Judaism

Broadly speaking one could trace the history of Judaism back to the early religion of Israel, the religion that produced the Hebrew Scriptures that are known to Christians as the Old Testament. Here, however, we take Judaism to refer to the religion that was known to Jesus and his contemporaries, and that was later developed and formulated by the Rabbis. A key date in the development of Judaism was 70 C.E. the year in which the Jerusalem Temple was destroyed by the Romans. Judaism of the pre-70 period is known to us from the New Testament and from other sources. It was a Judaism in which the Temple and its elaborate sacrificial system held a central place. Pilgrims from all over the Jewish world converged on the Temple on the occasion of the great Jewish festivals (see Exod. 23:14-17; Acts 2:1-11). Judaism of the first century C.E. included several groups that were often antagonistic to each other. Some of those groups, such as the Pharisees, the Sadducees and the Scribes, are known to us from the New Testament, while other documents reveal the existence of other groups. The Dead Sea Scrolls, for example, have detailed information on the Qumran sect.

Rabbis

After the destruction of Jerusalem which brought the Temple worship to an end, the Rabbis began to develop a Judaism that suited the changed circumstances. ‘Rabbi’ is a term which in Hebrew and Aramaic (the language of Jesus) means ‘my teacher’. The rabbis were teachers who studied the Scriptures and the religious traditions that had developed over the centuries (see Mark 7:5.8.13). They formulated norms which governed every aspect of Jewish life. The Judaism they taught became known as Rabbinic Judaism, and all forms of contemporary Jewish religion are ultimately derived from the Judaism of the Rabbis. A basic principle of their religious system was that God revealed a twofold Torah (the Hebrew word ‘Torah’ is usually translated as ‘Law’), the written Torah, i.e. the Scriptures, and the Oral Torah, i.e. laws that had been revealed at Sinai and handed on faithfully in an unbroken chain of tradition from the time of Moses to the days of the Rabbis. The Rabbis taught that ‘Moses revealed 613 commandments: 365 prohibitions according to the number of days in a solar year, and 248 positive precepts corresponding to the parts of the human body’.

The Mishnah and Talmuds

The teaching of the Rabbis was formulated in the Mishnah, a collection of legal opinions which was written about 200 C.E. The Mishnah contains regulations for all areas of Jewish life. It has, for example, sections on prayer, on the manner of observing religious Festivals, on marriage and divorce, and on matters relating to civil and criminal law. After its publication the rabbis in Palestine and in Babylon (where there was a large colony of Jews) wrote commentaries on the Mishnah. These commentaries were written down as the Talmuds, the Jerusalem or Palestinian Talmud which was written down about 400, and the Babylonian Talmud, which was put to writing about a hundred years later. The Mishnah and the Talmud became the foundation documents of rabbinic Judaism, and they are still diligently studied today by observant Jews. Besides the Mishnah and the Talmud the rabbis produced other bodies of literature, especially biblical commentaries (Midrash) which applied the Scriptures to the daily lives of ordinary Jews. Very often these commentaries included parables and fictional narratives that communicated religious and ethical teaching in an interesting and often entertaining way.

Christians have often claimed that Judaism was a religion of legalism and external observance. It is true that Jews were meticulous in their observance of the many regulations that governed their lives. But they observed these regulations in the spirit of the biblical precept which commanded them to love the Lord with all their heart and all their soul (see Deut. 6:5). They regarded the Law as God’s greatest gift to them, as the clearest proof of his love, and they saw their own obedience to the Law as a proof of their love for God. They did not observe the Law out of fear or for the sake of a reward. A well-known text from the Mishnah reads: ‘Be not like servants who serve the master in order to receive a reward, but be like servants who serve the master not in order to receive a reward’.

Worship and Prayer

Worship and Prayer have always had an important place in Jewish life. The Sabbath, which begins at sundown on Friday evening, is not only a day of rest but a day of prayer and study of the Torah.