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According to my recent research, the book of Kohelet has a link to the emergence of the Sadducees (Mandey, 2023). As a product of a thought movement, Kohelet could be the forerunner of Sadduceism. This paper aims to give a closer look at the link between Kohelet and Sadduceism as well as examine their relationship with the Pharisees as another movement that emerged alongside the Sadducees. Despite the challenges of historical information about the emergence of both the Sadducees and the Pharisees, a socio-historical analysis is conducted using literary sources.

In honour of Prof. Mazamisa, chronology, at its correctness, is viewed as the cornerstone of understanding every successful elaboration of any historical origination and leadership in realities through the perspective of the reader, text and two horizons. Second Temple period groupings’ identities are not immune to such perspective of historical order at foundational dimensions and towards the higher unfolding of origination and leadership narrations, aiming to place or show them correctly in their context. The three Afrocentric generations’ lessons and perspectives of leadership surfaced within the Second Temple three groupings context as an art of affirmative indigenous knowledge wisdom in origination and leadership chronologies from anti-colonialism and apartheid different generations. As Second Temple groupings, only Essenes, Pharisees and Sadducees are zoomed in to understand their correct historical chronology of originations and leadership through the three Afrocentric generations’ lessons and perspectives of leadership. This is aimed at surfacing an understanding of cause and reaction, advantages and disadvantages within similarities and differences, identities and actions from three Second Temple groupings context affirmed by the three Afrocentric different generations’ lessons perspective of leadership.ContributionThis article aims to showcase the comparative leadership lessons from the Second Temple era and early Christianity of the Sadducees, Pharisees and Essenes through Afrocentric perspectives in line with Mazamisa’s reader, text and two horizons. It is a lesson within theology, sociology, political sciences, and other fields of study to show the importance of comparative lessons drawn from the Second Temple groups and the Afrocentric leadership perspectives of different generations.

The Pharisees are frequently depicted in the New Testament as adversaries of early Christians. However, this narrow portrayal fails to capture their broader historical significance and the substantial role they played in shaping Jewish religious life during the Second Temple period and beyond. This article reevaluates the Pharisees’ leadership by exploring their positive contributions to both Judaism and the foundational development of early Christianity. Key aspects discussed include their twofold view of the Law of Moses, their pioneering efforts in synagogue worship, and their progressive stances on theological matters such as resurrection, the existence of angels, and social stratification. By highlighting these dynamics of power and influence, the study advocates for a more balanced understanding of the Pharisees’ enduring impact, which extends beyond their opposition to Jesus and early Christians to encompass their essential role in shaping the religious landscape of their time. This reassessment fosters a deeper appreciation of the Pharisees as a vital force within Jewish tradition and the emerging Christian movement.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implicationsThis article aims to highlight the positive aspects of Pharisaic leadership in the face of external challenges during the Second Temple era and the early Christian period. It serves as a lesson within theology, sociology, political science and other fields, emphasising the importance of diverse leadership narratives beyond the New Testament’s portrayal, which often presents a negative view of the Pharisees.

This article offers a new approach for reconstructing the original form and meaning of Jesus's legal woe sayings in Matt 23:16-26 (and the parallel in Luke 11:39- 44) as part of a broader Jewish intersectarian discourse. A close analysis of this unit alongside an early rabbinic source embedded in Mishnah tractate Yadayim 4:5-8 reveals that Jesus's condemnation of the Pharisees was not unique. His arguments concerning oaths, tithes, and ritual purity belong to a pre-Matthean stratum, and they match a familiar rhetorical pattern condemning the Pharisees' lenient and compromising approach. According to this pre-Matthean tradition, Jesus drew his argument and depiction of the Pharisees from the current intersectarian debate concerning the essential principles of torah observance. Jesus is portrayed as exploiting current anti-Pharisaic accusations, familiar also from Qumran literature and directed originally against the Pharisees' distorted conceptions of purity and holiness, as he attempts to uncover their moral faults.

In History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel , Martyn argued that John 9.22 concerns the formal expulsion from the synagogue of Jews who were confessing Jesus as the Messiah of Jewish expectation. Johannine scholars following Martyn have often claimed that a ‘high’ Christology must have provided the catalyst for this trauma, not the ‘low’ Christology posited by Martyn. For Martyn, however, a ‘high’ Christology was a subsequent development, leading to a second trauma, that of execution for blasphemously claiming that Jesus was somehow equal to God. Accepting Martyn's argument on 9.22 with respect to this issue, and leaving aside the debate about the relevance of the Birkat ha-Minim, this article seeks to determine why local synagogue authorities, evidently represented in John's narrative by the Pharisees, would have found the acceptance of Jesus as Messiah so offensive that they formulated a decree to expel fellow Jews espousing this new messianic faith. Analysis of John 5, 7 and 9 demonstrates that the Pharisees in the Johannine setting found this confession offensive because they regarded the behaviour of Johannine disciples on the Sabbath as thoroughly inconsistent with their own understanding of the Sabbath commandment and as significantly hindering their desire to play an authoritative role in determining what counted as acceptable behaviour on the Sabbath and what did not. In short, the specific catalyst for expelling Jews confessing Jesus as Messiah from the synagogue was their Sabbath observance, which the Pharisees in the Johannine setting came to regard as an unacceptable deviation from their own developing views on the matter in the period after 70 ce.

