My attention has been brought to a long series on my treatment of Jewish sources in On the Historicity of Jesus by a certain Simone (actual name unknown). The series is extraordinarily long-winded, almost entirely impertinent, and makes strange errors in vocabulary or reading comprehension. But since it will definitely be tl;dr to most folks, I will provide a summary in two posts, responding wherever really needed. This is the first.
The critical series is located on Simone’s substack called Simone Reads Texts, which is almost solely dedicated to critiquing my work. I cannot ascertain their gender or credentials, but they are studying Hebrew and Aramaic from Second Temple Judaism to the Rabbinic period at the college level (I assume graduate level, but that’s unclear). They might be religious (they spell God as G-d, a practice of religious reverence common among the orthodox, and frequently use the expression “G-d willing” non-ironically). But they definitely do not read competently, as I’ll be exhibiting.
My own response will be just two articles. The first, today, will address Simone’s latest entries (as of now) which are not included in their index to the whole series (On Reading the Talmud: Contents and Bibliography), because these two follow-up entries illustrate the strange and inconsistent, and usually impertinent approach Simone takes throughout their whole series. But I will only address one of those today, because the other (A Note on Pots and Kettles) is merely a tedious tirade against a critic of Simone’s series that gets everything I said wrong, droning on for over 7,000 words, asking such impertinent questions as why I say things about the manuscripts of the Talmud that I never said—as usual, getting entirely wrong what I said.
Since any of those questions that matter will come up already in this or the next article, and the others don’t matter (e.g., contra Simone, I never date anything in the Talmud on manuscript evidence), there is no need to prelude that here. But that article does illustrate the pointlessness of engaging with Simone: their responses to being corrected are to mount outrageously massive word-walls of no pertinence, riddled with reading comprehension errors that are already corrected by simply consulting what Simone is responding to, eliminating any need to ever read anything from Simone themselves. But this will become glaringly clear once you complete this and the next article of mine.
On Describing Jewish Sectarianism
Here we will look instead at the first of those two follow-ups, A Note On Historical Method. In this Simone writes over 2500 words complaining about my semantic application of the word ‘sect’ in describing early Jewish diversity. Since my point was diversity of belief (and thus dispelling common notions of a rigid monolithic Judaism in the time of Jesus), a normal person would understand my valence for the word ‘sect’ to describe diversity. I am thus obviously using the standard, broad, non-judgmental definition of ‘sect’ (Collins English Dictionary: “A sect is a group of people that has separated from a larger group,” such as in its ideas, “and has a particular set of religious or political beliefs”).
Thus, by my usage, for example, the Hillelites and Shammaites are distinct sects. You can also call them subgroups or subsects (of the Pharisees perhaps), or “affiliations” or “orders” or “schools of thought,” or whatever word or phrase you like, but that is just semantics. Each is still “a group of people that has separated from a larger group” in some way “and has a particular set of religious or political beliefs” distinct from the other. These are therefore sects in common English. Which means the Pharisees were split into or competing with at least two disagreeing groups with differing opinions on many subjects of belief and interpretation; and therefore the Pharisees were two sects (if not more), not one monolithic sect agreeing on everything. Even if we question whether one of these sects was actually a Pharisee sect, it’s still a distinct, disagreeing sect. So even that distinction is irrelevant.
We have evidence likewise that there were several sects disagreeing with each other within the umbrella of the Essenes (as described by Hippolytus and Josephus); and again of the Samaritans (such as the Dosthean sect) and Sadducees (such as the Boethusian sect). So we are already looking at a minimum of eight “sects,” if we mean by “sect” any metric for organized diversity in ancient Jewish thought. But there were many other sects, which we hear of only by name, or with minimal discussion (such as the Hemerobaptists, the Meristae and Genistae, the Therapeutae, and even the “Galileans,” cf. Huttunen, p 20). Simone may like to use the word ‘sect’ differently than me, and thus contrary to its usual and pertinent sense here. But that is not a complaint about me. It’s a complaint about the English language. Simone will have to take that up with dictionary committees. I’m just speaking English.
