Jewish thinking, the messianic kingdom merged with the eternal age to come.

Sects and Other Groups within Judaism#

Pharisees#

The Pharisees (“separated ones” in a ritualistic or derogatory sense) originated shortly after the Maccabean Revolt as an outgrowth of the Hasideans, who had objected to the Hellenization of Jewish culture. Middle-class laymen for the most part, Pharisees made up the largest of Jewish religious sects but still numbered only about six thousand in the time of Herod the Great. They scrupulously observed the rabbinic as well as Mosaic laws.

The concern for ritual purity loomed large throughout Judaism but with special prominence in Pharisaism.

Observance of the Sabbath was similarly scrupulous. Some rabbis in the Pharisaical tradition forbade spitting on the bare ground during the Sabbath lest the action disturb the dirt and thus constitute plowing, which would break the prohibition of working on the Sabbath. It became a moot question whether one might lawfully eat an egg laid on a festival day. Were such eggs tainted even though hens lack an awareness of festival days?

But Pharisaically minded rabbis devised legal loopholes for their and others’ convenience.

• Though a man should not carry his clothes in his arms out of a burning house on the Sabbath, he could put on several layers of clothing and bring them out by wearing them.

• One should not travel on the Sabbath more than three-fifths of a mile from the town or city where he lived. But if he wished to go farther, on Friday he might deposit food for two meals three-fifths of a mile from his home in the direction he wished to travel. The deposit of food made that place his home-away-from-home, so that on the Sabbath he could travel yet another three-fifths of a mile.

Jesus and the Pharisees repeatedly clashed over the artificiality of such legalisms. Nevertheless, average Jews admired Pharisees as paragons of virtue; indeed, they considered them the mainstays of Judaism.

Sadducees#

The aristocratic Sadducees were heirs of the intertestamental Hasmoneans. Though fewer than the Pharisees, they wielded more political influence because they controlled the priesthood. “Sadducees” may originally have meant “members of the supreme council,” reinterpreted by the Sadducees to mean “righteous ones.”

Unlike the Pharisees, they regarded only the first five books of the Old Testament (the Pentateuch, Mosaic law, or Torah) as fully authoritative and denied the oral law of the nonpriestly rabbis. They did not believe in divine foreordination, disembodied human spirits (which could be referred to as “angels”), or the immortality of the soul and resurrection of the body, as did the Pharisees.

Because the center of priestly power, the temple, was destroyed in A.D. 70 along with large numbers of the Sadducees themselves, the Sadducean party disintegrated. The Pharisees survived to become the foundation of orthodox Judaism in later centuries.

Essenes#

A small sect of Essenes numbered about four thousand. Like the Pharisees, they evolved from the Hasideans who had become disgruntled with the increasingly political aims of the Hasmoneans. Some of the Essenes lived in monastic communities, such as the one at Qumran, which produced the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Admission required a three-year probation and relinquishment of private property and wealth to a communal treasury. Either the stricter ones refrained from marriage, or they all stopped cohabiting with their wives after several years of marriage. The Essenes’ punctilious legalism exceeded that of the Pharisees. For this reason it is doubtful they contributed significantly to the rise of Christianity, as has been suggested by some modern writers.

The Essenes did not offer animal sacrifices in the temple at Jerusalem, because they regarded it as polluted by a corrupt priesthood. To maintain ritual purity, they even refrained from bowel movements on the Sabbath; and to symbolize that purity they wore white robes. The sect regarded itself as God’s elect remnant living in the last days. They looked for the appearance of several eschatological figures—a great prophet, a royal messiah, and a priestly messiah—and prepared themselves for a forty-year war that they expected to culminate in the messianic kingdom.