In Matthew 11:29–30, Jesus uses the image of a yoke in his interaction with the Pharisees. It is most common to interpret these verses as depicting the Jewish leaders – placing the ‘yoke of the Torah’ upon the people as an oppressive burden, in contrast to Jesus’s teaching, offering a different kind of yoke – one that is light and provides rest for the soul. In this article, it is argued that this contrast is insufficient for an appropriate understanding of Jesus’s use of the yoke metaphor. Firstly, to portray the ‘yoke of the Torah’ as an unbearable burden would be in tension with Jewish tradition, in which this ’yoke’ is regarded as a source of joy. The first part of this article therefore explored the concept of the ‘joy of the Torah’ within Jewish tradition, the very context in which the New Testament was written and within which it should be interpreted. It turned out that this joy is a prominent aspect in Jewish religious life, connected to the image of taking up the ’yoke of the Kingdom’. It is within this view of the term yoke that Jesus speaks to the Jewish leaders. The second part of the article proposed an alternative reading of Jesus’s reference to his own teaching as a ‘yoke’. If Jesus’s message opposed concrete obedience to the Torah, this would not only contradict the understanding of the yoke of the Torah as a source of joy among his audience, but also contradict his own affirmation of the Torah, as, for example, in the Sermon on the Mount. An intertextual analysis of the words used in Matthew 11:28–30 elucidated that Jesus’s use of the yoke metaphor echoes a positive use of this image, specifically by Jeremiah and Ecclesiasticus. Thus, there is much more continuity with the Old Testament and Jewish usage of the yoke metaphor than is suggested in the traditional exegesis of this passage.ContributionFinally, it is concluded that this not only sheds new light on the use of the yoke metaphor by Jesus in this passage, but it could also stimulate a fruitful dialogue with the Jewish tradition on how to live with the Torah as a source of joy. Moreover, this interpretation aligns with the whole framework of Matthew’s Gospel, never abolishing the Law, as underscored in the dissertation of Francois Viljoen, to whom this contribution is offered as a token of friendship.

This provocative new history of Palestinian Jewish society in antiquity marks the first comprehensive effort to gauge the effects of imperial domination on this people. Probing more than eight centuries of Persian, Greek, and Roman rule, Seth Schwartz reaches some startling conclusions--foremost among them that the Christianization of the Roman Empire generated the most fundamental features of medieval and modern Jewish life. Schwartz begins by arguing that the distinctiveness of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and early Roman periods was the product of generally prevailing imperial tolerance. From around 70 C.E. to the mid-fourth century, with failed revolts and the alluring cultural norms of the High Roman Empire, Judaism all but disintegrated. However, late in the Roman Empire, the Christianized state played a decisive role in ''re-Judaizing'' the Jews. The state gradually excluded them from society while supporting their leaders and recognizing their local communities. It was thus in Late Antiquity that the synagogue-centered community became prevalent among the Jews, that there re-emerged a distinctively Jewish art and literature--laying the foundations for Judaism as we know it today. Through masterful scholarship set in rich detail, this book challenges traditional views rooted in romantic notions about Jewish fortitude. Integrating material relics and literature while setting the Jews in their eastern Mediterranean context, it addresses the complex and varied consequences of imperialism on this vast period of Jewish history more ambitiously than ever before.Imperialism in Jewish Societywill be widely read and much debated.

his article examines the ritual dynamics and identity negotiation in Mark 7:1–23, aiming to unpack the complex interaction between ritual practices and social identity in early Christian communities. Drawing on ritual theory from anthropology and sociology, this research analyses the significance of ritual purity and its implications for group identity formation and maintenance. Mark 7:1–23 presents a confrontation between Jesus and the Pharisees about the observance of the handwashing ritual before meals, highlighting opposing understandings of purity and religious tradition between Jesus and the Pharisees. Jesus’s critique of an external ritual of handwashing as an identity marker emphasises the purity of the heart as a valid identity marker for all children of God. Through a ritualistic reading of Mark 7:1–23, this article seeks to explore the role played by rituals in identity formation in antiquity. By engaging with ritual theory as a lens to unpack the Pharisees’ perspective and that of Jesus on what identifies a true child of God, this article aims to offer insights into the complexities of identity as understood by both Jesus’s early movement and the Pharisees. Contribution: This interdisciplinary study of Mark 7:1–23 utilises ritual theory to expose the interaction between ritual practices and identity negotiation within early Christian communities, revealing how Jesus’s critique of external rituals facilitated the formation of a distinctively Christian identity centred on inner transformation and ethical conduct.