Simone also complains that in Historicity “there is no critical assessment…of how accurate” the Gospels may be regarding these sects. But I never cite the Gospels in Element 2; and I never say they are reliable on this point anywhere else there; in fact, I say the opposite (Historicity, pp. 175–77). I cite entirely different sources than those, including modern scholarship and standard references (see p. 66n14, where I cite leading experts, including Smith, Segal, and Charlesworth). And even then I allow for a considerable range of uncertainty (I state that there could be as many as ten to thirty or so sects; not “there are thirty,” for example).
In my own survey of the literature in The Empty Tomb a decade ago (which I refer to in Historicity) I also cite scholarship (directly or by breadcrumb) that critically assesses the source material where there is any to be done; and when I do cite the Gospels there (for any point pertinent to Simone’s argument), I do not rely on them, but back them with other sources or scholars. I simply brief all this in Historicity, with that cautious range (ten to thirty or so) and a breadcrumb for further study (with numerous sources, not just my decade-old summary). If Simone wants to do that further study and ascertain what can be known more surely than this, that would be useful. But Simone doesn’t do that. And even if they did, it wouldn’t affect my cautious conclusion in Historicity anyway. At best it would just become another source I could cite for the point (assuming it was any good; I am not confident Simone would do well at this).
We shall see this is a recurring theme for Simone: the fabricated complaint. They will pick on something irrelevant, or misdescribe something, creating something to complain about that doesn’t actually exist or isn’t pertinent to anything in Historicity. Even in this one article Simone fabricates other complaints in a similar way. For example, in reaction to my statement that Pharisaic ideology “rose to sole dominance over most of Palestine and the Diaspora after the Jewish War,” Simone complains that the Rabbinate that I am referring to did not achieve real dominance until after the second Jewish War. But my statement is not specific as to whether they achieved that dominance immediately after the first war or the next: both constitute rising to dominance after the first Jewish War. So Simone isn’t saying anything relevant to what I said. It would perhaps be worth knowing how gradual that move was (lest someone be confused as to when that dominance was reached and not when it started rising). But it doesn’t affect anything in my book.
More importantly, the reason I phrased my statement the way I did is that we actually do not know what Simone claims. Simone confuses “our extant sources mainly derive after the second war” with “that state of things only existed after that.” This is a basic failure of historical method. The first extant attestation of a thing is often not the first actual existence of that thing; and our sources for the state of Jewish sectarianism in the late first and early second century is not particularly good—certainly not good enough to make such confident assertions as Simone does. I was thus being cautious and non-committal as to a specific “when,” while Simone was going beyond the sources to make assertions not especially supported by them and which don’t matter to my point anyway.
For example, Matthew and Mark, written right after the first war (or within decades of it; most likely the first century in any case) paint a picture wherein only the Pharisees are their opposition, which evinces a rise to dominance soon after the first war, and not delayed until after the second. Does this conclusively prove that such dominance had already been achieved? No. But it does call into question any confident claim that it didn’t. Because even as fiction, even polemically unreliable fiction, we can expect the Gospels to inform us of the situation they are ideologically reacting to. So, we shouldn’t trust their depiction of the Pharisees; but we should trust that they see them as their only serious opposition. This, you shall see, is typical of Simone’s entire series: their criticisms are often irrelevant, based on uncharitable misinterpretations of my words, and historically unsound even when based on real facts (e.g. our best sources for Rabbinic influence arise after the second rather than the first Jewish War, leaving a gap of about seventy years where we are less certain what was the case—a fact that matters to nothing I said, and yet was deliberately taken into account by what I did say).
A similar fabricated complaint is when Simone tries to argue that some Rabbis after the Jewish War were Sadducees (or Sadducee sympathizers? Simone is unclear). But none of Simone’s cited sources say this. Simone cites Mishnah Yadayim 4.6, but that is describing a pre-war authority (Yochanan Ben Zakkai), not post-war, and whose point the Mishnah (and hence the post-war Rabbinate) is arguing against. Simone seems unaware that the Mishnah declares Sadducees as heretics with no inheritance in the world to come. Mishnah Sanhedrin 10:3 declares that “one who says: there is no resurrection of the dead,” as the Sadducees fundamentally did, shall be damned to exclusion from it (see also Mishnah Berakhot 9:5, Mishnah Niddah 4:2; and many more sources). The Sadducees also rejected Mishnah (see Fisch). I am not aware of any post-war Rabbi in the Mishnah or Talmud who did that. That view is precisely the one that gradually declined into oblivion after the Jewish War. Simone has therefore not presented any evidence relevant to anything I said in Historicity. And this was a trivial point anyway (why do we care?).
