Problem:
The Pharisee Rabbinical Tradition was produced out of the need for the Jewish Tradition to re-imagine itself in a wider world without its territorial state or the traditional religious context and Law it had sponsored since David and Solomon five centuries earlier -- the Temple of Jerusalem, its Priesthood and sacrificial ritual. The Rabbis of the new Synagogue tradition, instituted by Josiah, became the guides to that new reality, played-out within the experience of the Babylonian Captivity where prayer replaced ritual sacrifice, and Hebrews were identified by their character rather than their infrastructure. One might argue that their efforts were too successful, in that they inspired a community wide response so respected, even while enslaved, that the Jewish population in captivity were honored and rewarded by the Persian conqueror of Babylon with not only their freedom but the trappings of their former life as a semi-autonomous state within the greater Persian Empire of Cyrus "The Great" and his heirs. However, with the return of the state and the rebuilding of the Temple at Jerusalem, the Priesthood also returned along with their institutional claim as the exclusive arbiters of the Jewish Law. As a consequence, that Priesthood, representing a written (allegedly unchanging) Jewish Law, and the Rabbinical Party -- the Pharisee -- representing an oral tradition of interpretation of the Law, would compete with one another, relentlessly, for the hearts and minds of the Hebrew people until the Roman 'Diaspora'. Is the Law always the Truth? A saying of the Pharisee held that "the greatest truths have the most interpretations" allowing the Law, authored in the Torah, to be a constant reference point to every generation as new challenges arose in an ever changing world down to the present. Would the Eloquent Peasant have agreed?