Skip to content

Course 6 · Lesson 6.2

Temple, synagogue and the main groups in Jewish life

11 minute read

Lessons in this course

Course 6 outline

Module 1: Israel in the Ancient Near East

  1. Egypt, Mesopotamia and Canaan: the world of the Old Testament
  2. What archaeology and ancient texts can and cannot show
  3. Genesis 1 to 3 beside other ancient creation accounts
  4. Ancient cosmology and how Christians and Jews read Genesis

Module 2: Covenant: Abraham and Moses

  1. What a covenant is, and covenant forms in the ancient world
  2. The covenants with Noah and Abraham
  3. The exodus and the covenant at Sinai
  4. The Torah: law, worship and the tabernacle
  5. Covenant in Jewish, Catholic, Orthodox and Reformed thought

Module 3: Kingship in Israel

  1. From the judges to the first kings
  2. David, Jerusalem and the promise of a lasting house
  3. Solomon, the temple and the divided kingdom
  4. How Samuel and Kings tell the story: sources and purpose

Module 4: The Prophets, Exile and Restoration

  1. What a prophet was in Israel and in the ancient world
  2. Amos, Hosea, Isaiah and Micah: justice, loyalty and judgment
  3. Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the fall of Jerusalem
  4. The return, Ezra, Nehemiah and the rebuilt temple
  5. How the prophetic books were formed: the debate over Isaiah and others

Module 5: Wisdom and Apocalyptic Writing

  1. Proverbs and the way of the wise
  2. Job and Ecclesiastes: wisdom that questions
  3. What apocalyptic writing is: Daniel and its setting
  4. Reading apocalyptic images responsibly

Module 6: Second Temple Judaism and the Development of Jewish Thought

  1. Persian, Greek and Maccabean periods
  2. Temple, synagogue and the main groups in Jewish life
  3. Development in Jewish thought: angels, resurrection, wisdom and law
  4. Sources: the Dead Sea Scrolls, the deuterocanonical books and Josephus

Module 7: Messianic Expectation and the Shape of the Covenants

  1. Anointed ones in the Old Testament: king, priest, prophet
  2. Messianic texts in the prophets and psalms
  3. How Jews and Christians read the messianic texts
  4. The promise of a new covenant
  5. Mapping the development of covenant across the Old Testament

All courses

Program / Course 6: Old Testament Theology and History / Lesson 6.2

What you will learn

  • Describe the roles of the temple and the synagogue in Second Temple Judaism.
  • Distinguish the Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes by their beliefs and practices.
  • Name other groups, including scribes, Samaritans and revolutionary movements.
  • Explain why knowledge of these groups is limited and often comes from outsiders.

The big idea

Judaism in the last centuries before Christ was not uniform. The temple in Jerusalem stood at the center, with its priests and sacrifices, while synagogues in the land and in the diaspora gathered people for reading and prayer. Groups such as the Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes disagreed about how to keep the law, which traditions were binding and what to expect from God. Sources are limited, and many are written by people who were not members of the groups they describe.

Key terms

Synagogue
From a Greek word meaning gathering. A place and an assembly for reading Scripture, teaching and prayer.
Pharisees
A lay movement known for careful interpretation of the law, concern for purity and belief in resurrection and angels. Their heirs shaped rabbinic Judaism.
Sadducees
A group connected with the priestly aristocracy, who accepted the written Torah as authoritative and denied resurrection.
Essenes
A strict, community-minded group described by Josephus, Philo and Pliny. Many scholars connect them with the Dead Sea Scrolls community.
Sanhedrin
The council of Jewish leaders in Jerusalem under the high priest, with legal and religious authority under Roman rule.
Oral Torah
The body of tradition about how to apply the written law, held by the Pharisees to come from Moses and later written down in the Mishnah.
Samaritans
A people of the region of Samaria who kept the five books of Moses and worshiped on Mount Gerizim.

Background

In the first century BC and the first century AD, about the time Jesus lived, Jews numbered perhaps several million across the Roman Empire and beyond. A large part lived outside the land of Israel, in Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor and Babylon. The temple drew pilgrims from all these places for the great feasts. Herod the Great had greatly enlarged the temple complex in the decades before Jesus’s birth.