Nothing else Simone complains about is in Historicity at all. They seem more concerned to argue against what I said ten years earlier in The Empty Tomb, even though what they complain of is irrelevant to what I argued in Historicity. But all I did in The Empty Tomb was describe what our sources say, not that they were all accurate or reliable on these points. To the contrary, I am cautious as to how certain we can be, exactly as Simone says we should be: I simply describe what the sources say, and then conclude that given this extensive diversity that they report, “there may be” as many as thirty “but even at the most conservative we can identify no less than ten clearly distinct sects.” I thus do not commit to the accuracy of our sources.
For example, Simone complains that the source situation for Pharisaic attachment to astrology is problematic; I would agree. But all I said was that this is reported, and that “on acceptance of astrology” we have Epiphanius and “Goodenough’s Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period, vols. 1 & 9.” One could also cite the Talmud. For example, Shabbat.156b.7 (among other sources) takes astrology for granted, which appears to signal an ancient trend (see David Rubin’s Astrology in the Torah), which accords with Josephus’s description of the Pharisees in contradistinction to the Sadducees as believing in Fate (see Penner). And so on. But still, none of this has anything to do with what’s in Historicity. I never make any such claim there.
So, indeed, we might doubt whether the Pharisees embraced astrology (and conclude that was a post-war affectation of the Rabbinate). But that doesn’t make the Pharisees no longer a sect, nor impact the overall conclusion that Jewish ideological diversity was considerable. Even Simone agrees we do not know much reliably about the beliefs of the period; which is exactly what I said in The Empty Tomb (“we know almost nothing about” most Jewish sects); and even there my point about astrology was that there were ancient Jews who accepted even that, and that remains true—because if it wasn’t the Pharisees, it was definitely the later Rabbinate. So what is Simone objecting to?
Which Sect Was the Most Influential?
Simone also tends to struggle with accuracy or consistency. For example, regarding my statement that the Pharisees “had dominated the courts and held the widest influence” before the wars (a fact asserted by numerous experts on this, from Ellis Rivkin to Jacob Neusner), Simone argues that “Josephus paints a more balanced picture of their influence (and numbers them at only 6,000), and they appear more marginal in the New Testament literature.”
This is bizarre. For many reasons:
- First, Josephus did not exactly say that. He appears to be describing only the number of Pharisees who refused to swear allegiance to the Roman Empire (before the time Jesus), not all the Pharisees (his source most likely said six thousand objected; not six thousand existed). Simone also cites the wrong passage; it is J. Ant. 17.42, not 17.32, perhaps a typo. But the sentiment runs from the Greek of §41 and into §42, whereby Josephus identifies the culprits as “a certain Jewish group of men…called Pharisees,” apparently those most prone to “mischief,” which might not mean the whole sect (holos eidos/genos) of the Pharisees. Hence, for example, Baumgarten concurs it is unclear.
- Second, I was referring to Pharisees dominating the courts and thus possessing the greatest political influence. Six thousand men is more than adequate to fit that description. I said nothing about the sect being embraced by “the masses.”
- Nevertheless, since Simone seems inclined to believe whatever Josephus says: Josephus says the only widely influential sects were the Sadducees and the Pharisees, but “while the Sadducees are able to persuade none but the rich, and have not the populace obsequious to them, the Pharisees have the multitude on their side” (J. Ant. 13.298; a fact even more forcefully described in J. Ant. 18.16–17).
- The writings of Josephus establish no other conclusion. His many reports (there and in his Life and his history of the Jewish War) attribute a routine influence and power to the Pharisees all across this period, and considerably less to the Sadducees; and none to any other sect (see JW 2.119–166). I do not consider this definitive; but I will leave it to Simone to contradict themselves by now denouncing the reliability of Josephus on this point.
- Third, the Pharisees are the only sect mentioned dozens of times in the NT (in full, 99 times) and the only sect mentioned by Paul, in a statement implying they were the bellwether standard for being Jewish. That is the exact opposite of being “marginal.” The Sadducees are the only other sect mentioned more than trivially in the NT (in full, only 15 times, and rarely apart from the Pharisees)—so one could say they are marginal in the NT (likewise references that might be to other sects, e.g., the Galilieans, Herodians, Scribes, and the sectarians of John the Baptist). But not the Pharisees.
