cholland wrote:cnorman18 wrote:
Let's start with the existence of "Pharisees and Jews who thought possession of Torah was going to save them."
Do you even know what a Pharisee actually was? Do you understand that Jesus was primarily a Pharisee himself?
In short, I understand the Pharisees as those who emerged some time when the Jewish people were under cultural influence from the Greeks. The Pharisees' heart was to separate the Jews from this culture in order to continue to worship the one true God. They taught not only the written Torah, but also the oral Torah that developed into extra biblical laws and rules. The Sadducees then emerged in opposition in order to return to the written Torah alone; however, they were enticed by the wealth and culture of the Greeks. (Sounds awfully familiar to Catholics and Protestants)
So in the sense that Jesus had a heart to set his people apart, yes, I would agree he was a Pharisee.
What separated the Jews from the Gentiles?
Possession of Torah. This marked God's covenant with his people.
Not so fast. I'm not sure where you got all that, but for sure it wasn't from any Jewish scholar.
First, the Sadducees are extinct, and have been since the destruction of the second Temple. There are some indications of what some of the issues may have been between them and the Pharisees, but nothing is certain. The Pharisees survived and evolved into modern Rabbinic Judaism, but all we know of the Sadducees comes from their enemies. It's wise to bear that in mind.
Second, both the Sadducees and the Pharisees believed in the Oral Torah. They had to: many of the specifics of ritual and Temple service, like the proper method for kosher slaughter, the details of the construction of the Temple, its furnishings and tools, and the making and laying of
tefillin, are not found in the Written Torah but only in the Oral.
Third, the one issue between the two parties that is not in doubt was not the place of the Torah for Jews, but that of the Temple. The Sadducees represented the Temple leadership, where authority rested in the hands of the hereditary priesthood and where Jewish practice was defined as devotion to Temple ritual.
The Pharisees represented the common people, who were very often not practically able to get to the Temple even for the festivals, not to mention the daily sacrifices. For them, study of Torah (!), prayer, and deeds of lovingkindness (aka
tzedakah, roughly "charity") effectively, and later formally, replaced Temple sacrifices as the way to practice Judaism. Separation from the surrounding Gentile culture was a given for both.
Since the focus for the Pharisees was all but entirely on Torah study as opposed to ritual, authority for them grew to be invested in those who were well-versed in it; scholars, not priests. These persons were called "rabbis," meaning "teachers," and were not, or at least not necessarily, either Cohanim (priests) or Levites (Temple functionaries). Their authority came from knowledge and wisdom as acknowledged by the community, and not by right of birth.
When the Temple was destroyed in 70 CE, the Temple cult and its priests and followers were left without a home and without a purpose. Judaism survived as a religion because the Pharisaic understanding and way of practice was already in place: and modern Rabbinic Judaism, with its "portable Temple," the Torah, evolved from it.
It's notable that the title "rabbi" was applied to Jesus during his lifetime; it was at about that time that the title first began to be used.
All that is by way of background. The question, you will recall, was on the
existence of "Pharisees and Jews who thought possession of Torah was going to save them."
The fact is,
there were no such Jews, then or now.
First, the concept of individual "salvation," in the sense of going to Heaven and being "saved" from Hell, did not exist in Judaism then (whether we're speaking of the Pharisees or the Sadducees) and it does not exist in Judaism today. "Salvation" in Judaism and in the Hebrew Bible refers to either actual, literal salvation from physical danger in THIS life, as in many of David's Psalms, or to the eventual redemption of
Klal Israel, the Jewish people as a whole, again in THIS life.
Further, no Jew who ever lived ever thought that mere
possession of the Torah guaranteed "salvation" in any sense. For starters, as you point out, the Torah is a
covenant, a contract; to be effective or significant, its terms must be
followed. And for the record, the Torah is not and never was the sole "possession" of the Jews anyway; in Jewish tradition, the Torah was given at Mount Sinai, and NOT in the Land, to signify that it was given to ALL people, and not just to the Jews.
You may pontificate about the proper or actual content of your own religion all you like; but if you want to define Judaism, past or present, you'd better do a bit more study before throwing out casual misrepresentations of it.
One more note: Paul of Tarsus is not a reliable source for knowledge about the Jewish religion.
