Loading...I am in a short thread discussing Judaism just before and at the time of Jesus. In that connections, I often get asked about the different Jewish sects in the period. So I’ll devote two posts to the question, lifting the discussion from my textbook The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings.
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THE FORMATION OF JEWISH SECTS
It was during the rule of the Hasmoneans, and evidently in large measure in reaction to it, that various Jewish sects emerged. As we have seen, the Jewish historian Josephus mentions four of these groups; the New Testament refers to three. In one way or another, all of them play a significant role in our understanding of the life of the historical Jesus.
I should emphasize at the outset that most Jews in Palestine did not belong to any of these groups. We know this much from Josephus, who indicates that the largest sect, the Pharisees, claimed 6,000 members and that the Essenes claimed 4,000. The Sadducees probably had far fewer. These numbers should be considered in light of the overall Jewish population in the world at the time; the best estimates put the number at something like 4 million.
What matters for our purposes here, however, is not the size of these groups, for they were influential despite their small numbers, but the ways in which they understood what it meant to be Jewish, especially in light of the political crises that they had to face. Members of all of the sects, of course,
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Paul repeatedly identified as a Pharisee (Acts 23:6, 26:5, and Philippians 3:5). Acts 15:5 mentions “believers of the party of the Pharisees.” And the fact that Jesus instructed his followers to obey the Pharisees (Matthew 23) essentially confirms that they were all Pharisees or under the halacha of the Pharisees. Supporting this view is John 3:1 where Nicodemus claims that “We KNOW you are a teacher from God”, the “we” apparently referring to other members of the Pharisee Sanhedrin. Even if none of this is factual, the fact remains that it was the intention of the writers to show harmony between Christians and the Pharisees. That is most obvious in Acts 23:9 where Pharisees say concerning Paul, “We find nothing wrong in this man.” Not only does this signify that the first-century Jewish followers of Jesus remained Torah observant for at least three decades, but there was nothing in their belief that would have invoked the accusation of blasphemy seen in John 10.
What’s the relationship between the Essenes, John the Baptist and Jesus? Why is such an important Jewish sect never mentioned in the scriptures? Did the gospel writers want to downplay the Essenes’ influence on John and Jesus?
I suppose most kinds of Jews are not mentioned in the NT; some people have argued that JB and Jesus were both (or one of them was) an Essene, but I’d say many of their basic views were quite different, especially the Essene view that it was important to avoid the corrupting influences of broader society, when JB and Jesus were deeply committed to being with “sinners.” The main similarities are their serious apocalyptic views, but these were shared by a range of Jewish groups and individuals (Pharisees, e.g.)