I'm not sure who you are trying to convince, but quoting gemaras as evidence for something a few hundred years before will not prove anything to anyone who isn't already convinced.
I'm not sure if you meant this as a serious argument, but this is the equivalent of saying: "Rabbinic Judaism is the only type of Judaism! It's the same Judaism that Jews had always been practicing! How do you know? Well, here are a bunch of citations to core rabbinic texts to prove it to you!"
It's also functionally the only texts we have. I think a doubter of them on individual cases had the burden of evidence to prove them wrong, at minimum you ought to atheist give them the benefit of the doubt when describing חבר (as opposed to עם הארץ) practice in the 2nd Temple period.
I don't think this is true. We also have Josephus and Philo, as well as a bunch of other Second Temple texts. We also have material remains (see, for instance, Yonatan Adler's recent book on the origins of Judaism, where he goes into the evidence at length).
Particularly if you want to argue that "Rabbinic Judaism" is the only type of Judaism, you need to contend with Josephus's description of the differences between the various Jewish sects of the late Second Temple era.
And I think your distinction between חבר and עם הארץ is right on point and extremely significant. There is no reason to think that elite rabbinic practice reflected how "the people" experienced their Judaism -- which is basically the argument of this post.
Josephus was a Pharisee he just acknowledged other groups existed. While I do agree the Rabbinic tradition isn't perfect. Factually when they don't claim to be inventing something, its a very strong indication that they didn't invent it. (I will make the obvious exception of a case like Shemonah Esrei where they claim to rediscover something. If the claim is rediscoverry I consider allegations of invention to be legitimate. And plausible).
Given the Amoraim or Tanaim are claiming to neither have invented or rediscovered a practice, and no one else contemporary testifies that they invented it, it feels odd to assume that they invented it.
If we assume a certain practice predates the Tanaim and Amoraim then if you I would expect a certain specific source to argue from rather than blanket skepticism.
You could argue from an angle of survival, that Rabbinic Judaism, having stood the test if time while historically significant movements like karaism have dwindled down to nothing, that the backbone of Judaism, in any meaningful sense, is Rabbinic.
Also, it's generally agreed upon that the ancient rabbis were part of a populist movement and were from among the ranks of the poorer classes. Their status as "elites" was essentially intellectual celebrity, not economic or formally powerful. Their debates and enactments should be understood as basically descriptive of how the people lived.
(Philo and Josephus are bad examples because one was a platonic philosopher and the other speaking to a Roman audience)
But this isn't what the post argued. The argument in the post is that Judaism hasn't changed over the last several thousand years, and that “If you took a Jew from Temple days and put him in a Jewish community today, they [would] recognize the Judaism practiced as their own.”
The idea that Rabbinic Judaism has "stood the test of time" while other streams of Judaism have died out does not particularly help there.
Also, I don't think it is generally agreed that the ancient rabbis were "part of a populist movement and were from among the ranks of the poorer classes." I think you are referring to the Pharisees, but the general scholarly consensus is that the Rabbis were not necessarily the same as the Pharisees even if they carried on some of their traditions.
The argument that the post is making is that if you follow the Rabbinic strain of Judaism over the past few thousand years, its fundamentals remain similar, which isn't really something you can claim with other movements. You could say it's survivability bias, but there are no saudducees alive today to pose an alternative continuity to Judaism. Karaism has practically no bearing on how Jews practice today. There's no schism that produced a Catholic Judaism and an Orthodox Judaism. In a very real sense, Rabbinic Judaism is Judaism.
It's also generally true that core practices remain consistent. I think the article leans a bit too heavily into this theme. Tefillin, Shabbat, and circumcision are all well established. Josephus makes clear the existence of a widespread oral law adhered to and studied by the masses, etc.
It seems self evident to me that the rabbis are downstream of the Pharisees (they're the only ones with a substantive enough legal theory to have produced the schools of the Mishnah and Tosefta and it would be a little astonishing if the depth and breadth of the account of temple service in early Rabbinic literature was invented post destruction). Even that not being the case, given that there was little except ceremonial power in religious leadership under Rome, and given that most of the sages whose professions we do know have fairly blue collar jobs, it would be a stretch, by any measure, to call them elites.
