Compare and contrast first century Judaism with first century Christianity?

Answer 1

First century Judaism had become splintered among several sects, including the Sadducees, Pharisees, Zealots and Essenes. The Idumean people from the immediate south of Judah had fairly recently been forcibly converted to Judaism, but were not fully accepted as Jews by the other Jews and thus formed another group within Judaism. These sects were often at loggerheads, culminating in the civil war that took place within the walls of Jerusalem, even while the city was under seige by the Romans.

First century Christianity was also splintered among several different sects. It was not really until the fourth century that what had become the dominant Christian group was able to rewrite history to remove the other early Christians from the historical record. Although it is not clear when the Gnostic sects arose, or even whether they preceded or followed the proto-Catholic-Orthodox Church, we have records of several other groups that existed. Paul spoke of apostles who preached a "different Christ", while the gospels speak of "false apostles" who taught a different gospel from that offerred by the evangelists. It is clear that the "Johannine community" represented by John's Gospel and 1 John was quite distinct from the other gospel communities. Some scholars see 1 John as evidence of a recent split in the Johannine community. Burton L. Mack (Who Wrote the New Testament) believes that there were two distinct groupings of Christian sects in the middle of the first century - those who, like Paul, believed in a spiritual Christ, and those who followed a historical Jesus of Nazareth as an ethical preacher. On Mack's view, the two strands began to merge later in the century.

In contrast to Judaism, the different sects of Christianity do not seem to have taken part in civil war amongst themselves.

The Jews were admired in the eastern Mediterranean for their ethical values. Christianity adopted these values as its own and extended them.

The Temple had been regarded by Jews as the only place where God could be worshipped; in earlier times even as the place where God actually dwelt. After the destruction of the Temple in the year 70, Judaism had to adapt to no longer having a Temple. Judaism evolved and local synagogues became a place of worship. At first, Christians regarded themselves as Jewish, but became violently opposed to Judaism after they were forbidden to attend the synagogues late in the century. In the middle of the century, Christians seem to have held strong apocalyptic beliefs, based on the second coming of Christ, but this is less evident in the later gospels.

Answer 2

A:John Dominic Crossan (The Birth of Christianity) says that Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism both differ, to an equal extent, from the Second-Temple Judaism that preceded them. The defining event that led to Christianity and Judaism, as we know them today, was the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE. Second-Temple Judaism held that worship was based on offering animal sacrifices to God, with the Temple as the only place where God could properly be worshipped.

Judaism moved on, with its hereditary priests replaced by rabbis, developing its synagogues as places of worship and with worship needing good deeds, prayer, study and faith instead of animal sacrifices. Christianity developed in different directions.

Much of the teachings of early Christianity would not have been out of place among the Pharisees, suggesting that gospel criticisms of the Pharisees resulted more from rivalry than from faults on the part of the Pharisees. One original concept was the Christian notion that the sacrifice of animals was no longer needed because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and it is arguable that this view was inspired by the destruction of the Temple. We now know that the first New Testament gospel was written at the time of the Temple's destruction, so it is even arguable that the gospel story of Jesus cleansing the Temple of those who sold animals for sacrifice and of those who exchanged money for the purchase of sacrifices, was inspired by the consequences of its destruction, and sacrifices no longer possible.

Answer 3

First-century Christianity constituted a small movement, made up of a number of diverging groups in and around Judea. The first Christians were Jewish, none of them were Torah-sages; and they and their followers gradually drifted away from Judaism and the Torah-rituals, adopting instead their own writings and practices, with the Christian canon still developing at this time. Many early Christian communities gathered on both Saturday and Sunday. Jesus, while seen as divine, was not yet fully deified.

Some researchers identify the Essenes as a form of early Christianity, taking also into account the fact that early Christianity was far from uniform and was, for a time, seen as a kind of modified Judaism.

Groups among the Jews

1) The Jewish group that concentrated on the study, teaching and application of the Torah in every century was and is the Torah-sages and their many disciples, from Abraham down to today.
The word "Pharisees," which is based on a Greek misspelling used by Josephus, actually refers to the Sages of the Talmud. (The Hebrew word "p'rushim," to which he referred, means people of temperance; the opposite of epicurean.)The Torah-sages such as Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, Rabbi Yonatan ben Uziel, Chanina ben Dosa, Bava ben Buta, Shimon ben Hillel, Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Yehoshua, Rabbi Akiva, and hundreds of others, were active at that time and their yeshivot (Torah-academies) were flourishing. Their tens of thousands of disciples and hundreds of thousands of sympathizers were active in the Jewish world in that generation; they were the leaders and the forefront of Judaism.

