The Alchemy Key.pdf - Veritas File System

common person toward a scholar is even more intense than that of the
heathen toward Israelite. He suggested butchering common people on
the most holy day of the year, a day forbidden to kill animals. Rabbi
Joahanan added that one may tear a common person to pieces like fish.
The Herodian-Sadducees had little empathy with the spiritual
mission of the Jews. They upheld the importance of sacrificial rituals,
regarded the literal Torah as sole authority and denied the immortality of
the soul, resurrection after death and the existence of angels. 523 Josephus
notes that the Herodian-Sadducees even showed a harsh and disagreeable
spirit in their relationships with each other. 524
The Herodian-Sadducees proved no friends to the Zaddoki whom
the Maccabean-Hasmonaeans had supplanted. The office of High Priest
carried with it presidency of the Great Sanhedrin and responsibility for
suppression of revolutionary doctrine. Herod and his Sadducee High
Priest turned a ruthless blowtorch on their opponents including the
Zaddoki. 525 As with the Jonathan in 36BC, all potential claimants for the
position of High Priest were marked for particular vengeance.
This policy was still in force when Annas, father-in-law of the
High Priest Caiaphas, led the Great Sanhedrin to condemn Jesus the
Nazarene to death for blasphemy. His crime was revolutionary
insurgency and a valid Zaddoki claim to both the throne of Israel and
position of High Priest. The same set of circumstances had already led to
the death of Hezekiah and his son Judas the Galilean. It was also the
reason that John the Baptist was beheaded. In 62CE, the High Priest
Ananus ben Ananus had the next leader, James the Righteous, stoned for
the same reason. Josephus wrote that their persecution was not so much
because they claimed the throne, but because they were entitled to it.
At the time of Herod, the Pharisees administered the Jewish legal
system as Presidents of the Pharisaic High Court. There they dispensed
Mosaic Law, ran the world system of synagogue worship and were
responsible for suppression of heretical doctrine. Due to their absence
from the political arena and importance in maintaining the fabric of
Jewish society, the Pharisees became the only religious group tolerated by
the Romans after the destruction of the third Temple in 70CE. Almost by
default, the Pharisees became the sole religious authority of Israel. The
absence of the central Temple was not an issue for the Pharisees because
they were a cult of the legal system, not of the Temple. From the Roman
perspective, the most important point was that they were not nationalistic
militants.
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