The groups are known from several kinds of source: the New Testament, the writings of the Jewish historian Josephus, the philosopher Philo of Alexandria, later rabbinic writings, and the Dead Sea Scrolls. None of these is neutral. Josephus, for example, wrote in Rome for Roman readers. The New Testament mentions Pharisees and Sadducees mostly in disputes with Jesus. The rabbinic writings were put together later. A student should treat each source with care.

The groups were not churches or political parties in the modern sense. They were movements with different emphases, and individuals could belong to more than one circle. They shared Scripture, the temple, circumcision, the Sabbath and the hope of God’s deliverance.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: The temple and its leaders

The temple was the only place for sacrifice. Daily offerings were made morning and evening, and thousands of priests served in rotation. The high priest, who held office at the Romans’ pleasure in this period, entered the most holy place once a year on the Day of Atonement. The three pilgrim feasts, Passover, weeks and tabernacles, brought crowds into the city. Merchants and money changers served the pilgrims.

The Sanhedrin met in Jerusalem as a council of priests, elders and scholars, with the high priest presiding. Its powers under Roman rule were limited. In the Gospels the Sanhedrin plays a role in the trial of Jesus, and historians debate the details of its procedure.

Step 2: The synagogue

The origin of the synagogue is uncertain. Evidence for the term and for buildings appears from the third century BC in Egypt and increasingly in the first century. An inscription in Jerusalem from the first century AD, the Theodotos inscription, speaks of a synagogue built for the reading of the law and the teaching of the commandments. Synagogues at Gamla and Masada are among the oldest known buildings.

In synagogues, the Torah and Prophets were read and expounded on the Sabbath. The Gospels describe Jesus teaching in synagogues, and Acts shows Paul beginning his work in them. The synagogue was a community center as well as a place for prayer, and in the diaspora it provided a shared life for Jews without the temple.

Step 3: Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes

The Pharisees were not priests but laypeople who sought to apply the law to everyday life, including purity and tithing, as if the whole people were a holy priesthood. They held to traditions beyond the written text, which they believed were given at Sinai. They believed in angels, spirits and the resurrection of the dead. Josephus says they had the favor of the common people. Their teachers, such as Hillel and Shammai, were remembered in later rabbinic writing.

The Sadducees were linked with the priestly aristocracy and the temple. They accepted the written law and rejected the extra traditions of the Pharisees. According to the New Testament and Josephus, they denied resurrection, angels and spirits (Acts 23:8). They lost influence after the temple’s fall in AD 70. The Essenes, known from Josephus and Philo, lived in communities with shared property and strict purity. Many scholars think the Dead Sea Scrolls were the library of an Essene or Essene-like group living at Qumran, and others dispute this. They saw the temple as corrupt and expected a coming conflict between the sons of light and darkness.

Step 4: Other groups

Scribes were experts in the law and the copying of texts, not a separate party. Many scribes in the Gospels were Pharisees. The Samaritans kept the Torah and had a temple on Mount Gerizim until it was destroyed in the second century BC, and relations with Judeans were hostile, as Luke 10 and John 4 reflect. Revolutionary movements, such as the Zealots and the Sicarii, grew in the first century AD, and they fueled the revolt against Rome in AD 66.

Writers outside these groups, such as Philo in Alexandria, combined Jewish faith with Greek philosophy. The diversity is the reason scholars often speak of Judaisms in the plural when they describe this period, though many stress the shared center.

  1. What roles did the temple play in religious and social life?
  2. How did synagogues serve Jewish communities in the diaspora?
  3. What were the main differences between the Pharisees and the Sadducees?
  4. What is the evidence that the Essenes lived at Qumran, and what is the objection?
  5. Why must a reader treat Josephus and the Gospels carefully as sources for the groups?
  6. What did the groups share that made them all Jewish?

Examples

A Sabbath in a synagogue

Luke 4 describes Jesus standing up in the synagogue at Nazareth and reading from the scroll of Isaiah. The scene shows a pattern of reading a prophetic text and giving an explanation that scholars see reflected in other sources.

The Sadducees’ question

In Mark 12, Sadducees ask Jesus about a woman who married seven brothers in turn, in order to ridicule the idea of resurrection. The story shows that the debate over resurrection was a live one, and that the Sadducees rested their case on the written law.