- Fourth, even Simone ends up admitting the Pharisees “are generally considered the largest of the sects.” So, which is it? They were, or were not, the largest sect? By Simone’s apparent metric (which was not mine), this entails even a dominant influence among the masses. So how can Simone argue both that they were and were not the most influential sect? I am confused. You should be too.
Simone never objects to my actual element (that Judaism was far more diverse, and open to innovation and dissent, than is often claimed). Instead they just drone on about pedantic irrelevancies, applying the wrong definition of ‘sect’ to my entire discourse about sects, and complaining about things that are neither in nor relevant to On the Historicity of Jesus. So in the end Simone has literally said nothing of any relevance to what I wrote. And in the process Simone contradicts themself (the Pharisees are both the same size as and larger than other sects; a Pharisaically-derived Rabbinate both did and did not rise to dominance after the Jewish war). It is hard to fathom the purpose of their article. It certainly does not address anything I said. It seems more inclined to fabricate things to complain about. Yet this, we shall see, typifies Simone’s entire series.
Conclusion
My one paragraph in On the Historicity of Jesus reads:
Element 2: When Christianity began, Judaism was highly sectarian and diverse. There was no ‘normative’ set of Jewish beliefs, but a countless array of different Jewish belief systems vying for popularity. We know of at least ten competing sects, possibly more than thirty, and there could easily have been more. But we know very little about them, except that they differed from one another (sometimes radically) on various political, theological, metaphysical, moral and other issues. In fact the evidence we do have establishes that, contrary to common assumption, innovation and syncretism (even with non-Judaic theologies) was actually typical of early-first-century Judaism, even in Palestine, and thus Christianity looks much less like an aberration and more like just another innovating, syncretistic Jewish cult. Further support for this point is provided in Elements 30 and 33. No argument, therefore, can proceed from an assumption of any universally normative Judaism.
Historicity, p. 66.
Simone has not argued against even a single sentence of this paragraph, much less its overall point. The closest they come is to throw vague shade against the one single statement in it that the smallest sect-count could be as high as “ten.” But Simone does not even argue that. At no point does Simone ever argue the count is less than that. They don’t even perform a survey of the evidence for it. Their critique even of that one sentence is therefore completely vacuous. Whereas to the rest, Simone does not even raise an objection. Was there a normative sect of Judaism? No. Was Judaism highly diverse and innovative precisely in this period? Yes. Was first-gen Christianity a radical break from Judaism, or really just another instantiation of a common trend toward breakaway sects innovating on the core ideas of Judaism? The latter, obviously.
Ergo:
Judaism was highly sectarian and diverse. No argument, therefore, can proceed from an assumption of any universally normative Judaism.
While doing some research into Josephus recently, I can’t help but think about Mark Goodacre who said that when you delve into the Synoptic problem, you find that the actual experts are far less confident about their conclusions than the general population. Experts are much more aware of the full complexity of the data. There seems to be a hidden complexity problem that pervades Jesus Historicity. As far as Josephus is concerned, the more I learn about him, the less I trust him. He is inconsistent about his own past, changes scripture he cites (even though he said he wouldn’t), and has a very clear agenda to promote Judaism to pagans. Even besides this, he doesn’t really offer very much info on what was going on with Jews at the time. It’s simple not his prerogative, though I think he is often cited as if it was.
… As Thomas Thompson said of Josephus in The Mythic Past, “Would you buy a used car from this man?”
Hi Dr Carrier, it’s great that we’re finally getting to this, I was told that this would be coming over two months ago. I am a woman, and a graduate student. I also hold cultural values, but I would gently caution against reading too much into those, if I were to be called orthodox in belief that would be more on questions of critical social theory than theology.
I’m a bit concerned we’re off to a bad start as the entire point I was making in that aside post was to address your own citation of your own decade-old paper which you specifically direct your readers to as the source of your numerical claim of “possibly over sixty” sects, and did not claim to be rebutting that paragraph in OTHOJ – but rather to question that specific claim, by pointing out that the paper cited for this claim gets the bulk of the number from Patristic authors writing centuries after the fact. That is my primary issue, the reliance on late Patristic sources, by Christians not living in Judaea, as a source for historical data about first century Judaea, which is inconsistent with your own stated caution regarding using the earlier, Judaean Rabbinic literature. From your failure to defend that, can I assume that you long longer consider that reasonable?
