Again, you are mistaken. We tend to restrict the term Diaspora to the period after the destruction of the Temple, but it really dates from the Babylonian exile. Around the time of Christ, at least half of the Jews were living outside of Palestine, and Greek was their primary tongue, due to commerce. Additionally, there were a lot of converts, mostly women. There husbands often were interested in Judaism, but reluctant to be circumcised, so there was a class called "God fearers", people who did not convert but were conversant with elementary Judaism and the Bible. These were probably the first Gentiles Paul preached to.
The New Testament would not have been written exclusively for the Jews of Palestine, and, as I said, most literate Jews, even in Palestine, knew Greek, as did Paul, for example......
The Pharisees were in competition with the Sadducees and various sectarians for the Jewish mainstream. The were influential, indeed, but they had not yet become thoroughly dominant. Parts of the Talmud existed both in oral and written form, but parts remained to be composed, and the whole was not redacted until much later:
The making of the Talmuds: 3rd–6th century
The expounders of the Mishna were the amoraim (“interpreter”), and the two Talmuds—the Palestinian (or Jerusalem) and the Babylonian—consist of their explanations, discussions, and decisions. Both take the form of a running commentary on the Mishna.
The foundations for these two monumental works were begun by three disciples of Judah ha-Nasi: Johanan bar Nappaha, Rav (Abba Arika), and Samuel bar Abba, in their academies at Tiberias, in Palestine, and at Sura and Nehardea in Babylonia, respectively. Centres of learning where the Mishna was expounded existed also at Sepphoris, Caesarea, and Lydda in Palestine. In time new academies were established in Babylonia, the best known being those at Pumbedita, Mahoza and Naresh, founded by Judah bar Ezekiel, Rava, and Rav Pappa, respectively. The enrollment of these centres often numbered in the thousands, and students spent many years there. Those who no longer lived on the academy grounds returned twice annually for the kalla, a month of study in the spring and fall.
Academies differed in their methods of study. Pumbedita, for example, stressed casuistry, while Sura emphasized breadth of knowledge. Students often moved from one academy to another and even from Palestine to Babylonia or from Babylonia to Palestine. This kept open the channels of communication between the various academies and resulted in the inclusion of much Babylonian material in the Palestinian Talmud, and vice versa.
Despite the overwhelming similarity of the two Talmuds, however, they do differ in some ways. The Palestinian Talmud is written in the Western Aramaic dialect, the Babylonian in the Eastern. The former is invariably shorter, and, not having been subject to final redaction, its discussions are often incomplete. Its explanations tend to remain closer to the literal meaning of the Mishna, preferring textual emendation to casuistic interpretation. Finally, some of the legal concepts in the Babylonian Talmud reflect the influence of Persian law, for Babylonia was under Persian rule at the time.
The main endeavour of the amoraim was to thoroughly explain and exhaust the meaning of the Mishna and the Baraitot. Apparent contradictions were reconciled by such means as explaining that conflicting statements referred to different situations or by asserting that they stemmed from the Mishnayot (Mishnas) of different tannaim. The same techniques were used when amoraic statements contradicted the Mishna. These discussions took place for hundreds of years, and their content was passed on from generation to generation, until the compilation of the Talmud.
The portion of the Palestinian Talmud dealing with the three Bavot (“gates”)—i.e., the first three tractates of the fourth order of the Mishna (for orders and tractates, see Talmudic and Midrashic literature, below)—was compiled in Caesarea in the middle of the 4th century and is distinguished from the rest by its brevity and terminology. The remainder was completed in Tiberias some 50 years later. It seems likely that its compilation was a rescue operation designed to preserve as much of the Halakhic material collected in Palestinian academies as possible, for by that time the deterioration of the political situation had forced most Palestinian scholars to emigrate to Babylonia.
The Babylonian Talmud was compiled up to the 6th century. Some scholars suggest that the organization of the Talmud began early and that successive generations of amoraim added layer upon layer to previously arranged material. Others suggest that at the beginning a stratum called Gemara, consisting only of Halakhic decisions or short comments, was set forth. Still others theorize that no overall arrangement of Talmudic material was made until the end of the 4th century.
