Hello, and welcome back! Or, if this is your first time, just "welcome!"
If this is your first time here, I recommend going back to the first post, which served as a bit of an Introduction to the nature of this study. You can find that post here.
Please keep in mind that this endeavor is pointedly not for profit. I will never attempt to protect these words legally for my benefit, nor will I ever attempt to make money by their sale or by advertising associated with their publication.
Before we begin today, let me briefly remind you where we're at. Last time, we introduced a new short series of studies within our broader study. The title of that series is Sects of Judaism Existing in Palestine at or Immediately Prior to the Time of Jesus - A Shallow Survey. In the first installment of that survey, we learned about The Pharisees, or the "separated ones," who believed in an oral Jewish tradition as well as the written tradition. The Pharisees were a popular movement in Jerusalem, and they contrast in some way with the group we will discuss today: The Sadducees.
Without further ado, then, I give you the second installment of the survey.
Sects of Judaism Existing in Palestine at or Immediately Prior to the Time of Jesus - A Shallow Survey
Number Two: The Sadducees
The Sadducees are the second sect of two sects of Judaism that figure prominently in the Gospels of Jesus Christ. At the time of Christ's ministry, The Sadducees and The Pharisees were the two main groups rivalling one another for the hearts and minds of the Jews in Jerusalem. Jesus encounters thinkers from both groups throughout the narrative of the Gospels.
The etymology of "Sadducee" probably comes from the Hebrew for "descendant of Zadok," which became "Saddoukaios" in Greek. The person referred to there, Zadok, was a high priest* way way back in the days of David and Solomon (circa 1000 BC.) Zadok can be found in several of the books of the Old Testament.
When Jerusalem was Hellenized following Alexander the Great's conquest of Palestine in 332 BC, The Temple waned a little in its preeminence over Jewish life. The Temple's preeminence had been the unifier of the Jewish people, and at its waning, sectarianism began. The Sadducees were of the more conservative sects that emerged. Sadducees believed strictly in what had been recorded for them in their scriptures, not in the oral traditions to which The Pharisees adhered.
The Sadducees consisted of elite members of the priestly class living in Jerusalem. As priests, they were supposed to have been descendants of Aaron, Moses' brother, and they passed their jobs down to their first-born sons. They were responsible for the ritualistic animal sacrifices that went on each day at The Temple. They held charge over many of the most important aspects of Jewish religious and social life in Jerusalem.
Between Hellenization and Jesus' time, questions among the people of Jerusalem had arisen regarding the legitimacy of The Temple, the priesthood, and the Sadducees, who many felt were corrupted by Medizing influences.
It's easy to contrast The Pharisees, a popular movement, with The Sadducees, a sect of economic and political elites who controlled The Temple based on birthright. Disagreements about whether or not oral traditions were valid yielded major ideological discrepancies, particularly regarding the afterlife. The Sadducees believed resolutely, as recounted in the Gospel and by our friend Josephus, that there was no afterlife at all. They did not believe in a coming resurrection of the faithful dead. They did not believe in an eternal soul.
By the time of Jesus' birth, the inhabitants of Jerusalem saw The Temple completely controlled by The Sadducees.
When The Second Temple was destroyed in 70 AD by Rome, everything changed for the Jews. Being that The Sadducees derived all of their power and status from the management of The Temple through priestly positions, their power among their own people was obliterated by Rome's incursion into Palestine. Traditions of ritual sacrifice ceased, and Rabbis (or "teachers") replaced priests in primacy over Jewish religious life. The Sadducees died out immediately as the diaspora began in full and Jews faced the harsh reality of having to worship their God from synagogues, rather than from their beloved Temple.
The Sadducees died out while their main opponents, The Pharisees, continued on.
Remember these key points about The Sadducees:
a) They believed exclusively in written tradition, or Torah, not in the oral traditions that The Pharisees promoted.
b) They ceased to exist as a sect when The Second Temple ceased to exist, in 70 AD.
c) They didn't believe in an afterlife, nor an eternal soul, because they said these things did not exist in their scriptures.
d) They were an authoritative minority in Jerusalem who were suspected by some as being corrupted by Persia.
As we continue on learning about pre-Christian Judaism, we will no longer be able to see it as a monolith. To the contrary, the picture should be emerging of a people divided by economic, social, geological and philosophical differences.
The picture is emerging of a Jerusalem alive with vibrant debate about the nature of God's will for humanity, and humanity's place in the universe.
The religious and philosophical context of Jesus' ministry is this vibrant debate.
Next time: The Essenes.
Now, let's get back to our Gospel.