A Pharisee in the Sanhedrin

In Acts 5, the Pharisee Gamaliel urges caution toward the apostles, saying that if their work is of God, it cannot be overthrown. He appears as a teacher honored by later Jewish writings as well. Paul later says he studied under Gamaliel (Acts 22:3).

Different perspectives

Jewish readers

Rabbinic Judaism traces its roots to the Pharisaic movement and the teachers of the law. Jewish scholars today stress the diversity of Second Temple Judaism and warn against Christian caricatures of the Pharisees as hypocrites. They note that the Gospels’ sharp criticism reflects debates within Judaism.

Catholic readers

The Catholic Church teaches in Nostra Aetate that the death of Jesus cannot be blamed on all Jews of his time or on Jews today. It urges careful historical reading of the Gospels’ accounts of conflict.

Orthodox readers

Orthodox tradition reads the Gospel accounts in the liturgy, and Orthodox scholars increasingly acknowledge the need to distinguish the New Testament’s polemic from a historical description of Jewish groups.

Protestant readers

Protestant scholars, especially since the later twentieth century, have revised older portrayals that treated the Pharisees as legalists. Many now stress that Pharisaic piety was a response to God’s covenant and that Jesus argued with them as a fellow Jew.

Scholarly views

Historians debate how many groups there were, how influential the Pharisees were before AD 70, and whether the Qumran community was Essene. They agree that the picture from the sources is partial.

Why it matters

The Gospels and Acts assume knowledge of these groups, and Christian and Jewish traditions both grew from this setting. A student who knows the groups can read the New Testament without the stereotypes that have fed prejudice, and can see Jesus and Paul as people who argued within a lively range of Jewish views.

Common misunderstandings

Misunderstanding: The Pharisees were all hypocrites.

Correction: The Gospels criticize certain Pharisees in particular disputes. Historians describe the Pharisees as a respected movement, and some Pharisees in the New Testament, such as Nicodemus and Gamaliel, are shown favorably.

Misunderstanding: Judaism was a single, unified religion in the first century.

Correction: There was a shared core and many differences in practice and belief. Several groups disagreed about the law, the temple and the end of the age.

Misunderstanding: Synagogues replaced the temple.

Correction: During the Second Temple period, synagogues complemented the temple. Only after AD 70 did they become the main centers of Jewish life.

Knowledge check

What was the role of the synagogue before AD 70?

It was a local gathering for reading and expounding the Torah and the Prophets, prayer and communal business, in the land of Israel and in the diaspora. It did not replace the temple, where sacrifice was offered, but it kept the people shaped by Scripture. After the temple’s destruction in AD 70, the synagogue became the center of Jewish worship.

How did Pharisees and Sadducees differ?

The Pharisees accepted oral traditions alongside the written law, sought to apply purity rules in daily life and believed in resurrection, angels and spirits. The Sadducees, linked with the priesthood and temple, accepted only the written law and denied resurrection and angels. After AD 70 the Sadducees faded and the Pharisaic tradition shaped rabbinic Judaism.

Who were the Essenes and what is their connection with the Dead Sea Scrolls?

The Essenes were a strict community described by Josephus, Philo and Pliny, who shared property and kept purity rules. Many scholars think the scrolls found near Qumran belonged to an Essene or similar group. Others argue that the library came from several groups or from Jerusalem. The question remains debated.

Why is evidence for these groups limited?

Most of the descriptions come from outsiders: Josephus wrote for Romans, the Gospels record disputes, and the rabbinic writings were compiled later. Members of groups like the Sadducees left little writing. Each source has its aims, so historians compare them and hold conclusions with care.

Think it through

  1. How might a Jew in Alexandria have experienced the temple compared with a priest in Jerusalem?
  2. What do you learn from disagreements within a religion that shares the same Scripture?
  3. How can a reader guard against turning a group in an ancient text into a stereotype?
  4. Which group would you want to learn more about, and what sources would you use?

Independent assignment

A chart of groups

In your own notebook, make a chart with columns for Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Samaritans and one other group. Fill in rows for leaders, sources of authority, beliefs about resurrection, attitude to the temple and main sources of evidence. Then write 200 to 300 words on what the chart shows about the diversity of Judaism and on one way the evidence is limited. Keep it for yourself.

Further study