Who lived
in the region of Judea? Judea was where the spiritual center of Jewish
people was located. The Temple in Jerusalem was the focal point of
worship. The sect that had control of Temple worship was the Sadducees;
a group who
rejected
the oral tradition, (including the belief in a coming messiah).
The area of Judea was, to be sure, a
place of much friction and unease. Even among the leaders of the general
masses (known as the Pharisees) there was much division, especially when it
came to the association with gentiles. It had only been a short time
before this point in history that the Jewish people were threatened with
assimilation. One of the prominent Rabbis
to stand up against both assimilation and the ruthlessness of King Herod was
Rabbi Shammai. Around the year 8 CE Shammai passed 18
edicts specifically meant to force separation between Jews and Gentiles.
Many of Shammai's views, however, were
rejected by the followers of Hillel, another prominent rabbi of the time who
was much more inclined to both associate with gentiles and accept them as
converts.
The diminishing influence of the
School of Shammai and the disappearance of the Sadducees happened when the
revolt of 66-70 CE failed, and a "heavenly voice" in 70 CE was heard in
Yavneh instructing the Jews to follow the rulings of Hillel.
The "school of Hillel" became the accepted view
of Judaism (very similar to the early followers of Yeshua), while the
leaders of what would become the Christian church became heavily influenced
by paganism and their perspective grew more anti-Semitic as time went on.
Vince Garcia,
in his article "What you never knew about the Pharisees" writes:
The greatest
tragedy has been in Christianity's failure to realize who the true
enemies of the Gospel really were, and thus Jews throughout the ages
have suffered persecution by "Christians" who did not realize the real
enemy died out in the 1st century.