Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

c. Other Judaisms
FROM THE GOSPELS TO JESUS §9.3
For the sake of completeness some mention ought to be made of other groupings
known to us either in the land or in the period of our concern.
(1) Of those who exercised some degree of political power, along with the
Sadducees, we should note the 'elders' (presbyteroi). 'The elders of the congregation'
and 'the elders of the city' were a long established feature of Israel's
life." And 'elders' appear frequently in the NT, often with 'high priests' (17
times), 'rulers' (Acts 4.5, 8), or 'scribes' (12 times). As their name suggests, they
were the older members of any community, revered for the wisdom they had
gained through their long experience and accorded recognized status accordingly.
Presumably they overlapped with 'the leading men (prötoi) of the district'
(Josephus, Ant. 7.230), 'the leading men (prötoi) of the people' (Ant. 11.141;
Luke 19.47). We are not thinking here of 'sects' or parties, of course, simply noting
the kaleidoscope of groups and roles which constituted first-century Judaism.
(2) Similarly we should simply note the indispensable role of priests and
scribes within the religio-social system of Second Temple Judaism. Here again, of
course, there is no idea of 'parties'; these were simply the middle-ranking professional
functionaries ('retainers') without whom the system would have broken
down. The priests, by definition, existed to ensure the smooth running of the Temple
cult, but that would require the presence of any particular priests in Jerusalem
possibly only two or three weeks in the year. During the rest of the time they lived
in the towns and villages of the land. There they were the resident legal (that is, also
biblical) experts and teachers and evidently served as local magistrates and judges
(Josephus, Ap. 2.187). No doubt some at least of the leadership in local communities
was also provided by the elders. 100 The necessity for scribes is a reminder that
the many transactions necessitated by daily living would require both legal experts
and copyists, particularly where a low level of literacy must be assumed. 101 That
there were scribes who attached themselves to priests or elders or Pharisees can
probably be assumed, as the regular linkage of 'high priests and scribes', 'scribes
and elders' and 'scribes and Pharisees' in the Gospels and Acts suggests. 102
99. Lev. 4.15; Judg. 8.16; 21.16; Ruth 4.2; 1 Sam. 16.4; Jdt. 8.10; 10.6; 13.12.
100. Sanders, Judaism 170-82, emphasizing that this role persisted through our period;
Pharisees had not superseded it. The older treatments by Jeremias, Jerusalem 198-207; Stern in
Safrai and Stern, Jewish People ch. 11; and Schürer, History 2.238-50, are again too dependent
on later rabbinic perspective.
101. See below at n. 277.
102. See further Saldarini, Pharisees ch. 11; Grabbe, Judaism 488-91; C. Schams, Jewish
Scribes in the Second-Temple Period (JSOTS 291; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1998).
Schwartz argues that the NT's 'scribes (grammateis)' were Levites (Studies 89-101). Often referred
to is ben Sira's idealisation of the scribal role (Sir. 38.24—39.11).
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