The statement in the tractate Bava metzia that “Rabina and Rav Ashi were the end of instruction” is most often understood as referring to the final redaction of the Talmud. Since at least two generations of scholars following Rav Ashi (died 427) are mentioned in the Talmud, most scholars suggest that “Rabina” refers to Rabina bar Huna (died 499) and that the redaction was a slow process lasting about 75 years to the end of the 5th century.
According to the tradition of the geonim—the heads of the academies at Sura and Pumbedita from the 6th to the 11th centuries—the Babylonian Talmud was completed by the 6th-century savoraim (“expositors”). But the extent of their contribution is not precisely known. Some attribute to them only short additions. Others credit them with creating the terminology linking the phases of Talmudic discussions. According to another view, they added comments and often decided between conflicting opinions. The proponents of the so-called Gemara theory noted above ascribe to them the entire dialectic portion of Talmudic discourse.
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Pharisee
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member of a Jewish religious party that flourished in Palestine during the latter part of the Second Temple period (515 BC–ad 70). Their insistence on the binding force of oral tradition (“the unwritten Torah”) still remains a basic tenet of Jewish theological thought. When the Mishna (the first constituent part of the Talmud) was compiled about AD 200, it incorporated the teachings of the Pharisees on Jewish law.
The Pharisees (Hebrew: Perushim) emerged as a distinct group shortly after the Maccabaean revolt, around 165–160 Bc; they were, it is generally believed, spiritual descendants of the Hasideans (q.v.). The Pharisees emerged as a party of laymen and scribes in contradistinction to the Sadducees, i.e., the party of the high priesthood that had traditionally provided the sole leadership of the Jewish people. The basic difference that led to the split between the Pharisees and the Sadducees lay in their respective attitudes toward the Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament) and the problem of finding in it answers to questions and bases for decisions about contemporary legal and religious matters arising under circumstances far different from those of the time of Moses. In their response to this problem, the Sadducees, on the one hand, refused to accept any precept as binding unless it was based directly on the Torah, i.e., the Written Law. The Pharisees, on the other hand, believed that the Law that God gave to Moses was twofold, consisting of the Written Law and the Oral Law, i.e., the teachings of the prophets and the oral traditions of the Jewish people. Whereas the priestly Sadducees taught that the written Torah was the only source of revelation, the Pharisees admitted the principle of evolution in the Law; men must use their reason in interpreting the Torah and applying it to contemporary problems. Rather than blindly follow the letter of the Law even if it conflicted with reason or conscience, the Pharisees harmonized the teachings of the Torah with their own ideas or found their own ideas suggested or implied in it. They interpreted the Law according to its spirit; when in the course of time a law had been outgrown or superseded by changing conditions, they gave it a new and more acceptable meaning, seeking scriptural support for their actions through a ramified system of hermeneutics. It was due to this progressive tendency of the Pharisees that their interpretation of the Torah continued to develop and has remained a living force in Judaism.
The Pharisees were not primarily a political party but a society of scholars and pietists. They enjoyed a large popular following, and in the New Testament they appear as spokesmen for the majority of the population. Around 100 BC a long struggle ensued as the Pharisees tried to democratize the Jewish religion and remove it from the control of the Temple priests. The Pharisees asserted that God could and should be worshiped even away from the Temple and outside Jerusalem. To the Pharisees, worship consisted not in bloody sacrifices—the practice of the Temple priests—but in prayer and in the study of God's law. Hence the Pharisees fostered the synagogue as an institution of religious worship, outside and separate from the Temple. The synagogue may thus be considered a Pharasaic institution since the Pharisees developed it, raised it to high eminence, and gave it a central place in Jewish religious life.
