The smaller group, the Essenes, could hardly be designated as a party. Two of them, the Pharisees and Sadducees, were much more prominent than the third. But now the synagogues that have sprung up in every Jewish city seem to be the center of Jewish life even more than the temple.Īt this time the people of Israel were split into three major parties. The temple is still the center of Jewish worship, although the building has been partially destroyed and rebuilt about a half-dozen times since the close of the Old Testament.
They cannot trace their descendancy back, rather, they are hired priests to whom the office is sold as political patronage. Furthermore, the high priests who now sit in the seat of religious authority in the nation are no longer from the line of Aaron. But this king is the descendant of Esau instead of Jacob, and his name is Herod the Great. Palestine is still a puppet state - the Jews never did regain their own sovereignty - but now there is a king on the throne. The center of power has shifted from the East to the West, to Rome. The Roman legions have spread throughout the length and breadth of the civilized world. Rome is now the dominant power of the earth. Now when you open the New Testament to the book of Matthew, you discover an entirely different atmosphere - almost a different world. There were no political schisms or factions among them, nor were they divided into groups or parties. Nevertheless, although they were beset with weakness and formalism as the prophets have shown us, the people were united. It was Zerubbabel, the royal prince, yet there was no king on the throne of Israel, they were a puppet nation, under the domination of Persia.
The people knew who the rightful successor to David was, and in the book of Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, his name is given to us. There was a direct line of descendancy in the priesthood that could be traced back to Aaron.īut the royal line of David had fallen on evil days. Within the temple the line of Aaronic priests was still worshipping and carrying on the sacred rites as they had been ordered to do by the law of Moses. In Jerusalem, the temple had been restored, although it was a much smaller building than the one that Solomon had built and decorated in such marvelous glory. At the close of the book of Malachi in the Old Testament, the nation of Israel is back again in the land of Palestine after the Babylonian captivity, but they are under the domination of the great world power of that day, Persia and the Medio-Persian empire.
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