Herodians and Zealots#

The Herodians seem to have been a small minority of influential Jews—probably centered in Galilee, where Herod Antipas ruled—who supported the Herodian dynasty and, by implication, the Romans, who had put the Herods in charge. Contrasting with the Herodians were revolutionaries dedicated to the overthrow of Roman power. They refused to pay taxes to Rome, regarded acknowledgment of loyalty to Caesar as sinful, and sparked several uprisings, including the Jewish revolt that led to the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.

During that revolt some of them came to be known as “Zealots” (formerly a nonpolitical designation—Acts 21:20; 22:3; compare Luke 6:15; Acts 1:13). Modern scholars have sometimes identified these Zealots with the Sicarii (“assassins”), who carried concealed daggers; but the Sicarii may have formed only a branch of Zealotry or an originally separate group that fused with the Zealots.

Scribes and Disciples#

The scribes were neither a religious sect nor a political party, but a professional class. Lawyer, scribe, and teacher (of the law) are synonymous terms in the New Testament. To these must be added rabbi (literally, “my great one”), a term of respect for teachers as well as for deserving others.

Originating with Ezra, according to tradition, the scribes interpreted and taught the Old Testament law and delivered legal pronouncements on cases brought to them.

Application of the law to daily life necessitated their interpretive task. The disciples (“learners”) of the scribes followed behind them wherever they went and learned by observation and rote memory the minutiae of the Old Testament and of rabbinic lore. The scribes taught in the temple precincts and synagogues and occasionally debated in the presence of their disciples.

By Jesus’ time most of the scribes probably belonged to the Pharisaical sect, though not all Pharisees possessed the theological expertise required of scribes. Since scribal activity was gratuitous, scribes depended on a trade to support themselves.

For example, Paul, who had received rabbinic training, made tents (Acts 18:3).

Though he lacked formal theological education, Jesus was called “Rabbi” and gathered disciples around himself. He regularly taught in easy-to-remember rhythmic structure, sententious sayings, and vivid parables. His teaching carried the weight of his own authority (“Truly I say …”; compare Matthew 7:28-29). In contrast, the scribes endlessly quoted opinions of past rabbis.

Sanhedrin#

The Romans allowed Jews to handle many of their own religious and domestic matters. As a result, numerous sanhedrins—that is, local courts—existed. Outranking them all was the Jewish supreme court, the Great Sanhedrin in Jerusalem. This Sanhedrin even commanded a police force. The high priest chaired meetings of the court. The New Testament refers to the Great Sanhedrin by the terms “council,” “chief priests and elders and scribes,” “chief priests and rulers,” and simply “rulers.”

People of the Land#

In Palestinian Jewry the masses of common people, called “the people of the land,” remained unaffiliated with the religious sects and political parties. Because of their ignorance of and indifference to the fine points of Old Testament law and scribal regulations, the Pharisees held these people in contempt; but they criticized Jesus most of all for mingling with “sinners,” those known for flagrant violations of the Mosaic law.

Diaspora#

Outside Palestine the Jews of the Diaspora (“Dispersion”) fell into two classes:

1. Hebraists, who retained not only their Judaistic faith but also their Jewish language and customs and thereby incurred Gentile hatred for their standoffishness

2. Hellenists, who adopted the Greek language, dress, and customs while retaining their Judaistic faith in varying degrees.

An outstanding example of Hellenistic Judaism was Philo, a first-century Jewish philosopher and resident of Alexandria.

He combined Judaism and Greek philosophy by allegorizing the Old Testament and thus making it teach Greek philosophy in symbolic form.

Doubtless, Judaism outside Palestine tended to be less strict and more influenced by Gentile modes of thinking than was Judaism in Palestine.

For the Sadducees had lost their base of influence in the temple, and the Romans had defeated the hopes of smaller, apocalyptically minded sects such as the Essenes.

Proselytes and God-Fearers#

Despite its intensely nationalistic spirit, Judaism attracted Gentile proselytes, who were full converts, and - in larger numbers - God-fearers found Jewish theology superior to pagan polytheism and superstition, for the Jews emphasized their monotheistic belief in one God and opposed idolatry even in their own temple.

