Anyone can pretend that their medieval religious texts are records of oral teachings going back to the time of Jesus - or even back to the time of Moses. Just don’t expect anyone else to accept your heresies as any earlier than they actually are.
let’s settle basics first. do i need to read classical hebrew to have informed view on whether samaritans were part of the Temple religion? reading is good but not all questions call for pilpul
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Returning to the original point, to have an informed opinion on the Talmud and whether it is an authentic representation of mainstream Judaism as practiced in Jesus' days, you need to study the Talmud, Mishna and contemporary sources like Josephus.
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So, when you e.g. read Jesus complaining about the Pharisees' enlargement of their phylacteries and fringes, you can understand what he is talking about, where these phylacteries and fringes come from, and what he's NOT complaining about.
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Or when you read descriptions in Josephus of Jews pelting Alexander Jannaeus, a Sadducee king with, etrogs, you can grasp the significance (etrogs, like phylacteries, are exclusively a Talmudic thing-you won't find them mentioned explicitly in the Torah.)
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Sadducees, of course, were defined by saying exactly what the Christians today say (and the opposite of what Jesus said): that the rabbis were just making things up and that their interpretation of the Torah was not the real deal. By pelting him with etrogs, the people disagreed.
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Bottom line: the vast majority of Jews in Jesus' day practiced Torah in the way taught by the rabbis, saw the rabbis as custodians of unbroken tradition from Moses and Mt. Sinai (as did Jesus) , and this is the same Judaism codified in the Talmud and practiced today.
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that’s absolutely false
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With which of my sources do you disagree? Josephus or the Christian scripture?
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you seem to suffer brain damage if you think the incident in Josephus you cite licenses the conclusions you draw
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Yes, you need to be familiar with the sources (not cherry picking them.) In fact, the Samaritans are explicitly not affiliated with the Temple-they claim Mount Gerizim is the place, not Mt. Zion. And the Sadducees, Essenes and Pharisees all agreed they were not Jews.
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read my pinned post if you care to see that this was exactly my point - no, Samaritans not part of the temple cult, no you do not need to read their scriptures to confirm this You only need to know the OT and be aware the orthodox Judaean religion did not sacrifice on Mt. G.
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