Corpus-Paul

[Lewis Reich <lbr AT sprynet.com>]

Liz Fried wrote:

> There was a great deal of religious ferment at this time among Jewish
> groups. Except for Paul, none of these groups believed the law was moot.
> The Gospels portray various Jewish groups arguing over the minutia of the
> law. You see the Qumran community arguing with ...(whom?) over points of
> law.  The ferment was real, but it was not over whether the law was valid,
> whether the temple was appropriate.

Somewhat ambiguous;  I'd suggest that all Jews thought that *some* Temple was
appropriate, but clearly the Qumran sectarisn thought the Temple should be 
somewhat
different than it was, and the priests of the Leontopolis temple rejected the
leadership of the Jerusalem priesthood.

> You ask how one is to be righteoused without the temple.  I have tried to
> stress in other posts on this list that being righteous was not paramount,
> it is really not a Jewish issue.

Hmmm.  I'd say that salvation wasn't a paramount Jewish concern, but that
righteousness, meaning following the law, was important.


> The Jew had a place in the world to come,
> in God's covenant, regardless of the degree of his righteousness.

As long as s/he was righteous in some measure.  The Talmud indicates that 
some Jew had
no portion in the world to come.




> In any
> case, the temple was not necessary to be righteous.  The Jew who desired to
> be righteous obeyed the law to the best of his ability. Jews living in the
> diaspora who desired to be righteous did not worry about temple sacrifice. A
> woman did not hasten to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem every time she had a
> baby. The purpose of the temple sacrifice was not to be righteous anyway, it
> was to atone for the altar. With the temple destroyed, the issue of
> sacrifice is moot, there is no altar to atone for.

To atone *for* the altar or to atone *through* the altar?  And, of course, 
the rabbis
taught that the sacrifice alone does not atone without sincere repentance.


> The issue of being
> righteous was not moot however. Thus we see Jews still concerned about
> following the law. As I explained, even the 'am ha'aretx followed torah
> laws, they just didn't follow the rabbinic laws.

I'd suggest that they didn't follow *some* of the rabbinic laws.  Much of the 
rabbinic
effort, it seems to me, was a codification and systematization of the 
different
traditions of observing the law that were common among the 'am ha'aretz.
--

Lewis Reich
LBR AT sprynet.com