The active period of Pharasaism, the most influential movement in the development of Orthodox Judaism, extended well into the 2nd and 3rd centuries Ad. The Pharisees preserved and transmitted Judaism through the flexibility they gave to Jewish scriptural interpretation in the face of changing historical circumstances. The efforts they devoted to education also had a seminal importance in subsequent Jewish history; after the destruction of the Second Temple and the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70, it was the synagogue and the schools of the Pharisees that continued to function and to promote Judaism in the long centuries following the Diaspora.
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Hellenistic Judaism (4th century BCE–2nd century CE)
The Greek period (332–63 BCE)
Hellenism and Judaism
Actual contact between Greeks and Semites goes back to Minoan and Mycenaean times and is reflected in certain terms in Homer and in other early Greek authors. It is not until the end of the 4th century, however, that Jews are first mentioned by Greek writers, who praise the Jews as brave, self-disciplined, and philosophical.
After being conquered by Alexander the Great (332 BCE), Palestine became part of the Hellenistic kingdom of Ptolemaic Egypt, the policy of which was to permit the Jews considerable cultural and religious freedom.
When in 198 BCE Palestine was conquered by King Antiochus III (247–187 BCE), of the Syrian Seleucid dynasty, the Jews were treated even more liberally, being granted a charter to govern themselves by their own constitution, namely, the Torah. Greek influence, however, was already becoming manifest. Some of the 29 Greek cities of Palestine attained a high level of culture. The mid-3rd century-BCE Zenon papyri—containing the correspondence of a business manager of a high Ptolemaic official—present the picture of a wealthy Jew, Tobiah, who through commercial contact with the Ptolemies acquired a veneer of Hellenism, to judge at least from the pagan and religious expressions in his Greek letters. His son and especially his grandsons became ardent Hellenists. It has been argued that the Hellenic influence was so strong among the Jews of Judaea by the beginning of the 2nd century that if the process had continued without the forcible intervention of the Seleucids in Jewish affairs (see below) Judaean Judaism would have become even more syncretistic than that of Philo, the Hellenistic Jewish philosopher of Alexandria (c. 15 BCE–c. 40 CE). The apocryphal writer Jesus ben Sirach so bitterly denounced the Hellenizers in Jerusalem (c. 180 BCE) that he was forced by the authorities to temper his words.
In the early part of the 2nd century BCE, Hellenizing Jews came into control of the high priesthood itself. Jason as high priest (175–172 BCE) established Jerusalem as a Greek city, Antioch-at-Jerusalem, with Greek educational institutions. His ouster by an even more extreme Hellenizing faction, which established Menelaus (died 162 BCE) as high priest, occasioned a civil war, with the wealthy aristocrats supporting Menelaus and the masses Jason. The Syrian king Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who had initially bestowed exemptions and privileges upon the Jews, intervened upon the request of Menelaus' party. Antiochus' promulgation of decrees against the practice of Judaism and the offensive and cruel measures to enforce them led to the revolt of an old priest, Mattathias, and his five sons—the so-called Maccabees or Hasmoneans. It has been conjectured that one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness, mirrors the fierceness of this struggle. In any case, the figure of the martyr, as known in Judaism and Christianity—the person who bears witness to the faith through his suffering and death—dates from this event.
The tactics employed both in the countryside and in Jerusalem by the Hasmoneans in their counterattack against Hellenizing Jews, whose children they forcibly circumcised, indicate the inroads that Hellenism had already made. On the whole, however, the chief strength of the Hellenizers lay among the wealthy urban population, while the Maccabees derived their strength from the peasants and urban masses. Yet, there is evidence that the ruthlessness exhibited by the Hasmoneans toward the Greek cities of Palestine had political rather than cultural origins, and that, in fact, they were fighting for personal power no less than for the Torah. In any case, some of those who fought on the side of the Maccabees were idol-worshipping Jews. The Maccabees soon found a modus vivendi with Hellenism: Jonathan (160–142), according to the Jewish historian Josephus (c. 38–c. 100 CE), negotiated a treaty of friendship with Sparta; Aristobulus (104–103 BCE) actually called himself Philhellene (a lover of Hellenism); Alexander Jannaeus (103–76) hired Greek mercenaries and inscribed his coins with Greek as well as with Hebrew. The Greek influence reached its height under King Herod I of Judaea (37–4 BCE), who built a Greek theatre, amphitheatre, and hippodrome in or near Jerusalem.
