By Calvin J. Roetzel
The writer discusses the first-century biblical writers and descriptions the most important realities they confronted as they formed the hot testomony checklist: political heritage, varieties of non secular expression, associations, scriptural interpretation, and the mythic importance of evil..
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Extra info for The World That Shaped the New Testament
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And, unlike the Essenes, who seek to live in isolation, the Pharisees dwell among townfolk and are intensely involved in the workaday world. , and in their translation of the Levitical code into all aspects of daily life we see a remarkable openness to innovation. 6 While these early traditions conflict somewhat with the description of the Pharisees given by Josephus, this hardly implies that Josephus' observations are unhistorical. Thus, the early political involvement of the sect gave way in the first century to a form of piety defined by tithing, fasting, sabbath and festival observance, oaths, keeping the laws of purity, etc.
We are told that Paul was a Pharisee, that Jesus was crucified between two bandits, that John the Baptist baptized for the forgiveness of sins like the Essenes at Qumran, that the Jesus of the Gospels encountered Sadducees, priests, scribes, and Levites, and that he freely socialized with the "people of the land" ( aretz), sinners, tax collectors, the poor, the sick, the troubled. Awareness of this group's debt to the Hebrew tradition and of their manner of departure from the religious conventions of the day will help us appreciate both the distinctiveness of the church's kerygma and the reasons for both its polemical tendencies and its appeal for Jews and Gentiles alike.
Thus, the early political involvement of the sect gave way in the first century to a form of piety defined by tithing, fasting, sabbath and festival observance, oaths, keeping the laws of purity, etc. 7 Rivkin maintains that the writings of Josephus, rabbinic traditions, the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, and the New Testament all share a common view: the Pharisees were popular with the masses, served as a scholar class interpreting both oral and written traditions, believed in individual immortality, and promulgated new law.