"It is important to remember that Judaism is not Old Testament religion, but rather a rejection of the Biblical faith altogether in favor of the Pharisaical, Talmudic heresy. Like Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Unification Church, and other cults, it claims to be based on the Bible; but its actual authority comes from the traditions of men. Jesus was quite clear: Judaism denies Christ because it denies Moses. Orthodox Christianity alone is the true continuation and fulfillment of Old Testament religion (see Matt. 5:17-20; 15:1-9; Mark 7:1-13; Luke 16:29-31; John 5:45-47; 8:42-47).”
Natually, there are others brands but Rabbinic Judaism is the only authentic type of Judaism, that has withstood the test of exile, time and has a solid paper trail to demonstrate its legitimacy.
But this is the exact opposite of what this post argues. The karaites would certainly take issue with the claim that "Rabbinic Judaism is the only (note: he did not argue "authentic") type of Judaism."
>>>The premise that a so-called “Rabbinic Judaism” arose after the destruction of the Second Temple was initially propagated in polemics by early Xians
I've never seen X used in this way before, but there's a common misconception that using X for "Xmas" instead of saying "Christmas" is a means of de-emphasizing religious devotion toward Jesus of Nazareth. This takes the form of an inverse minced oath, because you're trying to avoid saying his name because you don't believe he's God, rather than because he's God.
However, the X comes from the Greek letter Chi, which is the first letter of the Greek word Χριστός, pronounced Khristos, which is where the word Christ comes from.
This is a post that's preaching to the choir. You'll only convince someone like me, who disagrees with you, if you deal with the academic sources. You don't quote or engage with even one academic sources. I highly recommend checking out this interview by Yonatan Adler as a great source for you to engage with - https://youtu.be/5U1TN-i0x7g?si=VLZ9LCPZkCX9necZ
He desperately tries to be madche them in his book (unconvincingly imo). Essentially, if there's no prior evidence for a practice then it is new, but if there is, then the evidence is just for that one small thing exactly and everything else is new. Why? Because.
The argument that the post is making is that if you follow the Rabbinic strain of Judaism over the past few thousand years, its fundamentals remain similar, which isn't really something you can claim with other movements. You could say it's survivability bias, but there are no saudducees alive today to pose an alternative continuity to Judaism. Karaism has practically no bearing on how Jews practice today. There's no schism that produced a Catholic Judaism and an Orthodox Judaism. In a very real sense, Rabbinic Judaism is Judaism.
It's also generally true that core practices remain consistent. I think the article leans a bit too heavily into this theme. Tefillin, Shabbat, and circumcision are all well established. Josephus makes clear the existence of a widespread oral law adhered to and studied by the masses, etc.
It seems self evident to me that the rabbis are downstream of the Pharisees (they're the only ones with a substantive enough legal theory to have produced the schools of the Mishnah and Tosefta and it would be a little astonishing if the depth and breadth of the account of temple service in early Rabbinic literature was invented post destruction). Even that not being the case, given that there was little except ceremonial power in religious leadership under Rome, and given that most of the sages whose professions we do know have fairly blue collar jobs, it would be a stretch, by any measure, to call them elites.
I somewhat agree, mostly in regards to Shabbat and ceremonial halachot.
However I think you are overlooking big differences that appear in lived halacha
One big difference you are overlooking is purity halachot. Today we just ignore them, at the time some cared. (Only some, in second temple times most didn't care, although the Rabbis looked down on them for this.)
If one is avoiding becoming impure, which is 100% a requirement to bake decent amounts of bread in a halachikaly valid manner, or harvest crops in a muttar fashion. (You can't deal with Challah or Maaser if impure)
The fact that we just have accepted impurity does fundamentally change living a halachik life.