Social, political, and religious divisions
During the Hellenistic period the priests were both the wealthiest class and the strongest political group among the Jews of Jerusalem. The wealthiest of all were the Oniad family, who held the hereditary office of high priest until they were replaced by the Hasmoneans; the Temple that they supervised was, in effect, a bank, where the Temple wealth was kept and where private individuals also deposited their money. Hence, from a social and economic point of view, Josephus is justified in calling the government of Judaea a theocracy (rule by those having religious authority). Opposition to the priests' oppression arose among an urban middle class group known as scribes (soferim), who were interpreters and instructors of the Torah on the basis of an oral tradition probably going back to the time of the return from the Babylonian Exile (538 BCE and after). A special group of the scribes known as Hasidim (Greek, Hasideans), or “Pietists,” became the forerunners of the Pharisees (middle-class liberal Jews who reinterpreted the Torah and the prophetic writings to meet the needs of their times) and joined the Hasmoneans in the struggle against the Hellenists, though on religious rather than on political grounds.
Josephus held that the Pharisees and the other Jewish parties were philosophical schools, and some modern scholars have argued that the groupings were primarily along economic and social lines; but the chief distinctions among them were religious and go back well before the Maccabean revolt. The equation of Pharisaic with “normative” Judaism can no longer be supported, at any rate not before the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. The fact that in 70 CE, according to the Palestinian Talmud (see below Rabbinic Judaism [2nd–18th century]), there were 24 types of “heretics” in Palestine indicates that there was, in fact, much divergence among Jews; and this picture is confirmed by Josephus, who notes numerous instances of religious leaders who claimed to be prophets and who obtained considerable followings.
Some other modern scholars have sought to interpret the Pharisees' opposition to the Sadducees—wealthy, conservative Jews who accepted the Torah alone as authoritative—as based on an urban–rural dichotomy; but a very large share of Pharisaic concern was with agricultural matters. To associate the rabbis with urbanization seems a distortion. The chief support for the Pharisees came from the lower classes, whether in the country or in the city.
The chief doctrine of the Pharisees (literally “Separatists”) was that the Oral Law had been revealed to Moses at the same time as the Written Law. In their exegesis and interpretation of this oral tradition, particularly under the rabbi Hillel at the end of the 1st century BCE, the Pharisees were liberal, and their regard for the public won them considerable support. That the Maccabean ruler John Hyrcanus I broke with them and that Josephus set their number at merely “more than 6,000” at the time of King Herod indicates that they were less numerous and influential than Josephus would have his readers believe. The Pharisees stressed the importance of performing all the commandments, including those that appeared to be of only minor significance; those who were particularly strict in their observance of the Levitical rules were known as haverim (“companions”). They believed in the providential guidance of the universe, in angels, in reward and punishment in the world to come, and in resurrection of the dead, in all of which beliefs they were opposed by the Sadducees. In finding a modus vivendi with Hellenism, at least in form and in terminology, however, the Pharisees did not differ greatly from the Sadducees. Indeed, the supreme council of the Great Synagogue (or Great Assembly) of the Pharisees was modelled in its organization on Hellenistic religious and social associations. Because they did not take an active role in fostering the rebellion against Rome in 66–70 CE, they were able, through their leader Johanan ben Zakkai, to obtain Roman permission to establish an academy at Jabneh (Jamnia), where, in effect, they replaced the cult of the Temple with study and prayer.
