The Faction That Won
The Longest Lie — Part 8 of 11 eFireTemple.com By the second century BCE, the laundering was complete. The Zoroastrian concepts had been absorbed, backdated, and presented as Jewish revelation. The texts were written. The narrative was set. But concepts do not institutionalize themselves. Someone has to champion them. Someone has to teach them, defend them, build a movement around them, and fight for their acceptance against those who resist. In Judaism, that someone was the Pharisees.
What this resource contributes
The Longest Lie — Part 8 of 11 eFireTemple.com By the second century BCE, the laundering was complete. The Zoroastrian concepts had been absorbed, backdated, and presented as Jewish revelation. The texts were written. The narrative was set. But concepts do not institutionalize themselves. Someone has to champion them. Someone has to teach them, defend them, build a movement around them, and fight for their acceptance against those who resist. In Judaism, that someone was the Pharisees. The debate Second Temple Judaism was not monolithic. Multiple factions competed for theological authority, and they disagreed on exactly the concepts that had been imported from Zoroastrianism. The Sadducees — the priestly aristocracy, associated with the Temple and the traditional sacrificial system — held a strict position: only the Torah, the five books of Moses, was authoritative.
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Talmud