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Matthew 2:13 through Matthew 2:15
13 When they had departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Rise, take the child and his mother, flee to Egypt,and stay there until I tell you. Herod is going to search for the child to destroy him.”
14 Joseph rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed for Egypt.
------------------------------15 He stayed there until the death of Herod, that what the Lord had said through the prophet might be fulfilled, “Out of Egypt I called my son.”
So the Magi have just come to see Baby Jesus and do him homage. They were supposed to go back and report to Herod, but instead have chosen to go a different way. Now, right after they leave, an angel appears in a dream (again) to Joseph. The angel says "Joe, you need to get down to Egypt where Herod can't get the baby, because he wants to kill this specific baby quite badly!" Joseph, without question, takes Mary and Jesus to Egypt.
Verse fifteen tells us that Joseph stayed in Egypt with his family until the death of Herod, and then returned to Palestine. The most interesting thing we have going on here, of course, is the reference to old scripture. Verse fifteen says that the entire Herod vs Baby Jesus scenario is occurring so that Jesus can be exiled to Egypt and then brought back to Palestine, fulfilling a prophecy of old. Verse fifteen says that God had said "out of Egypt I called my son."
The New American Bible points us back to the Book of Hosea to find the source for this prophetic material. Hosea, as the Book of Hosea tells its reader immediately, was another prophet living around the time of Ahaz. That means that Hosea would have been contemporary or nearly contemporary to both Isaiah and Micah, two prophets we've already discussed.
Hosea is interesting for a number of reasons. The narrative moves about wildly, and changes between direct subjects without warning. According to notation in The New American Bible, Hosea is notoriously hard to translate, possibly because the text was either corrupted by poor literary practices over time, or because the Hebrew it was originally written in was "nonstandard" somehow.
The first chapter of Hosea may be of note to those of prurient interest. In the first chapter, the first thing we see God saying to Hosea is that he must "Go, get for yourself a woman of prostitution, and children of prostitution."
A "woman of prostitution," God recommends? Hosea finds his prostitute woman in Gomer**, whom he marries and with whom he has three children.
Throughout Hosea, it seems as though everything is a metaphor for the people of Israel. God commands Hosea to love his wife, despite her adulterousness, the same way God loves Israel, despite Israel's being religiously adulterous at the time. God condemns Hosea's children at first, and then uplifts them, which represents condemnation and subsequent redemption for Israel.
The verse referenced in Matthew 2:15 is Hosea 11:1. Leading up to 11:1, the Lord is speaking through Hosea, saying that the people of Israel have stopped putting their faith in God and had come to be faithful only in their own military might. The Lord says that because of their faith in their military, which should have been placed in Him instead, they will experience resounding military defeats. "All your fortresses shall be ravaged," He says in Hosea 10:14.
Chapter 11, subtitled in The New American Bible as "The Disappointment of a Parent," shows the Lord in lamentation. He laments that even though He was a perfect father to His "son" Israel, Israel still betrayed Him. Hosea 11:1 begins that lamentation thus:
"When Israel was a child I loved him,
Out of Egypt I called my son."
It is only too clear, upon reading Hosea, that the author of Matthew is taking the words of Hosea (or of God, if you like) out of context. As we've seen before, the verse selected by the evangelist here as prophetic of Jesus can actually only be seen as such if taken out of context. Hosea is not talking about Jesus being briefly exiled to Egypt seven-hundred years in the future. Hosea is talking about Israel's liberation from Egypt at the time of Moses, some seven-hundred years prior.
It is as if I can see the evangelist in my mind, writing the Gospel, and flipping back through the Old Testament thinking "I know I can make Jesus' story fit with the old scriptures so that it sounds like it's all one continuous divine narrative." Then he comes across this "out of Egypt, I called my Son" phrasing and thinks "ah, this could work...."
Here's the broken record clause: the evangelist is trying to make the story of Jesus Christ palatable to Jews by writing the story of Jesus entirely in a Jewish context. The evangelist is a Jew living amongst and preaching to Jews.
Jesus' exile to Egypt occurs only in the Book of Matthew. We do not take the flight to Egypt as historical, but we will discuss its historicity again later.
I recommend that the reader open up their Bible to Hosea sometime, if only to witness the book's eccentric linguistic qualities.
That will have to suffice for today. Join us next time, and please share this writing.
Love.
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* The high priesthood was, very roughly, the "Papacy" of Judaism. It was inherited, and lasted one's entire lifespan in normal circumstances. The high priest was the only one allowed to enter the most sacred part of The Temple.
** What a name for a girl, huh?
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