RELIGST 2J03 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Misnagdim, Rabbinic Judaism, Sadducees

• School: McMaster University
• Department: Religious Studies
• Course: RELIGST 2J03
• Professor: Cecilia Hudecki

Document Summary

Jews today are more deeply divided than at any time in the past on the theory and practice of their religion (pg. There has been tremendous diversity in understanding judaism, which is not necessarily associated with the beginning. Sadducees were more literalist in their interpretation, less include toward the oral rule and they were in competition with pharisees who believed you had to follow a reifies law and they favoured the oral law. Essenes the key authors of most of the dead sea scrolls they believed in a religious life based on celibacy and separatism and they lived more separately. Exam question: was there always diversity in the understanding of how to enact the covenant and be god"s chosen people. Jews had to be self-sustaining and self-governing because of the empires in which they lived in. We do have a lot of evidence that the jewish communities looked to the jewish law as a source for how to practice judaism.