Another thing is in addition to decrees changing businesses halacha at the fundamental level, are the societal shifts that functionally if not technically changing it. No one today operates under Torah principles of proof. For example a big part of Torah abd especially Rabbinic jurisprudence involves the taking of oaths, a practice which if not technically abolished has been so attacked abd condemned as to functionally abolished it. (For example the whole heter iska framework relies on society refusing to take an oath even though the debtor is 90% fully in the right and may even be halachikaly obligated to take an oath that he lost the money through legitimate means). People don't care about hilchot Edut or Shevuot and are so scarred to touch them as to functionally abolished them, and basically most associated business halachot. When all courts operate under Pashara, even if technicallyhalacha is being followed, functionally businesses Din has been abolished.
I think the agricultural stuff can be forgiven as that is more about industrialization than halachik change.
A lot of functional change is in areas that are ignored, not in technical rule changes.
At the same time I think you are correct to emphasize the fundamental continuity in terms of Torah study, Shabbat, kashrut, and prayer to some degree.
I agree with the overall thrust of the post, but one major difference was overlooked--dealing with tumoh and taharah for kohanim or those who eat chullin b'taharah. For them, keeping track of tumoh (and the various levels of tumoh--esp. regarding zav and niddah and their producing tumas medris) must have been a major part of their daily routine which we do not have now.
Thank you Magen Yehudi. Very good points that will be evident to anyone who gets into a blatt gemora. The historical transition from state A to state B was gradual, intensified by exile, persecutions, instability.... It was not a boolean switch as the anachronistic peddlers try to sell. Personally I look forward the restoration of terumah d'oirata as described by Achronim. Sorry Rambam, waiting for the complete return of the all the lost tribes appears to too much a rationalization for pious passivity or other theological rhetoric.
You know that some of these things, in terms of when they started, aren’t clear throughout Chazal themselves. The Gemara says in Berachos that Shimon HaPikuli (whatever his name is) was mesader the shmonah Esrei, not AKG
I'm not sure who you are trying to convince, but quoting gemaras as evidence for something a few hundred years before will not prove anything to anyone who isn't already convinced.
I'm not sure if you meant this as a serious argument, but this is the equivalent of saying: "Rabbinic Judaism is the only type of Judaism! It's the same Judaism that Jews had always been practicing! How do you know? Well, here are a bunch of citations to core rabbinic texts to prove it to you!"
It's also functionally the only texts we have. I think a doubter of them on individual cases had the burden of evidence to prove them wrong, at minimum you ought to atheist give them the benefit of the doubt when describing חבר (as opposed to עם הארץ) practice in the 2nd Temple period.
I don't think this is true. We also have Josephus and Philo, as well as a bunch of other Second Temple texts. We also have material remains (see, for instance, Yonatan Adler's recent book on the origins of Judaism, where he goes into the evidence at length).
Particularly if you want to argue that "Rabbinic Judaism" is the only type of Judaism, you need to contend with Josephus's description of the differences between the various Jewish sects of the late Second Temple era.
And I think your distinction between חבר and עם הארץ is right on point and extremely significant. There is no reason to think that elite rabbinic practice reflected how "the people" experienced their Judaism -- which is basically the argument of this post.
Josephus was a Pharisee he just acknowledged other groups existed. While I do agree the Rabbinic tradition isn't perfect. Factually when they don't claim to be inventing something, its a very strong indication that they didn't invent it. (I will make the obvious exception of a case like Shemonah Esrei where they claim to rediscover something. If the claim is rediscoverry I consider allegations of invention to be legitimate. And plausible).
Given the Amoraim or Tanaim are claiming to neither have invented or rediscovered a practice, and no one else contemporary testifies that they invented it, it feels odd to assume that they invented it.
If we assume a certain practice predates the Tanaim and Amoraim then if you I would expect a certain specific source to argue from rather than blanket skepticism.
A fair number of examples in this post are redidcoveries.
You could argue from an angle of survival, that Rabbinic Judaism, having stood the test if time while historically significant movements like karaism have dwindled down to nothing, that the backbone of Judaism, in any meaningful sense, is Rabbinic.
