Jensens survey of the old testament adam 320
Bạn đang xem bản rút gọn của tài liệu. Xem và tải ngay bản đầy đủ của tài liệu tại đây (169.26 KB, 4 trang )
MAP C: THREE CENTERS OF JUDAISM DURING
THE SILENT CENTURIES
This rst centre of Jewish life in
Babylon was marked, then, by the
creation of the traditional law and
theology, and the dominance of a
cultured class of scribes and rabbis
who, in their zeal to preserve the
laws and traditions of Israel,
reduced the Jewish religion to a
mass of outward ordinances and
forms.6
Exercise: Refer to an exhaustive
concordance7 and note how often the
word scribe appears in the New
Testament. Do the same for rabbi;
tradition; and synagogue. (Include the
plural forms in this word study.)
( 2 ) Alexandria. A large number of Jews
migrated to Egypt a few months after the
destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C.8 When
Alexander the Great founded Alexandria in
3 3 2 B.C., the Jews constituted an eighth of
the population of Egypt — in Alexandria,
almost a half. He favored them very highly
and assigned them a special section of the
city. Alexandria became the capital of the
Jewish Dispersion (Diaspora), and the events
and movements of that city a ected the life
of Judaism for centuries to come.
Since Alexandria was a Greek-speaking
city, the Jewish population gave up its
Palestinian Hebrew vernacular as it began
learning Greek. Eventually the Jews were
without Scripture in their new vernacular,
so the need arose for a Greek translation of
the Hebrew Old Testament. Such a
translation (later called the Septuagint) was
soon made — the Pentateuch by 280 B.C.,
and the whole Old Testament by 180 B.C.
The Jews prospered and multiplied in
Egypt during the silent years, such that by
New Testament times there were almost one
million Jews residing there. Egypt was not
far from Judea, and the contacts between
Jews of both lands were very close. (Read
Matthew 2:13-18, one of the rst stories of
the New Testament, which is about baby
Jesus’ parents’ escape with Him to Egypt, to
ee Herod.) The contributions of the Greek
background, including the Septuagint
translation, to the New Testament setting
will be discussed later.
(3) Jerusalem. Approximately 450 B.C. Ezra
and Nehemiah had led about 50,000 Jews
back to Judea from exile in Babylon. Those
remained in the land, rebuilding the walls of
Jerusalem and trying in small measure to
preserve their religious heritage. But before
long the people gave up their allegiance to
God and, in their vain pursuit of holiness,
surrendered faith for works. The one bright
note was that there always remained a
faithful remnant in the land who awaited the
Messiah.9
It was during those silent years that two
ruling classes of the Jewish religion
appeared: the Sadducees and the Pharisees.
As rival religious sects, they became rival
political parties by New Testament times.
The Sadducees were the political party of
the Jewish aristocratic priesthood. They
were not popular with the common people.
Among their false doctrines were: (a) denial