Likewise, I’m not sure you’ve understood my point about Mishnah Yaddaim. Yochanan ben Zakkai explicitly uses the first common plural לנו excluding himself from the Pharisees who complaints are being levelled against, and implicitly placing himself in the camp of the Sadducees. That other parts of the Mishnah follow the Pharisees is not in dispute, the question is Tannaitic unanimity regarding this: we have, in fact, a plurality of identification, not just evidenced here but also by my citation of Tosefta Berakhot, where פרושין – the same word in that previous Mishnah – are co-identified with מינין – heretics. My point is that the Rabbinic movement represents a newly emerging consensus in post-Temple Judaism that cannot be crudely equated with the Pharisees, as you claimed in said paper.
Likewise, regarding all this bullet-pointed bluster, the point is, entirely, and simply, that we cannot assume that the majority of the population of Judaea had a sectarian affiliation. The Pharisees appear to have been the largest sect, but that doesn’t mean they were culturally dominant. This is the point made first by EP Sanders in the 60s, and accepted by basically everyone, with some variation, since (at least those who aren’t apologetically minded, and thus ignoring historians). The majority of the population probably didn’t have enough religious education to have an opinion on the matters that were key to the differentiation between these various groups, and those who did may not have even cared. They were primarily illiterate peasants, sharecroppers, tradespeople, merchants and the like, only around 15-20% of whom could sign their name on a contract and far, far fewer were even able to read or write a letter (if I remember Michael Wise’s breakdown correctly). Understanding this period as entirely defined by sectarian conflict is something that the academy largely rejected half a century ago and primarily persists only in those circles for whom the New Testament is the authoritative historical record, or whose religious beliefs dictate that the Rabbinic literature’s claims to an unbroken oral tradition from Sinai through to Ezra and the “Great Assembly” must have dominated the landscape at this time. Josephus largely limits the Pharisees and Sadducees influences to questions of Governance and Courtly intrigue. Likewise, we don’t even have evidence there was a formal, local “court system” that the Pharisees dominated. That itself is probably anachronistic.
Simone, you are continuing to repeat the same fabricated complaining my article already takes you to task for.
If you want to do a detailed study of which sources we can trust on sectarianism and to what extent or not, surveying and analyzing the scholarship already in the literature on each example (only some of which I cited here that I hadn’t before; a lot has been published in the last twenty years), please do that.
But stop complaining about a twenty-year-old summary that cites multiple primary sources and standard references and admits its conclusions face some degree of uncertainty. Which is all you are saying.
Unless you want to actually critique what I cited it for. Then actually do that. But now you seem to admit you cannot, and that what I said in OHJ is entirely true, and supported by more than “just” my helpful source-and-breadcrumb aggregation from twenty years ago (I listed more scholars than myself).
It seems the only legitimate complaint you have is that “someone should do a more detailed study on this,” since there is no one-stop-shop that addresses it all.
Which is a complaint not about me but the field.
You can answer it by doing it.
But please, when you do, learn from all your mistakes here and don’t repeat them. My article gives abundant examples of mistakes of method and comprehension that you absolutely must police before you will be able to produce good work in this subject. In every way that you hosed your critique of me, you will be prone to hose your analysis of literally any other scholar or source. So please see to that.
But when you have a peer-reviewed study that comprehensively surveys and evaluates all the evidence for first century sectarianism from all the disparate sources we have, then do please provide me a PDF galleys and I will review it here. And if it’s good, I’ll review it well (as I have for several other critics), and even include it as a source citation to the point in any future edition.
Otherwise, so far, you do not appear to have anything relevant to contribute here.
Apologies, Dr Carrier, I misread your statements about Yochannan ben Zakkai – you think the Mishnah is arguing against him. I would suggest you go to Sefaria and search for occurrences of his name in the Mishnah, and also look at who his students are (Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, for one), and who his students’ students are (Rabbi Akiva), and look at the founding myth of the Rabbinic tradition in BT Gittin (starting on 56a, going on for several folios).
