Bible Review

Since contact with corpses and tombs was a source of ritual impurity (Numbers 6:6; 19:16), the later Mishnah says that graves were marked with whitewash, especially at times of feasts, so that people would not stray over them and become ritually unclean (Mishnah Ma’as.sh. 5:1; Mishnah Sheqal. 1:1).

These two distinguishable forms of swearing were often interchanged for one another in the first century.

See Mishnah and Tosefta Nedarim and Saul Lieberman, Greek in Jewish Palestine: Studies in the Life and Manners of Jewish Palestine in the II-IV Centuries (New York: Journal of Theological Studies, 1942), pp. 115–143.

See 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra; G.W.E. Nickelsburg, “Enoch, Levi and Peter: Recipients of Revelation in Upper Galilee,” Journal of Biblical Literature 100 (1981), pp. 575–600; Graham Stanton, “5 Ezra and Matthean Christianity in the Second Century,” in A Gospel for a New People, pp. 256–277.

For the synthetic thrust of the rabbinic movement, see Shaye J.D. Cohen, “The Significance of Yavneh: Pharisees, Rabbis, and the End of Jewish Sectarianism,” Hebrew Union College Annual 55 (1984), pp. 27–53. The loss of the Temple leadership against which sects often reacted and the constant need to guard the community’s integrity probably encouraged unity. Even so, the emergence of a relatively united rabbinic Judaism as a dominant community influence took several centuries.

This is the thesis of Jacob Neusner, which has won increasing acceptance. Out of Neusner’s many writings, the following are especially useful for this topic: Judaism: The Evidence of the Mishnah (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1981); “The Formation of Rabbinic Judaism: Yavneh (Jamnia) from A.D. 70–100,” in Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt II.19.2, ed. H. Temporini and W. Hasse (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 1979), pp. 3–42.

This is the thesis of J. Andrew Overman, Matthew’s Gospel and Formative Judaism: The Social World of the Matthean Community (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1990).