The Sadducees and their subsidiary group, the Boethusians (Boethosaeans), who were identified with the great landowners and priestly families, were more deeply influenced by Hellenization. The rise of the Pharisees may thus be seen, in a sense, as a reaction against the more profound Hellenization favoured by the Sadducees, who were allied with the philhellenic Hasmoneans. From the time of John Hyrcanus (135–104 BCE) the Sadducees generally held a higher position in comparison with the Pharisees and were in favour with the Jewish rulers. Religiously more conservative than the Pharisees, they rejected the idea of a revealed oral interpretation of the Torah, though, to be sure, they had their own tradition, the sefer gezerot (“book of decrees” or “decisions”). They similarly rejected the inspiration of the prophetic books of the Bible, as well as the Pharisaic beliefs in angels, rewards, and punishments in the world to come, providential governance of human events, and resurrection of the dead. For them Judaism centred on the Temple; but about 10 years before the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, the Sadducees in effect disappeared from Jewish life when the Pharisees excluded them from entering the Temple.
Not constituting any particular party were the unlearned rural masses known as 'amme ha-aretz (“people of the land”), who were to be found among both the Pharisees and Sadducees and even among the Samaritans, descendants of the northern Israelites who had their own Torah and their own sanctuary. The 'amme ha-aretz did not give the prescribed tithes, did not observe the laws of purity, and were neglectful of the laws of prayer; and so great was the antagonism between them and the learned Pharisees that to their daughters was applied the biblical verse, “Cursed be he who lies with any kind of beast.” The antipathy was reciprocated, for in the same passage in the Babylonian Talmud (Pesahim) are added the words, “Greater is the hatred wherewith the 'amme ha-aretz hate the scholar than the hatred wherewith the heathens hate Israel.” That there was, however, social mobility is clear from the Talmudic dictum, “Heed the sons of the 'am ha-aretz, for they will be the living source of the Torah.” That there is little evidence that the early Christian church was particularly successful in converting 'amme ha-aretz suggests that their position was not unbearable.
Proselytes (converts) to Judaism, though not constituting a class, became increasingly numerous both in Palestine and especially in the Diaspora (the Jews living beyond Palestine). Scholarly estimates of the Jewish population of this era range from 700,000 to 5,000,000 in Palestine and from 2,000,000 to 5,000,000 in the Diaspora, with the prevailing opinion being that about one-tenth of the population of the Mediterranean world at the beginning of the Christian Era was Jewish. Such numbers represent a considerable increase from previous eras and must have included large numbers of proselytes. Already in 139 BCE the Jews of Rome were charged by the praetor (civil administrator) with attempting to contaminate Roman morals with their religion, presumably an allusion to proselytism. The first large-scale conversions were by John Hyrcanus and Aristobulus, who, in 130 and 103 BCE, respectively, forced the people of Idumaea in southern Palestine and of Ituraea in northern Palestine to become Jews. The eagerness of the Pharisees to win converts is seen in a statement in Matthew that the Pharisees would “traverse sea and land to make a single proselyte.” To be sure, some of the proselytes, according to Josephus, did return to their pagan ways, but the majority apparently remained true to their new religion. In addition, there were many “sympathizers” with Judaism who observed one or more Jewish practices without being fully converted.
Outside the pale of Judaism in most, though not all, respects were the Samaritans, who, like the Sadducees, refused to recognize the validity of the Oral Law; and, in fact, the break between the Sadducees and the Samaritans did not occur until the conquest of Shechem by John Hyrcanus (128 BCE). Like the later so-called Qumran covenanters (the monastic group with whom are associated the Dead Sea Scrolls), they were opposed to the Jewish priesthood and the cult of the Temple, regarded Moses as a messianic figure, and forbade the revelation of esoteric doctrines to outsiders.
Scholars have recently revised an older conception of a “normative” Pharisaic Judaism dominant in Palestine and a deviant Judaism dominant in the Diaspora. On the one hand, the picture of “normative” Judaism is broader than at first believed, and it is clear that there were many differences of emphasis within the Pharisaic party; and, on the other hand, supposed differences between Alexandrian and Palestinian Judaism were not as great as had been formerly thought. In Palestine, no less than in the Diaspora, there were then deviations from Pharisaic standards.