Simone, the example you cited is a criticism of what you quoted him saying.
I am not into the fallacy of moving the goal posts with some new claim you didn’t make about some other passage somewhere.
You are again fabricating a complaint by wingeing about a completely irrelevant dispute—whether ben Zakkai “was” a Sadducee or “sympathized” with them in some way you still have not defined (you are still not being clear which you mean to argue). That is a dispute I do not care about and that has no relevance to what I said.
My point was that his opinions are pre-war; he is not a post-war Rabbi. And the Talmud unequivocally condemns the Sadducee sect as heresy. End of line.
Whether later Rabbis incorporated this or that random opinion from a Sadducee source makes no difference to any of this (whether that even happened or not; I do not care, and am not challenging that). And it certainly makes no difference to any point I made in Historicity or Empty Tomb.
To the contrary, it would only further establish my point in both places, and thus my entire reason for citing them: that in the time Christianity arose there was no normative Judaism and in fact considerable diversity of thought and openness to innovation.
I think you are confused. My point is precisely that the Rabbinic consensus that emerges after the 2nd revolt is a compromise incorporating multiple disparate communties, which is then historicised and retrojected back into the second temple period in the later sources. This Mishnah is written after the War. The assertion that it represents unproblematic continuity with the Pharisees is highly disputed, and has been largely ditched by historians of Judaism. There is clear evidence of this, particularly in Pirkei Avot, where there is evidence of two competing lineages, that of ben Zakkai (who is absolutely not “some random Sadducee,” but one of the most quoted authorities in the Mishnah, the teacher of Rabbi Eliezer, who then taught Rabbi Akiva) and that of Gamaliel (who was, by all accounts, a Pharisee). There have in fact been numerous studies of this stuff, including the ones I cite, like Baumgarten, who has written extensively on this material across his career, and Boyarin addresses this at length as well (Borderlines, 74-88, discusses the issue in Avot, see also his paper “Beyond Judaisms: Metatron and the Divine Polymorphy of Ancient Judaism”). None of these scholars take 4th century patristic polemics as evidence of anything. I have not seen any other scholar treat them as evidence for the first century other than yourself, which is why I was so surprised to see it.
There has in fact been extensive study on this already done, which I am referring to. So when you say “It seems the only legitimate complaint you have is that ‘someone should do a more detailed study on this,'” but i have read a significant amount of material on this, and a lot of rabbinic literature. If you are claiming that I am wrong about that, and you do in fact know the sources, why on earth would you say that the Rabbinate, most of whom are students of Ben Zakkai, are arguing against him, in a passage where his words are used to justify their specific halacha – that the scriptures render the hands unclean? The inconsistency in this passage, that ben Zakkai places himself with the Rabbis’ opponents and in opposition to the Pharisees, only to prove the Rabbinic halacha correct is exactly the kind of evidence (along with a close reading of the rest of the Tannaitic literature) that leads scholars to conclude that there’s a compromise happening here – that this is evidence of the re-calibration of authority in the power vacuum left in the aftermath of the two Revolts.
This is what I was getting at, too, in the following citation of Tosefta Berakhot, where פרושין, the same word that gives us the word “Pharisees” is grouped with מינים, heretics. In this earliest strata of the Rabbinic literature, some, particular historical Pharisees are at times venerated (particularly in opposition to Sadducees) but the contemporary generation rejects Pharisee as a label and equates it with Heresy (ironic, as later the Rabbinic literature is self-censored by scribes, with “min”, heretic, replaced with “tzadoki”, sadducee, in order to avoid Christian persecution). A new identity is being formed here, and this is being negotiated in a complex and, at least on the surface, contradictory way. But if you dig deeper you can see what’s going on, and how power is being negotiated between different groups to reach this new position.