Also, it's generally agreed upon that the ancient rabbis were part of a populist movement and were from among the ranks of the poorer classes. Their status as "elites" was essentially intellectual celebrity, not economic or formally powerful. Their debates and enactments should be understood as basically descriptive of how the people lived.
(Philo and Josephus are bad examples because one was a platonic philosopher and the other speaking to a Roman audience)
But this isn't what the post argued. The argument in the post is that Judaism hasn't changed over the last several thousand years, and that “If you took a Jew from Temple days and put him in a Jewish community today, they [would] recognize the Judaism practiced as their own.”
The idea that Rabbinic Judaism has "stood the test of time" while other streams of Judaism have died out does not particularly help there.
Also, I don't think it is generally agreed that the ancient rabbis were "part of a populist movement and were from among the ranks of the poorer classes." I think you are referring to the Pharisees, but the general scholarly consensus is that the Rabbis were not necessarily the same as the Pharisees even if they carried on some of their traditions.
The argument that the post is making is that if you follow the Rabbinic strain of Judaism over the past few thousand years, its fundamentals remain similar, which isn't really something you can claim with other movements. You could say it's survivability bias, but there are no saudducees alive today to pose an alternative continuity to Judaism. Karaism has practically no bearing on how Jews practice today. There's no schism that produced a Catholic Judaism and an Orthodox Judaism. In a very real sense, Rabbinic Judaism is Judaism.
It's also generally true that core practices remain consistent. I think the article leans a bit too heavily into this theme. Tefillin, Shabbat, and circumcision are all well established. Josephus makes clear the existence of a widespread oral law adhered to and studied by the masses, etc.
It seems self evident to me that the rabbis are downstream of the Pharisees (they're the only ones with a substantive enough legal theory to have produced the schools of the Mishnah and Tosefta and it would be a little astonishing if the depth and breadth of the account of temple service in early Rabbinic literature was invented post destruction). Even that not being the case, given that there was little except ceremonial power in religious leadership under Rome, and given that most of the sages whose professions we do know have fairly blue collar jobs, it would be a stretch, by any measure, to call them elites.
"It is important to remember that Judaism is not Old Testament religion, but rather a rejection of the Biblical faith altogether in favor of the Pharisaical, Talmudic heresy. Like Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Unification Church, and other cults, it claims to be based on the Bible; but its actual authority comes from the traditions of men. Jesus was quite clear: Judaism denies Christ because it denies Moses. Orthodox Christianity alone is the true continuation and fulfillment of Old Testament religion (see Matt. 5:17-20; 15:1-9; Mark 7:1-13; Luke 16:29-31; John 5:45-47; 8:42-47).”
-- David Chilton, Paradise Restored
Natually, there are others brands but Rabbinic Judaism is the only authentic type of Judaism, that has withstood the test of exile, time and has a solid paper trail to demonstrate its legitimacy.
But this is the exact opposite of what this post argues. The karaites would certainly take issue with the claim that "Rabbinic Judaism is the only (note: he did not argue "authentic") type of Judaism."
>>>The premise that a so-called “Rabbinic Judaism” arose after the destruction of the Second Temple was initially propagated in polemics by early Xians
I've never seen X used in this way before, but there's a common misconception that using X for "Xmas" instead of saying "Christmas" is a means of de-emphasizing religious devotion toward Jesus of Nazareth. This takes the form of an inverse minced oath, because you're trying to avoid saying his name because you don't believe he's God, rather than because he's God.
However, the X comes from the Greek letter Chi, which is the first letter of the Greek word Χριστός, pronounced Khristos, which is where the word Christ comes from.
This is a post that's preaching to the choir. You'll only convince someone like me, who disagrees with you, if you deal with the academic sources. You don't quote or engage with even one academic sources. I highly recommend checking out this interview by Yonatan Adler as a great source for you to engage with - https://youtu.be/5U1TN-i0x7g?si=VLZ9LCPZkCX9necZ
Adler is the opposite extreme.
