Going to Court

 Thirteenth Saturday after Pentecost

Thanks to Glenn for his comment. I'll respond more thoroughly next week. For now I'll just note that neither Catholics nor Orthodox think of Mary as a God. They may pray to/with her as an intermediary between God and humanity. This may be too fine a distinction for many Protestants to make. As we shall see, the Sadducees have the same problem. They believed in God but not in angels, demons, devil, souls, saints or anything else in the divine realm--only God. It strikes me that quite a few Methodists these days have views remarkably similar to the Sadducees. I'm more of the view of a well populated heaven. 

This leads us to today's Bible Study. Please read Acts 4:1-4. This is the first of many times in Acts when the apostles will come in conflict with the law, sometimes the Jewish law, sometimes the Roman law. For us to understand more fully what is going on, we need to have some understanding of Jewish law and of Roman law. I'm fairly good on Jewish law, not so good on Roman. I'm working on it. 

Here are a couple of good things to know. The Jewish legal authorities in Jerusalem are the Sadducees. From what we know of them, they are mostly priests. They control the Temple. Their court is the Sanhedrin. They have jurisdiction over all Jewish religious matters. Their judgments on matters questionably religious can be nullified by Roman officials. Roman law supersedes Jewish law. There are a lot of overlaps and in-betweens with Roman and Jewish law. Roman governors can overlook questionable actions of Jewish courts. Technically, only Romans can carry out capital punishment, but as we shall see in the case of Stephen, sometimes Jewish authorities do.

In Acts 4 Peter and John are preaching in the Temple court. The Sadducees are annoyed because Peter and John are preaching the resurrection of the dead, something the Sadducees do not believe in. Luke uses the word "annoying" for how the Sadducees feel about these Apostles. There is nothing criminal about what they are preaching. The Pharisees and most of the common people believe in the resurrection. But being annoying is enough to get you put in jail (as our times' Civil Rights demonstrators well know). It was just an overnight jail stay and a warning for then to stop, which of course they would not do. 

One thing slightly different about the Apostles' preaching on the resurrection is their understanding that the resurrection of Jesus is a foretaste of the general resurrection of of the dead. 

As we will see further on in Acts Paul will use this disagreement between the Pharisees view and the Sadducees to his advantage in another trial. 

So here are a few other things that the Sadducees don't believe in: angels, demons, devil, the coming of a messiah, life after death (beyond sleeping in the grave), anything other than the first five books of the Bible as scripture. The Pharisees believe in all these things, as do the early Christians. There is a clear logic in the Sadducees belief. Angels, demons, messiah, satan, resurrection, etc. do not appear in the first five books of the Bible (Torah). They come only in the prophets and the writings. 

 

The Sadducees and the Pharisees both do believe in strict adherence to the Jewish law (Torah), all of which is found in the first five books of the Bible. On this point the Christians differ from both the Sadducees and the Pharisees. Christians are not bound by Jewish law. On this point the Christians and the Jews will eventually, by the end ofthe first century, part ways.

The Pharisees thought the Sadducees lacked understanding because they did not use the whole Bible, only the first five books. The Christians by the middle of the second century thought that all the Jews lacked understanding because they did not use the whole Bible, only the Old Testament. 

I may (or may not) want to take this line of thinking a little further. The Protestants lack understanding because they do not use the whole Bible. They leave out the Apocrypha. But that's a debate for another blog or two.

Faithfully,

Christian