On the question of normativity, all I would say is that I subscribe to the post-Sanders position, along with basically everyone else who studies this period. The very word “Judaism” implies at least a broad normativity. Most Jews at the time were illiterate and followed the custom of their community. Sectarianism is largely a product of urbanization and literacy, and thus of limited impact outside of literate classes in urban centures. My point, which you seem to miss in the final bullet point, is that most Jews at the time would not have had a sectarian identity – and we see evidence of this in the archeological record (as per the Adler book that you cited in your previous blogpost, which notably doesn’t argue for a 2nd Century origin of the Pentateuch, but for the population-level practice of Pentateuchal law, an important distinction which is discussed at length in his conclusion) and in every non-Jewish writer who discusses the Jews, universally providing a normative description of henotheism (debatable in some cases, as per the Two Powers Heresy, but broadly correct), abstinence from pork and circumcision. If there were no “normative judaism”, broadly speaking, that description would be impossible, as would the identification of who was a Jew and who wasn’t, which never seemed to be a problem, particularly for taxation purposes. Normative practice in Judaea at least extends beyond this involving widespread adherence to purity regulations and the like, as Adler describes at length. It is also necessary for the application of your own definition of sectarianism – what “larger group” are the sects separating from? Thus, the “most influential sect” is relative – precisely how influential any sect is going to be is relative to the extent of sectarian fracturing, which is vastly overstated in particular by Protestant NT scholars, for whom the authentic core of Christianity must be equated with “authentic Judaism” (a very popular position in the German Lutheran academy in the first half of the 20th Century).
Simply put, what I am arguing for is nuance, and the relativisation of terms in order to better describe the environment in question. My feeling is that your idea of this environment is the product of an over-reliance on New Testament scholarship, about which I agree with you that it is far too often warped by the authors theological commitments or biases. I would add that it is also often warped by an over-reliance on the textual record, produced entirely by the very small segment of the population who had the class status and wealth to gain literacy, and were naturally more concerned with the goings-on of their class than the broader population (Josephus fits in here, as do the NT authors). Thus, archeology becomes important, as do books like Adler, the work of Sanders and many who followed in his footsteps, in order to correct for those biases.
What this calls into question is the hypothetical number of sects who could have believed any number of hypothetical things and so on – the population subject to such hypothetical becomes significantly smaller once you account for the social realty we are speculating about. The people syncretizing material from a vast array of written works are only going to be not just those capable of reading them, but those with access to the contents of documents which were extremely labor-intensive to produce, and thus, like education, very, very expensive. Once social and economic concerns are taken into consideration, the boundaries of what is reasonable speculation become far narrower.
Your propensity for building impertinent word-walls rather than actually saying anything relevant is now showing.
Nothing you just said relates to anything I am saying. You have just admitted Jews had no problem coming up with the idea of a dying messiah. That is literally all my Element 5 says (that is the plausibility condition). You are then ignoring the second side of the disjunct (the probability condition) which is based on triangulating the Talmudic evidence with Daniel 9 and 11Q13. Which nothing you just said addresses.
But let’s play your game and move the goal posts and talk about something completely unrelated:
You want to propose a hypothesis, which you have not well defined nor explained the evidence of, whereby somehow (handwave, handwave, handwave), the universal Talmudic acceptance of a future dying messiah is based on accommodating (I guess?) Simon Bar Kochba, even though he is universally condemned as a false messiah and thus not capable of being an inspiration for a future true one.
Your hypothesis is implausible in every way, and stands on exactly no evidence whatsoever.
By contrast, the elaborate epicycles of your theory can be chucked, and then we end up with a far more plausible explanation of where that material came from: Hengel and Boyarin’s. Which is only further supported by dozens of other experts adding evidence from first century sources (like Daniel and the DSS).
I have evidence for my position (which is their position). You have no evidence for your position.
You will waffle between admitting this (and just warning us your model is possible) and trying to insist upon it anyway (implying it is even probable, but giving us no evidence making it probable—at all, much less more probable than our alternative). But the former position is moot (no one here is denying it’s “possible” and all here have admitted it is, even in Historicity); and the second position is unfounded (as it rests on no evidence and even against evidence).
You also want to complain about “maybe” the causal relationship between the Rabbinate and the Pharisees is more complicated or questionable. That has literally nothing to do with anything I argue in Historicity. It affects no element of background knowledge there. It affects no evidence for or against Jesus. It has nothing to do with anything. So why are you wasting our time with this?
I am sticking with standard expert references on this until I see the field change. I already cited scholarship on this, including both standard references and leading textbooks. If you disagree with them, go argue with them. I will not side with an unpublished graduate student over dozens of top experts in Talmudic studies. Especially as it makes no difference to anything I argue anywhere.
