THE SILENT YEARS: Hasidim

So the Greeks move into town and the people of God respond in different ways. Some of them certainly thought that this lifestyle was not inherently evil and preferred everything that Greece had to offer. And also, for sure, you would have seen all kinds of people responding with different commitment levels to walking the path of God, from true compromisers to those who just wanted to hold both worlds in tension.

And there’s an argument to be made there, but we will deal with this later.

Other Jews, however, responded with fierce resistance. They refused to engage the new Greek world as passive consumers of this new message and philosophy. They resisted in the choices they made, they resisted in the way they worshipped, and they resisted in where they chose to live. And all of that worked out alright until the Greek world went into turmoil. Alexander the Great died and the Greek empire was passed on to four different generals. We will talk about the first two later, but the far eastern part of the empire (think Babylon/Chaldea) was given to a Greek ruler named Seleucus, and the southern portion (think Egypt) was given to a general named Ptolemy.

Originally, the land of Israel lay in the southern kingdom of Ptolemy. Ptolemy’s style of rule was one of passive invitation and suggestion; similar to Alexander, Ptolemy believed that if you built it, they would come. However, Seleucus was bent on the domination of the Greek empire and wanted to be Greece’s new emperor of fame. As Seleucus pushed west, he went to war against Ptolemy and the southern kingdom fell to Seleucus. This changed the world of the Jews dramatically.

Seleucus’s style of leadership was starkly different from Ptolemy. Seleucus said, “Become Greek or die.” Massive persecutions were launched at those who would refuse to take on the Hellenistic world and its value systems (namely Jews). Seleucus was famous for the torture that was pursued in the city squares under his rule. People were boiled in oil, pulled apart limb from limb by horses, and skinned alive as they peeled one-inch strips of hide from their bodies.

This bloody mess only fueled the fire of resistance. One day, Seleucus stormed into the Temple of God, desecrated the holy place, and offered pigs on the altar. This was the last straw for many of the resistive Jews and they mounted a revolt, led by Judah “the Hammer.” We know him as Judah Maccabee and the Maccabean revolt. This revolt is also the story of Chanukah. The eight-day uprising led to the miraculous overthrow of what some might argue was the most powerful army in the world at the time. A little band of Jewish rebels took back the Temple and supposedly walked in to find the menorah out of oil, but still burning. This is the celebration of the festival of lights.

Let’s get back to the story. The Maccabeans took control of the Temple and the land of Israel and, for a brief time in history, the Jews had their land back. The Maccabeans turned control of the Temple over to the priesthood — the rightful rulers of God’s Temple system. The priestly family was known as the Hasmoneans and they were direct descendants of the family lines of Zadok, the high priest who was put in place at the opening of the Temple of Solomon (more on them later).

However, this priestly Hasmonean family, within a matter of years, became as Hellenistic as the Greeks. Josephus tells us that there were so many priests at the Greco-Roman mud-wrestling on the Sabbath that there were not enough left in the Temple to hold Sabbath services.

Let that sink in.

Yes, many of the Jewish people felt betrayed. After all of that work to push out the Seleucids and God’s miraculous provision to defeat their enemies, how could they simply compromise the way of God and become as Greek as their imperial counterparts?

And so, in disgust and dismay, those groups of fiery rebels headed north to the Galilee, which we have already discussed. They became people of fierce devotion and commitment to walking the path of God. They were people of the insula, the rabbi, and the synagogue. Set apart. Holy. Devoted unto the LORD.

They called themselves Hasidim, or “the Pious Ones,” and they were made up of two groups:


ZEALOTS

This group held on to the passion that led the Jews to revolt. They believed that the Kingdom of God would come through total devotion to God’s path, complete resistance and rejection of the Hellenistic world, and a commitment to redemptive violence. They believed that if they would rise up in faithful obedience — with the sword — that God would defeat their enemies. He did it at Chanukah. He did it with Joshua and the conquest. He would do it again.

One of the zealot sects that we know of was the Sicarii, known for their short daggers called sicae. They were known for hiding a dagger up their sleeve and taking a vow to kill any Roman they found who was alone. They saw any cooperation with Rome or acceptance of Hellenism as a rejection of God and complete idolatry. Their poster boys were guys like Phinehas, who speared the Israelite man and the Moabite woman who were having relations in front of God’s house.

Realize the teachings of Jesus that were committed to principles of forgiveness and loving your enemies would run counter to this worldview. Realize that every time Jesus interacts favorably with a Roman, it would be incredibly offensive to this group. Realize that Jesus called some of these guys to be His disciples. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.


PHARISEES

This group believed that the Kingdom of God would come through complete devotion to God’s path and completely resisting and rejecting the Hellenistic world. They did not believe that God would want them to take up the sword against their enemies, but that if they would simply worry about obedience, God would bring rescue to their situation.

You see, the Pharisees get a really bad rap in our teachings. Admittedly, this is for good reason: Jesus is ruthless against many Pharisees. But what we often fail to see is that, of all the groups that will be at Jesus’s disposal, He is going to insist, by His own choice, on working with this religiously pious group of leaders. Certainly, their piety bred a self-righteousness that prevented them from seeing those on the outside, those on the margins, and the very people who were forgotten in the stories of the Old Testament.

But this was a group of people who were fiercely devoted to God’s commands and walking the path well. Their commitment to God would put our personal walks with the LORD to shame ten times over.


The Hasidim were the pious ones. They headed north to start a new home for a new kind of Judaism. And it worked. When God showed up to do His work amongst us, He decided to set up shop right under the noses of the Hasidim. He didn’t build an apartment on the wing of the Temple in Jerusalem; He went right up to the Galilee and lived in Nazareth. He planted His ministry in Capernaum for three years — the Pharisee capital of the Jewish world. He called zealots and fishermen who were the sons of Hasidim to be His first disciples.

There is something here to learn from the fierce and zealous devotion of the Hasidim.