Q&A: Pharisees and Sadducees
Pharisees and Sadducees
Question
Hello and blessings,
How can one know the rightness of the rabbinic-Pharisaic path of Jewish law, which pushed the Dead Sea Scrolls outside the canon, as opposed to the path of Sadducean Jewish law?
Answer
I don’t think that can be known. The decision was made de facto. History had its say.
Discussion on Answer
It’s not connected to providence. There are evolutionary processes in Jewish law, and so a Jewish law that is accepted attains binding status. Certainly in a place where you don’t have a clear position that some other system/view is the correct one.
By the same token, I don’t know how to determine that Rabbi Yehuda is mistaken, and nevertheless we rule like Rabbi Shimon regarding an unintended act and regarding a labor not needed for its own sake, and so on. Or like Rava against Abaye, except for the six cases known by the mnemonic YAL KGM.
Why do you assume that an accepted Jewish law has binding status?
That itself is a Pharisaic assumption. The assumption of the Dead Sea sects would speak about their correct Jewish law. Not religious evolution—and that is why they withdrew to the desert.
Everyone claims that he is right. So what? Reason says that public acceptance has validity, just like the covenant we made at Mount Sinai. I assume the sects too agree that the system they accepted is binding on them.
As for dynamic tradition, see my latest series of columns (622 and onward).
Is that an argument from providence?
Because if there is no providence, then theoretically maybe the Sadducees are the true keepers of the word of God, and rabbinic Jewish law took over Judaism in a random way. No?