After roughly a century under Babylonian control, the Medo-Persian troops conquered the empire and made it their own. A part of the peculiar Zoroastrian religion of the Persians was all the other national gods were friends of their god. Thus, it was necessary to send the captive nations home to rebuild their gods' temples to ensure there was no deity with a claim against the ruling families. Israel was just one of many nations sent home. Except they were allowed to choose, and frankly very few went in the first round. In particular, the priests stayed behind because it was they who had delved most deeply in the material prosperity.
On the other hand, they had constructed the synagogue system. So thorough going was the training from childhood, there was a rather odd pride. They felt the land of Mesopotamia had absorbed such a great depth of covenant blessing from their zeal in the Law, it became more holy than the ground of Zion. Notice there was a ton of lip service to spiritual understanding and modicum of Eastern perspective, but the bulk of how men acted and talked betrayed a very materialistic perspective. Further, it was now tinged with racism.
It's not what you might expect. Surely the blue-blooded priests who stayed behind were quite snooty, but most of the people who now called themselves "Jews" had long carried the understanding anyone who embraced the Covenant could become a member of the nation. The issue with Ezra and Nehemiah ordering men to put away their foreign wives was not a matter of mixed DNA, but there were women who refused to convert, clinging to their old pagan gods. By now, the Jewish leaders were particularly intolerant of such a thing. So when Jesus said His Father could raise up children to Abraham from the stones of the street, that was hyperbole, but it was Law. Still, the racism crept in, and the snooty attitude spread in the background of thinking. Instead of reaching out to enlighten the Gentiles, they became harsh, even hateful in despising them.
The other edge of that sword was the superiority complex. They had learned their lesson, no more pagan uncleanness, and now they had Jehovah right where they wanted Him. There was a pretense of almost demanding God allow them to stomp on the rest of humanity. It was during this time was born the Messianic Expectations. While the prophets had, indeed, promised a coming Messiah, they read all those promises with fleshly and materialistic eyes. They built up a body of scholarship which predicted the Messiah would suffer, then overcome by some military victory, crushing all those who opposed Jewish supremacy. Then the whole world would realize it was good and right, would voluntarily enslave themselves to the Jews, dragging with them all their worldly goods. God would add more by miraculously turning the stones to bread, kosher animals would willingly come to them as they had to Noah's Ark, etc. This was a very ugly corruption of God's promises.
Then came Alexander the Great, stomping the Persians and bringing his zeal for Hellenistic culture. Jerusalem capitulated quickly, and Alexander left some teachers of Greek culture. That culture included the likes of Plato, Socrates and Aristotle. The basic starting point of that culture was man as the measure of all things; if man could not logically grasp and analyze a particular thing, it was not real. While the Jews didn't quite buy into the overt assertion, they did buy into the subconscious assumptions. All the more so as their community by now stretched all the way down to Egypt, where a major Jewish presence stood. The community of Alexandria was the perfect place for a new Greek cultural center, right next to the Jews. Having embraced the Hellenistic frame of reference, they just knew they were smarter than anyone else. These resented the old Babylonian blue blood priests and built their own version of understanding the Covenant from a purely rational, highly structured, and concrete framework.
The effect was altogether obvious when we contrast the Pharisees with Jesus in discussing the Law. God was reduced to a static and objective principle, not in those terms, but as the obvious assumption from which they operated. Truth was no longer a Person. Loyalty was redefined as rote performance according to some objective standard, not love and commitment to that Divine Sheik of Heaven. This great body of scholarship was entirely rational, and Jesus referred to it as the traditions of men, an attack on the real Law of Moses. The Jews eventually called this body of teaching the Talmud, which had held the minds of Jewish leaders captive for some 200 years before Jesus was born.
Judaism (the name actually came later) was alive, and Old Testament religion was all but forgotten. Oh, how far they had fallen! This made the teaching of Jesus incomprehensible to them.
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By Ed Hurst
08 May 2009
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