From the Maccabees to the Mishnah

by Shaye J.D. Cohen

Judaism remained a religion that allowed the individual little role.

The emergence of scribes and other sages meant that the priests no longer had a monopoly on religious truth.

incumbent

The legal portions of the Hebrew Bible are not familiar with the distinction between ritual and ethics or the distinction between rules that are peculiarly Israelite (or Jewish) and those that are followed by all civilized peoples.

Job,

Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes ignore all the Israelite rituals and focus instead on virtues that are respected by all peoples

“ritual” laws (Sabbath, food laws, etc.).

The council described in Acts 15 decreed

“Noahide laws,” a set of prohibitions and

obligations that were to be observed by all the children of Noah, that is, all of humanity. Gentiles

who ob...

them would have a share in the wo...

ritual laws (including the Sabbath, food laws, festivals, etc.) were less important than spirituality and ethics.

Rabbinic ethics closely resemble those of the Stoics.

disparagement