Despite the attempts of the Pharisaic leaders to restrain the wave of Greek influence, they themselves showed at least a surface Hellenization. In the first place, as many as 2,500–3,000 words of Greek origin are to be found in the Talmudic corpus, and they supply important terms in the fields of law, government, science, religion, technology, and everyday life, especially in the popular sermons preached by the rabbis. When preaching, the Talmudic rabbis often gave the Greek translation of biblical verses for the benefit of those who understood Greek only. The prevalence of Greek in ossuary (burial) inscriptions and the discovery of Greek papyri in the Dead Sea caves confirm the widespread use of the language, though few Jews, it seems, really mastered Greek. Again, there was a surface Hellenization in the frequent adoption of Greek names, even by the rabbis; and there is evidence (Talmud, Sota) of a school at the beginning of the 2nd century that had 500 students of “Greek wisdom.” Even after 117 CE, when it was prohibited by the rabbis to teach one's son Greek, Rabbi Judah the Prince, the editor of the Mishna (authoritative compilation of the Oral Law) at the end of the 2nd century, remarked, “Why talk Syriac in Palestine? Talk either Hebrew or Greek.” Even the synagogues of the period have the form of Hellenistic-Roman basilicas, have frequent inscriptions in Greek, and often have pagan motifs. Many of the anecdotes told about the rabbis have Socratic and Cynic parallels. There is evidence of discussions of rabbis with Athenians, Alexandrians, and Roman philosophers, and even with the emperor Antoninus; but in all of these discussions there is evidence of only one rabbi, Elisha ben Abuyah, who became a Gnostic heretic, accepting certain esoteric religious dualistic views. The rabbis never mention the Greek philosophers Plato or Aristotle or the Hellenistic Jewish philosopher Philo, and they never use any Greek philosophical terms; the only Greek author whom they name is Homer. Again, the parallels between Hellenistic rhetoric and rabbinic hermeneutics are in the realm of terminology rather than of substance, and those between Roman and Talmudic law are inconclusive. Part of the explanation of this may be that, although there were 29 Greek cities in Palestine, none was in Judaea, the real stronghold of the Jews.
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Diaspora
Encyclopædia Britannica Article
( (Greek: Dispersion), )
Hebrew Galut (Exile), the dispersion of Jews among the Gentiles after the Babylonian Exile; or the aggregate of Jews or Jewish communities scattered “in exile” outside Palestine or present-day Israel. Although the term refers to the physical dispersal of Jews throughout the world, it also carries religious, philosophical, political, and eschatological connotations, inasmuch as the Jews perceive a special relationship between the land of Israel and themselves. Interpretations of this relationship range from the messianic hope of traditional Judaism for the eventual “ingathering of the exiles” to the view of Reform Judaism that the dispersal of the Jews was providentially arranged by God to foster pure monotheism throughout the world.
The first significant Jewish Diaspora was the result of the Babylonian Exile (q.v.) of 586 BC. After the Babylonians conquered the Kingdom of Judah, part of the Jewish population was deported into slavery. Although Cyrus the Great, the Persian conqueror of Babylonia, permitted the Jews to return to their homeland in 538 BC, part of the Jewish community voluntarily remained behind.
The largest, most significant, and culturally most creative Jewish Diaspora in early Jewish history flourished in Alexandria, where, in the 1st century BC, 40 percent of the population was Jewish. Around the 1st century AD, an estimated 5,000,000 Jews lived outside Palestine, about four-fifths of them within the Roman Empire, but they looked to Palestine as the centre of their religious and cultural life. Diaspora Jews thus far outnumbered the Jews in Palestine even before the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. Thereafter, the chief centres of Judaism shifted from country to country (e.g., Babylonia, Persia, Spain, France, Germany, Poland, Russia, and the United States), and Jewish communities gradually adopted distinctive languages, rituals, and cultures, some submerging themselves in non-Jewish environments more completely than others. While some lived in peace, others became victims of violent anti-Semitism.
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