Link: The Torah-sages
Josephus talks of three groups among the Jews in late Second-Temple times: Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes. This may convey the mistaken impression that the Pharisees were just one "sect" among others, when in fact Josephus himself admits that the Pharisees (Torah-sages) with their disciples and followers constituted the large majority of the Jewish people. As he himself writes (Antiquities book 18), "the cities give great attestations to them."
Although the Christian Testament portrays them poorly, in fact the Pharisees were very egalitarian. They taught that all men were created in God's image and that all had the same rights, and the same right to an education, etc. They were devoted to the practicing of kindness, charity, the fulfillment of mitzvot, the study and teaching of Torah and the education of all people, regardless of status in society. They detested hypocrisy and actively sought it out and criticized it whenever they encountered it.

The Pharisees were the only movement to survive the destruction of the Second Temple and were the ancestors of modern Judaism.
Our traditional Jewish beliefs today, including the afterlife and the resurrection, are traditions continuing from the Prophets and the Sages of the Talmud ("Pharisees").

2) The Sadducees. These were men of politics and secular life, similar to the Hellenising Jews. They had abandoned various parts of Judaism; and they claimed no earlier source or tradition for their attitudes. They harassed the Torah-sages; and, like the tiny breakaway group called the Essenes, dwindled away after the time of the Second Destruction, like the earlier Jewish idolaters after the First Destruction.

Link: The Hellenizers

Note that there is a common misconception that the Sadducees, like the much later (and now largely defunct) Karaites, made a deliberate decision to reject the Oral Law and reinterpret the Scriptures.
However, a careful perusal of the Talmud reveals that the Sadducees were actually opportunists who had nothing much at all to do with religion in any fashion. They were lax in Judaism and had little interest in Torah-matters.

At that time the Jewish courts still had the ability to enforce the Torah laws, and almost all Jews were Torah-observant; so, in order to avoid total rejection by the surrounding community, the Sadducees outwardly maintained a facade of keeping the major Torah precepts (such as the Sabbath), while simply ignoring the Oral Torah and customs.
They went lost not long after.
The group that did (on rare occasions) debate against the Torah-Sages concerning subjects of religious observance, were a tiny sect called the Baitusim (Boethusians), who quickly died out.

3) The Essenes were a small sect in Judea who eventually disappeared from the Jewish community. They styled themselves "observant; pious ones." The normative, majority Jewish community viewed them as breakaways from the common stream of Jewish tradition, because of their non-traditional beliefs and practices.

Their beliefs included an excessive amount of dabbling with the names of angels, messianic fervor, gnosticism and eschatological speculation; and their practices were more like Christian monasticism than the generally accepted Jewish way of living.

The practices of the Essenes included vegetarianism, dwelling in isolated groups, communal ownership, monastic asceticism and avoidance of money, commerce and private property; and (among some of them) celibacy. Also, they had some forms of non-traditional observances (such as round phylacteries [tefillin]). Some researchers identify the Essenes as a form of early Christianity, taking also into account the fact that early Christianity was far from uniform and was, for a time, thought of by some as a kind of modified Judaism.

4) The Samaritans. After the Assyrians exiled the Israelite Ten Tribes (about 2600 years ago), the Assyrian king brought non-Jews from Cutha, Babylonia and Syria (Hamat), and settled them in the depopulated area where the Ten Tribes had lived (Samaria). They were taught Judaism by one of the Jewish kohens (2 Kings 17:27), and they were taught the Torah, which they wrote in the Old Hebrew script.

While both Jews and Samaritans believed in One God, and both accepted the Torah, there were also some differences. Jerusalem was and is the holiest site for Jews, while the Samaritans took Mount Gerizim as their religious center. Later in history, the Samaritans aligned with the Greeks and accepted foreign gods (Talmud, Hullin 6a).

The Talmud relates how the Samaritans adopted some of the mitzvot (Torah-commands) but not others (Talmud, Berakhot 47b), how they denounced the Jews to Alexander in an unsuccessful bid to get him to destroy the newly-built Second Temple (Talmud, Yoma 69a), and how they interfered with the declaring of Rosh Hodesh (the New Moon) (Talmud, Rosh Hashanah 22b). Our traditions relate how the Samaritans would sometimes waylay the Jews who tried to journey to the Holy Temple.

Today the Samaritans are a small group of about 800, who practice an ancient form of Jewish worship, with animal sacrifices. They don't accept the Talmud, nor holidays such as Hanukkah.

5) The Zealots. These were a group of dangerous hotheads who ignored the advice of the Rabbis and fomented war against the Romans, leaving the Romans no choice but to crush the people and destroy the city of Jerusalem (Talmud, Gittin 56). Link: The Destruction

See also the other Related Link.

Link: Jewish history timeline