Parallels of Reformation Christianity and First Century Judaism
...fs into yet different factions. Perhaps the most famous reformer, Martin Luther, faced this problem head on in his famous conflict with the Swiss reformer, Ulrich Zwingli. Luther and Zwingli agreed on almost everything, at Marburg in 1529 where the Swiss theologians met Luther, the only point of difference was the Eucharist . Because of this one difference some of their arguments against each other became personal, and instead of aligning and helping each other, they separated and were left to their own battles in their own countries, which in the end, led to a quicker demise for Zwingli then it did for Luther! Still, at the end of the day, they had much, much more in common then they did in disagreement, but in that time agreement on every article of belief was necessary for Christian fellowship. All of the major figures of the Reformation had to deal with the reality of people interpreting scripture differently then themselves, of people leaving their ‘church’ to form another, of other theologians deciding that they had becomes heretics and should be excommunicated. The Catholic Church, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli, the Radical Reformers, and even the peoples of different cultures and societies; had to deal with the turmoil and dissonance of the spiritual, religious, and theological issues of the time. Judaism was experiencing much of the same conflict in the 1st century, one of the dominant questions at the time was ‘what did obedience to God’s law require’? The Jews saw themselves as a chosen people by God, and so in trying to interpret the rule of a foreign power many different answers, ideologies, and interpretations of scriptures broke the religion into different factions, and as in the Reformation, there even being fracture within factions. The Jewish historian Josephus tells us their were four major religious groups in this era; the Sadducees, the Pharisees, the Essenes, and what he calls a Fourth Philosophic Group . The Sadducees were located in Jerusalem, were society’s elite, compromised a great part of the Sanhedrin, and believed in Temple and Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament). The Pharisees were located more in rural areas, were believed to be represented in small numbers on the Sanhedrin, were very popular with the people, and believed that the Oral Law (the interpretation of scripture) was just as important as the Written Law. The Essenes were a sectarian group that many scholars believe were the writers of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the desert community at Qumran. Those scrolls tell the story of a group of pious Jews, fed up with the religious leaders in the Jerusalem temple, convinced that the Law of God was not being properly observed in their nation, who left the inhabited haunts of sinners and made a utopia in the desert where the covenant would be faithfully and perfectly kept – to their glory and to the salvation of Israel . Not much is known about the Fourth Philosophic Group other than they held many of the same beliefs as the Pharisees except that they had a passion for freedom and liberty that was the defining characteristic of their group, many have thought that this would be consistent with the Zealot revolutionaries responsible for the Jewish revolt of 66-70 C.E. The Sicarii are also a group of the Fourth Philosophy. Josephus tells us that unlike the vast majority of Jews, who wanted no part in the war, the Sicarii were one of several revolutionary groups that advocated rebellion For the major players of both of these eras and religions, there seems to be many common characteristics in the articulation and practice of their belief systems. The Catholic Church, though very similar in power and influence as the Sadducees, actually was closer in one of their formative beliefs to the Pharisees. One of the catch phrases of the Reformation was “sciptura sola’ (scripture alone) reformers such as Calvin and Luther felt that scripture alone should be the authority for the church and the Christian life and not the words of any man. The Catholics accepted tradition and the so-called living voice of the church as sources of revelation and authority alongside scripture , the reformers sought to remove what they saw as wood, hay, and stubble from the foundation of Christ. They felt that the Roman response at Trent was not according to Christ or the early church . As already mentioned above; this pattern can be found among the Pharisees. The Mishnah’s own account of the origin and history of the Oral Law is given in tractate Aboth, I1ff. At the same time the Written Law was given from Sinai, the Oral Law, too, was delivered to Moses, and handed down orally in turn to the leaders of successive generations . Over the years as the oral law grew, its importance grew and it came to be attributed to Moses himself . For the system of Rabbinical Judaism that would develop out of the 1st century, the Oral Law continues to be as important as the written Torah, just as in Catholicism the Pope continues to hold his position of authority along side scripture, and has been elevated to an even higher status theologically than during the Reformation era with the doctrine of papal infallibility at the Vatican Council of 1870. It is interesting to note that the Catholics would appeal to apostolic tradition and that the Jews would appeal to Mosaic tradition to validate their opinions on religious matters, but in eras where innovation was ‘bad’ and tradition was ‘good’ this could be viewed as unsurprising. The example used earlier of the friction between Ma...