But based on your behavior so far, I do not think you actually understand what I and these scholars are saying. When everyone from Jacob Neusner to Rosen-Zvi says what I am saying (that the Rabbinate is an inheritance of the Pharisee position), we none of us are saying that the Rabbinate is “identical” to first century Pharisaism (as if no ideology evolves) or that it did not adopt any ideas from other sects (as if that never happened even among first century Pharisees). You seem to be falling into a black-or-white fallacy and not countenancing the nuanced reality we are describing; consequently, none of your evidence pertains to us. It pertains only to a fictional hard-line position no one holds.
Nothing else you say is even remotely relevant. I have never taken a “non-nuanced” position for you to argue against. You have invented that, projected it on to me even though it is never stated and even denied (my entire Element 5 is precisely that nuance destroys hard-line positions; so you are just agreeing with me), and then you burned hundreds of words arguing with a non-existent person.
This is what you always do. For tens of thousands of words now. And it is extremely frustrating and entirely unproductive.
Please get a clue.
Here’s my 2-cents worth. I have issue with the definition you provide for sects because, as the saying goes, put 2 Jews together and you will have 3 opinions. The Pharisees were a sect and the very nature of that sect (it’s clear from the discussions, often quite cantankerous) from the Mishnah and the Talmud. For the most part when a disagreement was settled, usually by the majority, that opinion was accepted. So while there was a school of Hillel and a school of Shamai, both under the umbrella of the Pharisee-ian sect, both schools held by the same set of rules and accepted, at least as far as we know, the majority opinion.
The Pharisees were the largest of the sects at the time. Estimates that there were approximately 6000 “card-carrying” Pharisees. There were approximately 2000 “card-carrying” Sadducees at the time. Of course there were other sects as well. If we look at the cross-section of DSS texts the proto-MT texts make up the largest sub-set of documents and the proto-MT was the Biblical text that the Pharisees used. After the destruction of the Temple, and it appears the destruction of the Sadducees as well, we only find proto-MT texts (Masada, Nahal Hever, Wadi Murbaat.)
Now the above numbers are estimates and the quantity of texts is miniscule in relation to the quantity of texts that actually existed at that time but I believe that this is a pretty good general indication of what happened to the non Pharisee-ic sects.
First, I think you have stumbled over a Sorites paradox.
Sect does not mean just any diverse opinion. A sect means a recognizable group of people who share a bunch of opinions together, that are distinctly different from what other groups share. A sect therefore can only define a group, not an individual. And it has to be a group large enough to have been noticed in the sources of the time—so, at least hundreds of members; although we could count a sect of only a few dozen, if they really did maintain a common yet distinct theology and ideology, but I am not aware of any we have evidence for, besides Christianity itself in its first couple of years.
Second, you are confusing post-war Rabbinical procedure with first-century schism conflict. Even Simone correctly gets this right: the schisms were smoothed over by the process you describe sometime after the war. But before the war, it was a chaos of conflicting, squabbling, competing, and even secessionist sects.
Third, you are not reading my article that you claim to be responding to. I address the “6,000” datum. You might want to check that out. It is problematic both in that it might not even be a census of card-carrying Pharisees, but also in that it ignores the influence of the sect (and not just its “members” which defines an elite cabal).
Fourth, there is nothing normative about the DSS or the “mainstream” sectarians actually competing for control over major institutions of the time (courts, temple, political leadership).
Fifth, variant manuscript readings do not necessarily indicate sectarianism. They appear to have been ubiquitous and spanned all sects (e.g. there is little or no evidence any given variant reading in the DSS was not actually common among many sects across Judea and the Diaspora). See my discussion of this in OHJ (Element 9; linked in the article above).
Sixth, we are not debating “what happened” to the diverse sects of the first century. We are debating how diverse sectarianism was in the first century. The smoothing over of disputes into a quasi-normative Judaism was a post-war phenomenon (as both Simone and I agree).
Correction: It was pointed out that Simone’s statement about Yochanan Ben Zakkai is unclear as to whether they mean to argue he was a Sadducee or in some unspecified sense a sympathizer with Sadducees. This doesn’t affect any point, but does require revising my paragraph to take this ambiguity properly into account. Revision duly made.
The tertiary sources I am reading also identify him as an opponent of the Sadducees, but I have reworded what I said to not take a position on that either way, since which is the case is moot to my point.