In Chapter 3, Ehrman provides us with much useful information about the religious environment into which Jesus was born and out of which Christianity emerged. Worthy of note is the Box 3.1 on page 29, about the Septuagint. Ignore the part about the legend behind the translation. The key feature is the fact that even Judaism had been heavily affected by the spread of Greek language and culture (referring to the process of "Hellenization" mentioned in the last Blog entry). While Jesus was very much a part of Aramaic speaking Judaism, Aramaic speaking Jews do not seem to have latched on to Christianity in any great numbers. But the response was much better among Greek speaking Jews.
Notice that in Acts 2, when Luke reports that the Jesus people (120 in number) began telling the message of Jesus in at least 14 different languages, the message of Jesus is going out to Jews (either pilgrims to the festival or foreign born Jews living in Jerusalem)for whom Aramaic is not their first language. This event, quickly puts the whole idea of Christianity into the ears of Jews who had connections throughout the entire eastern Mediterranean region. This is a precursor to the fact that Christianity did catch on among Greek speaking Jews. The first two we meet in the Bible are Stephen and Saul(Paul) in Acts 6&7.
Back to the Septuagint. What Ehrman says in Box 3.1 is well taken, especially the first and the last paragraphs. The entire NT was originally composed in Greek, and it is entirely possible that all of the NT writers were born Jewish and spoke Greek (I do realize that tradition says that the author of Luke-Acts was born pagan). This explains why the Old Testament quotations are taken from the Septuagint (the Septuagint is still the official Old Testament of the Greek Orthodox Church. After Christianity began to catch on in the Roman empire, even the "Diaspora" Jews ditched Greek and went back to Hebrew).
What we find is that Judaism in the time of Jesus was multi-faceted both in terms of language (speaking both Aramaic and Greek, and some scholars would have been able to speak Hebrew, while all Jewish scholars would have been able to read Hebrew) and holding a variety of belief patterns. In Palestine we know about the Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, and Zealots, as well as the disciples of John the Baptist and probably other smaller groups like Jesus and his disciples. We really do Not know much about Judaism outside of Palestine during this time. Even when the scholarly Jew, Philo of Alexandria (in Egypt), speaks of the varieties of Judaism in the first century CE, what he says is very similar to the Palestinian born Josephus (see Box 3.2 on page 35). But we cannot be sure if that implies that there are representatives of the four main groups of Jews (Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes & Zealots) outside of Palestine or not. Interestingly, Paul apparently meets disciples of John the Baptist in Ephesus (west coast of modern day Turkey) (see Acts 19:1-3).
Ehrman gives a very good summary of these four groups within Palestinian Judaism, based on what is actually known about them. When scholars refers to these four groups as "sects" they intend to imply that these do no represent the majority of Jews in Palestine. Sometimes we think of a sect as if it is a cult, but that word sect and cult mean things much different in religious academic speak than what they mean in modern everyday English. A sect is a well defined group that has its own rules for belonging and is intended to keep together people of a particular like-minded religious way of life. A cult is any kind of regular religious ritual activity that is repeated according to a specific set of rules. The "cult" that is most important to the New Testament is the sacrificial "cult" that operates everyday in the Jerusalem Temple involv8ing the ritual slaughter of animals as religious sacrifices.
I find it disappointing that Ehrman did not expand upon the this statement he makes on page 36, column 2: "I should emphasize at the outset that most Jews in Palestine did not belong to any of these groups." But Ehrman never says how these ordinary Jews actually practiced their faith. Here is my best answer on that.
The average Palestinian Jew in the time of Jesus probably did not work on Saturday, may have attended synagogue services, if his town had a synagogue (women did not participate directly in the practice of the Jewish religion at this time to my knowledge; thus the significance of the Martha & Mary episode in Luke 10:39). A major feature of Judaism of this time was attendance at the annual festivals in Jerusalem whenever possible. The temple in Jerusalem was the center of the practice of Judaism in the time of Jesus. Orthodox Judaism as we know it today, where the synagogue is the focus of any communal worship only came into prominence after the destruction of the temple in 70 CE and the subsequent emergence of Rabbinic Judaism based on the traditions of the elders (the Pharisees' oral law). The central features of most temple festivals would have been special events (processions) at the temple or to the temple, certain animal sacrifices (such as the lambs at Passover), and having a festive meal with the meat. As we see in Luke 2 in which 12 year Jesus gos to Jerusalem for the Passover, often large contingents of people from a village would travel together to such a temple festival.
The annual Jerusalem temple festivals in which male Israelites were expected to attend were: Pessah (Passover), Shavuot (Feast of Weeks or Pentecost) and Sukkot (Feast of Tabernacles or Booths). Other temple festivals people might want to attend were Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) and Rosh Hashanah (New Year). Other annual festivals would be celebrated at home, including Hanukkah and Purim. And perhaps most importantly would be the family evening meal marking the beginning of every Shabat (Sabbath) with the special blessing said over the cup and the bread ( the beginning of a Jewish day begins at sundown and continues to the next sundown).
In addition to the festivals the average Jewish person would be expected refrain from work on the Sabbath and to eat kosher in the broad sense of no swine or shellfish (I won't attempt to explain the details they are very complex. If you are every interested in the intricacies of Orthodox Judaism, go their American web site at www.ou.org/ and scroll down the left side until your get to Judaism 101, click on that and you will find everything you might want to know about the current practice of Rabbinic Judaism).
A note on synagogues. Traditional Rabbinic Judaism believes that synagogues as a gathering of men for prayer on the Sabbath began during the Babylonian exile. However, the existence of synagogues as buildings for prayer does not seem to predate Jesus by much. Notice that according to Luke 7:5 the synagogue in Capernaum was built recently and paid for by a Roman army officer no less. There is no archaeological evidence of synagogues to be found before the first century CE. Therefore, during the time of Jesus they were just coming into being as buildings (though men probably gathered for Sabbath prayer in someone's home prior to that). Some scholars suggest that perhaps the buildings doubled as community centers since there is evidence that during the early centuries CE the Torah scrolls were kept at the Rabbi's house during the week and only transported to the synagogue building on the Sabbath.
Also worth careful reading is Ehrman's page 34, column 2 on the events that led up to the Maccabean revolt. One of the more accessible sources for these events is the book in your NOAB 1 Maccabees. This revolt marked the beginning of new ways of thinking for Palestinian Judaism. First that it was worth the potential loss of life to revolt against a non-Jewish occupying power. This also happens during the time of the Roman occupation (which began in 63 BCE) on several occasions, but the revolt of 66 CE (when the Roman government was in disarray) was the only (temporarily) successful revolt during the time of the Roman occupation. The second thing that seems to emerge out of this era is the development of what we call apocalyptic religious expectations, which usually included the expectation of dramatic divine intervention to aid the Jewish cause in against a foreign power or against a demonic power (and the two could be one and the same). But more on apocalypticism later.
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