Unconverted pagans, on the other hand, could not comprehend a temple without an idol. Why build a temple if not to house an idol? The Jewish emphasis on moral behavior also appealed to the conscience of Gentiles offended by the immorality of the pantheon as described in pagan mythology and of the devotees of those gods and goddesses.

Jewish Education#

Jewish children received their first lessons in Hebrew history and religion, practical skills, and reading and writing from their parents. The Mosaic law and Proverbs in the Old Testament contain many injunctions concerning this parental responsibility, which included the employment of physical punishment for failure to learn properly. Jewish boys entered local synagogue schools at about six years of age. There they used the Old Testament as a textbook at least for reading and possibly for writing as well.

Lessons also included simple arithmetic, extrabiblical Jewish tradition, and religious rituals. Besides this narrow academic training, every Jewish boy learned a trade. To become an advanced scholar in the Old Testament, a Jewish young man attached himself as pupil to a rabbi. Before Paul’s Christian conversion, for example, he studied under the famous rabbi Gamaliel (Acts 22:3).

Greco-Roman Education#

By contrast, Greco-Roman education was liberal in scope. Slaves supervised boys in their earlier years by giving them their first lessons and then leading them to and from private schools until they graduated into adulthood with a great deal of ceremony. Even girls and young slaves might attend these elementary schools. After graduation, young men could attend universities in Athens, Rhodes, Tarsus, Alexandria, and other cities to study philosophy, rhetoric, law, mathematics, astronomy, medicine, geography, and botany.

They could attend the lectures of peripatetic philosophers, so called because these philosophers dispensed their wisdom as they walked around. Graffiti and papyrus remains show that education was fairly common, so that people often carried small notebooks for jotting down grocery lists, appointments, and other memoranda. Occasionally, shorthand was used.

Summary#

Traditional pagan religion featured a pantheon of gods who, according to the myths about them, often behaved badly. Roman emperors also were elevated to divine status and worshiped; and secret religions, called mysteries, became increasingly popular. Superstitious practices flourished. Pagans were syncretistic in that they combined these practices and religions rather than following one to the exclusion of others.

Jews of the period had forsaken idolatry. Obedience to the Mosaic law came to the fore. Religious and other meetings were held in local synagogues. There nonsacrificial worship took place each Sabbath day. Sacrificial worship took place daily and only at the temple in Jerusalem, where annual religious festivals and holy days were also celebrated.

The Old Testament provided a sacred text as the basis for Jewish beliefs and practices. This text gave an account of salvation history, among other things, and existed in the original Hebrew, a Greek translation (the Septuagint [LXX]), and mainly oral paraphrases into Aramaic (Targums). But Jewish authors had written, and were still writing, other religious books containing various sorts of material that add to our knowledge of the Judaism then current. Teachers’ oral interpretations of the Old Testament law were written in the Talmud only later.

Judaism attracted high-minded Gentiles, both full converts (proselytes) and half converts (God-fearers), but Judaism remained very nationalistic. Belief in bodily resurrection was gaining ground. So too were messianic expectations, which, however, varied. Yet the messiahs or Messiah was not expected to be divine as well as human, nor to die for the sins of others.

Pharisees were strict; Essenes, stricter; Sadducees, loose, upscale, centered in Jerusalem, and destined to disintegrate as a sect with the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in A.D. 70. The Herodians supported Herod’s family in power. Zealots opposed the Roman power, represented by the Herods and Roman governors. Scribes taught and applied the Old Testament law. Though limited in jurisdiction, Jewish courts handled most questions of daily life. The Sanhedrin in Jerusalem met as a kind of supreme court.

The mass of common folk belonged to none of these sects or classes and were designated “people of the land.” Jews living outside Palestine formed the Diaspora, or Dispersion, and divided into traditionalists (Hebraists) and progressives (Hellenists). Jewish education was narrow in scope; Greco-Roman education, wide.