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 andGoodenough’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.

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