Regarding section C, I’d recommend that the Rabbi and the readers watch this lecture: https://youtu.be/9KVuSxDteaA

I’m very curious what the Rabbi will think about it (because there’s a possibility that the Sages made a serious halakhic mistake)

I understand that this is a lecture by Rachel Elior. She has already been discussed here in the past.

I happened to exchange a few words with Professor David Henshke about Elior’s book on the subject (the lecture is based on it), and he told me that its view is considered bizarre by most scholars in this field. Professor Bezalel Bar-Kochva already thoroughly demolished it in his article here (and he is not suspected, Heaven forbid, of observance of the commandments):

https://www.google.co.il/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.tau.ac.il/sites/tau.ac.il.en/files/media_server/imported/508/files/2014/10/%25D7%2591%25D7%25A8-%25D7%259B%25D7%2595%25D7%259B%25D7%2591%25D7%2590-%25D7%25AA%25D7%2593%25D7%25A4%25D7%2599%25D7%25A1.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwi0mcjih9fYAhXDPFAKHf0zBrcQFjABegQIExAB&usg=AOvVaw1PReVPF0qTUq55FdBNx0PX

If you don’t have time to delve into it, at least read the opening paragraph of the review and you’ll understand how far-fetched these things are considered among the professionals. (Rabbi Michael Abraham likewise recommends skimming the beginning, since this is a common question.)

The difference is that Bar-Kochva doesn’t upload lectures to YouTube, and she does. This has become a phenomenon in recent years — scholars whose views are considered unaccepted upload lectures to YouTube (or publish popular “science” books on the subject) that sound very impressive to people who haven’t studied the topic in depth, and they get the mistaken impression that the view has been proven beyond doubt, when that is not the case.

Indeed, he makes minced meat out of her. He puts all kinds of claims from the “humanities” into healthy and balanced proportion.
His remark about YouTube public relations is also worth noting. These things are true in the study of evolution as well, where the more militant someone is, the more famous and prominent he is considered. The measured and balanced views that are common among researchers who don’t run to YouTube don’t gain traction with the general public.

Thanks for the article, M. For some reason I thought this was the consensus.

More good review articles:
https://www.haaretz.co.il/misc/1.858306
https://faculty.biu.ac.il/~testsm/elior.html

Additional review articles are brought in her Wikipedia entry.

With God’s help, 13 Tevet 5781

Just as today, whoever runs to publicize his opinion “outside” is someone whose opinion is not accepted in the “institutional academic study hall” — so it was in the Second Temple period. Whoever’s opinion was heard in the Pharisaic study hall (which was accepted by most of the people, according to Josephus’s testimony) was careful not to write down oral teachings. Only after the destruction, when the gatherings of all the sages during the three pilgrimage festivals ceased, did the Pharisees also begin formulating their teachings in compositions intended for memorization.

The overwhelming majority of “Second Temple literature” belonged to circles outside the Pharisaic study hall — Sadducees, Boethusians, and Essenes; members of the priestly elite; Hellenistic Jews; early Christians; and more and more — all of whom saw no prohibition in writing texts outside the sacred writings.

It is therefore no wonder that throughout this non-Pharisaic literature there is not a trace of mention of Antigonus of Sokho, Yose ben Yoezer and Yose ben Yohanan, Shimon ben Shetach and Yehuda ben Tabbai, Hillel and Shammai, Jonathan ben Uzziel, or Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai and his five disciples. The only ones mentioned are Shimon the Righteous (mentioned by Ben Sira), perhaps Shemaya and Avtalyon as Sameas and Pollion mentioned by Josephus, and Rabban Gamliel, mentioned both by Josephus and by the Gospels.

Second Temple Judaism was polarized. After the destruction, the power of the Sadducees and Essenes disappeared. The Christians separated from the Jewish people and drew after them some of the Hellenistic Jews. The massacre of Alexandrian Jewry in the days of Trajan also greatly depleted Hellenistic Judaism, and in the end the Pharisees remained as the leading force in Judaism.

Best regards, Yaron Fishel Ordner