Well obviously that’s evidence of them having written the Torah themselves, duh
He desperately tries to be madche them in his book (unconvincingly imo). Essentially, if there's no prior evidence for a practice then it is new, but if there is, then the evidence is just for that one small thing exactly and everything else is new. Why? Because.
The argument that the post is making is that if you follow the Rabbinic strain of Judaism over the past few thousand years, its fundamentals remain similar, which isn't really something you can claim with other movements. You could say it's survivability bias, but there are no saudducees alive today to pose an alternative continuity to Judaism. Karaism has practically no bearing on how Jews practice today. There's no schism that produced a Catholic Judaism and an Orthodox Judaism. In a very real sense, Rabbinic Judaism is Judaism.
It's also generally true that core practices remain consistent. I think the article leans a bit too heavily into this theme. Tefillin, Shabbat, and circumcision are all well established. Josephus makes clear the existence of a widespread oral law adhered to and studied by the masses, etc.
It seems self evident to me that the rabbis are downstream of the Pharisees (they're the only ones with a substantive enough legal theory to have produced the schools of the Mishnah and Tosefta and it would be a little astonishing if the depth and breadth of the account of temple service in early Rabbinic literature was invented post destruction). Even that not being the case, given that there was little except ceremonial power in religious leadership under Rome, and given that most of the sages whose professions we do know have fairly blue collar jobs, it would be a stretch, by any measure, to call them elites.
I somewhat agree, mostly in regards to Shabbat and ceremonial halachot.
However I think you are overlooking big differences that appear in lived halacha
One big difference you are overlooking is purity halachot. Today we just ignore them, at the time some cared. (Only some, in second temple times most didn't care, although the Rabbis looked down on them for this.)
If one is avoiding becoming impure, which is 100% a requirement to bake decent amounts of bread in a halachikaly valid manner, or harvest crops in a muttar fashion. (You can't deal with Challah or Maaser if impure)
The fact that we just have accepted impurity does fundamentally change living a halachik life.
Another thing is in addition to decrees changing businesses halacha at the fundamental level, are the societal shifts that functionally if not technically changing it. No one today operates under Torah principles of proof. For example a big part of Torah abd especially Rabbinic jurisprudence involves the taking of oaths, a practice which if not technically abolished has been so attacked abd condemned as to functionally abolished it. (For example the whole heter iska framework relies on society refusing to take an oath even though the debtor is 90% fully in the right and may even be halachikaly obligated to take an oath that he lost the money through legitimate means). People don't care about hilchot Edut or Shevuot and are so scarred to touch them as to functionally abolished them, and basically most associated business halachot. When all courts operate under Pashara, even if technicallyhalacha is being followed, functionally businesses Din has been abolished.
I think the agricultural stuff can be forgiven as that is more about industrialization than halachik change.
A lot of functional change is in areas that are ignored, not in technical rule changes.
At the same time I think you are correct to emphasize the fundamental continuity in terms of Torah study, Shabbat, kashrut, and prayer to some degree.
I agree with the overall thrust of the post, but one major difference was overlooked--dealing with tumoh and taharah for kohanim or those who eat chullin b'taharah. For them, keeping track of tumoh (and the various levels of tumoh--esp. regarding zav and niddah and their producing tumas medris) must have been a major part of their daily routine which we do not have now.
Thank you Magen Yehudi. Very good points that will be evident to anyone who gets into a blatt gemora. The historical transition from state A to state B was gradual, intensified by exile, persecutions, instability.... It was not a boolean switch as the anachronistic peddlers try to sell. Personally I look forward the restoration of terumah d'oirata as described by Achronim. Sorry Rambam, waiting for the complete return of the all the lost tribes appears to too much a rationalization for pious passivity or other theological rhetoric.
You know that some of these things, in terms of when they started, aren’t clear throughout Chazal themselves. The Gemara says in Berachos that Shimon HaPikuli (whatever his name is) was mesader the shmonah Esrei, not AKG
Take a close look at the description of the Amida in Yerushalmi Berakhot. How many are there? Which one is missing? Why?